DeeVee

I remember like yesterday a scene where Blake was diving into a pool topless in front of Ross. My mom and I were watching it together. Our jaws hit the floor. We knew immediately that they had to put them together. The chemistry was insane. I highly doubt that was the original intent, it was just another way to show Blake being a total **tch to her mother. Holly and Ross were the collateral damage. As for Billy and Nadine, they had them together because they had a storyline for them. (Nadine passing off Bridget's baby as theirs). They never really found a good pairing for Nadine.

She must have been around when they kept recasting Mary Ryan on RH. I've always thought she would have been very good in the role. But she would have ended up leaving for movies in the end, so...

Thanks for posting another really interesting interview, @Paul Raven! Weren't they the ones who wrote Maureen's death story? But didn't really want to do it?

Reva was on her way out by 1989. I don't see how that would have changed under the Dobsons; Zimmer wanted to leave. I guess we could assume that the same thing that happened under Long--Bernau leaving due to health issues, then passing away, and then the show asking Zaslow to come back--would still happen and they would have had to deal with it in pretty much the same way. I would like to think that there would have been a better chance that they would have brought Hope and Mike back onto the canvas. Maybe insisted on an Alan recast instead of sweeping him off the canvas for five years. It's really hard to say for sure for a couple of reasons: the show had changed so profoundly since they left. Almost all the characters they worked with back then were gone. The other thing is, their style of writing seemed to change when they did SB. When they wrote GL it was pretty realistic soap writing. SB was more over-the-top. So, I don't know exactly how they would have handled GL on a second run.

Leslie is the daughter of Dr. Steve Jackson, the doctor with the white hair and accent. Bert is married to Bill Bauer, the tall, drunk guy. Yes, Bill is Michael's and Ed's father. Papa Bauer is Bill Bauer's father. Maybe the ages of children/parents seems a little off because of SORASing (Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome--children are aged fast so they can participate more in storylines).

I would say it was less about looks and more about making Jackie a more conventional soap character. When Pickett played her, Jackie had a boho-quirky vibe, even when she was Mrs. Spaulding. Marland stripped Jackie of everything that made her Jackie. She became one of the holier-than-thou crowd, when Jackie was anything but before that. That comes with the territory of being a soap writer. You don't like the story, bring it to a quick end, make sure you play all the beats, and then move on. That's basically what Long did as best she could considering Jackie was dead and Elizabeth had been off the canvas for a long time. Maybe they were looking at GH again and seeing how a strong EP like Monty was bringing in the ratings. Monty also did some things that the writers (including Marland) didn't like, but for the most part she overruled them. Kobe was like that in some ways, so maybe that's why they wanted her at GL.

Something, anything. There was just no way it was believable that she found out the truth and thought she had no right to raise Phillip anymore. As far as Alan, yes. Elizabeth, no. She acted like Phillip HAD to be with his natural parents. Why? She fought so hard to get custody. Not only had Alan lied to her, so had Jackie, who had insinuated herself in their lives only so she could be near Phillip. Then she married Alan with the sole purpose to take custody away from Elizabeth. She should have been HOPPING MAD at Jackie. Yes, yes, Marland wanted to be rid of Elizabeth. Fine. Then, yes, a terminal illness or even better, a sudden accident, would have taken care of that, rather than this absurd storyline where Alan inexplicably gives custody to Justin and Jackie. There was ONE time I recall that Phillip told Justin he loved him. That was when Pennock was playing the role. I'm not so sure now that they got to do it just because they wanted to. That interview with Potter that was posted a few days ago implied that there were strong rumors going around that they were going to fire a significant number of people. This was right after Jane Elliot was fired. He denied it, but I'm thinking it was already planned back in 1982. Maybe the problem they had with PFS and Browne was that they didn't want to put the Bauers on the chopping block. Clearly, Kobe did not have that issue. They toyed with that kind of thing with the Dreaming Death and art theft storylines. I didn't care for either story. Alan was best when he was stirring the pot with people's personal lives. In the beginning he was not really a criminal in the sense that he wanted to get richer, he mostly got pulled into criminal activity because of personal issues, like doing the baby switch.

SERIOUSLY. I don't know who would have been available to produce the show at the time. As for writers, probably the thing to do was try to get the Dobsons back, but I'm pretty sure they were at ATWT during this period, and then they would have left anyway to do SB. I've never understood hiring people who have killed off shows. Maybe they felt that because Texas was a newish show that never found its audience it wasn't the same. But soaps have always been pretty incestous, they just keep rotating the same people from show to show. Stupid AI. (I didn't realize it was AI, it can be SNEAKY). One says there was one, then another said no. Finally got to the WGA site which does not list one for that year. Oh, you mean they can't blame that awful ending of the Rebecca/Mark Evans story on scabs? YIKES.

@SoapDope78 I found one! Lezlie starts at about 3:07. VERY different from Elizabeth and she doesn't have breathy, affected accent that she used when she played her, either.

