Broderick

Technically, it's really not the same role. The role Elizabeth Taylor played in the film was sort of a soft, seductive, benign version of Maggie Pollitt, who would appease the motion picture censors of the 1950s. In the real play, starring Barbara Bel Geddes, Maggie Pollitt is a scrappy, shrill, relentless fighter (like Pamela Barnes often comes across in the early episodes of "Dallas") who's given the thankless and insurmountable task of dealing with a mean brother-in-law, a jealous and self-righteous sister-in-law, and an alcoholic young husband who'd rather pine away for his lost love (Skipper) than lay a hand on his wife. (It appears Brick and Skipper had a sexual relationship, Maggie suspected it, she attempted to seduce Skipper to be sure, and when Skipper couldn't perform he killed himself.) But in the end, Maggie triumphs -- or at least, she seems POISED to triumph -- when she hides her husband's liquor and lets him know he won't be getting another drop of booze until he's fertilized her egg so she can produce an heir for Big Daddy. And that's definitely not the role Elizabeth Taylor played in the movie, lol. (Barbara Bel Geddes and Ben Gazzara got very good reviews for the roles of Maggie & Brick on Broadway.)

If memory serves, she sashayed into Geraldine's suite, poured herself a drink, primped in the mirror, made light of Draper's misfortune, lied her head off about the circumstances under which her visit with Ansel & Nadine was abruptly curtailed, snatched up the baby she'd given away, cooed at him half-heartedly for a couple of seconds, then dumped him on Geraldine when he started squalling. lol.

She came back, with her guns a-blazing. She told Logan (or Logan and Geraldine), "Poor April. Married to a murderer." Logan wanted to throttle her, lol.

Vee, my recollection is that Larry said (after the fact) that he believed he could've secured Barbara Bel Geddes the deal she was seeking during her first exit, if she'd asked for his influence. He basically said, "She let her agent negotiate for her, and he ended up costing her a job." She evidently wanted more time off, the same salary, and a reprieve from taping in Dallas during the hottest months of the summer (July and August). Her agent laid-out her demands, and Lorimar said, "We're not interested." Larry Hagman thought if he'd talked to Lorimar on BBG's behalf, she would've gotten what she asked for. Jim Davis and Barbara Bel Geddes might not have been the "stars of the show" -- more likely supporting players -- but they were both, without a doubt, the backbone of the show. They gave the show an air of authenticity. They LOOKED like a weather-beaten wildcatter who'd married the daughter of a Depression-era rancher. With both of them gone, the show looked "fake" to me.

If you've got 3 episodes till Raven returns, you're on the verge of understanding two different (haunting) premonitions that April Scott has been having for weeks (or months). You're about to find out why a mournful and lonely train whistle has been tormenting April. And you're about to crack the case of the silver bracelet she's been dreaming of. She initially perceives in her dreams & visions that the Silver Bracelet is a gift that's being offered to her by someone kind. But when she finally encounters the silver bracelet in person, she views it as a horrible curse and believes her dreams were wrong. Unbeknownst to April, Sam Dwyer will then utilize the bracelet to give Draper the greatest "gift" ever -- his life. If you're rusty on your American history, google "Salem witch trials Martha Corey" and you'll quickly see how Mrs. Madison chose the name of Deborah Saxon's "kindly" neighbor. During this time period, Henry Slesar (who was first and foremost a novelist and short story writer) is operating on a literary level unheard of in daytime television.

That is the story of the stolen birds, lol. You can see the subtext there. The birds were both males, and they had "bonded for life", as macaws tend to do. They could say "I love you" to each other in parrot-talk. The news article was studied in-depth by the women in the office where I was working. They were all passing it around, shaking their heads, and saying, "Omg, Jeremy Hunter and Dakota taught the birds to mate and say, 'I love you'." (These were women who raced home to watch "All My Children" at lunchtime.) I tried telling them the ladies those birds had likely learned their behavior from Mr. & Mrs. Short (the second owners who donated the birds to the zoo). But there was no erasing the idea from their minds that Mr. Leclerc and Mr. Durham were roommates who owned pets together. I never watched either of the two shows, but I knew who Kate Collins, Jean Leclerc, and Dakota were. My main concern was the birds might be separated from one another and die, as they'd been together for several years and were dependent on each other.

