Reverend Ruthledge

The show was really being mismanaged at the time. I was thankful for the few crumbs they threw us.

There were occasional acknowledgements of the "dramatic-license" time that had passed but it was only occasional and there was no difference in the story being played out. Meaning, the announcer would occasionally say, "It was 2 years ago (or however much time), that such-and-such happened". This was sometimes accurate in real life, sometimes not. However, the story never jumped ahead much (except in the SORASing of children). The story would just continue on at a normal rate with no gaps. Time was just speeded up in regards mostly to children aging. In the instance of Chuckie's superhuman development in and out of the womb, there was no mention of it. The story would just continue at a normal rate and, in the background, Chuckie would just grow fast. There would be occasional comments, like Ray and Charlotte saying they had Chuckie for a couple of years when in reality they only had him less than a year at the same time no other storyline had progressed for two years. Does that make sense? Basically, the timeline was all over the place and Irna didn't seem to think the audience would care. With Meta's pregnancy, she was out of the story for a week or two before she had Chuckie so I supposed that was suppose to confuse listeners to think she had been gone longer. And, Meta was isolated during her pregnancy. She had run off to New York alone, was in a convent and when she returned to Los Angeles she lived alone in an apartment with no contact with anyone other than Mary Leland. So, the time discrepancies with the other storylines going on simultaneously weren't so noticeable.

Interesting. When compared to Suzanne Davidson's portrayal of Betsy, who played the role the longest, I found Meg's portrayal to be somewhat of an anomaly for the character. Lindsay Frost's portrayal seemed more like the real Betsy to me. I didn't dislike Meg Ryan's portrayal, I just found Lindsay Frost's portrayal more true to character.

Does anybody know what happened to Bill Shanks? He seems to have disappeared completely from public eye.

Kathy was 14 when she first appeared in 1951. By 1952, she had already moved out of the house, started working, married a guy and gotten pregnant. A very precocious 15-year-old. LOL. Meta, even though she was only a few years older than Bill and Bert, really got SORASed even more than that when she became a step-grandmother in 1953. They even put gray streaks in the actress's hair to make her look older. Even though they didn't do the same for Lyle Sudrow and Charita Bauer. They weren't the victims of SORAS until Michael suddenly became an adult 9 years after he was born. So, I guess Bill and Bert eventually caught up with Meta. Irna actually messed quite a bit with the timeline. Chuckie was SORASed. Even in the womb. He was conceived around October of 1948, born December of 1948, talking by 1949 and was 7 years old in 1950 when he died. And the characters would talk about an event happening years ago when it had really only happened a few months ago. Irna may have actually started this trend of "speeding things along" for the sake of plot. It was also much easier and less jarring to do this on radio where nobody could SEE that the actors had changed or how quickly the characters had matured. As great of a writer as Irna was, I don't think she was that big of a stickler for details.

When they first appeared on the show, in 1948, Meta was 24 and Trudy was 19. I can't remember what Bill was but he was in between Meta and Trudy. I can't remember if it was mentioned how old Bert was when she joined the show in December of 1949, but I don't think so. I would guess her at Bill's age which I guess was about 22. Of course, that was when they started. Even adult soap characters can be the victims of SORAS so Meta, Bill and Bert were aged considerably based on how fast Kathy, Mike and Ed grew.

I think it's more likely bad direction. You can't say bad writing as the name is written the same way regardless of the pronunciation. I thought it was showing Doug III was an imposter because he didn't know how to pronounce Robert's name but Marie said his name the same way as Doug III and she would know better. Even though Maree Cheatham wasn't on the show at the same time as Robert Clary, the character of Marie Horton was in Salem the same time as Robert LeClaire. Most of the actors wouldn't know how he pronounced his name but SSH sure knew and I wonder why she didn't make the correction if the director and other actors didn't know. Not a huge issue but a personal pet peeve of mine--historical inaccuracies. Robert never went by the English pronunciation of his name. Never. This is another pet peeve of mine.

I get that actors are not sticklers for accuracy in details like hard-core fans are but it looks like SSH would have said something to the current cast and director.

