Nicholas Blair

Robin Strasser's pregnancy led to Agnes Nixon creating the Rachel/Steve/Alice triangle which gave great drama to AW fans for several years. According to a magazine interview with Ann Flood, when she was pregnant in the early years of EON, they put her behind furniture, shot from the shoulders up, etc., but one viewer wrote to her and said she could tell that Ann was pregnant because of her eyes. AF said she was very touched by this.

Hilarious!

Slick, for SFT do you have Chip Lucia included as a dayplayer in the mid-70s? This is not in imdb with his other credits. Chip Lucia played a young hitchhiker whom Doug Martin (Ken Harvey) either gave a ride to or met in a diner. This may have been before Doug's accident that left him paralyzed, I don't recall. He was only on for probably a couple of days, but I remember being impressed by his work and then later on not equally impressed by his run as Tony Lord on OLTL, though I didn't see much of that.

Thanks to everyone for all the information. For years I thought OLTL was set in "Landview" until a scene where Viki and Joe register at an inn, and the hotel register clearly shows "Llanview, Pa." That may have been around the time that Viki had to choose between her two husbands. I was not familiar with the Welsh influence in that part of Pennsylvania. But then, thanks to the mushy diction of the young actors on Y&R, I thought that show was set in "General City"! Several years later I read something about "Genoa City." Speaking of Richard and "Betty" (Becky Lee), I thought Jill Voight was an absolute delight and that she and Richard were an adorable couple. JV had a genuine Southern accent of the slightly nasal variety, what linguists call the "Inland South" accent. I liked Mary Gordon Murray well enough as the recast Becky Lee with all the rough edges gone, but Jill Voight was one of a kind.

Viki was the older daughter who had been treated like the son Victor didn't officially have and was set to follow him in the newspaper business. Meredith was the more traditionally feminine, probably set to be a stay-at-home mom. The sisters got along very well, with Viki feeling protective about Meredith. Had Merry lived, it would have been interesting if she had become part of the business world later on.

I wanted to write a little about the two women's lib storylines that were running back in the 70s. Some people did not like this. The early part of this thread includes a negative review by "Deborah Channel," and I seem to recall that another magazine criticized SFT for running two women's lib plots at the same time. It seemed clear to me at the time that this was deliberate, for reasons we would automatically recognize in a novel or play or movie: the two plots were intended as a contrast. The younger couple, Scott (Peter Simon) and Kathy (Courtney Sherman), were able to work out the new balance in their relationship, whereas the older couple, Doug (Ken Harvey) and Eunice (Ann Williams) had more serious problems as Doug did not want to accept that his wife needed to work, too. It made sense that a middle-aged man might have more problems than a younger man in accepting newer roles for women. This plot was used to break up Doug and Eunice, especially as Eunice was working with John Wyatt (Val Dufour), who found her attractive. It's possible that not all of the audience accepted this as readily as I did, because the writers then paralyzed Doug before turning him into a vegetable and having him subject to a mercy killing, which was then changed after the fact to a murder plot so they could make changes to Morgan Fairchild's storyline. I'm trying to remember if Ken Harvey believed that his union activity was a factor in Doug's being killed off.

Considering all the forgotten children of Viki and illegitimate children of Victor who turned up on the show, it's surprising that none of the headwriters decided to use Meredith's twin sister as part of the story. Meredith (Lynn Benish) went to see Dr. Joyce Brothers because of guilt about being the surviving twin, the other having died at birth. Revealing that Victor had given away one of the twins or that a nurse had stolen her would have been easier for the viewers to accept than some of the storylines that were actually used. I thought that killing Meredith was a mistake when Lynn Benish wanted to try her luck in Hollywood (IIRC). Lynn had good chemistry with Michael Storm and good sisterly chemistry with both Gillian Spencer and Erika Slezak. True, killing off Meredith did open the door for Larry to find women who would make him miserable after this brief interlude of happiness.

