Broderick

4 hours ago, AMCHistory said:

What was Lynn’s send off?

She basically walked into Paul's office, threw some papers down on his desk, and said, "Please sign these, Boss.  And by the way, although I've never mentioned her before in my entire life, I have an old sick aunt who lives a million miles away, and I need to leave Genoa City forever to care for her.  Oh, and my plane leaves in five minutes.  Bye!" 

Miguel got the same treatment.  He randomly told Nikki, "Senora, I've finished the dusting.  Oh!  I must leave town forever if it is agreeable with you."  She snatched an old clock off the mantel, thrust it into his hands, and said, "Here, take this with you as a gift for your decades of loyal service.  And don't forget to close the door when you leave.  Bye!" 

All those types of characters were dumped with no warning in the first round of budget cuts, and if you blinked you missed their exits. 

12 hours ago, Matt Powers said:

The Edge of Night is such a unique soap, in that, it seems to me from watching the 80’s run, the show only has about 8 “core” characters. The supporting characters are brought in for certain stories and are dropped as soon as the story concludes. 

At his peak, Slesar was a master of surprise, even when it came to defining his collection of core characters.

Sometimes an actor & character would really *pop* with the audience, and Slesar would add that particular actor/character to his core mix.  Other times, an actor & character would really *pop* with the audience, and you'd start expecting that character to stick around for years; instead, they'd end up dead on the floor with a knife in the back or a firepoker to the forehead.  You just never knew.  

2 hours ago, danfling said:

Kevin borrowed a car from some other character (maybe Draper) and was killed in a crash.   Initially, the people in Monticello had thought that it was Draper (or whoever had lent the car to Kevin) who had been killed.

 

My recollection is Raven was in the process of leaving Kevin and was claiming she'd fly to London to stay with Nadine & Ansel.  Kevin planned to stop her at the airport.  Draper Scott threw Kevin his car keys.  April, meanwhile, had one of her premonition/dreams of Draper's car crashing, and sure enough Draper's car had driven off the highway.  But it was Kevin Jamison in the car instead of Draper, and Kevin had died.  

On 12/26/2023 at 10:50 PM, DRW50 said:

Most of that material being lost makes it more difficult to understand the levels of Geraldine's loathing of Raven, because even though Raven is betraying Logan (her replacement replacement son), her behavior isn't as horrible as it seemed to be with how she had treated Kevin. I wonder if Slesar decided to tone down the character by that point or if it just reads worse on the page than it played out onscreen. I wish more of Kevin was around as he has that '70s offbeat quality for leading men that I appreciate. 

I don't recall Geraldine ever really "loathing" Raven.  She was righteously indignant with Raven plenty of times.  When Kevin was killed, Raven threw herself a pity party and made herself the center of attention; Geraldine lost it with her at that moment, because Geraldine was grieving for Kevin and saw Raven more as the REASON for Kevin's death, rather than a "victim" of Kevin's death.  Later, when Raven tried to make herself the sole custodian parent of Jamey Swift, Geraldine got fed-up with her again.  Geraldine thought Raven was making the decision out of spite for Logan Swift, but actually Raven was trying to get her hands on Nadine Scott's money, as the funds were scheduled to pass to the custodial parent of Jamey.  Raven also did some shenanigans to turn Nadine against Geraldine Saxon, and Geraldine was pretty fed-up about that.  But by the time the dust settled, Raven did the noble deed of saving April Scott's life, and Geraldine offered Raven the opportunity to move out of her grungy apartment and into Geraldine's hotel suite, which of course enabled Raven to meet Schuyler Whitney.    

Seems like a good way to introduce the show to ABC audiences, if they hadn't seen Edge before.  

8 hours ago, Khan said:

Personally, I think Y&R made a mistake in reuniting Nina with her first child (Ronan).  The fact that Nina had had that baby as a teenager and then had it stolen from her was, IMO, the event that defined her life most.  It informed many of the choices that she would go on to make.  Take that away, and I think you take away a lot of Nina's essence and drive.

