Broderick

In one of Lee Sheldon's first episodes, the Preacher Emerson character delivers this long speech about his father (Del Emerson) conducting a wedding of "gator wrestlers" on the "Florida/Louisiana border". Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's about 175 miles from extreme western Florida to extreme eastern Louisiana. There's two entire Gulf States (Alabama and Mississippi) in between Florida and Louisiana. Lee Sheldon was too stupid (or lazy) to look at a map and see that there's no such thing as a Florida/Louisiana border. It's just scene after scene of complete nonsense that doesn't advance the plot, doesn't make any sense, and completely fails at being humorous. I've never seen anything like it.

Sheldon had his moments for sure. I think the subliminal messages could've been effective, but as you noted, he bungled it. The "Alice in Wonderland" sequence at the end of the show was probably somewhat stupid, but was an effective way to conclude a mystery show. It was just his day-to-day plotting, scene structure, "humor" and dialogue -- yikes!

I don't know about the Facebook post, but several sources have subsequently reported Patrick Horgan's death. I went to YouTube and watched his final "Edge" appearance as Ansel Scott in early 1983, when he told Ian Devereaux, "I'm sorry, my dear boy, but I'm alive and well and haven't heard from Raven in the past three years." He was mighty suave, urbane, and sleazy in his scene. lol. While I was at it, I made the TRAGIC MISTAKE of re-watching the transition from Henry Slesar to Lee Sheldon in late May/early June of 1983. Gosh, it's immediately horrible. It's the worst short-term deterioration of a soap that I've ever seen. (Viewers who saw the shaky hand-held camera transition to Peapack on "Guiding Light" might disagree!) My siblings and I were teenagers in the summer of 1983, and I can remember watching an episode of "Edge" that left us all cringing at how amateurish and thrown-together it looked. We joked that it appeared Henry Slesar had allowed his ten-year old nephew to write it. The scenes were sloppy and disjointed, most of the dialogue seemed utterly pointless, all the sequences were short and haphazard, and the majority of the scenes were underscored with cheesy, outdated music that completely worked AGAINST the mood being set by the (childlike) dialogue. We just couldn't believe what we were seeing. Our beloved, sophisticated, witty "film noir" show had suddenly, overnight, degenerated into the crappiest piece of mundane garbage we'd ever seen on television. At the end of the episode, the credits rolled, and it said "written by Lee Sheldon". I remember shaking my head and saying, "It's evidently a writer's strike, and this poor guy is the best they could find on short notice." I've been thinking I maybe misjudged him. Perhaps he wasn't as awkwardly bad as I'd remembered. He was. You can tell Slesar's final episode and Sheldon's first episode without even watching the credits. It's plumb awful.

Y&R's character "Pam Warren", a hooker in the syndicate storyline in the very early 1980s, was played by Kristine DeBell, who'd done some X-rated work in the 1970s using the same stage name that she used on Y&R. Wade Nichols/Dennis Parker from "Edge of Night" was fairly well-known in heterosexual porn in the 1970s also, but when you do an internet search for him these days, the film that normally pops-up first ("Boynapped") doesn't appear to be from that particular genre. lol.

In that particular video, the line between "porn actor" and "disco star" becomes extremely thin, lol.

I figured he was fired. Next on the chopping block was Bill Marceau, to bring in a young porn actor as the police chief. lol.

I'd always assumed he was fired. But in 1984, he told the Washington Post that he'd quit, because he'd been on the show ten years and felt that "I'd said all I had to say". After 10 years as a leading character on one of daytime television's longest-running shows, Donald May quit. "I thought I'd said all I could say," he said. What next? "Then I bought a TV set. I looked at nighttime TV. It had changed dramatically. I didn't see a whole hell of a lot that I wanted to do. I came to the conclusion there was more to be said on a soap opera -- nothing profound, simply a running commentary on the human condition." For 10 years, Donald May made his running commentary in the role of Adam Drake, a crusading attorney in "Edge of Night," a soap opera that traditionally has emphasized corruption and crime-busting even more than romance. Now, after a turn in the short-lived "Texas" soap and a hiatus spent producing and directing stage plays in California, he's back in New York and back in a soap, the equally long- running "As the World Turns."

Right. Draper thought April was poor when he started dating her. She was supposedly a little orphan girl with no mother. But surprise! She got Margo! Draper's problem was that he ended up with a mother-in-law who kept forcing him to take things he didn't want. lol.

