Nicholas Blair

I believe that Gregg Marx and his partner are now living in Palm Springs. A friend has worked with Gregg in music and has only nice things to say about him.

I believe in this interim period Sam Groom had left, Jacquie Courtney had married and moved to Mississippi, and Robin Strasser left at some point. George Reinholt had more of a supporting role during the Wayne Addison story. These happenings did not make it easy for any writer. Still, Val Dufour, Judith Barcroft, Nancy Wickwire, Lisa Cameron, and John Cunningham were all on my A List. Pat & John always had a lot of fans, especially those who had followed the story from the beginning, when Pat "got pregnant, shot her boyfriend, and married her lawyer," as a classmate of mine put it. This was also the launch of AW:Somerset, as Somerset characters were introduced and then eventually moved to the new show.

I saw most of Cenedella's work on AW, but I am not sure when it began. I believe most of the time with Lisa Cameron, John Cunningham, and Nancy Wickwire was under Cenedella, though this may have been from based on Agnes' bible. The whole Wayne Addison story, leading up to the murder, Lenore on trial, and her husband Walter Curtin, who defended her, being the actual killer, was first rate. Cenedella does get a bad rap, mostly undeserved, from Harding Lemay, although I will say this: the Rue McClanahan storyline seemed endless. She played Caroline Johnson, a baby nurse looking after the Randolph twins--but her own twin babies had died. Her friend, Jane Overstreet (Frances Sternhagen) was concerned that this would be too much for her. It was obvious that sooner or later the nanny would snap and kidnap the twins or try to poison Pat. Of course she fell in love with John and talked to her friend Jane about the married man she was in love with who was going to leave his wife. Rue McClanahan was good in this role, of course, and some people really liked the story, so they kept dragging it out. I think I missed the eventual resolution. Unlike some actors--Lisa Cameron for one--Rue and Frances did go on to have the solid careers they deserved. The resolution of the Walter Curtin storyline was dragged out too long, and I don't blame Lemay for making fun of all the scenes where Val Dufour got Lenore's scarf out of the safe and cried over it. On the other hand, Lemay never resolved the story either. After Lemay took over, Walter did eventually confess to a horrified Lenore, and he did eventually get drunk and go off a bridge in his car which caught fire. Lenore's keeping this secret--after all, she had Walter's child to raise--ultimately wrecked her marriage to Robert Delaney, but she left Bay City with the secret kept when so much more could have been done with this. I believe that Cenedella's tenure included the time when Robert Hover was playing Russ Matthews after Sam Groom (beyond compare) left to star in a Canadian TV series, IIRC. Hover's acting was about on a par with David Bailey's, but Bailey was certainly more handsome. This is when Russ, after divorcing Rachel, was in a triangle with a doctor, Paula (Beverley Owen) and Cindy Clark (Leonie Norton), one of his patients. Basically, Cindy Clark was AW's Carol Deming, the nice sweet pure virginal (and frankly, not all that interesting) girl that Irna felt was worthy of Russ Matthews/Tom Hughes. Dr. Paula lost out to Cindy and left town. Without naming her, Lemay suggested that Leonie Norton was like Irna's favorite silent screen heroines, and Cindy died of her soap opera illness not long after Lemay took charge. That was one change I approved. Not that Leonie Norton was a bad actress: she wasn't. Killing off Cindy opened up Russ for more story, but except for Sharlene, Lemay's writing for Russ was weak and unmemorable. Of course, Cindy was the sister of Ted Clark (Stephen Bolster), the ex-con whom Rachel had impulsively married. I'm hazy on whether Margaret Impert was the Rachel who married him or if Robin Strasser had returned by then. Impert was the Strasser lookalike who was hired on the apparent hope that no one would notice the difference. We did, however. Margaret Impert was a competent actress, sweet and gentle--in other words, not Rachel. I know this is a very long post but there is much more to say, and I agree with danfling that Cenedella wrote well for Somerset.

This is an excellent question to raise. The old "redeemed by love" argument has never gone all that far with me, though I do understand (from many real-life examples) that women have traditionally believed this, thus the use of this on the soaps. However, I think that some viewers may also see "Ben as hero" as correcting the mistakes of previous writers. The previous writers messed up by killing off a character? Bring 'em back from the dead! Not that DOOL would actually do this, of course! (Wink.) The previous writers messed up by making Ben a serial killer? Say it was a tumor and bring back the Ben the viewers wanted all along.

