DeeVee

True. There used to be short-term expendable villains who did the really heinous stuff. Then you had the Machiavellian style villains who were on the edge like Alan but who never did anything so bad they had to be killed off or permanently written out. I believe a lot of people were put off by soaps when that changed. Hallick's a great choice! He would have been a very good Mike. This is so funny. When we were talking a while back about Holly's ex-husband Deitrich Lindsay and how great it would have been if they had brought him on the show, Arrants was the first actor I thought of. But I could see him as Ed, too. Another great pick. I think he also would have been a good Alan. He played a lot of on the edge characters, he had the charisma and charm to play him, though he might have come across as a little too young. My personal top pick for an Alan recast would be Jim Storm. He ticks a lot of the boxes.

I'm glad I found it, too! Some people here mentioned they would have liked Jed Allen as a possible Alan recast. I think someone even said he was in the running for the part at one point. I agree, he would have been a very good Mike. I see him as playing a good guy more than a bad guy. I was always a little surprised that Stewart was popular as Mike, exactly for these reasons. I believe he fit a male "type" that was popular during the 70s that didn't carry over into the 80s as much.

This is a really good point. Alan's "villainy." from the moment he was introduced was not solely about getting back at people. Definitely that was part of it--he wanted to get back at his father because of unnamed things his father did to him growing up. He wanted to get back at Elizabeth and Mike because he didn't want to lose control of Phillip and even though he didn't love Elizabeth, he was offended that SHE left HIM. But what really drove Alan most of the time was having to cover up something he did that was underhanded, or not exactly legal, although he would tell himself he did it for good reasons, (i.e. doing the baby switch when Elizabeth's baby was born dead). He was usually busy hiding something he did in the past, and that would force him to do more bad things, that he would also have to hide. For instance, he ordered his lawyer to pay someone to say he had an affair with Elizabeth so he would have a better chance to gain custody of Phillip. The witness swore on two affadavits--one claiming he had the affair with Elizabeth, one where he admits he was paid to lie about it. His lawyer, behaving kind of like the knights who murdered Thomas Becket because the king made an off-handed comment that he wanted to get rid of him, kills the guy they hired to lie. Alan didn't ASK him to do it, but he would have been implicated. Then the lawyer is killed, and Alan's like, PHEW, got out of THAT one! Only ROGER found the affadavits. So he he starts blackmailing Alan. And Alan has to do a bunch of things at Roger's command, like promoting him, letting him keep his job when he's accused of rape, etc. He keeps trying to convince Roger to take a job in Hong Kong so he can sweep him under the rug, but Roger won't do it. Then Holly shoots Roger. Roger, certain he's going to be convicted of rape, orders Alan to help him fake his death. Which he does. And he thinks, hey, I'm in the clear again! Unfortunately, this makes him partially responsible for Holly going to jail for "killing" Roger. Too bad, he's about protecting himself. Only Mike is suspicous and also upset because Hope is involved with Alan. So he has the "Roger's" body exhumed and everyone is shocked that it's not Roger. MEANWHILE, Roger is in France and calls Alan and tells him he's coming back because he wants his daughter Christina. While Roger doesn't get his hands on her, a pregnant Rita sees him, and Roger kidnaps HER. Now Alan is partially resonsible for Rita's kidnapping and for the fact that she almost burns to death in the cabin Roger left her in, eventually losing her baby. (This is the kind of thing that irks me about Marland. We NEVER got reveals where people gave Alan sh!t for the terrible things that happened to them because he was looking out for himself. Rita, Holly, and Hope should have torn him a new one multiple times. I don't think even Elizabeth told him off when she found out the truth about Phillip. That said, Marland did do a good job of keeping Alan consistent, until he had him punished and "redeemed"). Anyway, see what I'm saying? His villainy was his impulse ALWAYS for self-preservation, EVEN if he felt kind of bad about it. He tried to stop Roger from taking Christina, but only in ways that wouldn't have exposed his complicity. He wasn't a good guy (though he had some good impulses) but he was a way more interesting and complex guy than the Alan RR played. (Not blaming RR for that; he didn't write the scripts).

