Reverend Ruthledge

Truth. Back then, when the quality of the shows went south, you could count on them scrambling to try and fix it. Nowadays, nobody cares enough to improve the quality. The only thing worse than James Lipton's writing was his acting.

Yeah, I think the show suffered from the revolving door of head writers during that time. It was a weird mix of too many cooks in the kitchen and stagnation as they tried to hold on too much to a certain pace and way of doing things because of the lack of cohesive forward-focus. They weren't going forward like the other soaps during that time. Or, at least, not as much. Other shows were more ok with doing new things and stepping up the pace. There wasn't a clear direction on how to go evolve and so the audience, I'm sure, looked at the show as stale and boring. I, personally, don't think it was either of those things but there was a huge shift in the late 60s/early 70s culturally.

I could be wrong but I don't think the Hughes kitchen was introduced much earlier than the Snyder farm. Maybe just a few years. The Hughes set up until 1980 was Chris and Nancy's house. Although I'm not sure when the new set was introduced. The years 1980-1984 are fuzzy for me. Was it originally Bob's house? Or Kim's? They didn't get married until 1985 so I don't know who lived there before then. I remember seeing scenes of that living room with Kim and Meg Ryan's Betsy (if I'm not mistaken) so perhaps it was Kim's house? Maybe someone with knowledge of those years could help out. I do remember they used to show the living room/dining room, the den and the kitchen. The den was the first to disappear and then the living room/dining room disappeared and eventually everything just happened in the kitchen. Then, the kitchen strangely got turned into a WOAK set. By the end, the elder Hughes were relegated to having holidays at the hospital if Tom and Margo weren't hosting.

Damn! Why couldn't they have kept the tape going?!

Yeah, I think she was meant to be a love interest for Rick but it never really took off.

I think too much damage has been done to the genre and to the human race to ever have what we consider quality soap opera ever again.

A very inconsequential character. I think her name was Amber and I think she was a doctor at Cedars. I think. But her presences was much more important at Bert's funeral than Mike or Hope. 🙄

I'm not sure if Ned was played by Ed Prentiss at that point. Jonathan got a job in Los Angeles. He would come back to Chicago periodically and on one of these visits, after Tim had died, he asked Clare to marry him and she went off to Los Angeles with him. They didn't stay in the story long. They were gone before a year of the new story. It was said that Jonathan and Clare moved away for another job. I think Irna was really trying to find her way with the story until she settled on the Bauers. The transition characters from the old show (Jonathan, Clare, Ned) were quickly forgotten to focus on Ray's family and then they were quickly forgotten when the focus became the Bauers. But then she settled on them and they became the focus for the next few decades. And every time Irna changed the focus of the show, there would be a new minister. Reverend Keeler replaced Charles Matthews when the focus was switched to the Bauers. You are right that by 1944, the old story was largely forgotten. The focus became mostly on Clare Marshall and those in her orbit. Some of the old characters stayed around to varying degrees (Mrs. Kransky, Mrs. O'Hearn, Pete Manno, perhaps a few others). However, they only came on occasionally. Perhaps Ned and Mary were on the show that late although I don't have any episodes with them. I have a lot of gaps from that time period. It seems the focus of the show was less on Five Points and more on Chicago (Five Points was a suburb of Chicago). I think the years of 1943-1946 were good but also what I consider a weak point of the series. It was the transition period from the original show to what it would become with "The New Guiding Light". It was kind of all over the place. Rose, Ellis, Torchy and a most of the original characters seem to have stopped around 1943 when that transition time began. I'm not sure how it was handled. It will take me a while to get to that time period. I have very little from around that time period so it will take me a while to get to those answers on how that particular transition was handled. I have more answers on how the transition to "The New Guiding Light" was handled. The last name was just coincidence. They weren't related. With two cancellations, probably a lot of struggle with the suits, and struggling with ratings, I think Irna was just trying out different things to find the right formula. Even though I'm a huge fan of the Bauer family saga, the first five years of the show are my personal favorite. Although I can see why it might have struggled in the ratings. It was more a philosophical show, like another favorite of mine Against the Storm, and it wasn't probably the crowd-pleaser that shows like Ma Perkins were. It was not the plot-heavy, Perils of Pauline type of radio soap opera that so many women seemed to like at that time. Even during the time that the show was focused mostly on one woman (Clare Marshall), it was still slow-moving, thought provoking and character-driven.

I just looked up Easter for 1946 and it said it was April 21st. It's possible that he just came back Easter month as a guest. He did do that from time to time.