Another fun fact about TSS: This may be the first soap to show a gay character. Granted, this was a day player and no mention was made of his being gay. However, on one show Belle had a flamingly stereotypical designer helping her re-do her living room.

Thanks for the info. I can't imagine what it would be like to be on a soap from the time you were a child. I wanted to mention Audre Johnston, who played Martha Ann Ashley, a sidekick of Belle's. Did Martha Ann work as a nurse for Dr. Neeves, and did she find out about Amy's insemination and tell her pal Belle? My memory is hazy on that. Audre Johnston was very good in the part. As you may know, the part of Kevin Kincaid was originally played by Dennis Cooney, but not for long. He was OK, IIRC, but bringing in David Ackroyd was the right choice. Dennis later got his big chance as Jay Stallings on ATWT, where he blossomed as an actor.

Thanks, Bill.

I enjoyed the episode with the fashion show and Richard Fairchild. Many thanks! I noticed that the headwriters were listed as Tom King & Millee Taggart, and I wondered if Millee Taggert were responsible for some of the humor in the Arielle and Lisa scenes. She always found humor in the roles she played on OLTL and SFT, while doing a fine job with the more dramatic moments.

I think you're right about TB as the anomaly, a softer Carly. During the era (which I strongly disliked) of Sonny and Jason as the cool high school jocks and Carly and the character played by Alicia Leigh Willis as the cheerleaders who thought the boys were as cool as Robert Guza did, TB identified with this Carly and played the material she was given, and usually played it well. Jennifer Bransford played Carly from the outside, as a theater-trained actress would, not identifying with the cheerleader vibe, and often finding interesting ways to show more comic or less sympathetic aspects of Carly. This subverted what the writers wanted, and it's not surprising she was fired, but her work was really interesting. Laura Wright's Carly could be seen as the SJB character with some of the harsher edges worn off by time and a certain amount of maturing, but with some of that original edge left. I'm glad the writers have been willing to show Carly's taking it for granted that Jason should trail after her like a puppy dog, consistently putting her above any girlfriend, wife, or child.

When GL dumped Mart Hulswit, AW would have scored big by casting him as Robert Delaney and Caroline McWilliams as Lenore. There was so much story for those characters. Lisa Cameron is one of my all-time favorite soap actresses, and she and John Cunningham are my all-time favorite soap couple. She also had great scenes with Nancy Wickwire (imagine having Liz Matthews as your mother!) and with Charles Baxter (as Fred Douglas, whom Susan briefly married). I always wondered why they were written off, only to learn from Harding Lemay's book that he thought AW had too many blondes! If I had Jacquie Courtney, Beverly Penberthy, Susan Sullivan, and Lisa Cameron under contract, I would be thanking God that I had such talented and beautiful women to write for. Naturally, I was pleased when Lisa Cameron quickly re-surfaced on ATWT as nurse Peggy Reagan. It looked like she would become a prominent player in the Dan Stewart storyline. Alas, she was caught in the "Saturday night massacre" when Irna killed off or wrote out almost everyone with any connection to the Stewarts. After that, Lisa Cameron simply vanished, as far as I know. She would have made an excellent replacement when Barbara Bain left MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. She had the same look, the same attractive low voice. Do not get me started on what I thought of Lynn Milgrim as her eventual replacement on AW. Not today, anyway! At least Lynn Milgrim was a brunette, I'll said that for her.

Thanks for confirming this.

I never saw Barbara Berjer's Claire on ATWT, but I seem to recall reading that Irna said because Claire had committed adultery, TPTB wouldn't allow a divorce and remarriage, which Irna had wanted, so Irna either had to make Claire suffer or kill her off, and chose to kill her off. It would make sense to use a more popular actress on GL. If GL wanted to give Barbara Norris a romantic interest--which they would do, with Robert Milli as Adam Thorpe--perhaps they thought Barbara Berjer projected a less matronly and more appealing image than Augusta Dabney. That's how I would see the two. So this appears to be another double switch like Lynne Adams to TSS and Barbara Rodell to GL?

