JarrodMFiresofLove

5 hours ago, slick jones said:

Warren was married, to Lesley Ann. She was bitten by a lab  mouse and caught the Dreaming Death.

That's right, he did marry her. She was originally involved with Floyd.

4 hours ago, Soaplovers said:

I think Warren Andrews was supposed to be a grey character.. not all bad and not all good.  He was saddled with that dippy nurse Lesley and once she was killed off during the Dreaming Death virus story.. he became a little darker with his dealings with both Alex and India.  He also owned a really interesting looking club called The Blue Orchid that was shown for about two or three years before it got phased out.

 

From watching the November 1986 videos, I just watched the botched Reva/Kyle wedding with Maeve breaking it up with the news that her son with Kyle was still alive.. and a stunned Reva getting hit by a car with the return of Josh.  With that said, I think the show reunited Josh/Reva too quickly at this point when the two hadn't spoken in two years.. and I think a slower build toward the two reuniting would have been better than what was done.  It was like one day she was all set to marry Kyle, and after calling off the wedding, she goes back to Josh.  Too sudden and too quick.  I'll even go far as to say I preferred Reva during the two years Josh wasn't on the show because she was allowed to breath and develop as a character outside of the Jeva label.  If the show hadn't bought Josh back in late 1986, I wonder where the character of Reva would have gone.

 

 

Warren was kind of a Roger Thorpe type character. Not quite ethical, a bit shady and dark, but still there were a few redeeming features. And he was obsessed with power and status. At least that was my impression of him.

Regarding Kyle and Reva, I'm sure the show would've turned them into a long-range couple if Josh had never come back. In many ways Kyle was the replacement for Josh. Not only did he become romantically linked with Reva, but like Josh, he was the younger half-brother of Billy.

The Reva-Kyle-Maeve stuff was sort of repeated with Reva-Josh-Sonni.

15 minutes ago, NothinButAttitude said:

 

Did they ever have any direction for Warren? Because I just feel like he was implanted on the show with no direction at all. I think the only saving grace was that Warren has chemistry with Alex, but outside of that--was there any real purpose for him? No. Not at all.

He worked well with India too. He had an earlier storyline where he was involved with a nurse who died from the dreaming sickness disease or whatever it was called. I think he started as the hospital administrator who butted heads with Ed, then he switched over into the Spaulding orbit. He was always meant to be a weasel type, but they never married him to anyone and they never brought any of his family to town, so he we didn't find out much about him and what made him tick. Probably the reason he lasted four years was because the actor who played him was very good, but it was largely an undeveloped role.

I see he just died last year. I didn't realize he'd received a Daytime Emmy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Burton

Nobody ever talks about Warren Andrews. Was that a Pam Long creation, or was he added before her first stint as head writer? The character lasted a few years but we never knew anything about his background, did we? Or if he had a family?

I posted this on the Daytime Royalty site yesterday:

13 minutes ago, robbwolff said:

Actually Luke (Lew) Dancy lasted longer. He showed up right after Joan Dancy died and was there till the last episode on December 31, 1982.

 

Interesting. Was it the same actor who played Lew/Luke the entire time? When was Virginia Dancy written out and what were the circumstances surrounding her departure?

3 hours ago, robbwolff said:

 

I know Weber showed up as Burton Canfield on Texas in 1982. He was definitely in the final episode of Texas, appearing alongside Lori March who played his wife Mildred.

The credit on the IMDb I referenced is for an episode for The Doctors from April 1982. Maybe it was one of his last episodes and he soon moved over to Texas. He obviously had a long run on The Doctors, he was the longest lasting Dancy.

I see he played Jada Rowland's father on The Secret Storm.

19 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

The episode opened with Steve asleep in his office next to a photo of Carolee. She looked very grim in that shot and I wondered why anyone would have such a depressing photo of their wife as a memory. They then went into a dream sequence and David O'Brien's acting was awful.Something was off, maybe just a difficult scene for anyone to master.

This was the episode from the 22nd of December 1976. I just finished watching it. I think Steve's dream, which was one part flashback and one part fantasy, was meant to be over-acted. It was filmed in a very stylized fashion.