On Somerset, Marie Wallace and Georgann Johnson seemed an unlikely pair of sisters. Of course India and Ellen were totally different in character.

Just to have a little fun with the possibility of SBu exiting GH: For Y&R Fans, a poll on how you would feel about SBu returning to play Dylan on Y&R. Which answer expresses your feelings best? A. I can hardly wait for SBu to return as Dylan! B. I'd like for Dylan to return, but only if he bumps off Victor Newman. C. I'd like for Dylan to return, but only if he has a steamy affair with Devon. D. Who's Dylan? For Days of Our Lives fans: SBu's agent calls him up, saying, "We just got a call from Days. The casting director wanted to know if you'd ever played a zombie." SBu: "Did they watch GH in the last twenty years?"

How about the the whole idea of SORASing? I don't know what the first example was. As much as many of us do not care for SORAS, and as ridiculous as some of the consequences have been, this has proven to be a tool that writers have used throughout soap history.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of Jaime Lyn Bauer being offered a role that ultimately went to Susan Flannery, and I never saw JLB as Laura on Days, another piece of casting that seems so wrong. Of course the role of Stephanie would have been reshaped around whichever star they were able to sign. Now Lauri on Y&R was in many ways the younger (emphasize younger) version of Susan Seaforth's Julie on Days, a beautiful vixen who was neurotic and self-destructive and sometimes harmful to others, yet basically sympathetic with an inner desire to overcome her weaknesses. Bill Bell understood this kind of woman well, and wrote great material for SSH and JLB to play. Each had a sympathetic man (Jed Allan's Don Craig, Tom Hallick's Brad Elliott) who tried to help her, was very attracted to her, but did not end up with her. Neither Susan Oliver nor Rosemary Forsyth really worked as Laura, and there was the additional problem that because supercouple Laura and Bill were married, the writers had to find a way to break them up without alienating the audience or move Laura and Bill into the background or write them out.

THIS!!!

Some of Andrew Robinson's movies billed him as Andy Robinson.

Margaret Klenck really rocked the short hair. Never seen her look so attractive. Judith Light softer and more sympathetic than I've ever seen her. Well-written scene with Larry which gave Karen a believable reason for leaving. I didn't get to see much of OLTL during this time, and regretted missing the playing out of the baby switch story. So Margaret Klenck has become a Jungian analyst. Brynn Thayer has become a very fine actress, with some good scenes on Suits.

I saw very little of Sunset Beach, but did see some of the infamous turkey baster story, and thought it was a hoot. Since I wasn't a regular viewer, I don't know if that fit with the overall tone of the show or not.

Paul, I would see Tina Sloan as fine for Lillian Raines or other supporting roles, but not for any starring role. If Alice is not going to be a central role, then you might as well keep Susan Harney. Ideally, Alice would be 1) blonde; 2) someone with star power who immediately reads Soap Opera Heroine; 3) someone who can access deep emotions.

A couple of blonde actresses who must surely have read for Alice on AW are Diana Walker (Mary on WTHI) and Barbara Stanger (the last Laura on LIAMST). I am not sure either of them would have been more successful than Susan Harney, but they were both good actresses. Bibi Besch would have seemed a little old for Alice.

Isn't Peter Hansen doing the Anacin voiceover in that episode? He had such an appealing voice. I always enjoyed his work as Lee Baldwin. Don't think I had ever seen Patricia Breslin, only Elizabeth MacRae. I also liked the lovely Anne Helm (Mary) who was involved with Lee at some point.

For my taste, the best choice would have been Jada Rowland. Not a blonde, but definitely a star who could have held her own against Victoria Wyndham, Beverlee McKinsey, or anyone else. If this idea seems out there, so was casting Jada to replace Carolee Campbell, an actress she had almost nothing in common with except the ability to work well with David O'Brien.