Veering away from "gossip" for a minute, there was a newspaper article that ran all across the South in the late 1980s or early 1990s, concerning the theft of two parrots from a Florida zoo. The parrots originally belonged to Jean Leclerc (who played Jeremy Hunter on AMC) and Chris Durham (who played Dakota on RH). Leclerc and Durham decided they had too many animals and birds in their home, and they gave the parrots to friends of theirs who lived down in Florida. The Florida couple decided they also had too many critters in their house, and they donated the parrots to the zoo. Late one night, thieves arrived at the zoo and stole the parrots. The concern was that the birds would ultimately be sold on the "exotic bird black market". The article was written in such a way that Leclerc and Durham appeared to be a "romantic couple", which caused a pretty big sensation among Southern female viewers of Ryan's Hope & All My Children, as some female viewers evidently assumed all male soap actors are heterosexual. lol. Jeremy Hunter was normally linked in the press with a pretty female actress on AMC named Kate Collins, but he co-owned the birds with the nekkid boy from Ryan's Hope. That's why in my response to this "long-standing rumor", I referenced "Bon jour, mademoiselle" [Jean Leclerc was French or French Canadian] and 'South Dakota" [Chris Durham played "Dakota" on RH]. I'm sure I can find the article about the two of them and their parrots if anyone wants to read it. It was about 35 years ago when all of that happened.

I ain't telling you. I want you to be as surprised as possible about who did it, and how the Perpetrator managed to accomplish it. lol. It's all been laid-out for us, but we're bad about *assuming* everything is the way it initially appears. And nothing really is.

For those of us who didn't know Sharon Gabet was coming back (and in 1980, that was every single viewer, lol), Raven's reappearance at an opportune moment for one of the suspects came as a complete, unexpected shock, which blew one of our "study hall theories" of "who done it" to hell.

Let's just say Raven will play a significant role in the denouement of Margo's mystery and will also be a central character in the mysteries that occur in the summer and autumn of 1980, and in each event the groundwork is all CAREFULLY laid without us really even being aware of it. 😆

I'm glad you're having fun with the show. It brings back so many memories. In 1980, there was obviously no such thing as a "spoiler". I was a teenager at the time. My siblings and I watched the show most evenings, and several of my classmates were watching as well. It wasn't at all unusual for us to sit around & speculate as to where Henry Slesar was going with the storylines. "It HAD to be Eliot Dorn. But how did he get out of there without the doorman seeing him?" "It must have been Nola Madison! But didn't a reliable witness see her somewhere else at the time?" No explanation appeared to make sense, but suddenly EVERYTHING makes perfect sense. It's really a masterclass in mystery storytelling, in my opinion. Without spoilers, it was VERY HARD to figure it out. And that theme remained true throughout 1980.

lol. I don't want to influence the conclusions you draw. All I want to say is this particular "mystery storyline" (Margo Huntington's exit) and the mystery later in 1980 that involves a child's toy were VERY perplexing to me when I was watching at the time, and I'd read a zillion murder mysteries. Nowadays, I already know who the perpetrators were and can catch all the clues (and the red herrings), but at the time, I was completely bewildered how the deaths had been accomplished and by whom.

Once you get to the discovery of the Corpse (or almost Corpse), if you feel the Primary Suspect wasn't responsible, please tell us how you believe those Other People managed to do the deed & escape unnoticed 😉 (A significant portion of the storyline depends on who came & went from the Deceased Person's condo, where everyone was at the time, and whom they were with. The only person who ultimately is stuck "holding the bag" is the Primary Suspect. Everyone else appears to be accounted for.)

They're speculating about a pretty blonde girl who was on an ABC soap in the 1980s, her male co-star who might say, "Bon jour, mademoiselle", and a boy on another ABC show who did some nekkid pictures. I don't believe any of the 3 ever acknowledged any of this. I *Hope* I told it right. I don't know the three people, and I've got no insider knowledge, as I'm from a place as rural as South Dakota.

After she filed her $10 million wrongful termination lawsuit against Columbia Pictures Television [now Sony] after her dismissal, she pretty much blackballed herself from appearing on Y&R (or any other soap) ever again. Very unfortunate decision on her part to file the suit. No production company wants to deal with someone like that. I know she's blamed everyone (except herself) for her lack of subsequent lack of acting gigs over the years, but the fault obviously lies with her decision to file that lawsuit. I didn't mind her (ridiculous) campiness all that much. If you jot down her lines from the 1986-1987 scripts, and try reciting the lines yourself, you'll find that most of them can't be delivered in any fashion OTHER than camp, which is the way she played it.

I watched "live" in 1980, with no idea what was coming next. Obviously I knew Primary Suspect hadn't done it, and as you said, the motive assigned to the Primary Suspect seemed weak. But if I remember right, the jury was inclined to believe the Primary Suspect had a sudden agitated burst of anger and did the deed. (Plus the Primary Suspect had prearranged a meeting with the Deceased.) In hindsight, if I'd been on the jury, I perhaps would've convicted the Primary Suspect, based on the information that the Deceased had been seen alive and well, had received no visitors that evening except the Primary Suspect, and the Primary Suspect's fingerprints were on the weapon. As we know in Slesar's world, nothing is ever as it seems! When I found out who the real Perpetrator was, I couldn't believe I hadn't figured it out.