I'm inclined to agree about Ronan.  

The retcon of Cane Ashby being the "real" Phillip Chancellor III was a pretty terrible slap in the face to all of us who watched during the 1970s and 1980s and were invested in the Phillip we'd always known.  I wanted the concept of Cane Ashby being Jill's son to be revealed as false (obviously) but didn't want to see "our" Phillip III resurrected from the dead, in a lame, poorly-handled storyline that fizzled out quickly.

As for Ronan, we always suspected that at some point Nina might find him and reunite with him.  That possibly was present throughout the 1980s and 1990s and into the 2000s.  BUT if there was going to be a reunion, I'd have preferred that it be a little more thought-out and permanent than the drivel we ended up getting.  As you pointed out, it lessened the sense of loss that had permeated Nina Webster's character.  

The "Phillip is Alive!!" reveal likewise sacrificed some of the Jill and Kay dynamic that had always revolved around the Phillip III character.  

The whole fiasco of Phillip's resurrection was very poorly handled.  I'm sure there was a creative way for the writers to prove Cane was a fraud without digging up Phillip's casket.  And if Maria Arena was determined to exhume Phillip and reveal he was alive, she should've first made certain Thom Bierdz was up to the challenge of reviving his role after a 20-year break.  (He wasn't.)  Also, his scenes were terribly written.  Phillip wasn't given any genuine moments with his younger brother (Billy), and both Jill and Kay were so busy screaming at Phillip for "playing dead", they failed to show him any real affection at all -- despite having fought over the privilege of "mothering" him in the 1980s.  At this point, one would expect Chance and Ronan to be leading actors on the show, and Phillip III to be a recurring character who shares scenes with Cricket, Danny, Nina, Jill, and his son.  I'd call the whole ordeal an epic fail.     

4 hours ago, BoldRestless said:

Years ago someone here posted the papers from Ronn Moss and Shari Shattuck's divorce. There was a massive cut in the guarantee rate offered. That's why Moss and Flannery left. I assume the other stars took the cut.

Ross Moss had been making $700,000 annually until July of 2012.  His contract expired, and the show offered him $400,000 for the 2012-2013 year.  It was a one-year contract, indicating his pay would be cut even further for 2013-2014.  He said, "No thanks," and left.  The legal terminology in his spousal support case was "contract negotiations fell through", lol.  

Presumably, all of the higher-paid actors were offered similar deals when their existing contracts expired in the 2012 era.  I always assumed Flannery said, "No thanks" to the new pay scale as well.   

11 minutes ago, BoldRestless said:

 

The recaps say at some point even Kay was considering birthing Derek's child LOL.

lol, yep, that was discussed.  Kay had actually visited her ob/gyn, who assured her that she hadn't started menopause yet and could still have a baby with Derek if she was determined to.  (I believe Jeanne Cooper was 48 or so at the time, although she appeared to be 67.)  

Turned out Derek already had a son with Suzanne Lynch, which is what dragged Suzanne to town.  

But with this (haphazard) Eve Howard storyline, Kay was presumed dead, and her estate was "up for grabs".  Brock had technically already received his inheritance from Gary Reynolds and had squandered it.  Young master Phillip Foster had been declared illegitimate by the courts, with no known father.  Derek Thurston was presumably the sole heir to Kay Chancellor's money, as she was missing on an island with Felipe.  If some unfortunate event had happened to Eve Howard, and if Jill had taken custody of young master Charles Victor Howard -- who turned out to be Derek's -- then Jill, fresh from her break-up with John Abbott and Jack Abbott, would've had a stake in Kay's estate.  But obviously none of that happened, as all of the stories going on at the time seemed to be short-circuited (and it's just as well, because it was becoming pretty clear that Lilibet Stern, Terry Lester, Doug Davidson, Melody Thomas, Eric Braeden, and Michael Damian were the audience draws in all that convoluted mess.)     