That's interesting as I have the full months of June and July, 1946 and Reverend Ruthledge isn't in any episodes. It looks like he would at least be in a couple if he was back on the show then. I don't have EVERY episode from 1943 to 1946 but, after he left the show to enter the war, it appears he only came back for brief visits. He doesn't seem to come back into the story full-time until October, 1946. But, again, I don't have every episode. So, who knows? Perhaps he was on the show but just didn't do much. Or maybe had storylines during the gaps of episodes that I don't have. Jan and Charlotte were not rivals professionally as Charlotte was a singer and Jan was a model. However, they were rivals for Ted White. Although not really rivals per se. Ted was interested in Charlotte and Jan was interested in Ted. Thanks for that ad. It's interesting that the ad spells it "Claire" when Irna spells it "Clare" in the scripts. I always thought it was weird how Irna spelled it.

Jan (Meta) and Mary were roommates at the Towers apartment building. Charlotte lived across the hall from them. Mary was introduced as a doctor at the hospital where Julie Collins was staying at when she was faking her blindness. Mary was on to her and tried to prove that she could really see. Later, Mary became Mama Bauer's doctor and then discovered that Jan was really Meta Bauer. Yes, Ricky was very much a character on the show. Unfortunately. He was kind of an annoying kid. LOL. You are correct in that Larry Lawrence wasn't in the original story. Only his brother Tim. You know a lot! Yes, Larry is the one who supplied Charlotte with pills. He was Charlotte's ex boyfriend who had jilted her years ago which led to her having a breakdown and being institutionalized. Clare, married to Jonathan at the time, was shaken at Larry's resemblance to her deceased husband Tim. It made her think she wasn't over Tim. Larry was pretty much a trouble maker. He wormed his way into Julie Collins' life which made her son Roger think they were having an affair which he thought led her to push her husband's wheelchair off the cliff and kill him (they weren't and she didn't). Yes, Reverend Gaylord took over for Reverend Ruthledge and then Reverend Tuttle took over for Reverend Gaylord. Ruthledge didn't come back until October, 1946. He stays until the show is cancelled. When it's brought back on the air in June of 1947, Ned moves to Los Angeles and gives the friendship lamp to Reverend Charles Matthews who was a seminary friend of Rev. Rutledge's. John Ruthledge had died sometime when the show was off the air. Not in the war, as some historical synopses say. Ned is only in two, maybe three episodes as he looks for a job and talks about Mary and the kids coming to join him. Then, he just disappears and is never mentioned again. I think Irna just used Ned as a transition into the new show and had no intention of making him a character again. Yep, Ray and Charlotte got married in October, 1947, just five months after the new show started. Roger and Susan got married a couple of months later in December, 1947. Yes, the story DID move very fast in that first year. It didn't really slow down until Irna got her footing with the Bauers in 1948. The show kind of switched from being plot-driven to more character-driven. So, it got a lot more "talky". Don't apologize. I love answering trivia questions. I have synopses if you're interested.

I've been looking at scripts from the beginning. In 1947, the only crossover characters were Jonathan McNeil and Clare Marshall. Ned Holden was in a few episodes at the beginning of "The New Guiding Light" but he quickly disappeared. Ray, Julie, Roger and Susan were all new characters in 1947. It was mainly about them and Charlotte Wilson for about a year until the Bauers started to become the main focus. Then all of those characters started fading away. The Bauers entered the story in 1948 (Meta in June and the rest of the family, Papa, Mama, Bill and Trudy in September). Meta was going by the name Jan Carter so it wasn't known she was a Bauer until later. Her roommate, Mary Leland, wound up being Mama Bauer's physician when she became ill with cancer. That was the connection and how the Bauers were introduced.

I'm not sure who out there might care about this but there was a thread several years ago in this forum where I said Bert Bauer started on The Guiding Light in 1948. After having read all the scripts from that time period, I just wanted to say that Bert actually didn't start on the show until December, 1949 (although she had been talked about a long time before that). The original actress who played her was only in two or three episodes before she was replaced by Charita Bauer in February, 1950. Also, there was some question about what happened to Ross Boling and Mary Leland. Ross seems to have just moved off to San Francisco to be with his foster son. What happened to Mary is more of a mystery. Her character just seems to have disappeared. She was in a big storyline where she was in love with a patient named Michael Cellini who had TB and asked her to marry him. The character of Michael seems to have disappeared and neither he nor the storyline was mentioned again when the Ted/Meta/Chuckie storyline takes off. Mary is only on a few episodes after that but I don't think she mentions Michael and then she just disappears. It's all kind of strange. Maybe Irna got bored with the storyline and the characters and just never bothered to bring any closure. What's even weirder is that on the soap central character synopsis for Mary Leland, it says that Michael had TB (he didn't) and that some vindictive nurse caused trouble for Mary because of her relationship with Michael and none of this ever happened on the show. The synopsis also claims Mary was interested in Ross (she never was). So, what happens to Michael and Mary are a mystery but an even bigger mystery is why someone would just make things up and put them on soap central. Who writes this information up and where do they get the information? There seems to be a lot of fan fiction stated as fact on that site. I'm only up to July, 1951 but Michael hasn't been "seen" or mentioned of in over a year and Mary hasn't been seen or mentioned in at least six months. So, the odds of them popping back up in the story are pretty slim but we'll see. What happened to the characters might never be known. This post is for the three people in the world that might actually care. LOL.

