ScottyBman

4 minutes ago, j swift said:

Thank you for this bit of grace, good to know that I was not alone in my ignorance.

But, it was Donna, Peter, then Nicole, correct?

Donna, Peter, Nicole and Marley (for at least 18 years)

On 12/17/2023 at 9:58 PM, Paul Raven said:

She could have just said she remembered it as a young woman when she arrived in Bay City.

I always felt like the Cory Mansion and the Love Estate were outside the city and not something one would walk past on the way to school.  

I got to meet Jensen one time here in Ohio.  She was very nice and gracious.  But I also understand that they needed Vicki to "mature".  It is difficult to keep that chip on your shoulder after a while.  She got comfortable with the money.  Her style matured as they moved the character into a more mature position.  It happened with all soaps.  But by this time, I was dropping in and out of Bay City.  The Lumina stuff may for me have been the last straw.  Pandering to the "supernatural" storyline was enough for me to bid adieu.

Christmas 1983.  Carl Hutchins arrives as Felicia Gallant's guest much to the chagrin of Donna Love and Perry Hutchins.  The rest of Bay City is delighted to meet him.  For a while....  I never liked him with Rachel.  And that pony tail...

4 minutes ago, ScottyBman said:

Christmas 1983.  Carl Hutchins arrives as Felicia Gallant's guest much to the chagrin of Donna Love and Perry Hutchins.  The rest of Bay City is delighted to meet him.  For a while....  I never liked him with Rachel.  And that pony tail...

And the head writer whom I am guessing executed the backstory and the addition of characters around Donna Love was this lady, although I never heard her mentioned before...

 

Donna and Felicia bonding over lost daughters.

I have posted this before.  One of my favorites.  Great dialogue between Anna Stuart, Victoria Wyndham, Constance Ford, Anne Hache, Carmen Duncan and Nancy Frangione.  I wish they would have been able to bring her back in full "b*&ch" mode and not as a caricature.  

On 8/7/2023 at 3:51 PM, Xanthe said:

I have a very badly overexposed promo from 1989 with Jamie/Vicky/Jake dancing. I like the part where a duplicate Vicky spins off -- I wish the duplicate had had the Marley wig, but other than that it's pretty fun.

Anne Heche's hair was fantastic and the Marley wig always looked terrible in contrast. I wonder if it would have been better if they had gone with a darker shade of hair instead of the pale straw, especially since they also always dressed Marley in pale pastels in this era.

Is there a better-quality version of this promo anywhere online? I haven't turned up anything searching.

I believe there were other versions with other couples with the same music. Not sure if they did it for AW only or other NBC soaps as well.

I have to say I bought this song, Big Pig is the name of the band based soley on this promo.  I loved the over the top of the 80's early 90's.

On 7/31/2022 at 8:49 PM, Melroser said:

I always wanted Cecile to return to town with the surprise announcement that she's finally married to Peter. Restart the Cecile/Donna rivalry. 

I would have been on board with that.  Perhaps even at some point Peter buying some interest in the Hudson Group as he would have I guess had some part of the Love fortune back from inheritance from Reg.  They could have even retcon a Brittany (recast as Sharon Gabet doubtfully would want to return) and claim Peter Jr's claim to the Love money.  I would have ventured far easier to buy than Cecille claiming that Maggie was really Cass's daughter and not a Cory.

The continuous recasts of Nicole were problematic.  At first she was the party girl/rich girl/model.  That was a good contrast to the uppity Donna and the stallwart Peter, who you knew came from money, but was a smart, level headed hard worker.  Nicole Part Deux was some sort of combination of smart, level headed and she all of sudden sang.  She pretended to be a reporter to get to meet Michael.  She was the one who stood up to Reginald.  Then we get Designer Nicole.  Not as confident.  Not as level headed.  She never really had much of a base in Bay City and seemed to come in for a storyline and then once that came to an end, they didn't know what to do with her.  Once she went to jail and Peter left town, the Loves were really the Hudsons and that was that.  It certainly happens as time goes on as it happens in real life....but with the constant change of head writers as well.

18 minutes ago, victoria foxton said:

More episodes from 1986 have been reloaded. Hate seeing Donna scared of her own shadow. in these episodes.  

 

I agree, I have been rewatching this period on You Tube and seeing it again don't like that Donna who was always so cold and in control turned into this....