31 minutes ago, yrfan1983 said:

Maybe Joe LaDue's random exit was due to Jeanne Cooper's absence from the majority of the first half of '81 (perhaps because she was in rehab...? she mentions rehab in her memoir but doesn't provide dates).

There was such a set-up in fall '80 to have Kay marooned on the island with Felipe and then seems like it wrapped up in 1-2 eps at the beginning of '81. Would make sense if the writers had to craft a quick exit for JC.

Yep, that sounds about right.

Kay Thurston basically came back from Felipe's Island Paradise one random day in early 1981, popped into Victor's office and said, "Kindly continue running Chancellor Industries for me, for the love of heaven," then dropped by her mansion and told Derek Thurston, "Jerrick, I've changed while I was away.  I'm afraid your free ride has come to an end," then popped over to see Douglas Austin and told him she wasn't terribly interested in him anymore, either.  She then disappeared into thin air until the Jerry Cashman/male escort storyline started months later, in the summertime. 

Derek disappeared after she dumped him. 

I felt like the "punchline" of the Charles Victor Howard storyline was intended to be an ironic twist, in which (a) Derek and Eve did all this sleuthing and stealing of Victor's medical records to prove Michael Scott was the father of Julia's unborn baby, and -- surprise! -- it was really Victor's fetus, (b) the kid who was alive and alleged to be Victor's kid (Charles Victor Howard) wasn't Victor's son at all but instead was -- surprise! -- Derek Thurston's kid, and (c) Jill Foster would discover that the mysterious tyke who'd been living in her house all along was Derek Thurston's kid, and she'd never even known it. 

But obviously with the permanent exit of Derek, the months-long absence of Kay Chancellor, and the sudden flop (and disappearance) of Jill's new beau John Abbott (Brett Halsey), it seemed every vestige of several different storylines (including the paternity of Charles Victor) fizzled completely and were relegated to the Bill Bell Wasteland of Unanswered Questions.   Which was pretty typical of Y&R in 1980 and 1981, lol.   

1 hour ago, YRfan23 said:

What else is a bit distracting and proves they did retcon some of the Eve/Cole stuff, is that I thought Victor did spend some time with “Cole” (Charles) when he was a kid and I feel Cole would have remembered those encounters?

My recollection is that Eve was constantly trying to make Victor "bond" with young Charles Victor during Eve's first run in 1980.  But then again, nothing much during that period of time made a lot of sense.  

The little kid (Charles Victor) was blond, and looked nothing at all like Victor.  But then it turned out Eve Howard and Derek Thurston knew each other, and the two of them reconnected to steal Victor's medical records (the vasectomy) and send the file to Julia Newman.   When I learned Derek already knew Eve (and Charles Victor was blond like Derek Thurston), I assumed the kid was Derek Thurston's son.  But then Derek was dumped from the show, and that was that.  lol.  

On 12/10/2023 at 8:16 AM, yrfan1983 said:

I wonder if there was ever a scene in the 90s where Jill meets Cole and says “Remember me? You and your mom were boarders in my home when you were a toddler 

I wonder if Jill would've ever realized he was the same kid who lived in the Foster house.  Seems like his name was "Charles Victor Howard" when Eve was rooming with Jill.   Then when he reappeared as J Eddie Peck about 12 years later he'd magically become "Cole", lol.    

32 minutes ago, Khan said:

Originally, their opening theme song was "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," but for reasons I'm not aware of, they changed their minds and went with that mess instead.

"You Don't Bring Me Flowers" sung by a male (Neil Diamond) would've probably worked better 

I vaguely remember this show from when I was a little kid.  From an urban, corporate standpoint, where very few women held upper-level positions, it was a clever idea, perhaps for a 90-minute movie, but it didn't seem terribly sustainable as a nightly show.  Once you'd learned the "gimmick", you'd learned it, and that was that.  