Oh, wow, that's interesting. I always wondered why it seemed like she came back briefly to support Roger during the rape trial, but she also was behind the nurse's desk at Cedars. Damn missing episodes. 1977 the show was half an hour and then in 1979 it's an hour and there are a bunch of new characters she has no connection to. It's not odd that she got left out of the mix.

What an interesting factoid! Michael I think did quite well in theater. Not everyone is suited to soap work. I did not know this. I know that some people did not like him, but I did. What can I say, I'm a sucker for an Irish brogue. I think perhaps the problem with him for the audience is first he was in the way of Mary and Jack getting back together, then he functioned the same way with Faith and Pat.

OR, handing the family over to the next generation. This, IMO, is one of the many reasons it was a huge mistake to kill off Alex's son. With Amanda, Phillip, Alan Michael, and Lujack, there were plenty of players and natural conflicts between the siblings/cousins to keep the Spaulding family a powerful force in SF. I can believe RR was good in other roles (I think he could have been a decent recast for Mike Bauer--he's even a singer like Don Stewart, LOL). He just did not have the qualities that Alan needed. He was also not helped by the writing for the character.

We can eliminate Ed and Rita's wedding because I FINALLY found the picture. Bill Bauer was not at that wedding. Your mind wasn't playing THAT many tricks in you, LOL. To this day, I will never understand the casting of Raines as Alan. They waited FIVE FREAKING YEARS to bring Alan back. Nobody was going to bring to the role exactly what Chris Bernau did, but Raines was so wrong for the part. And then they kept him for 15 years. Yeesh. Yes, Hearst was partly cast because he had some resemblance to Bernau, and so did the first non-baby AM actor, Carl Evans.

That's another thing that got scuttled because the Dobsons were kicked over to ATWT. The woman who came to Brandon's funeral in the hat and heavy black veils was obviously being signaled as a woman of mystery, maybe truly the love of Alan's life. Or not, she could have been out for revenge against him and his family for what they did to her. In spite of the convoluted backstory Marland cooked up for "Jane Marie," it was pretty insipid and Jennifer was also insipid. I am certain Court could have played her as a MUCH more interesting character than what Marland created. If Stewart objected to being paired with her, it might have been for this reason. At least with Elizabeth (who also could have been characterized as insipid, which is kind of ironic) they were caught up in a big storyline involving many other possible connections/love interests with some real conflict driving the love story. After the trial (which Marland ripped off from that old movie "Madam X") there wasn't much else for them to play that was interesting. I believe that is very close to what the Dobsons were planning. No quick wedding, possibly no wedding. As the Dobsons exited the show, Alan was going to be juggling a lot of women: Hope, Rita, Diane, Amanda's mother...they must have had a very big, very complex story planned beyond Alan and Hope getting married.

I don't think Fran Myers (Peggy) was interested in coming back permanently (she returned briefly during the rape storyline and I think that was it for her). She transitioned to working behind the camera as a soap writer. They put Sara and Justin together for a while, where they had a backstory but that got dropped. She married Alan's corrupt lawyer and when he died she was briefly paired with Adam. And then she basically did little other than act as therapist for various characters.

Good question! It was weird that Ed had a sudden godson no one ever heard of before. I think Kelly was created to be a kind of ideal romantic hero that young viewers would respond to. (Strangely enough, I think he was more popular with older women). I was one of those young viewers at the time. I thought he was an obnoxious jerk. (And still do). They tried to create a romance between him and Claire Ramsey--I think she was created just for that purpose. It went over like a lead balloon. Like Tim, he was a preteen back in the mid-70s. By the time the new set of young people hit town, they could have easily SORASed him a little. Holly became wealthy at a young age from an inheritance. I don't think she had a career back then. Not to say she couldn't have found one. Maybe as a businesswoman, as she was when she returned. If the Dobsons had stayed as writers of the show, I venture to guess that Ed and Holly would have become more than platonic friends.

