DeeVee

How did I forget this one??? I must have blocked it from my memory. Not only terrible, incredibly irresponsible. Still can't believe the network and P&G signed off on it. You're welcome. Lots of drama and upheaval behind the scenes. It's hard to keep track of it!

Wow, great list! You missed a few who were out in 1983: Hope Evie Mrs. Renfield (I THINK she left in 83, but it might have been 82.)

I have no inside information, but I strongly suspect that the Dreaming Death story was not entirely her fault. I can practically hear a network executive saying, "We need to compete with General Hospital, write an Ice Princess story!" Even though I loathed that story, I'm inclined to give her a break. Bringing back Brandon from the dead for the Barbados story--ugh. Maybe if they had taken advantage of the new Spaulding family members it created it wouldn't have felt like a waste of time. The storyline overall was not terrible, they needed a spoiler for Reva and Josh, but I hated her making Alan one of Reva's needy puppy dogs. The return of Roger--again, likely not her idea. It's not bad that they brought him back, but the execution of his return was awful. The silly mask, the silly accent, making him an ex-CIA spook like that redeemed him. Then there was Alan--who at this point in the story had literally NO reason to kill him (that slate had been wiped clean years before) chasing him with a gun. Had Alan ever touched a gun before this? I don't think so. I get they had decided to remove Alan from the canvas, but the whole thing was totally absurd.

No, that happened earlier. In late 1979, the Dobsons were writing GL and were asked to switch with Marland, who was doing a stint at ATWT. He went back to ATWT a year or two after he quit GL over Jane Elliot being fired. When Marland quit GL, he was briefly replace by Pat Falken Smith, then there were a bunch of other writers that came and went after her, and then Pam Long took over. Rebecca Hollen (Trish) said in The Locher Room that she and Jerry were very keen on being paired, but for some reason it never really took off. It is odd that outside of that one blip where she was used to break up Alan and Hope and then was the excuse for Alan to go after Ross, she never got a major story. Even then, I think she was only put in there because she was the one female character not involved in a major story who could credibly be inserted into the Spaulding office. It was weird that Alan was ready to toss his marriage for her. She was SO much like Hope, she was even an alcoholic like Hope. Obviously, it was story tossed together very quickly to get Hope off the canvas. Anyway, it's a shame they never gave Hollen a strong story, especially considering how Long made the Lewises so prominent. I don't know about eunuch, but I was thinking today while watching one of the Dreaming Death episodes that Warren always acted like he had a huge sign around his neck that said "Loser." A very ineffective villain.

The time period here was 1981. Alan and Hope were very front burner for almost that entire year. After Hope gives birth, the story is about the Diane/Joe Bradley murders. Because of evidence Diane had about Alan's association with Roger, Alan takes Hope and the baby out of the country. Mike gets to do the truth, justice, and the American way thing and tracks Alan down. Alan could have left Mike to die, but he didn't, and then he turned himself in. So Marland did a redemption arc for him. He paid for his crimes with Roger and went to jail. When he came out, he quit Spaulding. He and Hope (who forgave everything, yes, Marland never gave her anything significant to do outside of Alan) went to live in a smaller house and were on the back burner for a while. Alan and Mike were even friendly for a time. Then Marland abruptly left the show. I doubt he would have left Alan and Hope on the back burner. I'm pretty sure the plan was to bring back Rita. Originally, she was going to come back to cause trouble for Ed and Vanessa, but they realized that pairing wasn't working, so they brought in Maureen for Ed. They strongly hinted Rita was pregnant when she left town, and the thinking is she would have sashayed back to Springfield with a kid to blow up Ed and Maureen and Alan and Hope. When new writers came in, they probably didn't want to bring back a character that was off the canvas before they started. Also, executive producer Allen Potter left soon after Marland. If he had still been there he might have pushed the new writers to bring back Rita. The writers before Pam Long took over started showing fissures in Alan and Hope's marriage and put Alan back in charge of Spaulding, so they obviously didn't want to keep them as happy and boring. When Gail Kobe took over as EP she wanted to get rid of a bunch of characters, including Hope, so they had Alan completely revert back to the way he was before he married Hope. Bernau's first exit wasn't until 1983. I don't know if that was because of his illness. It was probably the end of his second 3 year contract so he might have just wanted to take a break.