Yes, Ansel was strictly a leech. Although he was an attorney, he tended to squander his money on girls, and he married Mrs. Nadine Alexander to refresh his coffers. There's a funny scene featuring Ansel, shortly after Nadine's death. He reveals what he individually received from Nadine's will -- it was one vase, or something like that -- and there's a young girl crawling all over him while he's discussing it. I found Nadine's choice of rental cars pretty strange. As a car guru, I remember thinking when the scene first aired, "Surely that's not really her rental car!" lol. Seems like it was a Ford Tornio, or maybe even a Pinto. I wish I could remember the 1977 scene more clearly. My own impression of it was that Raven was blaming Nadine for Mr. Alexander's untimely demise, and Nadine shot back that he'd never wanted any children in the first place. If that's the case, it's probably not inconsistent with the 1980 scene. In the 1980 scene, Raven is whining about how attentive her father was and how aloof Nadine was. Just because Mr. Alexander didn't specifically want children probably wouldn't prevent him from being overly-attentive once his daughter was born.

The first girl (Juanin Clay) was around for about a year, and the actress actually married Joe Lambie who played Logan. Juanin Clay was in the role for the Nadine/Ansel/Raven triangle, and for the beginning of the Kevin/Raven/Logan situation. Sharon Gabet came along sometime in 1977, to make Logan's life miserable and to torment Draper's new girlfriend (April).

We saw Nicole and Adam's son (Adam) from time to time. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nicole was the anchorperson for WMON-TV, and Miles was a physician. They were both shown as being "busy career people". As a result, they had a nanny (Mrs. Goodman) who usually hustled Adam off-screen pretty quickly. But occasionally we'd see Miles and Nicole (or Jody Travis) playing with Adam. Kevin Jamison was sterile (rather than impotent). Geraldine was aware of this fact, but Raven wasn't. When Logan impregnated Raven, Raven anticipated having no difficulties passing her baby off as Kevin's. It was Geraldine who broke the news to Raven that Kevin was sterile. There was talk of a possible abortion, but ultimately Raven decided she would flee to London to mooch off Nadine and Ansel for a while. Kevin borrowed Draper's car and raced to the airport to intercept Raven before she could board the plane, and Kevin died in a car wreck. I was never 100% sure if Mister Alexander and Nadine were married at the time of Mr. Alexander's death. Nadine's exit scene in 1977 (which I barely remember) left me with the impression that Alexander and Nadine had divorced prior to Mr. Alexander's death. Nadine's 1980 exit scene (which I remember vividly) left me with the impression that Nadine was still married to him at the time of his death, leaving Nadine as crushed by his death as Raven was. Ansel Scott was alive and well in England when "Edge" ended in 1984. Raven's inheritance had come from her long-dead father, Mr. Alexander. Mr. Alexander and Nadine were fairly wealthy, and upon the death of Mr. Alexander, Raven had received a small trust fund under his will. Raven got monthly distributions from the trust, which allowed her to exist without a job. (She was sort of a Holly Golightly from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" -- morally opposed to holding a job, because she had Daddy's trust fund distributions that paid her rent and grocery bills.) The REAL MONEY that had belonged to Mr. Alexander -- aside from Raven's little trust fund -- had passed to Mrs. Nadine Alexander. Raven was always aware that if she ever hoped to be truly wealthy, she would need to get her hands on Nadine's inheritance. In about 1976, Draper was summoned to New York City to meet with his father, Ansel Scott. Draper and Ansel had been somewhat estranged over the years, primarily because Ansel was disappointed that his son was more of a "Mike Karr full-of-integrity-attorney", rather than a cut-throat-snake like himself. When Draper arrived in NYC, he found that Ansel was engaged to be married. Ansel's fiancé was Mrs. Nadine Alexander, who hoped that she could facilitate a reconciliation between Ansel and Draper. In Nadine's eyes, she could offer Raven to Draper, which would help cement her own relationship with Ansel. Ansel ended up coming to Monticello to defend Tony Saxon in a criminal trial. Draper was on the prosecution team, pitting Ansel and Draper against each other in the courtroom. No father/son reconciliation was in the cards, although Draper learned to have a certain respect for Ansel as an attorney, and Ansel likewise developed a (small amount of) respect for Draper. Nadine and Raven came along to Monticello, as well, and they stayed with Geraldine, who it turned out had been friends with Nadine Alexander for decades. Ansel Scott was sexually attracted to the nubile young Raven. Ansel was FINANCIALLY attracted to Nadine, because Nadine was the holder of the purse strings, having inherited the majority of Mr. Alexander's wealth. (Ansel was perpetually in need of money.) To get his hands on Raven for sexual purposes, Ansel would need to forego marrying Nadine. To get his hands on Mr. Alexander's millions, Ansel would need to marry Nadine and forego having sex with Raven. As a result, Ansel was perpetually trying to sabotage any budding relationship between Draper and Raven, so that he could have Raven for himself, but he was acutely aware that if he were caught with Raven, he'd be unable to marry Nadine. Draper became aware of what was going on, and he dropped Raven pretty quickly. Draper never had any use for Raven thereafter. Nadine and Ansel ultimately married, and they moved to London after the Tony Saxon trial. Their marriage wasn't a happy one, and Ansel continued to stray with young starlets and models. Raven dumped her son (Jamey) on Draper and April permanently, and went for an extended trip to visit Nadine and Ansel in London. This trip reignited all the tensions, as Raven and Ansel had dinner alone together several times in London, while Nadine was out of town. In retaliation, Nadine changed her will, leaving all her millions to Jamey, and absolutely nothing to Ansel or Raven. As it happened, Raven had lunch with a young attorney who worked in the London law firm that drafted Nadine's new will, and Raven learned from the chattering attorney that Jamey was the sole beneficiary of all Nadine's millions. This news sent Raven scampering hurriedly back to Monticello to pry Jamey away from Draper and April, so that she could be the administrator of Jamey's future millions. To Raven's horror, Draper and April had returned Jamey to his father (Logan), which meant that Logan Swift would be administering Nadine's fortune if Nadine passed away. Raven herself would be left with nothing more than small distributions from the trust her father had left her; the BIG MONEY would be in the hands of Logan and Jamey. This led to a big custody suit between Logan and Raven. Of course, Logan simply wanted custody of his son because he loved him; he had no clue that Jamey was on the cusp of inheriting all of Nadine Alexander's money. Raven, though, was perfectly aware of the financial benefits of having custody of Jamey. In a strange series of accidental events, Nadine of course did ultimately die in 1980. Ansel Scott, her husband, received nothing under Nadine's will. Raven also received nothing. Jamey got it all. Raven was proud of herself, thinking that as the custodial parent, she'd be making all of Jamey's spending decisions for the next twenty-one years. She referred to him as her little million dollar baby. But unfortunately for Raven, it became clear that she'd perjured herself to get custody of Jamey, and custody ultimately went to Logan.

