Chris 2

I recall reading that Corday was in the process of suing Bell which is how they wound up with a percentage of the new show. Susan was such a striking looking woman. But this shows how silly it was for Frances Reid to be playing her grandmother - way too young.

“Well, I always wanted to die in bed.”

I don’t remember her talking about how she got Towering Inferno, but she stated that after the movie came out and was a hit, she went to NY to meet with the head of NBC and tell them that she wanted a chance to get some prime time guest spots. But not much came of this and when DOOL went to 60 min, she was done. She felt that the production pace for a 60-minute daily show was not conducive to good performances. She did six weeks of the hour shows as a transition and then she left. I think three things prevented her from going further at the time: she was known to be outspoken (and women weren’t supposed to be outspoken back then), age (she was 36 when she left, and roles start drying up for actresses at 40), and homophobia.

I’d call her style subtle. Flannery is another one who was disciplined and controlled. She had a career that most working actors would envy, but she should have been a bigger star than she was. She probably stayed on DOOL too long if she wanted to do primetime or features - it becomes more difficult to jump the longer you stay, because you get pegged as a daytime actor.

LOL. As Caroline says, I guess it was the style. And Susan Hayes isn’t alone. The one who I always thought gave controlled performances back then was Victoria Wyndham - Rachel on AW. She seemed more disciplined than her peers. Rachel fought a lot with Mac, but I don’t remember her getting hysterical. Even in the older clips where she’s torturing poor Alice, she’s angry but not over the top.

Patty Weaver (Trish Clayton) had - and presumably still has - an amazing voice. I watched the clip of the fire, and it’s a little upsetting to see Julie sitting there hurt and crying. I didn’t like the storyline that followed it, although Lee made me laugh. I was pretty young when these episodes aired. Was Susan Seaforth Hayes hammy back then? Or is that a more recent development? I’ve seen some daytime leading ladies like Robin Strasser and Jess Walton chew the scenery more as they get older.

Jeff Freilich, the season 6 and 7 showrunner, actually bragged in an interview that he didn’t watch any of the previous episodes when he took over. I’m guessing that’s the same interview you’re talking about.

Angie Dickinson, really? She was a little old to play Jane Wyman’s daughter. The network getting rid of Ken Olin was a good example of too much network interference with this show (same thing with Nazi treasure). Chris should have been a long term character and member of the family. And I thought his character worked - a nice contrast to Lance. If only they could have done something about his Chicago accent lol. But the ratings started slipping with the 1984-85 season, so CBS felt emboldened to interfere. I have to agree with the pretty much all of the focus group feedback from season 7.

Interesting - thanks for posting that. Any of the actors you mentioned would have been better than Billy Moses, who I thought was awfully dull as Cole; he just didn’t have a great range. I can understand why Jamie Rose got the nod if Earl Hamner was doing the picking. She’s his “type,” similar to Mary McDonough from “The Waltons” - red headed and low-key. Michael Zaslow wound up on Lorimar’s “Kings’ Crossing”, which premiered a few months after FC, in 1982. It was also produced by Michael Filerman, which is presumably why he departed FC midseason. What’s striking in retrospect is how similar that show’s premise is to FC: troubled family returns a parent’s hometown (mother’s hometown this time) where a wealthy aunt resents their return. Oh, and the wealthy aunt has an emotionally troubled daughter she tries to keep in an attic room. And of course, Susan Flannery wound up on “Dallas,” where she didn’t really fit.

Christine Jones certainly got around. I remember her as Viki on OLTL but didn’t know she filled in for Jane Elliot too.

The ratings for season 6 were virtually identical to the season before it (as were the ratings for its lead-in, Dallas, that year). The big difference is that Dallas maintained its rating despite being up against Miami Vice that year, and Falcon Crest got the same rating even though it was no longer up against Miami Vice. I’m watching the first few episodes and they haven’t yet gotten to Chase leaving Maggie yet. I’ll probably tune out then because I think it’s out of character for him and I find it very difficult to watch. I’m guessing they knew even then it was Foxworth’s last season, so they were writing him in a way so the audience wouldn’t miss him when he was gone. They wound up killing him off anyway, so I don’t understand why it was necessary to tear down Chase and Maggie’s marriage before he left. I wonder if they were going to say that Jeff raped Maggie had the previous writing/production had stayed. There was no rape mentioned or implied during season 5. I’m guessing the previous regime was planning to bring Julia back full time, too, but that changed with the new showrunner. I don’t know why they had to make her blind - this isn’t “Little House on the Prairie.” I miss Terry. She was a fun, shades-of-gray character and I don’t know what they were thinking when they got rid of her. Greg, too. The morally ambiguous characters make the show fun. i also liked Chase’s old coot of a lawyer, Riley Wicker, who has disappeared. I hated the plot of Angela being Richard’s mother. It doesn’t make sense given how Douglas and Jacqueline acted or spoke in the early seasons. Very cheezy, like a daytime soap opera. Jeff Frielich was a dreadful hack.