Thanks for posting this! From what I recall, there were a couple of soap columnists who were big Marland admirers. One for certain was Michael Logan. The article that was posted recently with his comments on the GL 50th Anniversary tribute leaving out the Nola fantasies and making it sound like that was one of soap opera's finest achievements is a perfect example of his admiration for Marland. Now, my thoughts on this article. I know I've been shredding Marland quite a bit, but I think some of the criticism here is off. First of all, Alan and Hope had been married for a year, of course they were going to have major conflict. It's either that or have them back-burnered. Why would any fan want that? Was I, as a fan of the pairing, thrilled about the affair with Rita at the time? No, but you weren't supposed to be. It made perfect sense because it had been foreshadowed for AGES. Even going back to the Dobsons, I think even before they put Alan and Hope together. They had these scenes where they weren't exactly flirting, but they were very "simpatico." Alan and Rita were like two sides of the same coin: a bit narcissistic, sensual, both adoring living the "good life." Something stalwart members of the middle class like Ed or Hope never understood. Of course they were going to get together at some point. In fact, if Kasdorf had not left the show, I am absolutely convinced that this would have been more than a passing affair story. It seems to me the plan was to have a long-term love triangle, kind of like Alice/Steve/Rachel on Another World. Alan truly loving sweet, faithful Hope while still being sexually drawn to Rita, and Rita wanting an upgrade in lifestyle through Alan. They seemed to be building it up in the soap mags (lots of pictures of the three characters together). That got cut off abruptly because of Kasdorf's exit so Alan and Hope were reunited fairly quickly, IMO. The storyline to do with them that should have gotten raked over the coals was the absurd decision by Elizabeth to give custody of Philip to Jackie and Justin without telling Philip he was their son. Since Hope was on Elizabeth's side, it was the issue that caused a rift between Alan and Hope and gave him the excuse the step out on her. But it made no logical sense. (Neither did Diane blackmailing Ross to convince Alan to keep Philip out of his will because he wasn't his biological son. Alan could have left his money to a charity for homeless cats if he wanted to). I don't disagree with her complaining about a lack of a Roger-type villain, but Andy was Roger Lite--abusive to women, a guy who gathered information for blackmail, etc., without the backstory and character connections Roger had. The obvious succesor to Roger was Diane. Definitely a mistake to kill her off. As for the teen stories--we have all complained about them. But from those stories evolved some major characters, like Josh and Nola.

O.K., I'm going to say it. I did not have a way to articulate it back then, but I do now: Carrie was Marland's Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She was there to teach Ross to embrace life and not care so much about the things that mattered to him before: becoming rich and successful. She got him to jog and eat healthy and toss his lawyer suits in favor of turtleneck sweaters and safari jackets. That's how you knew he was "loosening up." She had an almost insanely positive attitude. Ross would order her an orange juice and she would act like it was the greatest thing anyone had ever done for her. I have loved Jane Elliot in practically every other role she has played, but found her cringy in this one. As someone pointed out earlier, this was a personality she developed to protect herself from all the terrible things that happened to the original Carrie when her husband killed himself. But why Ross didn't run screaming in the other direction, I'll never know.

Wasn't HTSAM sacrificed so they would have room in the lineup to expand Another World? If so, how ironic. WHAAAAT? I'm so glad I was tapped out of GL during this period. When Marland was putting together his young adult crew there was lots of chem testing going on. They tested out Tony and Josh with almost anyone who wore a skirt who wasn't related to them. Josh and Nola briefly flirted while Nola was pregnant.

