Reverend Ruthledge

Bill did a lot of different jobs but the one he worked at most consistently in his life was in the advertising/PR field. It's the episode where Charlotte dies but not the one where she's poisoned.

Yes.

I don't even know what to think about that comment. Is it Greek?

I think I remember Alan Locher asking Kathryn Hays about playing Leslie Bauer and she didn't remember it. Since her daughter announced she had dementia towards the end, that's more understandable. Then again, maybe I am the one misremembering and she didn't say she didn't remember during the interview. Memory's a tricky thing.

Yes, it's true. Leslie was married to Stanley Norris (Holly's father).

Good and accurate description. He wasn't. He was named Billy. Johnny was Billy's stepfather. Yes.

That's seeming younger and younger each year.

You are, sadly, right.

Thanks for posting that interview. I would have missed it otherwise and I found it interesting. Before watching it, I was fast-forwarding it trying to find Darby until I realized he was the host! Lisa Trusel hasn't aged a bit. I very rarely say that because I feel like people overuse that phrase as a compliment. But in her case, she almost looks the same. I would recognize her today in a second.

Melinda was always an outlier to me. When I think of the Ryan family, I always think of Jennifer, Kim, Barbara, Rick and Frannie. I never think of Melinda.

Me too! And I didn't realize Gillian Spencer wrote for the show.

Does anybody know of any website that sells GL episodes, in particular from the 1970s? It seems like there were some such sites at one time but I can't find them anymore.

Peter Reckell seems way too old for Suzanne Davidson. Seeing him with his hand on her seems kind of creepy.

That was a very well-done funeral. It would have been perfect if Lindsay Frost would have come back.

You're actually very right now that I think about it. Mary Stuart's portrayal of Meta was more Trudy-like than Meta-like.

Yes, it was supposed to be, I think the grandson of John Ruthledge but that was yet another bit of revisionist history. John only had a daughter and, after she married, she became a Holden and so were her kids. It couldn't have even been a nephew or grand-nephew. John only had one sister. There's no way the Ruthledge name could have been passed on with this new Reverend Ruthledge that Josh met. I wasn't watching at the time so I'm not sure who he claimed to be but I do think he claimed to be Reverend John Ruthledge's grandson. Sure, you could say (and rightfully so) that nobody would know or care about that but I doubt anybody watching at the time even knew or cared about who the original Rev. Ruthledge was so what was the point of the reference? Again, I guess it's nice for them to give a nod to history but the inaccuracies tended to negate any joy I found in the references.

Thanks. Steve was always a bit shady. LOL.

Someone else who I talk with here who knows a lot about the golden days of the show and I have discussed that before and we've both come to the conclusion that that is just something that was reported somewhere but isn't true or that she may have filled in as Trudy for another actress a time or two but was never a regular on the show. She definitely didn't play Trudy in 1953 as nobody did. Trudy didn't appear on the show that year.

Thank you. Well, she was a very interesting character. First off, she was surprisingly sexist. At least when she was younger. She was adamantly opposed to Mama Bauer having a female doctor, Dr. Mary Leland, when Mama had cancer. Of course, this could have been a sign of the times and what was happening culturally. Also due to the fact that she was very young and also very worried about Mama. She also hated Meta and thought she was selfish. Meta and Trudy were the original Marcia and Jan Brady. Trudy was a "plain Jane" and Meta was the prettier, more glamorous sister so there was a lot of jealousy as Trudy had pretty low self-esteem. In fact, when Clyde showed interest in her, she asked him why he would and couldn't quite believe him. Trudy fell in love with the guy who lived in the apartment of the Bauer home, Dr. Ross Boling, but he was in love with Meta even though Meta was married to Ted White. You can imagine how this fueled Trudy's hatred for Meta even more. The Meta/Trudy fights were some of the most compelling Bauer moments. Trudy never held back from telling it like it is. She often put Meta and Bert in their place and Papa would always try to calm her down. She didn't like Bert either mostly due to the way she treated Bill. Her hatred for Meta ran much deeper. Trudy did something very out of character and went on an adventurous vacation in Jamaica and that's where she met Clyde Palmer who was also vacationing there. It was such a great experience for Trudy that she had a hard time believing it was real and didn't expect to ever hear from Clyde again. When he got back to the States, she was surprised to see that he was still pursuing her. When she finally agreed to marry him in spite of her doubts, they moved off to New York City where Clyde lived and worked. She was in and out of the story after that. She made the comment about not wanting children when she came back in 1957 for Papa's birthday. It was during the same conversation where Clyde told her not to gloat because Meta was going through a rough time. Trudy was fiercely loyal but was very jealous (probably due to her low self-esteem) and held resentments for a very long time. Even though she could be quite bitter and cutting, I liked her and felt sorry for her. There were many comments after she left the show by the Bauers that they were aware that Trudy felt the need to distance herself from the family. Bert, I think it was, made the comment that that was encouraged by Clyde who felt Trudy needed to be her own woman and forget the negative family dynamics (which had mostly to do with Meta).

That makes more sense as the flashbacks were of Mary as a teenager which even an actress as good as Mary Stuart couldn't pull off at that time. LOL. Yeah, the soap central synopses should always be taken with a grain of salt. I think it's like wikipedia where anybody can just add things. Fanfic can sometimes turn up in historical synopses. That's what it was. Maybe she just mentioned knowing Reverend Ruthledge, not that she lived in Five Points. Of course, if she knew Reverend Ruthledge as a child, that would mean that she grew up in Five Points. Which, of course, she didn't. I found the most historical accuracy to be in the 70th anniversary show. Somebody really did their research there!

I think Paul meant Mary Stuart, not Mary Bauer. There was a Mary Bauer, I think, that was supposed to be a cousin of Meta's that was long-gone but was part of that angel storyline. I don't know. I only vaguely paid attention to that storyline. It was too revisionist and cringey. Actually, with Mary Stuart's Meta, there was a lot of revisionism. I think it was her that at one time talked about the Bauers being in Five Points. While I appreciated the nods to history that her appearance on the show brought, it was usually WRONG history. So my gratitude was usually cancelled out. When Trudy came back home for Papa's birthday party in 1957, she and Clyde were talking about how she didn't want to have children. So, her coming back with kids and grandkids would have been a slight bit of revisionism but only to me. LOL. Nobody else in the world would probably know of Trudy's desire not to have kids. But, if Leah can go from being Jude's younger sister to being his older sister, anything was possible for the Bauers in the later years.

Yeah, the recaps I've read are wrong. They say she drowned but it looks like she got run over by the boat. It also says that Brad jumped in after her and THEN got knocked unconscious. That's not what happened.

I googled her and found out she's a theater professor in, I believe NYC. If you're talking about the PanicDiscoStarr website, I'm curious if anybody's ever gotten anything from there. I've contacted them several times with no response. Makes me question the validity of the site. I did hear someone (on SON, I think) say that they thought they were a legitimate business yet I've never heard from anybody actually getting a DVD from them. I'm curious if that 1970 episode exists as well. I will say that it may be just an audio recording of an episode if that matters to you. I know they list some GL episodes which are only audio recordings but they don't list them as audio recordings. That seems a bit dishonest to me. That, plus the lack of responses, makes me really question the site. Plus, they're asking for an exorbitant amount of money for material that is 90% out there in the public anyway for people to download on their own.

Very few of the later soap writers "got" the genre.

Right? I didn't start watching until 1985 and if I never read a history book I'd never know Melinda existed. Even after I learned of her existence, I never thought of Barbara, Rick and Frannie having another sibling. It's like Melinda never existed.