wonderwoman1951

Not the best time for the show. And they had the gull to shove Conner and Mark down our throats on the 40th anniversary show i was on the set that day, which was gross enough. but then i heard from a reliable source they had planned to show mark’s bare butt. don’t know if they shot it, but thankfully, it didn’t make on screen.

true enough — i always forget about that when i discuss the factors that led to atwt’s demise. but, i was told (by a cbs programming exec) that the bell’s insisted that b&b run after y&r. and given the success of y&r, it’s not hard to understand why cbs agreed.

looking forward to this. very curious why kate mulgrew, mary munisteri, and claire labine’s kids weren’t included.

Thanks for the correction. Don't want to be guilty of the very thing I am objecting to ! be that as it may, the point being made is that what led to gloria monty, luke, laura, scotty was the fact that ‘general hospital’ was losing its time — badly, 8.6 vs 7— to ‘another world.’

true enough, but the point was that the fact that aw trouncing gh in the ratings was what they call in film ‘the inciting event.’

re aw creation: i believe that eddie drueding wrote that piece; liccardo and levine are quoted as sources.

while not widely seen, one of philip baker hall’s best performances was as a man descending into dementia, opposite the always exquisite lois smith in ‘ruth and erica. ruth and erica

surprised that no one’s mentioned kate mulgrew. my understanding was that claire labine wasn’t planning to have mary ryan become pregnant so soon after marrying jack, but wrote it in when kate became pregnant, leading to a protracted, and beautifully wrought, conflict between jack and mary. finding out years later that mulgrew had given up her daughter for adoption, then immediately had to play the mother of a newborn still gives me the shivers.

this preliminary obit in the ny times mentions his role on ‘another world,’ as do several of the comments. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/movies/ray-liotta-dead.html

nice piece on huffpost https://www.huffpost.com/entry/marnie-schulenburg-dead_n_628604f2e4b02667554e7670

this is the link i though i embedded.

found it with bl’s help. 9 june 1994. thanks. after ed comes into ross’s room, ross takes off his briefs (or boxers) and talks about how as a bachelor, he can walk around the house naked whenever he wants. and watch how much peter simon is able to convey without saying a word.

sad, sad news. the morning of blake and ross’s wedding in 1994, ross and ed had a conversation — just a conversation between two old friends talking about their years of history — that i remember to this day, more than 25 years later . i cannot find it anywhere online. i’ve always suspected that it was part of the reel he submitted for his first emmy, in 1995. i remember reading somewhere that liz kiefer put together his reels. if anyone knows where it is, please post.

ahh — that would be bill bell.

just saw this: tamara tunie’’s in london playing kamala harris in a new play, 47th. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/apr/10/the-47th-review-old-vic-theatre-mike-bartlett-trumpian-satire

i was privileged (and lucky) to meet her twice — at the paley center event in 2010, and in 1996, when i was on the set covering the 40th anniversary episode. we finished the interview. but a bit later, she tracked me down to make sure she had told me about the huge crush she had on don mclaughlin when she join the show, as indeed she had.

just sat this: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bobby-rydell-teen-idol-dead-at-79_n_624cbae2e4b068157f7d6482 the music i grew up with — you can do the math.

in 1996, i looked through marland’s original longterm and can confirm that his original plan was for kelly and nola to end up together. i loved the idea and always wondered why the change — thought it might have come from p&g or cbs since nola was not the typical soap ingenue.

not quite. while their names are similar, gina belafonte is an actor (and the daughter of harry belafonte. ginia bellafante is a journalist and critic at the ny times (and time magazine before that).

nice piece in today’s ny times remembering mary ryan munisteri: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/nyregion/ryans-hope-soap-opera.html

which is exactly why bill bell insisted, and head of cbs daytime, laurie caso, agreed. then caso became ep of ‘world turns in 1988, and had to deal with the consequences.

i posted the following on the critical year discussion: “when b&b premiered in 1987, atwt moved from 1:30 to 2pm, which split the cbs lineup into the bell shows and the p&g shows— stylistically, very different shows. prior to the move, atwt’s rating was 7; three years later, it was 5.8 and continued to drop in subsequent years.” and while killing off maureen is often mentioned as the beginning of the end, when the network-owned flagship affiliate in new york city moved guiding light to 9am, cbs was certainly sending a message

atwt: when b&b premiered in 1987, atwt moved from 1:30 to 2pm, which split the cbs lineup into the bell shows and the p&g shows— stylistically, very different show. prior to the move, atwt’s rating was 7; three years later, it was 5.8 and continued to drop in subsequent years.

in her 1972 new yorker piece on soap opera, renata adler mentions a storyline from ‘the doctors’: “of an educated man so bitter that he kills himself solely to frame another man for murder.“ have no idea who the character in question is. as for claire cassen: from everything i read, she’s hit by a car after running into the street trying to apologize to her grandson, dan. near the end of her unfinished memoir, ‘all my world,’ irna philllips tells the story of her post-heart attack depression in 1960-61. she then goes into great detail about claire’s 1962 depression, noting ‘i don’t believe i realized it at the time, at least nor consciously, that i was having her go through the same kind of depression that i had experienced. i mentioned (2 pages earlier) that i had contemplated suicide but i took it a step beyond contemplation with claire. she took an overdose of sleeping pills…’’

apologies for my delayed response. i mentioned gender because it very much applied to my own situation. when i told my parents that i wanted to major in english, my father responded, ‘you’re a girl. college is a waste. you can be a secretary until you get married.’ my response: i refused to learn how to type. while jessica’s family may not have addressed gender explicitly, i do think it was an issue to some degree, particularly with her brother, lamar. re irna and her obsession with keeping actors tethered to their roles: not so much p&g’s interference (though there was plenty of that), but something the late soap journalist, robert laguardia observed: “it was quite as if for irna, oakdale was a real place — far more real than new york or chicago — and far better.” here’s a link to an article that considers irna’s emotional connection to ‘world turns: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2013/01/vita-irna-phillips