I can't imagine Jerry saying anything blatantly negative about any of the actors he worked with, but he certainly seemed to have a problem with the storyline. In The Locher Room he made quasi-joking comments about how Ross was the stupid husband during that story. Now I have to read the book! Sounds like there's lots of tea in it. I don't recall that about Kelly but you're not wrong that soaps changed. There was talk during the mid-late 1970s that soaps were going to become more explicit, that they might even feature nudity eventually. I wish I could remember what magazine it was that had an article not only saying this, but giving examples from existing soaps how scenes would be changed to become more explicit. This was before cable existed in most homes. The show that was supposed to be the vanguard was called How to Survive a Marriage, which tackled a lot of social issues and was more open about sexual matters. It was a flop, so that might be one reason soaps pulled back on these issues by the 1980s. I think the difference is pretty obvious when you look at the 1979 episodes of GL. Not only in the incredibly realistic and mature way they handled the Roger/Holly rape storyline. There was a whole storyline about how Rita wasn't able to have an orgasm during sex with Ed. (Not because he was a dud in the bedroom, but because of all the stress in their marriage). They never used the "O" word (much like the Seinfeld "Master of Your Domain" episode never used the "M" word) but you knew exactly what they were talking about. I can't even begin to imagine a story like that happening during the 80s, and not just during Marland's tenure. There are probably multiple reasons for this change. The country becoming more conservative, yes, possibly the AIDS the crisis. Also perhaps how everyone was chasing GH's ratings. Even a show that started out very focused on personal and sexual matters like Ryan's Hope was ditching that for mob stories and the like by the 80s.

This is fascinating! My assumption back then was that Zimmer was Long's muse the same way Elliot and Brown were Marland's muses. I've been watching Reva's intro episodes. After they get past the "trashy ex-wife blows into town to cause trouble" bit and it becomes about Reva and Josh, I have to say it's very compelling. The scenes between KZ and RN seem real and sincere. Long was very good at writing stories about the past impacting the present. If there was ever any of that during his tenure, it was down to the actors. Jerry and Maeve were great in their scenes and it's a shame that he didn't give Ross and Vanessa a long-term love story. Instead, he paired her with Ed (sad trombone noise) or had her bouncing around from one affair to the next. It took Long to give her a real love story. Ross was paired with Carrie, and I don't see how that was ever going to be anything but a fairly short-term story. Too bad the Alan/Rita affair scenes aren't anywhere on YT that I know of, they had great chemistry. One of the things that I thought was a missed opportunity was how Marland built up Alan and Jennifer's youthful affair as this big deal and when they see each other again...nothing. They were always very cool towards each other. This is so true. The only female characters that seemed to interest him were Carrie and Nola. The Dobsons wrote beautifully nuanced women. If you wrote down on a piece of paper all the things Jackie, Rita, Holly, and Amanda did, you might think, "Wow, what a bunch of selfish bitches." But somehow they managed to get you to feel empathy for them. Then when Long came in, all the women became far stronger. It's too bad she had to write out Hope, who was doomed to stay entirely in Alan's sphere under Marland. Even though her exit story was rushed and poorly motivated (Alan went from loving Hope one day to acting like she broke into his house the next) it was nice to see her evolve into a stronger person. Even though I was a fan of them as a couple, her last scenes where she tore Alan a new one for the way he treated her were very gratifying.

I think you can add Hillary to that list. Outside of the Roger story, she didn't do much except work at Cedars. They never made it feel like she was a part of the Bauers, even taking into account how she became a Bauer. That goes for all the writers, she always seemed apart from them. Which is too bad, because they could have used her to bulk up the Bauer family as other core families took over more. OMG, wasn't John the guy who took advantage of Kim having amnesia and that's how Andy was conceived? Yikes.

No, not at all. Marland seemed to be saying that the final decision always rested with him. If Long had to be talked into Zimmer, then it would seem she didn't have the same level of power as he did. Or perhaps she was more inclined to compromise than he was.