My recollection is that Logan had political ambitions, and Geraldine was keen on "sponsoring" politicians, as she'd done with her sons and with Kevin Jamison. Logan was sort of a "distant conquest" for her. He didn't actually move in right away; that only occurred after he gained full custody of Jamey. He found himself having to hire an arsenal of babysitters, and Geraldine said, "Why don't you and Jamey just move in with me?" So he did. I don't believe he really had a madonna/whore complex. Rather, he stumbled into the Raven Trap before he realized how "terrible" she was. Once he and Draper became closer friends, and he began spending time with Draper and April, he appreciated more that a man could have a decent partner. And then of course when Draper was presumed dead, Logan comforted April and fell in love with her. By then, he'd long since washed his hands of Charlotte's Web. I wish I could recall more about Nadine Alexander Scott's initial exit in 1977. "French Fan" has been posting detailed summaries of the 1977 storylines, but there's no real mention of Ansel and Nadine moving to England. According to the summaries, the Tony Saxon criminal case ended, Ansel Scott collected a big check, learned he'd lost his position in New York, dallied with Raven, married Nadine (who was wise to the fact that Raven was flirting with Ansel). Then suddenly there was no more mention of Ansel and Nadine. Clearly they'd moved to London, but it's not specifically mentioned in the summaries. But there IS a detailed recap of a 1977 scene in which Nadine accuses Raven of "always going after her men", and Raven begrudgingly admits it's because Nadine "took my father away from me". Nadine basically explains to Raven that "your father never really wanted you, Raven. I didn't take him away from you; he just didn't want you. It's that simple", and that's a scene that I'd really like to see.

Wow! Just crazy. Hmmm!