Marland did surreal dream sequences  like this on As the World Turns. There was a very famous one with Liz Hubbard as Lucinda Walsh and Lisa Brown as Iva Snyder, fighting over Lily (Martha Byrne). Where Lucinda went to sleep worrying about Lily finding out Iva was the biological mother. In the dream Lily is confronting them both and the two mothers are fighting over Lily.

I think Marland liked doing these kinds of campy dream scenes, but they don't play well today. They seem incredibly contrived. The acting is meant to be over the top, almost like silent film actors overdoing every single emotion. Fortunately Marland was not in the habit of presenting these all the time. I'm sure the actors had fun performing them. In Britain this is called "panto" style acting. It probably has its roots in the Theatre of the Absurd movement.

15 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Dec 21 1976

Larry Weber debuts as Barney Dancy.

Is he on the show until the end? He has a credit on the IMDb for an episode that aired in 1982.

2 hours ago, Mitch said:

 

She did get rid of Lacey..who realized her dream of bagging A-M and was promptly shipped off.  Lacey was going to be a schemer and Long replaced her with Harley...switching Todd into Frank..Long said there was "enough Bauers," which was dumb but I think that this branch could have worked if they went back to the Bauer's working class roots and this was the "poor" relatives. Lacey didnt because of the casting and really, even though it was distant...AM and she were related.

 

Long was not going to kill Johnny, the cancer storyline was going to be a big storyline where he was a "faith healer" (there was a scene where he touched Michele and brought down her fever...) It was going to be a storyline about faith healing and crackpots trying to take advantage and someone wisely canned it. There were bits of that left as Johnny tried natural remedies and basically the faith of his family and the community brought him back from dying.  Long actually brought his parents in as non contract and then gave them a contract..though they didnt do anything...besides taking over the Boarding House so I think she saw Laney Bauer as a Bea Reardon type character.  The actor was popular but I never liked him or the character.  And actually, Chelsea had a big storyline with the Ray Rooney stalker thing.

 

Again, I think the blue collar Bauers could have worked...if Ehlers were cast as "Lacey" or Harley Bauer...it could have worked. 

Interesting comments. Johnny's cancer story had an interesting premise. I do remember it coincided with Roxy having some sort of breakdown and leaving. Johnny & Roxy were together when Long took over, then Long ended up putting Johnny with Chelsea.

I always felt Johnny's cancer story was an allegory for HIV/AIDS. At the time only women were allowed to have the disease on soaps. It was still taboo for a male character to have HIV, probably because there was a stigma the audience would think the guy was gay. Johnny's illness started with him having a sore throat and a cough. Then he had some lesions or growths on his skin. It all seemed like symptoms a man would have with Kaposi's sarcoma. I think Long, who was an atheist, was going to use the faith healing stuff to poke at organized religions who felt that AIDS was a punishment on gay men who had broken faith with God. That's where I think she was going with all that, but she was probably forced to make compromises and water it all down. So it just became a story just about cancer and natural remedies. That's my take on it. Feel free to disagree.

I don't feel Jack and Lanie were ever going to work on the show, unless they were given some seriously gritty material to play. They needed to struggle, have hardships that Ed and his wealthier branch didn't have to face. Of course we saw some of that with the Coopers, especially later when Buzz was introduced in the 90s.

On 11/3/2018 at 2:59 AM, vetsoapfan said:

 

Lacey Bauer came and went very quickly. The actress was dreadful and the character, who was not developed well or fleshed out,  never really had too much of a story. The writing back then was an inconsistent mess. If I recall correctly, Lacey was a gymnast who briefly became infatuated with Alan-Michael Spaulding, but that did not go anywhere and the character was dumped, never to be seen or heard of again. I don't remember if Lacey and Johnny had had problems in their relationship, or why she would not have responded to him. 

My understanding is that Lacey was one of the first characters Long axed when she returned to the show. If I'm in error about this, please correct me. I do remember Long switched Todd Bauer at the last minute to become Frank Cooper. Jack and Lanie were never really featured again and Long gave Johnny cancer, meaning she was probably going to kill him off but then he ended up staying on as a love interest for Chelsea saddled with romantic B plots.