You'll really hate this one because it's AWFUL. When Alan married Jackie it was a snazzy wedding on a yacht in the Mediterranean attended by European aristocrats and Arab shieks. Jackie wore a beautiful couture gown in a couple of shades of gold with Phillip giving her away. He married Hope in her grandmother's house populated with hostile wedding guests. Hope wore a dress that looked like it was made out of a tablecloth. The cake looked like they got it from Publix and they danced their first dance to Bert singing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart." (I SWEAR I didn't make that up). Now, you might be saying, "It's a Bauer family wedding, that's nice, it's homey and sweet." But it was ALL WRONG for the story and the characters. If she was marrying Ben, that would have made sense. She was marrying one of the richest men in the country and it seemed like an afterthought. Even though Marland kept Alan and Hope in front burner storylines (because they were a popular couple with the audience--he said that in interviews, I didn't) he just did not care much about the characters he inherited. Anyway, I also want to see it again, to confirm it was as bad as I remember it and now I won't rest until I know if Bill Bauer was there, too. 😂 By the way, @vetsoapfan is it possible you are thinking of Ed and Rita's wedding? A picture of them on their wedding day with the guests (Rita's in her traveling clothes after the ceremony) pops up in my Pinterest feed every now and then. Now I'm trying to remember if Bill was in THAT picture. If I see it in my feed again (searching for it yielded only a picture of Ed with Rita in her wedding gown), I'll let you know.

Nope, nope, nope. He was pretty bad in the beginning. He did a lot of sketchy stuff. He treated Holly (and Hillary) horribly during the rape trial. He tried to do a Spaulding takeover using Amanda's stock and money (he was her lawyer and financial advisor). Justin (who also had a bit of a sketchy past) was frequently lecturing him about his ambition and what he did to gratify it. It was Marland who decided to "redeem" him. Probably JVD's natural niceness made it easy for the audience to accept it.

The problem with their backstory is some of it was retconned. When Vanessa was introduced, their story went like this: Ross was a poor student (either college or law) when he fell madly in love with socialite Vanessa. They wanted to get married, but her father's business was failing. The only way for her to save it was to marry a guy named Gerald, who had a lot of money. Ross never totally got over it. It was not just because he genuinely loved her; it made him feel like he was nothing. It was used as a reason to explain why Ross was so ambitious and money mad. When divorcee Vanessa hit SF she was determined to get him back. She would show up at his apartment wearing nothing but a fur coat. You guess the rest, LOL. They briefly got back together a couple of times, but it never worked out. They changed it later so that she was in high school when they first knew each other. Ross was dating Lillian's sister Calla, but he also got involved with Vanessa. She became pregnant on her prom night but she never told him.

Ew. Joe Bradley was written as so obviously smarmy (like Andy). It would have made Holly look like an idiot. Diane sleeping with him made sense--it was strategic on her part. I believe I recall an article interviewing one or both the actors, who revealed they agreed to play their scenes as if they wanted to go to bed together and Marland picked up on it. If that's true, it wasn't even his idea. Anyway, no, no, no. No wonder MG left. Thanks @Paul Raven for posting that article about Dalton. How interesting that she said she chose to leave. The scuttlebut has always been that Marland was determined to write out the character. They must have paid her well if she could afford a mink coat after becoming unemployed. 😂 I just don't understand why they didn't kill her off. Then MAYBE Justin and Jackie getting custody of Phillip would have made a tiny bit of sense. Of course, the obvious route would have been to kill off Elizabeth, then the truth about Phillip coming out, and Alan fighting J&J for custody.

I don't see him, but looks like some of the guests might have been cut out, so the mystery is still not solved! Thanks for posting this, I would been looking for it half the night.

I hate to pile on your doubt, but I don't recall Bill Bauer being at Alan and Hope's wedding, either. The wedding episode is not available online, but one of the anniversary compilations includes a brief clip of Mike walking Hope in her wedding gown down the stairs in Bert's house. In fact, someone posted that here fairly recently and I don't remember seeing Bill Bauer among the guests. Since they had all the guests facing towards the camera and not turning away from it to look at Hope as she came down the stairs (by the way, what was THAT about, that was a very strange choice by the director), again, I'm kind of sure he wasn't there. However, one can't discount cognetive dissonance--since I didn't expect to see him there, he might not have registered, especially since it's a really short clip. Also, we were too busy making fun of Hope's hideous wedding gown, another reason he might not have registered. Does anyone remember which anniversary compilation that was? Now I really want to take a good look at it, LOL.

