Broderick

Much has been written over the years about the relationship between Tennessee Williams (writer) and Elia Kazan (director). Tennessee Williams (like William J. Bell) was a well-known and gifted writer who didn't *need* any certain director or producer to handle his scripts. Elia Kazan (like Wes Kenney) was a respected and award-winning director who could choose to collaborate with virtually any author he chose. But Tennessee Williams often reworked his own scripts, over and over again, to gain the approval of Elia Kazan, whom he knew would make them commercially and critically successful. He wrote in his diary, "I don't WANT to make these changes, but if I don't, I'm afraid Kazan will lose interest and walk away." Elia Kazan, likewise, would receive a 100% ready-to-direct script from a lesser known screenwriter or playwright, and he'd toss it aside in favor of spending hours and hours helping Tennessee Williams work out the kinks in one of his scripts, knowing that once finished, the Williams script would be the superior product. That's the relationship I believe existed between Bell and Kenney. Bell was, without a doubt, one of the most perceptive writers working in the genre. But with the hour format, which he detested, he'd sort of lost his footing. John Conboy took advantage of the struggle. Bell began giving in to his personal excesses -- writing in circles at times, introducing characters who lacked a clear focus, changing his mind about storylines mid-stream, digging too heavily into some characters while glossing over other storylines entirely. In many ways, the show was VERY MESSY from 1980 till 1982, although it had its isolated beautiful moments, as it always had. John Conboy was preoccupied with developing his own show (completely parroting the Bell formula of wealthy family/working-class family with young and beautiful stars in the main roles). Conboy didn't seem at all invested in Y&R -- and his solution to Bell's writing struggle was simply to cloak the entire product in tits & ass titillation to disguise the meandering and subpar writing. I'm pretty sure we've discussed this before on the board -- the awkward braless scenes that popped-up in virtually every episode from this period, the almost comical hip-flexing and bicep-posing the actors were expected to do to make the show interesting. Even the soap magazine reviewers (such as John Kelly Genovese) were commenting, "Daytime's golden soap has ventured into the world of the tacky and the cheap." I believe Bell was looking to Wes Kenney to help him right the ship and remake Y&R into the more tastefully sensual product that it had been prior to 1980. And I believe Wes Kenney would've rather critiqued and corrected William J. Bell's flaws than work on a more well-oiled soap written by a lesser talent than Bell. There's no doubt that Bell was in charge of the writing, and Kenney was in charge of the production values, as evidenced by Kenney's balancing of Conboy's "film noir lighting" into a brighter, more modern-looking serial. But I expect Kenney DID make some suggestions about storylines, and Bell, realizing the ratings were dropping, likely listened to him. And as others have pointed out, Melody Thomas's surprise pregnancy meant making certain changes to the storylines that had existed pre-pregnancy. It seemed fairly necessary to bump-off Jerry Cashman, and of course Kay Chancellor got a new beau in the less-than-charismatic Mark Tapscott. The soap press at the time rejoiced at this development ("After a series of distasteful assignments -- Joe LaDue, Victor Mohica, and John Gibson -- Jeanne Cooper finally has a love interest worthy of her.") I disagreed; I thought Jeanne Cooper had great chemistry with John Gibson's Cash character, but the message that a still attractive 50-year-old woman needed to PAY MONEY to a young man for sex seemed a strange message to send in a medium geared primarily to female viewers. That seems to be the type of thing that Wes Kenney pointed out to Bill Bell, and Bell then rectified the problems. No doubt, their collaboration, like the collaboration of Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan, worked for both of them, and Y&R quickly recovered from its ratings slump.

For sure -- like the audience at home, Miss Winters was the "outsider looking in" on all the weirdness and spookiness. She helped us to understand (and care about) the present day Collins family when the show premiered, and she helped us to care about the 1795 members of the family as well when she met them. Still, what a creative risk to remove virtually every character off the canvas in one big Friday afternoon swoop and leave them all in suspended animation, unseen by the audience, for four months or more.

Perhaps they really have this time. With the word "lover" in the spoiler (rather than "girlfriend"), they seem to be making the mysterious person less gender specific. Also I read an article about the Nu Noah in which it was stated that he "might find love in an unlikely place". Not sure why a dude would be considered "unlikely", but I'm getting the impression his "unlikely lover" is either a man or a fleshlight.

Dark Shadows definitely gets the award for taking a chance. Who on earth would've thought a vampire would become a successful leading man on a 1967 daytime soap? lol. They took another huge risk, as well -- the 1795 storyline. After about a year on the air, they completely ditched every character on the show (except Victoria Winters and Barnabas Collins), left them all sitting unseen around a séance table for months and months, and introduced the audience to an entirely new slate of characters from a different century. And they went into it blazing, with no intention of showing the previous characters until the 1795 storyline was finished. This move had the potential to alienate and confuse viewers and result in the show's cancellation. Instead, it propelled them to higher ratings than they'd seen before.