I suppose it's pretty cheap to send a couple of cast members outside, with a director, a production assistant, a sound person, and a hand-held camera. But it seems as though it'd be even cheaper (with today's technology) to invest in a couple of fairly realistic trees. I just had a lot of questions about that segment of the interview; Locher didn't though. lol.

Yeah, Billy Miller actually had a RESTLESSNESS about him, even if he could be awfully annoying at times. Jason is so much more stoic, staid, unadventurous. It's difficult sometimes to accept him as a more matured version of Miller's character. Burgess Jenkins. Yikes. lol.

Same here. Billy Miller often got on my last nerve with that Cheshire cat grin and all those strange tics, but he looked as though he was trying to make the character stand out (for better or for worse). Jason Thompson sometimes seems to be performing at gunpoint. "I'll deliver these lines if I must, but it's because my captor is forcing me to."

Goutman also mentioned going on those "inconsistent remotes" because they couldn't afford to "rent a tree". "Dark Shadows" was never BIG-BUDGET, but they had a zillion "trees" in their studio, most of them being branches glued to music stands or something. Those little kids on Dark Shadows could get lost in the "woods" and wander around all night, without ever leaving the studio. It didn't look spectacular (obviously) but it set the atmosphere in a somewhat believable manner. I was hoping Goutman would expand a bit more on the cost of "renting a tree" versus going on a remote, and if they simply didn't have the backstage personnel to figure out how to improvise with the props they already had.

Years ago, on some message board, we were writing parody scripts for Y&R. My "contribution" was an episode in which Kay Chancellor threw an elaborate, impromptu, late-night costume ball. Everyone dressed spontaneously and appeared in full regalia -- except Sharon and Nick, who were feeding Cassie breakfast and helping her get ready for the school bus. lol. It was the only way I knew to parody those strange Time Warps that permeated Bell's scripts.

Yep, always! And time would move at different speeds for different storylines. Lorie and Lance might have a candlelight dinner in the Allegro. Meanwhile, Kay Chancellor might ask her attorney to mail her a transcript from court. In the next episode, Kay would be opening her mail and finding the transcript -- indicating an entire day has passed at her house -- but Lorie and Lance are still having their same conversation, in their same clothes, in the same restaurant -- indicating time stood still for them. lol.

There was a sequence about demographics, and Goutman indicated they'd tried to focus on "younger performers" to get more 18 to 49 year-old viewers (at the expense of screen time for the show's vets). I would've asked, "Is there is a STUDY showing that younger viewers are only interested in younger performers, or is this merely an industry BELIEF? Where did this theory originate? Can you elaborate on that?" That's a question which can be asked without hostility or anger, just a simple conversational question. But Locher passed on the follow-up. Also, Goutman mentioned that vets sometimes weren't utilized for "budgetary reasons". Why's that? Did they have guarantees of one episode per month, and anything in excess of that was a budgetary problem? Were the veterans being paid on a per-episode basis? I would've asked that. Same thing about the complaints after the "third kiss" of the same-sex couple. "Why the complaints? Did the third kiss follow too quickly after the second? Was the third kiss too explicit? Or was there simply a two-kiss limit established by P&G or by CBS? " Nothing. Just, "Wow. Ok. People in the Midwest and the South might have a problem with that. That's crazy." The follow-ups (or lack thereof) were AWFULLY frustrating and ruined what could've potentially been an enlightening interview.

The Goutman interview wasn't bad. (Sometimes it's interesting to hear from a person who's universally reviled, lol.) But the dude asking the questions was horrid. He didn't seem capable of asking even the most fundamental follow-up questions. Goutman mentioned that CBS and P&G had "differing views about some issues". Most interviewers would then ask, "Which issues? Can you elaborate?", or something to that effect. Locher said, "Oh, so they didn't play nice in the sandbox. Wow. Crazy. Hmmm", or something, and just let it go. He did that with 90% of the questions, as though he didn't even listen to Goutman's response.

I believe some fans considered Malloy "swoon-worthy" on Edge of Night as Schuyler Whitney. He was sort of a mysterious scoundrel, he had a patrician air of sophistication, he was secretive, and he had great chemistry with his co-star (Sharon Gabet). It was probably a case of the perfect actor having been cast in the perfect role -- much like Jonathan Frid as Barnabas on Dark Shadows, Jeanne Cooper as Kay on Y&R, Chris Bernau as Alan on Guiding Light, or Anthony Geary as Luke on General Hospital. I'm not sure how successful Larkin Malloy was in his later roles, but he definitely had something that made him appealing when he first burst onto the scene in what was likely his most memorable role.