Thank you so much for posting this! Love interviews with writers. Hmmmm...I HATED Kelly and still do all these decades later. 😂 (Nothing against JWS, who is an excellent actor. It's no surprise he's had a very strong post-soap career). While I would rank Marland as number 2 on a list of GL headwriters (after the Dobsons), there are some things he did that still drive me right up the wall. One is how he made his so-called "heroic" characters a bunch of sanctimonious, preachy hypocrites, and that includes Kelly. He was always lecturing Morgan about her behavior, treating her like she was his little sister or child. Even after they had sex, he was lecturing her because she wanted to keep on having sex and he was like, no it's wrong. He seduced a minor and still acted like he had possession of the high moral ground. Which makes their romance creepy, in my opinion. (He did something similar with the Scotty/Laura relationship on GH, IIRC). I felt this way back then, and I was in the demographic they were targeting. Then there's what he did to Mike Bauer. I liked Mike when the Dobsons wrote him. Totally understood where the guy was coming from. He hated Alan because he wrecked his romance with Elizabeth and was afraid he would hurt Hope. But once Marland got his mits on the character, it wasn't about a personal grievance anymore. He was going after Alan for truth, justice, and the American way! He'd make speeches about Alan's terrible values when just a few months earlier he was banging Elizabeth in a hotel room while she was married to Justin. One of the most insane scenes was between Elizabeth and Mike while she was in therapy in Switzerland. She goes on and on about how good she feels with Mike because he's so honest and she totally trusts him. Then in the very next breath she tells him she knows he lied to her about Philip being her son. But that was O.K. because Mike had the right values, or whatever. This is a VERY interesting comment. As far as I know, there were at least two times Pam Long was vetoed about a casting choice. She didn't want Kim Zimmer as Reva, or at least she was not her first choice. TV Guide did an article about the casting for teenager Samantha Marler. I don't recall the name of the actress she did want, but she was overruled and Suzy Cote was cast instead. So sounds like he had an unusual amount of power for a head writer. Sheds light on why he could walk when Jane Elliot was fired without suffering career consequenses. I don't get what he meant here, either. Didn't Maureen Garrett want to leave? Then the rest in her orbit kind of had to go, too. I've heard he either had something against Lezlie Dalton or just really didn't like the character of Elizabeth. Mowery was obviously not working out as Jackie, but killing her off before the resolution of the Philip story was crazy. I believe his original plan was to have one of Carrie's alternate personalities murder her, which is even wilder. How he thought that wouldn't naturally put an end to the Carrie story is extremely puzzing. I think Lainie was slated for a romance with Ed (or possibly a problematic crush). That's what the Dobsons seemed to be setting up at the end of their run. Instead, Marland stuck her in Mike's law office answering phones until he sent her out of town. And it's strange how Evie stuck around for as long as she did, doing close to nothing. My theory is he kept her because he was planning to bring back Rita at some point.

That is correct. She received the bulk of his estate, including his Spaulding stock. Philip got money as well as material stuff like Brandon's stamp collection, but nothing close to what Amanda got. It made her so powerful at Spaulding that Alan had no choice but to work with her. He even talked about her taking over before he knew she was his daughter.

There's also a scene after Long took over between Amanda and Billy. They often talked about her being a savvy businesswoman. In this scene she actually IS one, taking on Billy Lewis and more than holding her own. There's also a sparky vibe between Cullen and Clarke. Amanda was already on the way out at this point, but nice to image the what could have been if they had done an Amanda/Ross/Billy/Vanessa quadrangle.

Toby.

I'm guessing you never saw the Dobsons' version of Amanda, because she was WAY different from Marland's version, and much more interesting. Yes, she was thoroughly under Lucille's thumb, yes, she was extremely neurotic. Lucille was portrayed as even more of a psycho than under Marland, regardless of her later murder attempts. She had Amanda so freaked out about men and sex that Amanda couldn't go through with her wedding night. (Her husband was a guy named Gordon. You can see him in some of the 1979 episodes as he was Hope's boss). As Amanda becomes attracted to Ben (still married to Eve), she decides to give that sex thing another whirl. She seduces her husband and realizes, hey, she really likes sex! He is thrilled and thinks they are back together. She's like, "Oh, yeah, this was nice, but I still want a divorce. See ya!" Her music teacher notices her piano playing suddenly has passion that it had previously lacked. She starts picking up men. Lucille insists Ben look for her while she's having one of these trysts. (By the way, this episode is somewhere on YT). He finds her and realizes she had sex with some rando. He insists on driving her home and gives her a lecture about not living her life like this. They get caught in a storm and end up taking shelter in a barn, stripping off wet clothes. She starts vamping him even though she slept with another guy like an hour before! Ben manages to resist temptation but they do kiss. So the wishy-washy version of Amanda is entirely a Marland creation. In fact, it's stunning to see the difference in Amanda once Long takes over. Even though it was for a short time, she portrayed Amanda as at least having a spine. As for the Poser version, did I love Amanda being a madam? Nah, that I thought was dumb. But is it completely out of the question that she would be sexy with that mean girl streak? Not really!