Karen Gorney on AMC became Karen Lynn Gorney of Saturday Night Fever. Leigh Lassen of SFT changed her name to her legal name, Natalie Israel. Her husband's last name was Israel.

AW: Audra Lindley seemed difficult if not impossible to replace, but Nancy Wickwire was also outstanding, and Irene Dailey was a great choice, even if she never got to play the sociopath that Liz Matthews truly was. Susan Sullivan was the perfect choice to replace Judith Barcroft as Lenore. Victoria Wyndham was also the best possible choice to play Rachel after Robin Strasser left. As has been noted, Douglass Watson was a recast for Mac. The original idea for the character must have been an overbearing, unattractive rich man, and that's how the part was cast, but making Mac sophisticated and attractive opened up far more possibilities. Robert Milli as Wayne Addison was also recast as a sophisticated, attractive plausible love interest for Liz Matthews, which later would be the idea for casting Douglass Watson. AW never found a Russ Matthews equal to Sam Groom, though David Bailey was easy on the eyes. No Alice recast came close to Jacqueline Courtney. Brian Murray wasn't the equal of John Cunningham as Dan Shearer, and Lynn Milgrim was nowhere near the quality of Lisa Cameron as Susan. You can find scenes of Milgrim as Orlena on ATWT, where she is more ridiculous than Marj Dusay in that GL wedding scene. Milgrim never reached that degree of badness as Susan, but she was stiff and theatrical. Y&R: I loved Gina Tognoni's Phyllis. David Hasselhoff turned out to be a good recast for William Gray Espy's Snapper (still the best). For Snapper's brother Greg, neither Brian Kerwin (who has since become an excellent actor) nor Wings Hauser was even as good as James Houghton, and none of the three was at all believable as a lawyer. RH: I loved Andrew Robinson, but Daniel Hugh-Kelly was a great recast. If you could accept Randall Edwards' light comedy Delia as being very different from Ilene Kirsten's heavy drama Delia, I thought Edwards was a successful recast.

In addition to Bruce Baxter's vasectomy, this era also had Lisa's hysterical pregnancy. Lisa thought she was pregnant by Don Hughes (Peter Brandon), and when her friend Elizabeth (Jane House) found Lisa collapsed and bleeding, she said, "Lisa, did you have an illegal abortion?" (There may previously have been some discussion about whether Lisa was going to have a legal abortion; I don't recall.) However, this was only a hysterical pregnancy, and the blood was the result of the periods which had been suppressed, and this was mentioned in the dialogue. All in all, this was a good era of ATWT. Peter Galman was perhaps the most charming and likable of all the actors who played Tom Hughes, and I certainly liked Gregg Marx and Justin Deas as well. Galman was stuck with the pure and priggish Carol Demming (Rita McLaughlin), and a measure of his skill was that he showed us how Tom could appreciate Carol's better qualities while accepting and moderating the less attractive qualities. When C. David Colson took over, Tom and Carol quickly became the most boring couple in all soapdom, as the writers realized, for they soon let Tom be seduced by Natalie (Judith Chapman), who managed to make Colson almost interesting, no small accomplishment. Meanwhile Carol became fascinated by diamond-in-the-rough Jay Stallings (Dennis Cooney), and for the first time I began enjoying McLaughlin's scenes.

That was fantastic, with all the promos run together like that.

This thread is turning out to be even more fun than I expected! After leaving GL, Melinda Fee used the names Melinda O. Fee and Melinda O'Fee. Yes, I remember when Paul Michael Glaser was just Paul Glaser on LOL. Good catch. Triple names were suddenly big about the time he changed. Though I'm ready and willing to poke fun at actors who change their names for numerological reasons, acting is such a crazy profession with talented people sometimes making it but sometimes not, if I thought I'd have a bigger career calling myself Tracey or even Traceeeey, I just might do it.

Unfortunately, I never saw Victoria Wyndham as Tracy Delmar/Charlotte Waring.