19 hours ago, Xanthe said:

She essentially experienced an identity crisis, so she was experimenting and trying out different things because she didn't seem to identify with with the Rachel Mac told her she was.  Mac's Rachel was so stodgy!  Felicia was so fancy!

Here is the outfit, which shocked Mac. No boa, but fur and spangles. 

Here is the video of the "makeover/reveal".  Mac was not digging it.

They are reuploading the summer of 1985 on Youtube.  This episode was setting up the Love Family with Kathleen wanting to do a book on her mom and her life as a staff member at the Love Mansion.  Peter Love was turning dark and brooding.  And suddenly he has money to buy the stables back from Michael.  Just months earlier they could not even throw a dinner party as they were so broke.  The Love fortune was quietly returning.  The softening of Donna.  And then the Queen of Tanquir has returned....  I particularly enjoyed this period, but understand how long time fans were not digging this change.

It's one of the "bad periods" of AW.  Le Soleil, and the unveiling of the Le Soleil woman.  But it was 1985 and everything was over the top as was Donna and her desperate snootiness.

I am guessing with the revolving door of EP and HW's it would have been difficult to have that tentpole rivalry.  Of course Rachel vs Cecile/Donna/Sharlene would have been a tertiary storyline at times.  On OLTL Llanfair was always a coveted and established home point that was desired.  The Cory Mansion never really had that.  The Love Mansion burned down.  Donna and Rachel had their moments, but not the same animosity.  Donna was a nuisance to Rachel at best.  Cecile had it, but they wrote her into positions that she could not return to a conventional storyline.  She was too over the top.  It was good having Rachel and Vicki at odds, but eventually Vicki became too much like Rachel a "bad girl" who with love and money became a heroine.    

16 hours ago, soapfan770 said:

I actually thought early on in that time period but Joe was shoved down Paulina and viewers throats that Joe and Frankie had a nice chemistry 

I actually liked Frankie, perhaps after Donna, my second favorite AW character.  No.  Donna, early Cecille and then Frankie.  I just was going down a YouTube rabbit hole and saw a scene where they referenced Joe and Nancy together and that Rachel didn't like Joe and Paulina starting out.  

Snotty Donna was always the best.  But this was the beginning of "humanizing" Donna, which for a long term character was essential.  Plus the recast while OK, was not the same.  Donna had lost her "edge".  I am always an Anna Stuart fan, and understood as the years went on the sometimes frustration with where Donna was going.  But that's a soap opera.

It took me a bit but I was watching Cobra Kai and didn't realize that guy was Catlin back in the day...I am not the best at that!

And I guess once the show decided to be the Victoria Love Hudson....show. Moving Donna and Michael into parental roles, it would almost be distracting to have her siblings around.  Plus the sibling role went to John.  

If I am remembering correctly, Peter was a good guy.  A good lawyer, stand up guy.  He carried himself as though he came from money, but was a hard worker.  Then when recast was blond and somewhat of a playboy or cad.  Then he became more of a guy looking to rebuild the love and admiration of his father and maintaining the Love legacy.  It was a character that had no real definition, but was redefined as he needed to fit a storyline.  I loved the Peter/Brtiany banter and tension in the Love mansion.  But that can only go so far and then there was little one could do once that drama played out and it had to at some point.  As Reginald lost the ability to maintain the control of the Love family, the need for Peter to want his acceptance was less of a storyline.  Did he leave via the writers just running out of storyline or did the actor decide to leave and thus the decision to write him out?

This is weird memory, (and not Another World) but I was a very young kid and my mom watched soap operas during the day.  I can vividly remember watching which I now know as Search for Tomorrow and the only scene I remember was a like prison setting and Morgan Fairchild was being harassed in jail by some women, I think it was either a laundry or cafeteria scene.  I think she was locked in a cooler or laundry room by some women, at the time I didn't know why or the context, but I do remember that scene.

Could she have played Iris when the recast came in the late 80's?  Granted at the time, she was a "bigger" star than that, but just pondering the thought.

On 12/4/2021 at 6:08 PM, Xanthe said:

Today by chance a Twitter thread about Baywatch came across my feed and I glimpsed Kim Morgan Greene (original Nicole Love) at 0:35. Apparently it was an uncredited role as Girl with Injured Foot. 

I liked Kim Morgan Greene as Nicole and never felt the recasts captured the privileged party girl aspect of the character. 