Barbara Bel Geddes and Howard Keel were each offered a 4-episode deal for what turned out to be Dallas’ final season. Keel accepted, but Bel Geddes declined. And I totally believe that Susan Sullivan was let go - that promo is the smoking gun. Nice find.

Put me in the camp of those who thought MP significantly declined after the bombing. The aftermath was just so dumb, and Kimberly staying on the show was stupid.

Agreed 100%. I wonder what they could have done, because they tried to do the same show, just one with a giant Pam-sized hole in it. I’ve seen others suggest that Pam’s mysterious disappearance could have powered the show for another season, though I don’t know how satisfying that would have been knowing she wouldn’t be back. If Dallas were more of a gothic show, I would have had Pam disappear at the end of 1986-87, and 87-88 picks up six months later, with Bobby hiring a nanny for Christopher, and who tries to figure out why nobody wants to talk about the mysterious Mrs. Ewing. And the new nanny essentially plays the “outsider” role that Pam played. Maybe she eventually winds up with Bobby, too. Not sure it would have worked but I think it would have been better than what we got. And at the same time, you introduce a new business rival for JR - maybe Sue Ellen, an idea that had been floated for the following season. Or maybe it’s someone entirely different, but whoever it was needed to be intertwined with the family beyond just JR.

Victoria has not always been a reliable narrator. For example, sometimes she says that as far as she’s concerned, Pam died in the car accident. But shortly before the finale aired, she said she would have been willing to appear and put a “coda” on the story of Pam, but didn’t want to be part of another cliffhanger. And even when they did the TNT revival, she mused publicly about a return but a year or so later released another statement saying that she would never make a “desperate reappearance.” Some of her colleagues said in Barbara Curran’s book that she was renegotiating and I believe them.

Victoria likes to say these days that when she signed her two-year contract extension in 1985, she told them that would be her last contract. In reality, she was negotiating for another new contract in 1987. The sticking points: she wanted salary parity with Patrick Duffy (who got a big raise when he returned a year earlier) and she wanted a one-year deal (the producers wanted two). So they let her walk away. Big mistake. And the producers pissed her off by leaking to the press that they had let her go, which she forced them to correct, and they even took away her parking space. But they were expecting her to come back, which is why Pam’s exit is so bungled. They started shooting the next season immediately after they finished Principal’s last season, trying to bank episodes in anticipation of a writers’ strike. TV Guide reported at the time that they were removing Pam from the new season’s scripts. When Sue Ellen did her “movie” a couple of seasons later, notice how there were no clips of Pam. And when Bobby showed Pam’s lookalike a picture of Pam, it was NOT Victoria. She wouldn’t give permission for her clips or image to be used. That’s unusual for an actor - again, they must have really pissed her off.

LOL, no. After finishing up her phone sex with Bobby, Pam just throws up her hands in front of her face in a lame attempt to protect the money. They should have ended the series with the previous scene: JR walking out of Ewing Oil and vowing to get it back.

Anyone remember Kevin Bernhardt as Frisco on GH? I thought he was terribly miscast but TPTB liked him enough to bring him back as a different character for the dull Laurelton Murders storyline.

I liked the Waleska story, but I wish it had been played out a little longer. It only took Valene an episode or two after their marriage to figure out it was a mistake. I think you could have had a season of Valene married to this guy whom her friends don’t like, and he gradually reveals himself to her.

I liked Anne. Michelle Phillips didn’t have a whole lot of range as an actress, but that character was perfect for her. I liked the rivalry between Claudia and “Annie”.

I think both were great on the show but Donna Mills gave more consistently controlled performances. I think some stronger direction would have benefitted Lee at times.

LOL - Charles?

I’m still working on season 5. Boy, Cole is an uptight, humorless, judgmental jerk. It doesn’t help that the actor playing him is pretty limited. But Cole is acting like a mini-Chase and he can’t be more than 25 or 26. And he has a lot of nerve calling Melissa a “tramp,” like he’s Tuscany Valley’s answer to the church lady.

Great scene. Donna Mills was GOLD.