I think Long could see the "fake Bauers" were a mistake and she wasted no time dismantling them. If they had proven popular, then they could have replaced Ed's family. Thankfully that never happened. The actress who played Lacy was only on the show for 13 weeks, one contract cycle. I don't remember any other contract player in the 80s who only lasted one cycle. Usually if they were designed to be short term, like Frances Fisher as Suzette Saxon, they lasted two cycles, so the storyline had a good six months to be told. But Lacey Bauer was quickly put on the scrap heap.

1 hour ago, Paul Raven said:

Haven't watched the interview yet, but was Lakin perhaps referring to being #1 in the timeslot?

Not sure. That's possible. I think she was exaggerating and really meant that she'd helped turn the show into a hit, saving it from the axe.

1 hour ago, vetsoapfan said:

 

Thank you for the link. That was a great interview. My only quibble: Lakin claimed that The Doctors "was number one" when she left the series, which simply was not true.

In the 1966-67 season, the series ranked 8/13 soaps, with a rating of 7.6. After she took over, the 1967-68 period saw TD climb to 5/12, with a rating of 9.7. That was a fast and impressive rise, but the show was not number one. In 1968-69, it was 6/14 and 9.3. While I personally adored the time Lakin spent writing for Hope Memorial, there were always other series with higher ratings.

You're welcome. Yes, Another World had higher ratings during this time, and so did As the World Turns.

A more accurate statement would be that The Doctors achieved its highest ratings ever under Lakin, when it hit 9.7. The Pollocks also had strong years (their best season was a 9.5).

Here's the interview Lakin did last year. There's a tab for the full interview, or you can click on the tab called 'Highlights' and go to where she discusses her work on The Doctors. She seems like a very interesting lady.

https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/rita-lakin

19 minutes ago, vetsoapfan said:

 

I just recently began watching TD, starting from the earliest available eps of December, 1967. Along with Rita Lakin as HW, Rick Edelstein was credited as "Story Editor" at that time.  The "story editor" credit has since disappeared however, along with Edelstein's name. I noticed RE's name was missing around the time Liz Wilson and Nick Bellini broke up and Liz was held captive in a seedy hotel room by that weirdo from across the hall. I'm now in early 1968, and RL's is the only writer ever listed, although as Paul Raven has pointed out, Edelstein should be back working on the show in a few months.

In an interview that Lakin gave she said she was only hired to write the show for a few months. Mostly to help turn it around because in 1967 NBC was not happy with the way things were going and the network was about to cancel it. The sponsor convinced NBC to keep it on the air if they could get a primetime television writer to take over for awhile.

Lakin was a primetime writer who took the job. She quickly brought it up in the ratings. She said she went to New York to do The Doctors, so her kids could spend time with their grandparents, since Lakin's parents lived in New York. But because the ratings had gone up, NBC was now willing to keep the show on the air indefinitely if she stayed. Her contract was renewed, which she said her kids didn't like because they had wanted to go back to California, probably because that's where their old school and their friends were.

Also in the same interview she says she was stuck in a hotel room turning out five scripts a week. She wrote them all and was burning herself out. She told Edelstein she couldn't handle the grind anymore and was about to quit, so he offered to help write half the scripts. She said he was a producer (but maybe he was also credited as a story editor).

She went on to say that they got to a point where she'd do several weeks worth of episodes, then take a week or two off and Edelstein would write the whole show, so she could go off with her kids and parents. Then she'd come back and take over again. So even though her name is on all those episodes as head writer and her ideas were being used, she did not write all the scripts because Edelstein was working solo while she would take breaks to regain her sanity. It sounded like she finally had enough and went back to writing for primetime.

12 minutes ago, NothinButAttitude said:

 

^

This.

 

One episode he had an epiphany and the next he was a cop. Given that Armand Assante's Mike didn't have much to do after they reunited him and Toni (and wrote off Alan), it would've been nice to see go through a semi-mid life crisis which led him to the police force--going through the academy step by step, and Toni having issue with Mike being in such a dangerous career. 

Assante's a great actor. But he was already miscast as Mike Powers (he should've been cast as Rico). Making him a police officer, a type of role that didn't suit him, made him seem even more miscast. I don't know what the producer and headwriters were thinking. Spoiler...I believe he returns to the medical profession in 1977 or 1978 with another actor taking over, after Assante leaves.