For the rest of us, out in agrarian America, it seemed like a rather silly concept from the get-go.   In a farming family, the husband was usually the farmer (breadwinner), but the wife was his partner in the venture and had equal input.  She also ran the house.  And invariably, there was an old widow woman down the road who knew more about agriculture and family life than either the husband OR the wife, and she was ultimately the person everyone listened to.  ("Marsha, tell Jeff he'd better not plant his corn next week.  There's going to be another hard freeze; I saw it in the Farmer's Almanac.  And honey, you'd better re-think your kitchen design.  You're putting too many steps between the refrigerator and stove, and you're going to wear yourself out walking back and forth.  And there's no sense in taking Jeff Junior to the doctor.  His leg ain't broken, it's just sprained -- put some ice on it, and it'll be better in the morning.")  Everybody just said "yes ma'am" and did what the old lady said, because she was always right.  Never was a question who the real "boss" was! 

That was probably a strange concept in New York, LA, and Chicago, but it was everyday life for most rural folks in the 1970s. 

All That Glitters was clearly designed for an urban audience, and once they'd seen it for the first week, the point had been made, and there wasn't much sense in continuing to watch.  

I think the "downturn" for the Abbotts started the day Brenda Dickson sauntered off the set for the last time (plume, feather boa, veil, and all).  Say what you will about Miss Dickson -- and we've all had our say, lol -- but there was some undeniable chemistry between Brenda's Jill and all the other members of the Abbott family -- especially Jack, Ashley, and Traci.  (Even if the chemistry was merely created by their well-written characters interacting with an insufferable hip-swiveling, bosom-heaving, eye-rolling villainess.)   When circumstances led to Miss Dickson's exit, she was obviously replaced with a more credible actress, but a certain degree of humorous and often frustrating chemistry was gone from the Abbott family & their chief antagonist.   Then Traci limped off to grad school in 1987 (though she did return), Miss Eileen left us in 1988 for years, and Terry Lester left us in 1989 for good.  

The recasts turned Jill, Ashley and Jack into more conventionally drawn soap characters, while Miss Dickson's utterly bizarre Jill, Eileen's assertive Ashley, and Terry's smiling playboy Jack had provided a more unique experience and were doubtless more fun to craft stories for.  

44 minutes ago, j swift said:

But, can we all agree that the idea of filming in an actual space is intriguing, it just shouldn't have been applied to GL? 

Yet, I still think about the final weeks with Lilian's monologue about her sacrifices and Alan's death on the bench as being top-notch soap.  And it didn't matter where it was filmed or how it looked.

Honestly, I think it offered a good lesson about what to do (and what not to do).   Find a space that resembles your actual show, practice with the cameras first so that you don't zoom into nose hairs, don't drown out the actors with bad music, be careful with the make-up so you aren't filming corpse-like zombies, don't have everyone ambling about aimlessly like frost-bitten vagabonds, and resist the temptation to make the whole town look frigid & condemned.  

21 hours ago, Vee said:

The folk muzak often drowned out dialogue.

Then there was the fact that both Harley and Cassie's houses looked condemned like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I'm pretty sure the church/'convenience store' was just a production office.

Characters would often just wander along the side of the road at all hours of the day before coming across others, like drifters. 

I guess they filmed where they could do it cheaply, but I always thought Newark or Hoboken could have given them a more "urban" feel like the Springfield we'd often seen on TV, given them a greater variety of places to shoot, and also provided them with some parks and rural spots if they wanted to show people drifting aimlessly in front of a snowbank or an algae-covered pond.  

1 hour ago, SoapDope said:

Wasn't Kate Jackson from Alabama as well ?

Yes, she was from Birmingham and left for Ole Miss.  

Espy was from Dothan and left for Vanderbilt.  (I believe he started in mechanical engineering, but graduated in something like philosophy that didn't offer much "job market potential", so he shrugged and said, "Reckon I'll try acting," went to NYC for a short while to do theatre and ended up in Hollywood on Y&R.)  His brother Kip was a lawyer in West Texas.  When their mama was diagnosed with dementia about 30 years ago, Bill popped back up pretty much full-time as her caregiver.  