I was thinking that, too. Maybe instead of a murder mystery, it would have been "Who shot Andy?" Or "Who shoved Andy so hard he hit his head and is now in a coma?" Or something like that. Yeah, he made him SO bad, SO fast. He's beating up Katie, he's gathering blackmailing info, I think he was embezzeling, he was chasing Hope because he thought he would get some of her eventual divorce settlement...Roger did a lot of that stuff, too, but it built up over years, not months.

He was my favorite Frank. And I saw DIrty Harry when it first came out. It's sad that some people get typecast.

Oh, yeah, I think you're probably right. Yikes, I guess we're lucky Zaslow left when he did. No, he did not write her in that way. While she was always portrayed as someone who was upwardly mobile, Marland made that more crass than the Dobsons did. Rita really loved Ed, but it didn't hurt he was successful doctor who could buy her that nice house. She was pretty aggressive about persuing him after he and Holly broke up, but she genuinely cared for him and I think was genuinely jealous of his residual feelings for Holly. She really was a dedicated nurse, not someone who wanted to live a life of leisure. She was furious when he made her quit her job and take care of Christina (not sure I can blame her very much) almost like a penance because she didn't come forward soon enough about what Roger did to her. Like Jackie, she had a lot of layers to her. Yes, she was insecure, because of her humble background and her aspirations. Under Marland, he had her become more like Nola--wanting to put on airs, live large, I guess you could say? I'm not sure if it's still available online, but there is episode where she's telling Sara she was sick of pretending she didn't want the things she wanted out of life. She felt like Ed held her back, that he was content with a blah middle-class existence. There were lots of implications that she wanted the kind of life the Spauldings lived. Whereas the Dobsons portrayed Alan and Rita's attraction as mainly sexual, like two people who just vibed, not necessarily that they would fall in love or that Rita was after his money and social position. If she had stayed on the show, I'm fairly certain Marland was going to have her make a play to become the next Mrs. Spaulding. Which would make her kind of horrible, since Hope was her pregnant niece. We'll never know now. I wish there was more from that time period available, the affair and the fall-out from it.

Frank's birthday is really interesting. The date, not the year. I remember the scene where Kim asked Jill about their birthdays and she mentioned Frank was a Gemini. Frank was obviously modeled after John F. Kennedy. Frank was supposed to be killed off very early in the show. I think Labine and Mayer might have even said that in interviews, I'm not sure. He was going to be the tragic lost son who was cut down before he could reach his full potential. It might be a total coincidence, but Kennedy was a Gemini and his birth date was May 29. (If it was exactly the same date, I would be convinced it wasn't a coincidence). (Jill was totally a Leo 😂).

"Mad at Ross" was probably her excuse for most of her affairs back then. 😂 I wonder if the Diane murder storyline was originally meant to be the Andy murder storyline. Maybe when Sofia told them she wanted to leave they changed it, especially since Andy didn't click with the audience the way they hoped he would. (I think he was Marland's attempt to create his own Roger).

OH MY GOD. Is there one pair of pants in SF Vanessa DIDN'T get into back then? I must have blanked this one out. I had NO memory that she ever slept with Andy and I'm wondering why, other than promiscuity, would she do such a thing.