When Susan Keith first came on the show, Cecile was basically a nice, sympathetic character who was in love with Dennis. However, Iris successfully schemed to break them up, which was used as the motivation for Cecile to do a 180-degree turn into becoming a schemer. At one point during this phase of the character, Cecile was competing with Pat Randolph to be editor of Brava Magazine, part of Cory Publishing. Whether good or bad, Susan Keith's Cecile was not humorous. Susan played the role well both ways.

My impression is that it was well enough received. After all, Amy was a married woman, and she intended to raise the child with her husband. Because Kevin, who was paralyzed, had so looked forward to their having a child, Amy believed that he would become deeply depressed if he knew about her miscarriage. (And apparently he couldn't count to nine, but let's not think about that.) So the writers had come up with ways to make the artificial insemination more acceptable. This was not the case of a single woman wanting to have a child alone. By 1973 artificial insemination would have been generally acceptable for infertile couples. The combination of a somewhat daring topic and a good old soap opera noble heroine probably made this work for many viewers. I don't recall exactly when Jada Rowland returned, but I remember Lynne Adams having a scene where she was excited about getting the artificial insemination. Robbwolff mentioned a scene where Lynne is having a baby shower. Did Lynne get the sperm but Jada had the baby? That's what I don't recall.

Absolutely! It's weird, but I can remember a scene where Barbara told one of the other women that she didn't understand why more people didn't make grape pies, something I have never heard of. I'm pretty sure there was a pie as a prop in the scene. Surely a lot of people would have written in for Barbara Norris' Grape Pie recipe.

IIRC, Niele didn't interact much with anyone but her brother, whom she did not want to get involved with Amy. She was not paired up with any of the men and did not have a lot of airtime. I thought Betsy von Furstenberg was very good when she replaced Eileen Fulton the first time, but then didn't seem as strong or as involved when she returned to play Lisa another time.

Nothing could be more truly 1970s than that video of Dennis Parker. It would be really sexy if I weren't laughing so much. In his book EIGHT YEARS IN ANOTHER WORLD (1981) Harding Lemay says that after the firing of George Reinholt (1975), other producers were also willing to fire their (these aren't the exact words, but the right idea) "temperamental, high-priced" stars. I always guessed that Donald May was one of these. I don't know who else Lemay had in mind. Don Stewart remained on GL until 1984. Thanks to everyone for all these great pieces of information.

What was the story behind Donald May's leaving EON? Thanks for any information.

Faith Catlin portrayed the shy and awkward Faith which was apparently the original idea for the character. She wasn't bad and she didn't look like a lot of other young soap actresses (a good thing, IMO), although she wasn't at the level of a Kate Mulgrew. Catherine Hicks, a more polished actress, seemed like the nice girl in your English class you'd feel comfortable asking for a date. I was shocked when Hicks was cast as the young Marilyn Monroe in a TV movie, because she didn't seem at all glamorous. Karen Morris Gowdy was more conventionally pretty, and she developed into a capable performer. I liked all three in different ways. As for Nancy Barrett, I wonder which of her Dark Shadows characters she would have used!

I'm pleased that other people also remember Mart Hulswit and the fine work he did on GL as Ed Bauer.

Did you prefer Mart Hulswit, or were you a fan of Robert Gentry? I never saw Robert Gentry as Ed. I also thought Laura should have stuck with Scotty, although I really like Laura and Kevin as a couple and do not miss Luke.