I recently re-watched the "Eden" storyline (from Mark Arnold's tapes) for the first time since 1982. I was thinking maybe I'd misjudged the storyline and perhaps in hindsight it would be better. It's not. lol.

Yep, those "contracts", lol. I can't remember Doug Davidson's recent EXACT quote, but the gist of it was, "Doug, we're bumping you to recurring, but no one has to know about it." He said, "I believe people will figure it out when I'm way below my normal guaranteed number of appearances." But TPTB assured him it could remain a secret (unless he elected to publicize it, which he ultimately did several months after it happened.) Even before he spoke up in September of 2018, several of us were already speculating that Doug, Kristoff, Christian LeBlanc, and Kate Linder were all secretly recurring. It now seems likely Brytny Sarpy & Camryn Grimes are, as well. Camryn averaged 3 shows a month in 2023, which is below a normal contract guarantee, and in 2024 she's averaging only 2 shows a month. We've seen Miss Sarpy a grand total of twice since Labor Day; I can't imagine she signed a contract that guarantees her 2 shows in an 8-month period.

Paige Madison MIGHT have been the victim of a cobbled-together storyline that just didn't work 100% right. The previous year, Henry Slesar had attempted to tell a story about a dangerous religious-type cult called "Children of the Earth". Unfortunately, 900 real Americans ended up dying in a cult just as the Edge Of Night storyline was getting underway, and you could sense Henry Slesar pulled the plug (prematurely) on whatever conclusion he'd originally planned out of sensitivity toward the victims' families. In hindsight, I believe he "salvaged" some of the unaired material, altered it a bit, and slapped it on Paige Madison. Paige's storyline also seemed loosely based on Patricia Hearst, a millionaire college girl who was kidnapped from San Francisco in 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Hearst became an "accomplice" of the SLA, either by force, by brainwashing, or just because she decided she liked them. Opinions vary on what led to her joining them. A hodge-podge of material (from the real-life Patricia Hearst story and from the aborted Children of the Earth story) seemed to get slapped on Paige Madison, and it ultimately became sort of comical (and stupid) how many times Paige's life was placed in danger by Tobias & Company. I liked the actress (Margaret Colin) just fine, but I was glad when Paige moved on.

I wonder if Sharon Case has recently "signed" one of those Special "Contracts" some of the others appear to have.

It's extremely well-written in the late 1970s and very early 1980s. What always impressed me is there's very few "throwaway" scenes. If someone is discussing an event with another character, you better believe the other character will soon be a player in the storyline. And no one is EVER anywhere by accident. Henry Slesar places them all exactly where he needs them to be.

"Never Too Young" is really a trip. I watched the first episode & got a kick out of it. Gotta love that groovy 1960s dialogue!

The contracts likely won't be for a very long duration, since the network is intentionally sabotaging the show with a 60-minute format out of the starting gate, which of course has a historical success rate of literally 0%.

That's about right. Since 1980 or so, daytime television in American has served up the same thing -- the "trials & tribulations of well-to-do families in gated communities." And unfortunately with today's budgets, the concept seems silly. We already know what we'll get -- a daily budget of $2.35, and numerous references to the off-screen wealth of characters who supposedly have a private jet parked just outside, but their clothes will come from Dollar Tree. Glad this show is happening but can't get too enthusiastic about it based on what I've read so far.

To me that's the biggest problem that plagues the show -- the scripts. Yes, they're trying to tape each episode on a budget of $2.35. There's no rehearsal time for the actors. The directors are lazily slapping stagnant blocking and camera shots onto the screen, shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Okay, that looks like garbage, but I guess it'll do. On to the next scene!" The actors often recite their dialogue in the dullest and least imaginative manner. The sets are desolate and worn-out. But the biggest problem is the scripts lack wit, complexity, and humor. There are no twists of irony, no unexpected symbolism. Everything is surface-deep, and no one on staff seems to identify it as problematic. (Which is why I couldn't muster any sympathy for the fired outline writers; I'm sorry they lost their jobs, but they were working in the same dull, assembly line fashion as the head writer and the dialogue writers, adding nothing whatsoever to the product.) The failure (and laziness) of the writing staff became glaring post-Covid. Several scripts had been written, but not taped yet when the studio shut-down for Covid protocol. Any conscientious writer would've seized that opportunity to improve his work. ("Okay, they've got four of my scripts piled-up in the studio which haven't been taped yet. I'm going to retrieve them and rewrite them entirely during the quarantine period, add some humor and pathos, some sarcasm, some irony, and once I'm finished, they'll be the BEST scripts I've ever submitted!") Evidently, none of the writers was willing to go that extra inch to improve the quality, because once the show began taping again after the shut down, there had been no improvement at all in the scripts. The material was the same dry, mundane, tired, shallow junk that had been taped pre-Covid. Nobody bothered to use that extra time to improve their work. Same grade-C stuff as before. Nobody cares anymore.