Yeah, they really wrecked Alan's character when they brought him back in '95. I don't like to dump all over actors because sometimes it's just a case of miscasting and poor writing, but Raines never worked for me as Alan. Still can't believe he lasted as long as he did. They turned Alan into a two dimensional villain. He was far more complex during his initial run. Probably very few people behind the scenes were still there from when Alan was on during the 70s and 80s. Chris Bernau's portrayal of Alan was as iconic as Michael Zaslow's was of Roger. The two of them in conflict was prime soap viewing. Many episodes from that period are available on YouTube. From early 1979 (the beginning of the Holy/Roger rape story) through Roger's first exit. I highly recommend you give them a gander at some point.

True, however, Ed was considered Blake/Christina's legal father and Rick was her "brother." (Yes, I know, they eventually slept together, which was even ickier than Blake sleeping with Alan). It's hard to believe they never got pictures and never visited her. I know, I know, it's a soap opera. Maybe they explained it (like Holly's husband didn't want her ex around, or something) but it makes me think again that initially Blake was not supposed to be Christina.

Wasn't part of it also that Blake was not originally conceived to be Christina (Roger and Holly's daughter)? I seem to recall that in the beginning Blake had some kind of secret. She was always on the phone with someone but it seemed like she was talking to someone younger than herself. And then when they decided to bring back Zaslow, certainly Stringfield looked more like she could be Roger and Holly's kid. Maybe this is wishful thinking because I hate to think they had Alan and Blake sleep together knowing all the time she was the little girl who used to live next door to him. Watching that scene many years later knowing she would turn out to be Christina was a tad traumatic for me. 😄 Anyway, I liked Dennehy, I felt at the time she got a dirty deal, but it's hard to argue against Stringfield. She was very believable as Roger's progeny.

It is four decades ago, so I absolutely could be remembering it incorrectly. I'd be curious to see the interview, too. My memories of Stewart's interviews are of him complaining about a lot of things. Perhaps I'm being unfair to him. I guess they thought because of the many traumas Beth had suffered they could get away with some of the stuff they wrote for her during that period. It was really difficult to watch sometimes.

I remember reading an interview with Stewart where he complained that the women they were putting him with weren't young enough. (I think this was when he was paired with Trish, who was supposed to be around the same age as Hope). I'm going on memory, but I'm pretty sure he said he had suggested to TPTB that they pair him with Trudy, played by Amy Steel. She was a teen character who was friends with Morgan and dating Tim. Something I'm really glad they never took him up on.

So true! The whole art theft mess was one my least favorite storylines. The idea that Alan would have stolen art for kicks is so dumb. Almost as dumb as making him into a villain plucked out of a James Bond movie for the Dreaming Death storyline.

Carrie Mowery never hit it right as Jackie Marler, in my opinion. She wasn't a bad actress, she just wasn't Jackie. Larkin Malloy. I know a lot people disliked him as Kyle. I think he was a good actor, thought he was fine on EON and AMC, but for some reason he seemed out of place on GL. Michael Wilding, Jr. as Jackson. Again, I had nothing especially against him, he was O.K., unless you have a problem with nepo baby casting. But what was he doing there other than pining after Beth? He even looked confused a lot of the time. Daniel Pilon. I know he was likely always meant to be a temporary replacement. And on paper, he should have been an adequate replacement for Bernau, since he played a very similar character on RH. But MAN, he just melted into the wallpaper. It didn't help that a majority of his scenes were with two actresses who would wipe you off the screen if you didn't meet them on their level. I'd agree with both of these. I watched a few episodes of Texas recently and was surprised by how much I liked Larsen in that role. Loved Pennock on Dark Shadows, but he was seriously miscast as Justin.

I found his older channel, but it only has a few GL episodes. 😢 Yikes, I hope we don't lose Spauldingfield. I am really enjoying watching what they have been uploading the past few weeks. I love that they are uploading the episodes mostly in order of air date. It has been fascinating to watch the show transition from the end of the Marland era, through the interim writers, to the early part of Long's first tenure. Thanks! I don't remember these. I wasn't watching AMC or GH much during the mid 90s.