That may be, but she was an important player in the Phillip storyline. It makes me SO mad that Marland totally dropped the ball on that storyline. I would have preferred he had it come out soon after taking over so we could get scenes of everyone giving Alan and Jackie hell for the garbage they pulled. Instead of killing off Jackie, he should have killed off Elizabeth. Then it would have somewhat made sense that Phillip was raised by Justin and Jackie. But not before this storyline was resolved. LOTS of interesting info in this article! First thing: I thought Allen Potter retired right after GL. I thought that was the reason he left. I did not know he had been moved to AW. So they went around telling everyone the new producer wouldn't change things too much, everyone was safe, and within a year the writers and half the cast had been fired. (There's a saying about the entertainment industry, that they will "kill you with kindness." It's not at all unusual to have everyone tell you you're doing fantastic and then get fired the next day). I'm trying to figure out the timeline for PFS and Browne. If she was fired at the 13 week mark in mid February, that means she started mid November. So that means PFS started mid August. Then you have to take into consideration that shows tape ahead of time. Was it only 3 weeks back then? Because on YT I found an episode dated March 4, 1983 that credited the Cullitons as headwriters. Wasn't there also a brief writers strike Spring 83? I seem to remember that scabs were blamed for the goofy Rebecca/Mona storyline and how it resolved. Here's another thing...I didn't realize Kobe had been hired almost right off of Texas' final episode. I watched the last few when they broadcast them, so that seems right, it ended with the holidays, Christmas and New Years. So basically, they decided to work out whatever was left of her contract by dropping her into GL. They could have sent her to a different one, but I guess the chaos after Potter and Marland fell out and Marland left made that the logical decision as far as P&G was concerned. A shame that they never gave Browne another chance at headwriting a soap.

Supposedly, Roussel was willing to come back, but they didn't want her. There were other available soap actresses around the same age as her. There was no reason not to recast her. I can understand not bringing Rita back because Lenore was so identified with the role, and because she was a very complex character. But Hope was a legacy character who was born on the show. There were a lot of different ways they could have gone with the character. The Dobsons didn't really get a chance to form her as an adult. Marland was not really interested in her character and wrote her mainly as a credulous dummy for much of his run. Even though it was for an exit story, Long making her an alcoholic and disillusioned with Alan could have set up years and years of story. IMO, this is one of the biggest mistakes GL made, and I think the reason they did it was because they did not want to bring the Bauers back into the story as a major family.

Sorry if this was mentioned before, but Prinz agreed to play Amy only for 6 months. She did it as a favor to Nixon. She was very popular on ATWT and it lent AMC some star power when it first started. She also asked Nixon to make Amy political. She wanted Amy shown making placards for anti-war protests and talking about being against the Vietnam war, and Nixon did that. I would assume the whole storyline about Phil and Tara "marrying" before Phil went to Vietnam and then being declared missing in action came from that. They definitely should have brought Amy back as another actress. Besides the poor recasting choice for Phil, it was another reason their first star-crossed lovers story withered and died.

That might have been true back then, but nowadays a lot of villains end up becoming the leading men on soaps, LOL. Thanks for posting these, @Paul Raven. They're like windows into the past, and it's great when they mention storylines that happened during periods of the show we can't see.

Yes. Listen, Richard Hatch wasn't exactly a Shakespearean actor, but you could understand why Tara was so crazy about him. I never understood why Benedict was cast as Phil. When Tara cheated on him with Chuck, I don't think anyone even got mad. I didn't buy that Erica was in love with him. Frankly, I couldn't understand why Victor's first wife on Y&R (I forget her name) cheated on him with this guy. I remember seeing an interview with Agnes Nixon and Hatch was there, and he made a remark like he couldn't believe he was chosen to play Phil because his audition wasn't that great, and Nixon said, "I saw your face." A clear reference to his beauty and sex appeal when he was young. It wasn't that Benedict was ugly or anything, he was nice looking guy, just kind of a lump and not someone you would imagine women going crazy over. This of course is my personal opinion and maybe other people feel differently, but I was not at all upset or surprised when they killed the character off.

I kind of like the name Marah (it's a real name; it's a form of Mary). But we have talked a few times about how little care went into naming babies on GL. Like, how many Bills and Billys do you need on one show? Almost everyone named after someone--why? Give them their own names! Some don't mind it, but I think Alan Michael is awfully clunky. The various attempts to honor Bert Bauer were always disastrous and taken back. (One has to wonder if they decided to make Beth's younger daughter Alan's instead of Rick's so they didn't have to lumber the kid with the name Bernadette). Poor A.J. Chamberlin, who ended up just "J" for whatever reason. Elizabeth, Beth, Lizzie...all in the same family. Why? Plus, no one stepped back and realized they were giving girls of the same generation names starting with the letter "M" - Marah, Marina, Michelle. That was awkward during the Maryanne Carruthers story (which also started with an "M"). Just give kids cool, fashionable, appropriate for soap opera names. I never understood why they didn't do that.