I think the Faux Bauers happened during those messy years when there were a lot of head writer changes. I'm not even sure Kobe was still producer. Hmm. Long knew how to bring in new characters and even whole families and integrate them into the show. It helped that the Lewises were talked about for 2 years and already had Josh and Trish on the canvas, but she understood you don't have people hanging in the background, hoping the audience takes to them. Billy was immediately embroiled in business stuff and soon was courting Vanessa, Mindy arrived and became involved with Phillip, leading not long after to the 4 Muskateers. Then she brought in HB and Reva, and we all know how that went... The same with the Coopers. Frank was just hanging around a little at first, but the way she introduced Harley was really unusual--a pregnant teen in labor being rushed to the hospital and crashed into by Alan Michael and Dinah on a motorcycle. Then soon after that handing over her baby for adoption, as if she hardly cared about her. She made Harley compelling right away. If I'm going to ding her for something, it's the cancer story. I thought that was horrible and even dangerous to do a story about a cancer cured with prayer, or good vibes, or whatever. Clearly, they wanted to make Johnny a major hero/hunk with or without his family, but it never really took. I do give him credit for many things. I think the way he handled the Roger wrap-up was great--he won an Emmy for it and he deserved it. He couldn't help Pickett and eventually Kasdorf leaving. He recognized Lisa Brown was special and built a family around her, a blue color family, something that you saw less and less of on soaps during 80s. I didn't mean to give the impression that I hated everything he did. GL was my show back then. She was Trish's sorority sister. So they were friends, but that doesn't necessarily mean she knew Trish's family well. Billy was probably married, either to Mindy's mother or Reva at the time, so there would have been no reason for them to be involved much, even if she had met him.

I always liked Teri, too, and think it's a shame they squandered her when they had her on the show. All this discussion we've been having about the baby Phillip story makes me realize what they did wrong: aside from Johnny, they never gave them or put them in major storylines. (And in Johnny's case, his job was usually to have his shirt off as much as possible). Even before the Spauldings officially hit town, they were already in the story, connected to Jackie and Justin through her flashbacks about what happened before and after Phillip was born. Then they arrive, and the first time Mike meets Elizabeth, he's flirting with her in front of her oblivious husband. They quickly set up years of story featuring these characters, while connecting them to several people already on the canvas. And as time went on, their connections to other characters spread out: Ed, Rita, Roger, Sara, Ben, Hope, etc., until they were fully integrated into the show. I think Jack and Lainie were on for a year, maybe? As far as I can recall, they never did anything like that for them. I just remember them hanging around in the background a lot. Sure, they weren't rich jetsetters, but somehow GL came up with major storylines for Bill and Bert back in the day. I don't know how they thought just putting these characters in front of the camera was going to result in them becoming the new heads of the Bauer family. A total, self-inflicted flop.

Lots to digest here, board is moving fast! Eh, I don't feel sorry for Marland or how his stint on GL ended. Nobody liked the Carrie story but him and Jane Elliot. He was SO focused on it, the rest of the show was suffering. He stuck Amanda in that horrendous Mark Evans story, had Alan and Hope sidelined in their little cottage, had Vanessa acting like a cougar before anyone coined the term, turned Ross into an idiot (JVD made jokes about it, but you could tell he didn't like it), made the insane decision to kill off Jackie, stuck Kelly and Morgan in a dull "marriage vs. career" story...He was playing favorites. I'm sure most writers do that, but it was to the point that it was really hurting the show. I believe Potter left not long after Marland quit. So it's an interesting question of how much longer he would have lasted on the show even if Potter hadn't told him Elliot was being fired. Under that scenario, would Kobe had been brought in? Would she (or any new producer) have wanted him to continue as writer? Even though we often bash Kobe, there's no denying she and and Long (and Ryder) gave GL a big shot in the arm those first couple of years. If she had refrained from decimating most of the Dobsons' and Marland's characters...oh, the possibilities. I love, love, LOVE this idea! I have frequently thought they should have brought Morgan back. Walker was just the right age at the time to play Morgan. They could have had Morgan retired from modeling and come back as an attorney, so then Ross would not have been the lone attornery in the main cast. They wrote one for him for a short time--that German professor who was dying. Bert had befriended him and he was teaching Rick German. I remember thinking, "Steve should be playing these scenes." Maybe he was supposed to. Maybe Schnabel turned down a chance to do a short-term appearance as Steve, because it was a little strange that Bert was deeply mourning someone she knew for a very short time. Whereas if it had been STEVE...