A lot of the negative press B&B got in its early years was probably undeserved. I recall an early review of the show in which Caroline, Brooke and Kristen were referred to as "B&B's interchangeable blondes". There's nothing really "interchangeable" about them. Each of the three characters has a distinctive personality, appearance, and storyline of her own. It's not as though they're remarkably similar actresses or characters who'd be confused with one another. I also recall reading that some of the actors had "questionable" abilities. Aside from Ronn Moss -- say what you will about him, lol -- the only real HOWLINGLY bad actor that I've noticed so far is the guy who plays Donna's boyfriend Mark. He's awful. But even there, the emphasis seems to be on his preppy looks and vapid personality, with Rocco referring to him as "Mister Cool" and so forth. If he were a more animated actor, the storyline probably wouldn't be as effective.

E.F. Irna Phillips was such a volatile person. She and I had many disagreements about the Lisa character. One instance in particular stands out. A.L. Wow. Ok. So did you expect Meg Ryan to make it big?

Thanks so much for providing these for us!

Bryton James (Y&R) has been Bryton McClure and just plain old Bryton.

Bill Bell's leading ladies were always good about passing away with dignity after a romantic evening.

It's hard to remember the exact number of days that Y&R was pre-empted, but it does seem like it was a couple of weeks or more. The main thing I remember is racing to the archaic old barber shop my dad visited to have my overly-processed Big 80s hair whacked into an Ollie North cut. lol.

I feel like they just wanted to use Heather Tom and gave her a role (Katie) without putting much thought into it. Likewise they probably cast Jennifer Gareis as Donna, because they thought she slightly resembled Brooke. They seemed to toss the original concept and personalities of Donna & Katie out the window with the recasts.

Same here. I don't think Jack Smith and Kay Alden were a "team". Jack Smith seemed to be in control, and the show was subject to all his absurd whims. There's no question that Alden had some lousy storylines (Sperm capers, etal), but Jack Smith's stories were awfully distinctive, as they all seemed like something an adolescent boy would write. Juvenile crap. The most damaging in the long run (I think) was that stupid mess with Jill and Kay, which he probably spent five minutes crafting. As Paul Raven said above, normally something that ill-planned and foolish would've been dismissed immediately by a grown person.

I don't have much respect for Jack Smith's writing. It was a "slash & burn" style of writing that didn't seem to include anticipating long-term consequences of decisions. When he joined Alden in the early 2000s as a co-head writer, we had all that nonsense of Kay being Jill's mother. Seriously, what was the point? The entire thrust of their 30-year rivalry was that they weren't biologically related, but couldn't stay out of each other's lives. So the audience already considered them "de facto family" without having to retcon a foolish "forgotten" pregnancy. Jack Smith appeared to have no perception of irony or subtlety. Once the decision was made to create a biological mother/daughter relationship between them, the more fluid love/hate, mother/daughter, arch rivals/old friends element of their storyline was gone. Jack Smith, if he had any brains, would've looked down the road a year or two and realized that he was handcuffing two of his central characters for years to come. Stupid decision. And he made PLENTY of other stupid choices.

So much for Beth Logan. 6/02/1987 -- "The role of Beth is now being played by a whiner." Didn't realize it would happen quite that fast.

I like her. Judith Baldwin's Beth character seems down to earth, but sort of innately sad. Yes, there are hints that Eric will ditch Stephanie and reunite with her. When Beth caters a party for the Forresters, she's hurt that Eric doesn't appear to recognize her. Later in the episode we see Eric wondering to himself, "Why did that caterer seem so familiar?" In the same episode, Stephanie is a bitch on wheels, blissfully unaware that Eric would drop her like a hot potato if he realized the caterer was his beloved Elizabeth Henderson. But it's more complicated, of course, with the backstory having already been laid-out that Stephanie's daddy had plenty of money, and Eric owes his current career to Mister Douglas's financial backing. When the episodes first aired in 1987, I didn't get much enjoyment from the Logans, who seemed like cheap knock-offs of the Fosters on Y&R. But re-watching now, I really enjoy Ethan Wayne's Storm character (aside from his silly name) and Carrie Mitchum's Donna character. Brooke is awfully pretty. Katie is still as dull as ever. The storyline involving Katie and her acne, her love for Rocco, and her semi-rivalry with Donna is FAR too reminiscent of Traci Abbott's weight issues, Danny Romalotti, and Lauren Fenmore, which had aired only four years earlier on another show.

I wish I could remember more of Patrick Horgan's run on "Edge" in 1976 and 1977. The stories that Ansel Scott had then -- defending Tony Saxon, marrying Nadine Alexander for her money, belittling his son Draper, courting Nadine's daughter Raven -- all seem to be right in Patrick Horgan's wheelhouse. lol.

I like that guy! He's funny. And it's amazing how he can be sophisticated and refined, but smarmy at the same time.

lol. Ansel Scott (Horgan) appeared for a brief reprise of his role on 2/16/1983. He schools Ian Devereaux at the 1:18:59 mark.

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."