Looks like I was right about the jail scene not being a flashback. What's up with the weird pronunciation of Robert's name? He never went by the English pronunciation of the name. Only the French. I thought Doug pronouncing it that way was an indication of Doug being an imposter and only having seen the name written but Marie called him by the English pronunciation as well. Weird. SSH should have corrected that error. And isn't Salem supposed to be in the North? It's December and the leaves were all green at the outdoor memorial service and Ciara was practically naked. Why was Mike not even mentioned? He's always the forgotten Horton. I don't dislike Lucas but you would think he's Jennifer's only sibling. I would much rather see Mike than Lucas.

Yeah, I remember them saying that but it didn't make a lot of sense. It makes even less sense to me now. Why would it be disrespectful to memorialize Bert soon after Charita's passing? Disrespectful to whom? Her kids? Charita couldn't care at that point, obviously. It's not like they were capitalizing on her death. In actuality, it was more disrespectful to let the character and fans hover in limbo for a year. I don't know. Maybe there's some sensibility I'm not tuning in on.

They explained that Addie had gifted Alice with the necklace but Alice thought it was too garish for Salem so she put it in the time capsule. I think that's an unlikely scenario but it explains why Alice would have had a diamond necklace. It wouldn't make any sense to have a modern recreation instead of the original footage since they had already show part of the original scene and all the other flashbacks have been real, not modern recreations.

I didn't take it as him playing Brent Douglas. I took it as something happening to Doug Williams III. The fact that he was in prison, had a cell mate name Bill and was heading to Salem upon his release just a coincidence. They were trying to tie him into his grandfather. I think that was a nod to Gloria's real life as she had two sons.

Thank you for posting that. Who was the man being interviewed?

That reminds me of Claire Ramsey circa 1985 and that, I think, was all from one writer. She went from sweet girl to bitch to psycho to brain damaged within the course of about a year until they shipped her off for brain rehab. When she resurfaced years later, everything seemed to have been forgotten except bitch mode and that seemed to work the best for her.

As said earlier, I think it makes sense as the victim who has had enough and then decides to become hard and bitter and screw everyone else over. I don't think the speed of the change was necessarily even the problem as people can just "snap". I think the problem was that there was no explanation of the change. Perhaps there was. That was so long ago. Then again, people have internal changes without expository explanation. I don't know. Usually I'm not a big fan of drastic character changes but sometimes it doesn't bother me. Barbara's character change didn't bother me much. Perhaps because her change happened when I started watching the show so I wasn't aware of the way she used to be.

It was an event but not a huge one. It was held in the backyard of the Bauer home with Bert, Meta, Peggy, Ed, Hope, Rick, Stephen, Holly, Ken, Janet, Barbara, Joe and Sara in attendance.

I think Michael and Marianne Randolph and Mike Horton could, at least, tie Tom and Dan in the SORAS department.

LOL. At least he had a sense of humor.

The Bauers were my favorite soap family because they weren't always "the good guys". They were complex, had strong faults and were sometimes even the "bad guy" in various storylines. By the time the family got watered down to Rick and Michelle, that was all lost and they were just the boring good guys with no complexity. It was like the writers were afraid to make them anything but bland and we know no stories can come out of that.

My personal favorite Tom was the rebellious, anti-establishment young adult Tom in the late 60s. He was a jerk but really was a great tool to shake up the conservative, stuffy Hughes family at the time. Maybe not the most likable Tom but, in my opinion, the most interesting.

Tom was played by so many people who all played him differently that it was really hard to pinpoint the character. He was like 20 different characters. I thought Holmes played him too petulant. It was weird watching a man well into his middle age years throwing tantrums. I never warmed to his version of Tom even though he played the character the longest.

Yeah, they made Michelle too bland and, with Rick already being bland, that was sort of a guarantee that the Bauers would be less prominent and fade away.

I loved The Guiding Light's premiere. Ellis Smith, an outsider, being lured into Reverend Ruthledge's church by Mary Rutledge's organ playing and then collapsing. Set up the mystery of Ellis Smith really well and let the listener be introduced to this new world via Ellis as he entered into it. It got the audience interested immediately in who Ellis was, what Five Points was all about and how they would affect each other. In a way, similar to the premiere of Y&R which had a stranger entering Genoa City for the first time.

Yep. It was very cartoonish but I was young so it appealed to me at the time.

No, I know it was during the Whit McColl mystery because I started watching right after he was killed and I clearly remember not knowing who Lisa was and why she was snooping but being intrigued by it. By the time Tad Channing came around, I had been watching regular for a long while. I'm sure she snooped in a closet more than once. LOL.