The main problem with making Mike a police officer later is that this show is called The Doctors, not The Police Officers. If it was about a family of cops, instead of a family of medics, then that would be fine. But turning Mike into an officer went against the main theme, not to mention how rushed it was for him to switch professions at the blink of an eye. It was one of the show's worst decisions.

9 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

I see in the credits for the Nov eps a character named Beatrice Lansing.

 

As mentioned before, Marland always included a character named Beatrice in his shows as that was his mother's name.

 

he also used the surname Lansing a few times so maybe he had a connection to that also.

 

I was quite impressed by Mona's living room set as it looked quite detailed and spacious. Opposite the entry to that room is a door which I thought was a closet or entry to another room until the doorbell rang and I realized it was the front door to this mansion,just a few steps away - hardly the grand foyer you would expect such a house to have,.

The Beatrice Lansing character first appeared in the final week of Margaret DePriest's episodes, back in early September. But some of us on another board felt Marland rewrote some of the scenes, though DePriest was still credited. Probably the Beatrice Lansing character was in the script as "board member" but Marland gave her a name and is giving her substantial screen time while Matt's resignation story plays out.

4 hours ago, Soaplovers said:

 

Considering the political climate... I'd settle for seeing Capital rerun.. all 5 years including that infuriating cliffhanger lol

Capitol is the show I'd choose too...simply because of its era, its cast, its glossy production values, and the fact five years' worth of episodes wouldn't take forever to get through. I've sent an email to Retro requesting this. Maybe others will send emails too.

3 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

 

Hmm, I had forgotten all about Capitol. It was never one of my favorite soaps, but I imagine its episode library could still exist. It would not be my first choice of classic soaps to see again  (that would be Y&R starting in 1973 or AW from 1964 to 1975), but I'd give it another shot!

Capitol's entire library does exist. The show has been successfully rerun many times in Europe. To this day it's still popular in Italy. There are Italian websites devoted to it, and episodes on YouTube that were dubbed into Italian. It did so well because its glossy production values probably made it seem like a daytime version of "Dynasty."

25 minutes ago, victoria foxton said:

Does anyone find it strange that the grand jury testimony happened offscreen?  

Yes, I was disappointed in that as well. Not only does Marland shy away from medical stuff, when it gets down to it, he shies away from in-depth legal stuff. Of course we know Matt won't go to trial, so in a way, they are taking the easy way out. Having the policing, lawyering and doctoring take place off screen so we can show things like Matt drinking or Maggie pulling her hair out about Matt's drinking.

Another thing I didn't care for was how everyone was commenting on Matt's overnight drinking problem. Even Nola was jumping on him about it. She works in a nightclub where a lot of people drink. It's not like she hasn't seen intoxicated behavior before. We also had Mike piling on. Marland has avoided the grand jury scenes in favor of these repetitive scenes of Matt drinking.

Personally I would like to have seen Virginia's testimony, Nola's testimony and Jerry's testimony. Plus I think we needed to see Stacy being interrogated by the jurors. And Paul. Not to mention Matt going before them a bit tipsy. Marland really made the wrong decision. He skipped a lot of riveting on-camera drama that should have been depicted.

I posted this on another site earlier today:

We have had Mona take an active role in hospital business, which I think is good. It actually makes her conflicts with Steve more interesting, less about just disapproving of the women he chooses. Penny working as Matt's secretary has been okay, but DePriest ruined her by having her quit her medical studies. Past characters like Margo were sufficient in just being a doctor's wife, a career unto itself. In fact I think that's what Marland should have done with Nola. She should have been scheming to marry a successful doctor (maybe trying to steal Matt away from Maggie). For what it is, I don't mind the Nola-Jason pairing. And I know the show needs a lawyer for Matt's story, but I don't really buy Glenn Corbett as a lawyer. He's not coming across as shrewd or as worldly as Marland's writing is suggesting and he feels a little miscast in my opinion.

Reading ahead with the Soap Opera digest summaries, we do get the return of Eleanor's daughter, around the start of '77. I won't spoil the plot but I think Marland got rid of the previous Wendy because the actress was rather boring. He brings a recast Wendy back with renewed energy and purpose. It all fits into Eleanor's new storyline with Lew/Luke.