1 hour ago, SoapDope said:

I'm pretty sure James Houghton mentioned golf course in a soap magazine when he and Espy returned to the show in the early 2000's, but that's been over 20 years ago. Espy would be 75 years old now and may be retired. 

 

Well, he definitely always liked golf.  Even when he was on Y&R, he used to show up on golf courses with his fraternity brothers from Vanderbilt, whenever he would come visit his mama.  He dragged Jim Houghton down here one time (about 1975) to raise money for a local boy who had cancer.  Not very many years ago, Bill did some stage work at the Southeast Alabama Community Theatre.  Like I said earlier, I don't think he ever cared much about "stardom"; he seemed like a guy who'd rather tend to his mama and hang out with his friends than audition for movies.     

(Dothan Eagle, August 24, 1975)

Actor Bill Espy, a Dothan native, and Jim Houghton, also an actor, were met at the airport Friday by Charlie Silva.  Silva underwent lung and throat surgery 2 1/2 weeks ago and expects to begin cancer treatments this week.  Espy and Houghton, who play Snapper and Greg in the daytime TV series "The Young and the Restless" will emcee a six-hour musical extravaganza at the Dothan Civic Center this afternoon.  Proceeds will go toward Silva's medical expenses.  Featured artist will be Bobby Goldsboro, also from Dothan.  

[It was a Sunday afternoon concert that started after church and lasted till about dark.  They raised a ton of money for Charlie Silva, but he died a few months later.  He had a LOT of really extensive surgery and radiation but had no health insurance at all.  I believe the Espy boy and his friends organized the whole fundraiser.]   

14 minutes ago, SoapDope said:

Espy was a strange fish. Several co-stars said after a few months he would start complaining about having to come to the same place to work day in and day out and wanted out. They also said he is probably happy now that he runs/owns a golf course. I also remember reading he said he felt he was taken advantage of in his original Y&R contract.

I expect everyone was "taken advantage of" in their original contract negotiations, because nobody had ever heard of them, they were mainly inexperienced kids, and they were probably signed at a bargain price.  They likely went from feeling "rich" at first, to resenting their contracts later.

Mister Espy is from over in my neck of the woods.  His mama and daddy died back around 1995 or 1996, and seemed to "roost" around Dothan in their final years.  I wasn't sure what he was doing over there, but I was thinking it was a wildlife preserve.  He's always marched to his own non-Hollywood drum.  He definitely never gave a flip if he was a "star" or not.    

Most of those young original actors who bolted after their contracts expired were probably looking for greener pastures than a long-term soap role.  I'd say the two exceptions were likely Miss Bauer and Mister Espy. 

When Jaime Lyn Bauer bolted in 1982, I believe she was pretty adamant about leaving because she was TIRED.   During that chaotic transition period, Bill Bell often used her 4 or 5 times a week, which led to her working five days a week, sometimes six days a week, and she claimed that the workdays were often 12-18 hours.  She said she wanted to rest and spend time with her family.  She didn't seem to be angling for an immediate movie role.  

And William Gray Espy was such an unpredictable and unusual boy, there's no telling why he left.  He didn't seem overly committed to being a movie star.  He probably woke up one morning, discovered he'd saved enough money to buy a horse and said, "I'm leaving. Bye."   

47 minutes ago, Khan said:

I think Wings Hauser and David Hasselhoff should have switched roles, with Hauser playing Snapper and Hasselhoff playing Greg.

Or not used either one of them 

1 hour ago, SoapDope said:

That's what I thought. Hasselhoff just said something about Bell having him move around, talk etc... while watching his audition for Snapper from his home in Chicago while talking to Conboy. I wish I could find that interview just to confirm that. 

I've heard Hasselhoff say something to the effect of, "They kept telling me during my audition that the director was speaking to me from the booth, but I didn't know where the booth was."  That may be what you're remembering.  