That sounds right. Four. (Or maybe 3, with the 4th being a replacement for one of the other 3.) You'd expect him to echo that same format with B&B in 1987, if that were his ideal working environment. And it appears that he did. I've watched those first twelve or fifteen episodes of "B&B" that have been released this so far this month, and it looks as though a few of the episodes were written entirely by Bill (the first episode, for instance), a few were written by Bill & Bradley Bell, a few by Bill and Meg Bennett, and a few by Bill and Jack Smith. Here's the quote from Kay Alden, edited to take out the "ummmms": Bill was really driven. He was extremely driven. He was married to Lee Phillip, who was a very well-known Chicago TV personality and had a huge public presence in Chicago. But for a lot of the years that I knew Bill, it seemed like he never went out. He just sat at his desk. I came in from the suburbs where my parents lived. I sat at the dining room table, and I worked. And he worked. And that’s what we did for, you know, ten hours a day, five days a week. We also worked on the weekends, but we worked together every day, and gosh, he was very driven. He took his work very seriously, and he was very fun, and obviously I adored him. He was wonderful to me … The writing process evolves over time. What we’re doing now [2006] is a more traditional system than we had for much of my career. There was a point in time, in the first years that I was working with Bill … He was very happy with my work. The show was still a half hour then. He was very happy with my work, and he wasn’t very happy with the California writers that he’d been working with. They were all older, you know, and he had not found this young person, and he liked that [about me]. Through a series of events, all of those other writers left the show. There were two or three of them, and they were each doing, like, a script a week, and Bill was doing one, or maybe Bill was doing two at that time. So that was the five scripts. They all left, within a month of each other. Bill came back from a vacation. He’d gone to Hawaii, and something tragic had happened in his family. One of his parents had passed away, while he was away. So he came back from the vacation to deal with the death of a parent. He had sent me to California, for my first California trip; that was my reward. While he took the vacation, I worked, but I worked in California, which was very cool. So we both got back to Chicago. It was a Monday morning, and we had no other writers. It was a Monday morning, and it was just Bill and Kay. Bill and Kay have to write an episode of “The Young and the Restless” that is going to tape a week from this day. Now, this is beyond even special delivery, we think. So for the first time, we call around, because we’d heard there’s this thing called "Air Express". We found out there is Air Express, and they will show up today, they will pick up our script – provided we get it written on this day. If we get our script written, Novo Air Express would be there to pick it up at five o’clock, and they would take it to the airport, and it would be in California tomorrow. That was the start of a new era. We were too busy to look for anybody to hire. Bill and I had developed already – this was the second year of my career, maybe – not quite, probably near the end of my first year – we had developed this simpatico. We finished each other’s sentences. We could talk through stuff. So we started writing all the scripts. We would sit down in the morning, and he would have an envelope, or a steno pad – one or the other. He would jot down some names, and we’d talk a little bit about what they were going to do, and then we’d write the script. And it had to be done by five o’clock, because Novo Express would be down there to pick it up to take it to California. That was, of course, my period of greatest growth. No one in history would’ve gotten a gift like that. It was terrifying; it was huge pressure. But it was unbelievable, it was fabulous, and I learned so much at that time. As talk began [about going to an hour], we began to hire some people, because it was insane to keep writing the show that way, just the two of us. But that was sort of historically the writing process. At that period of time, there was no "writing process". Kay and Bill just wrote the show.

"Dark Shadows" had a countess too -- Josette's aunt, Countess Natalie du Pres. But that actually sorta made sense, as she appeared in 1795, and she was from Martinique. Nonetheless, she was just Grayson Hall in a big hat with a deck of tarot cards. I never could quite grasp where her title came from. Her brother, Andre du Pres, didn't seem to have a title, which indicated she'd married a count, perhaps, at some point. But she used her maiden last name on the show.

Even odder still, why would Lorie think Kay could possibly forget her "grand entrance" down the steps in London a few months earlier, with her gown split all the way up to her swiveling crotch? lol. (I'm sure the dialogue was phrased that way, because they'd shared so few scenes over the past nine years. But that entrance down the staircase in London, with Kay Chancellor, Liz and Stuart gasping at her revealing ensemble, was pretty memorable.)