I agree.  But the character of Nicole was then repositioned with every recast.  Gone was party girl Nicole when recast in the mid 80's as a reporter/business woman/chanteuse who worked with Michael to help get entre back into the Love Mansion after Reginald had returned and taken it back over. Then later Nicole was repositioned as a Fashion Designer, first working under the direction of a mean spirited designer (played by somebody I believe with a name in Daytime TV) then coming out on her own.  A woman trying to make it on her own....I mean she was a Love, and a a model but somehow that just didn't matter as she had to work to make a name for herself.  Well until she shot Jason Frame and finally cracked.  Probably from the multiple personalities throughout the decade...

14 hours ago, Forever8 said:

Anne Heche's TBT post on IG 

Ellen really threw the shock into my daytime world when she debuted as Vicky and loved it, but Anne really made it her own.  In real life, she may have been a little out there, but she was great in the role of Vicky/Marley.  I didn't hate Jensen, and I understood both her desire that playing both characters was alot and that Vicky had grown up and wasn't as scrappy, but Anne had both an edge and an ability to play a woman that was maturing in her 20's to money and position.

I took some time this weekend and watched the Locher Room with JFP.  I have to say, I liked her candor.  And I get her position.  (That just may get me thrown out of here...)  She was hired to do a job.  Often with a hand of cards that had serious issues.  People leaving, budgets, etc.  To think that a woman who had a 35 year career in an industry had a secret desire to destroy that industry is ridiculous. She made mistakes, of course, I would love to see anyone who whether in this chat or a general fan, has not made mistakes, missteps, bad judgment calls.  While not AW, she said in the interview her directive was to bring Y&R into the 21st century.  And I get it.  Young and the Restless is neither Young nor Restless today.  Middle aged upper income people wandering around looking for problems....it is what it is.  So, while we may not agree, I do understand where she was coming from and applaud her for having a vision and being able to execute it, perhaps to the delight or the dismay of the audience.  

I can talk Donna Love Hudson all day long.    But I think the powers that be felt as though they had to make Donna a more sympathetic character that her being a rich Ice Queen/Snob would not keep her in the fabric of Bay City with any genuine connections.  While Iris was similar, she was a Cory and thus kept her in the middle of storylines easier.  If Donna remained so cold and aloof she would have just been "dismissed" by most of the characters and it would have limited keeping her on the canvas.  And I agree that the process started before the recast, the casting of PS made that transition a faster track.  As the Love family intrigue started to fade away with the death of Reginald, Peter not being viable, Nicole gone, Marley and Vicky in their own worlds...they worked to push her into the stories with Felicia and the gang and their adventures.  While some may argue it was perhaps a misstep, it may have kept the character around.  

On 7/1/2021 at 7:22 PM, Xanthe said:

 

They made Reginald too much of a cartoon and made his crimes too unforgivable. He supposedly loved Mary but his motivation for lying to her was not to protect her from anything, just to keep her from leaving him. His only interest in his children was in Protecting the Family Name. He tried to get Victoria on his side primarily to "pwn" Michael. He killed Zane and Sally just as a way to write the characters out. Ironically, his McGuffin was called "the trump" (and it didn't really drive that much story, although it did somehow bring Mitch onto the canvas and also cross over with Cecile).

I loved (pun intended) the creation of the Love house as a cold old money family with deep dark secrets, but it was difficult to keep Reginald in the mix after a while.  Donna had money again with Michael.  Peter was destroyed as a character once his marriage to Brittany was over.  Mary went back to the McKinnons.  Nicole...well that character never really was finessed.  Vicky and Marley were in their own world making their way and not really Loves, but Hudson's.  They would have needed to develop more business angles like perhaps a run for taking over Cory Publishing or creating a company that hired many of the people of Bay City and then had work storylines.  It was fun for a while....but burnt itself out and with it the Love mansion.... 

On 6/6/2021 at 2:27 AM, FrenchBug82 said:

Unpopular opinion: while Nancy Frangione was a wonderful presence and pulled it off beautifully, I didn't like that they turned Cecile into basically comic relief.

Yes, making her a caricature of her former self was a disappointment.  The schemes to which Cecile came to Bay City in further incarnations were just over to the top.  The one when she came back homeless and Felicia took her in showed promise.  It would have been great to see her humbled and then rebuild a life start good then revert back to scheming but without the over the top Queen of Tanqueray "...It's Tanquiir mother..." said Vicky to Donna to which Donna replied, "...whatever"  And this give me a chance to repaste my favorite scenes with Donna, Vicky and Cecille.