The character I find most uninteresting under Marland right now is Martha. I guess I miss her little scenes with Nick and with Tom. I loved it when she had those geraniums in the lab and would talk to them, baby them. That was some of the Pollocks' best character-driven comic relief. But Marland seems uninspired in his handling of Martha. She's become a glorified babysitter now that Toni's gone. Incidentally, I don't buy Toni just taking off without her son. The Toni we knew under the Pollocks struggled to get through a difficult pregnancy and have that baby. When she thought Mike was dead, little Michael Paul was her only link to him. That baby meant everything in the world to her. No way would she just go out of town for so long a period of time and not have her son with her.

I also think Hank's quite dull at the moment and can see why he is soon written off. Since Laurie ditched him, he hasn't had his own story. He's one character Marland could have refocused. I think a female black doctor is brought in right after Hank departs (Dr. Jessie Rawlings) but from what I've read she doesn't seem to have much storyline either. Another token minority character on a soap.

There's also a moral code in daytime television that says murderers must not go unpunished. So the minute they had Stacy pull the plug on Joan Dancy, her days were numbered. Paul's days are numbered too. And you can see Marland already setting up their exit by mentioning a place outside Madison where Paul is promising to take Stacy. I don't think their exits finally occur until the spring of '77, so it drags out for awhile. But Stacy's exit is unavoidable, since the morality of the mid to late 70s on a conservative soap opera says euthanasia is wrong and that Stacy's a murderer who will have to suffer and pay for her sins at the end. So will Paul.

There's an upcoming plot with Stephanie Aldrich needing surgery which Ann will perform. But Marland is merely using the medical drama as a plot device to make Steve more dependent on Ann while Carolee is still away. So it's not a purely driven medical story. Marland definitely is not a writer who excels at medical drama, and that makes him somewhat the wrong fit for this unique type of soap opera. It's a shame they didn't pair Cenedella with Marland. That would have been perfect. One head writer focusing on the hospital and all the doctors' and nurses' work-related dramas, with the other head writer focusing on the characters' domestic issues.

49 minutes ago, vetsoapfan said:

Okay, here I go.

 

After procrastinating for YEARS, I am finally going to start watching the available reruns of TD. I can binge-watch now and not have to worry about running out of "new" episodes to devour any time soon.

 

I have been directed to one channel on youtube, whose uploaded material starts with the  December 4, 1967 broadcast. 

 

Before I begin, does anyone know if there are earlier eps available on-line that precede 12/4/67? I prefer to start from the earliest-available date.

 

Thanks.

I believe that's the starting point. They chose to begin with color episodes, where the six most popular characters had already been introduced (Matt, Maggie, Althea, Nick, Steve, Carolee).

The comments about Liz Hubbard and Hubbard squash were made in the article where writer Richard Backus was interviewed.

Thanks for reposting the article. It's a great article. I think he's right about the core families, but he doesn't mention the hospital at all...and the hospital staff do function as a family unit too, so keeping Althea as Chief of Staff would have made her the mother of that family, even with Penny's departure. So I think he overlooked some key things, especially with regards to the foundation of the show. It originally was about these doctors and nurses on staff working side by side, then spinning off into their personal lives. But the hospital was always central to everything. He's not really keeping much of that.

I do think he has made M.J. more relevant, and yes, Lauren White did deserve a front burner storyline. Humanizing Matt is a good thing, and showing Maggie as more than just Matt's wife is also a smart move.

He got rid of boring characters DePriest and Cenedella created, like Dr. McIntyre and Scott Conrad. I wonder if he thought Hank and Martha were boring too?

I don't think the child abuse storyline for M.J. and Tom is very medical related. It starts with Tom saying he has Huntington's disease, but then we find out that's a lie and it becomes more about domestic violence and psychotherapy. At least from what I've been reading in the Soap Opera Digest summaries. I'm curious to see how it will play out, but it's definitely not medical. The only medical storyline I see him doing is Stephanie's surgery, which Ann performs around February '77.

20 hours ago, robbwolff said:

Nope. I meant June 1977. Althea and Jerry were last seen around May 1977 and the interview with Marland took place after Elizabeth Hubbard left the show. He was vocal in the interview about Julia Duffy quitting without giving much notice since he had a storyline in mind for her. He complained about Hubbard in the interview, too. 