I saw some of the last few weeks of AWA, which I did not think was very good. I began watching after Julie (Dorothy Lyman) had testified in court against Patrice's boyfriend Tony and was evidently instrumental in his conviction, or so I gathered from what was said. Dorothy Lyman and Tom Ligon then connected, both of whom I liked very much, and I decided they were the couple I would watch the show for. They were written off in about two weeks! I don't recall much about Tom Ligon's character, just that I liked the actor a lot. Dorothy Lyman's Julie was serious, thoughtful, fascinating, someone I would want to know in real life even if I didn't know much about her. Of course I would later see her comic ability as Opal (AMC), and her earlier Elly Jo (EON) was like an evil Opal. I could never quite figure out what Gwen Parrish was supposed to be like on AW, although Lyman was interesting and had good chemistry with Leon Russom. Lemay said in his book that Gwen was supposed to be a 1930s screwball heiress, something I did not get from his writing. In many ways, Lyman's Julie on AWA is the performance I like best from her, the most realistic, not broadly or sometimes over broadly played like Elly Jo and Opal. Because she was good at comedy, she didn't get an opportunity later on to play a serious, complex dramatic character for an extended period of time. As for the rest, Stephen Elliott was clearly a good character actor, and I was not at all surprised when the gifted Susan Sullivan and Susan Sarandon went on to be cast again and again. Susan Sullivan, like Judith Barcroft and Maeve McGuire, seems born to wealth, poise, and sophistication, and she was the perfect choice to follow Barcroft as Lenore on AW. I don't remember her storyline on AWA except that Stephen Elliott and Susan Sullivan were good together as father and daughter. Sarandon may have been too old to play 17, but she was quite convincing as a strong-willed but naive young college student. Patrice was basically the girl from good family who gets in trouble (in both senses). Having a boyfriend who's part of a radical group, but like an update of a Secret Storm vibe. I didn't care at all about Patrice and Tony as a couple, but then I got to the party quite late. Tony had been sent to prison, where he volunteered for a medical experiment and soon died. So did the show. I doubt that many viewers found the "nice girl dates student radical" theme very interesting. The other actors did not make much impression on me. Susan Sarandon had a short-term role on SFT toward the conclusion of the storyline about Jo's hysterical blindness. Sam (Roy Shuman) had taken Jo to a cabin in the woods. A young hippie-ish couple called George and Sarah stayed there (I think; details are hazy) and perhaps accidentally (?) George shot Sam. Previously to Sam's death, for a lark, Sarah had wiped the cabin for fingerprints as she and George got ready to leave. They fled after George was killed, and Jo was left alone in the woods, blindly (literally) seeking help and almost falling off a cliff, and once found, having a very fishy-sounding story about two people who had left no trace behind.

Thanks for recommending this episode. It was as good as advertised! Excellent dialogue, committed and very natural performances by everyone. I had never seen any of this storyline.

Bright Promise has some family history for me. Our local affiliate decided to replace it with something else, and my cousin's wife led the campaign to get it back on the air! There was a picture in the newspaper with someone in front of the NBC affiliate waving a banner with the words, "Ladies, We Surrender!" I did see the last few weeks of the show and was positive that I had seen a star in the making. No, not Tony Geary, whom I expected to have a good career playing character roles or Tony Perkins types. I'm talking about someone not yet mentioned in this thread: Robert Viharo. If you've seen HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT, he plays the gangster whom James Caan's wife is having an affair. Viharo, though short, was a can't miss: sexy, smart, already a polished actor. Most of his scenes were with Tony Geary, and they were great on screen together. When David (Geary) witnessed his mother Sylvia (Regina Gleason) fall down the stairs during an argument with Martha (Susan Brown), he ran away and did not come back even after Martha was wrongly accused of murder. He met Pecos (Viharo), who tried to help the troubled young man grow up. He even introduced him to a couple of girls, though David never slept with either of them. Although Pecos never told David he had to go back to clear Martha, David was able to mature enough to go back and tell the court what had actually happened and free Martha. If, after NINE TO FIVE you can't imagine Dabney Coleman as a serious romantic lead, he was, convincingly so. Susan Brown easily carried a major storyline. Lesley Woods did a lot of hemming and hawing and stuttering before saying her lines, which bored me. Gail Kobe was a very good actress before she turned producer. She got the best treat of all: romantic scenes with the bearded Dr. Brian Walsh, "Brian the Bear," as she called him: John Considine. If you've only seen him in his later years, you have no idea how handsome and sexy he was at this time. At the end of the show Gail Kobe's character went back to her dull husband. That would not have been my choice. John Considine had much better material on Bright Promise than he ever got from Harding Lemay on AW, who apparently imagined Vic Hastings as a piece of human wallpaper. Given Tony Geary's success as David in BP, it's easy to see why he was cast as Trish Stewart's rapist on Y&R. Robert Viharo did not become a star, had his own theater company, and at one time was married to Anne Helm, the lovely Mary Briggs from GH.

Thank you! So much good information in that article, and a lovely tribute to the actors.