I write monthly recaps I don't mind sharing but I don't have daily recaps. Some daily recaps, but mostly monthly. And mostly ATWT and TGL.

That was a great ATWT Christmas!

Thank you for that. It made my night.

These faux Bauers never made sense to me. I think it was just the tone deafness and stupidity of the writers and producers at the time. They were probably hearing the fans say they want more Bauers so they just added a bunch of characters with the last name "Bauer" when the audience wanted the old characters back. "Look, we DID bring on more Bauers and people still weren't satisfied". LOL.

I agree. I didn't say she began it either. Nails had been nailed into the coffin for years. She just nailed the last one in. It officially died under her watch.

Thank you for those ratings. I didn't realize the show had ever reached number one. I am probably more familiar with the radio ratings which were never very good and the ratings after I started watching in the 80s which, also, were never very good. It looks like the 50s and the 60s were the best for the show, ratings-wise. I wonder why the sharp drop in 68/69. I don't think the writing suffered too much during that time. Especially not compared to what came later.

Part of the problem is the expansion to one hour. When the show was 15 and 30 minutes, a small family like the Bauers could be the main focus. Especially 15 minutes. In fact, the show was basically all about the Bauers from the late 40s to the 60s. With the time expansions, they had to add more characters as filler for time as the Bauers were too small a family at that time to be the focus. For some reason, the previous writers (Irna, Agnes) didn't expand the Bauers through births so it was kind of inevitable with the time expansions that they would lose their centerpiece status. Then, inexplicably, what few Bauers there were were written out and not brought back. Making the situation worse. I'm actually surprised the Bauers had a presence at all till the end. The Matthews of AW basically didn't exist toward the end. I think AW lasting as long as it did is actually a bigger miracle. I just think TGL worked better as a 15-minute show. Bad writing was definitely a major part of the decline but I think there were other factors like the time expansions. Even Marland, who did such great things with the Hughes family, didn't really do much for the Bauers. Maybe because there weren't that many players to work with. But he should have brought Bill Bauer back and he should have had Kelly be an illegitimate child of Ed's instead of his godson. It's kind of weird how differently Marland treated the Bauers and the Hughes. But I actually think it's miraculous that TGL lasted as long as it did in its entirety. Not just the last 25 years. I don't think it was ever number one in the ratings. Even in its glory years. In fact, it was always sort of middle of the pack. Sometimes towards the bottom. And then it actually DID get cancelled twice and came back. It was just the show that kind of flew under the radar and resiliently outlasted them all. That is, until Ellen Wheeler finally killed it.

I mean, it makes sense why head writers always want to introduce a slew of new characters when they take over. However, it could also just be that they are just writers interested in their own creations and not fans of the show they start writing for. They probably don't care about the history of a show they never watched.

Who would have Todd Bauer been? Part of the faux Bauer clan or someone related to the real Bauers? I never thought I'd be grateful to Pam Long for anything, but, wherever you are, Pam, thank you from the bottom of my heart for getting rid of Lacey Bauer.

Close. She was called Berta Bauer Ramsey and "BB" for short. It ALL was stupid as Berta wasn't Bert's name. It was Bertha. This didn't last long. I think within a few short months they changed her name to Michelle. Even the writers realized how stupid they were being.

I thought so too originally until I realized that it was the headlines from the Springfield Journal and the show began being set in Springfield in the late 60s. The headlines were being flashed (too quickly) in chronological order so it makes sense that Peggy's murder trial was the first big headline related to the show in Springfield. Meta's trial would have been in the Los Angeles papers.

The first Bauer BBQ was in 1984, I believe. However, I don't think they had one in 1985 or 1986. I could be wrong about that, but I know there was a July 4th BBQ in 1984. I think it kind of became "official" in 1987.