I'll have to go back and find the article. I was always under the impression he was a fan of Hubbard's since he wrote many storylines for her on ATWT. Maybe he had a grudging respect for her talent.

Duffy was probably anxious to get to the west coast and try her luck in primetime. I went to several tapings of Designing Women in 1991-1992, the season where Duffy played a character that was basically Delta Burke's replacement. She was let go after one year, at the end of the sixth season. I suspected mainly because the show's producers were quite liberal, and she was more conservative. It was sad to watch her film her last episode. Between the scenes, she sat off to the side by herself. She did not associate with the other cast or with the crew. Everyone on the set was rather close, except for her. Earlier in the season, it wasn't so noticeable. But by the end of that year, it was clear she just didn't fit in and was about to be fired. Despite how difficult it was for her, she managed to do an excellent job. Under the circumstances she maintained her professionalism.

The high point of her TV career was/is probably her role on Newhart.

4 hours ago, robbwolff said:

It was all intentional. There is an interview with Marland circulating online from around June 1977 where he discusses his vision for the show. It doesn't seem that it was Young who didn't understand what the show was supposed to be about, but Marland. He discussed his plan to refocus the show on the families -- the Powers, Aldriches, and Dancys, and the need for the show to focus on romance. I don't know if he even mentioned Hope Memorial. The interview can be found on page 98 of this thread. 

 

As for the "silent ones" looking at clipboards and answering the phones, we're seeing less and less of the extras who have been around since the 60s. That's sad to see as they always enhanced Hope Memorial and its presence. I miss seeing Nurse Dorothy, orderly Joe, Nurse Rios and her blue sweater, and the others. But I always got a kick about how busy they were answering the phone during the closing credits when the phone seldom rings when we see scenes at the hospital.

 

Did you mean June 1976, since Marland took over in '76. I think he was on his way out by June '77.

The day players answering the phones also cracks me up. I guess it's the only prop that makes them look busy, aside from checking the clipboards. When the phone rings during one of the program's main scenes, it's always because someone like Matt, Maggie or Althea are on their way home trying to catch the elevator, and a phone call brings them back to the desk for more dialogue.

My biggest gripe is that the show's main doctors do not really practice medicine on camera. We don't even see them dispense aspirin to anyone! Even when Paul's giving Stacy pills, it's usually on another set, like at his place, or at the restaurant. There is really no medicine being practiced at Hope Memorial. All those board room scenes and people getting on and off the elevator seems to be the bulk of the action. We do have Carolee getting treatment somewhere, but it's in some other hospital.

I think it's clear Marland hasn't gone back and looked at any of the Pollocks' material. In a recent episode he's having Jerry explain to Penny about the grand jury process. But hello, she was once up before the grand jury herself when her stepfather John was shot and killed. So she's been through this process, and she should be telling him that.

I posted this earlier on another site...

While I have been enjoying Doug Marland's writing...I have to say that there are more scenes in the Powers home and Aldrich home than at the hospital. When we do see the hospital it's focused around the board meetings. We really are not seeing any of the doctors practicing medicine. Even Althea's scenes consist mostly of drinking coffee and chatting with Eleanor. You'd never know she was a doctor if she wasn't wearing her white lab coat. And we never see Paul or Hank really practicing medicine either. They never talk with patients. They mostly stand around talking to each other. Maggie's never really featured anymore in clinic scenes.

While I think Marland is very good with the domestic strife, it's clear he's not much into medical drama, which is really the foundation of this particular soap. Some episodes take place entirely at the Powers, at the Aldriches, at Andre's, or at the Dancy apartment, and we only see the hospital set in the opening and closing credits with some day player looking at clipboards and answering the phone at the nurses station.

It feels like the show is losing its sense of identity. I figured this would happen after the Pollocks left, but at this point, 15 months after their exit, it is really noticeable. I don't think the current producer (Jeff Young) really understood what the show was supposed to be about. It's just becoming more of a routine soap opera, less medical, less about the issues that drove the stories in the 60s and first half of the 70s.

And repeated scenes of Carolee in some other place calling out for Steve and Billy just feels like stalling, and none of that feels very medical-related either. I wonder how viewers in 1976 felt about all this.