I dunno.  They didn't seem to have much in the way of technology.  Miss Alden said from about 1975 to 1979, she and Bill would write the show at his dining room table and then send it by "overnight air mail" to Los Angeles.  You'd think if they could "view" what was going on in Hollywood (aside from on the TV), they could've found a more expeditious way to ship the scripts!  

11 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Re Victor - Eric had been working in primetime guest shots for over a decade. Were the roles becoming fewer as aged out of his 30's and there wasn't much around? 

Did his agent get a hold of the Y&R casting and suggest a few months in daytime would build the bank balance. I wonder if Eric wanted a regular nightime role? Did he have any failed pilots under his belt?

If you've seen The Feud: Joan & Bette, there's a funny scene where Bette Davis, who's pretty well washed-up at that point, goes on a diatribe about how she won't do this, she won't do that, "because no one would ask Marlon Brando to do it, for God's sake".  Joan Crawford pointedly reminds her, "Brando isn't begging for a recurring role on Wagon Train, either!"  

I believe Hans was pretty much "begging for a recurring role on Wagon Train" by the time the Y&R offer came along.  In the past several years, he'd done a few sporadic guest spots here and there, and he'd been in a (terrible) "Herbie the Love Bug" movie.  He had a wife and a son by then, and I expect a few weeks of solid work sounded appealing to him.  

Ditto for Miss Cooper when John Conboy (and that female producer whose name I can never remember) called her for Kay Chancellor.  She'd had a small recurring role on Bracken's World in like 1969-1970, and  then a few sporadic guest spots, and a few solid weeks of work was probably hard to pass up! 

Jeanne Cooper on Maria Arena:  "I have to say in Maria’s defense, she was serving two hats, one with MOCA (The Museum of Modern Arts) and one with The Young and the Restless.   She had a great sense of Y&R having Bill Bell as a father-in-law and learning and writing under his umbrella.   But within the art world, it was going down.  And Maria as the chairwoman was very beneficial in turning that around.   Now that is a very important position.   Now put that on top of writing a number one show and what she was trying to do, which kept her from the show a great deal of time.  Maria was thinking she had the right people at her back at every turn, and she had laid out storylines assuming her writing team is taking care of that.  She was trying to make it blend and teach this way of working to a show, if the storylines had been correctly done.   We talked about how it is to handle two major things without paying attention to one without the other. Maria was trying to blend the two and consequently Y&R suffered for it.

[I added the bold & italics, because she's saying exactly what I alluded to above --- Maria Arena wasn't WRITING one damn thing.  She was "laying out stories" (probably verbally, in my opinion) to Hogan, and he was writing them.  Miss Arena was trying to "teach" this way of writing, which was basically "writing without writing, and writing without being a writer."  The woman is just not a writer.  She's never written anything.  She's a socialite and an art collector.  

I would LOVE to read the novel she allegedly wrote, according to her biography, but we all know she ain't ever written any novel; nor has she ever written a single episode of Y&R.]  

Kay Alden: "Lynn [Marie Latham] has only been with the show maybe six months.  She comes to us with a nighttime background.  We're now trying to do some more innovative things.  More nighttime flavor to the writing.  And she's come in to help us with that transition because it's foreign to us, in terms of writing in that venue.  And Lynn has an incredible track record." 

Miss Alden goes on to explain the horrific process SONY and the network subjects the writers to -- thrust documents, detailed outlines, constant script revision, etc. 

You can tell by her faltering voice -- she knows Latham is about to take the whole mess over.    

1 minute ago, lucaslesann23 said:

Back to LML for a sec, what did the CBS/Sony execs see in her that she was able to just fire all of Bells people. From what I read from older threads she actually wasn't that bad working WITH Kay and them.

Kay Alden said at the time that Miss Latham was brought in because she had "primetime sensibilities" and would add more of a "primetime flavor" to the show (at SONY's suggestion).  As to why the Bell-era writers were ultimately dismissed -- who knows?  Maybe they were seen as hindering Miss Latham's "primetime sensibilities".