DeeVee

I agree about Rita lying her kid is Alan's and that it really is Ed's. It was implied that Rita's endgame was to become the next Mrs. Alan Spaulding. And think of poor Mo, who would eventually find out Ed had ANOTHER kid that wasn't hers. Jeez, so much great potential drama. Get two really good actresses to play Hope and Rita, some intense drama, and maybe PS wouldn't have seemed so bored. Instead we got that stupid summer camp story. I believe the reason they paired Reva with Alan was because he took Kyle's place in the Josh/Reva story. If Malloy had stayed, it never would have happened, IMO. I don't see why Malloy couldn't have been replaced. Oh, well. Self-made millionaire attracted to Reva? Sure. But patrician Alan? Maybe as a hidden mistress, but as the love of his life? Please. The early scenes between Alan and Reva showed it perfectly. That was when he hired her to break up Billy and Vanessa. She tried desperately to vamp him and his attitude was, "Are you for real?" It's kind of funny, actually. She was not the right age. I think Sharon Gabet could have been a good replacement for Lenore. She had the sexy thing without being too obvious about it. When EON ended, she went to AW because she was still on contract with P&G. Too bad they didn't think to bring her to GL as Rita. I also thought of Judith, but yeah, she's a cooler type sexy than Rita was supposed to be. Speaking of Gabet, I just thought of another good possibility for Hope: Terry Davis, who played April, Gabet's good-girl opposite on EON. She briefly did Santa Barbara early in 1986, but after that would have been available.

Yes, the perfect timing to bring back Hope (and Rita, too) was when CB returned in 1986. 1986, the year of the head writers revolving door. ☹️ I think people have mentioned that around that time it was being planned. There's even a scene early in his 1986 return between Alan and Ed where Alan randomly brings up Rita, Once they SORASed Alan Michael, they made it difficult (though not impossible) to bring Hope back. True, Rita was not a brash sex kitten. Everything I've seen KZ in, she tended to play everything rather large. Not a whole lot of subtlety. Which worked for Reva.

I honestly can't see her as Hope. If she were to have replaced Elvera (possible, since she came in right after Elvera exited the show) I just don't see it working. She had an innate and obvious sex appeal back then. That was important for Nola and Reva, not so much for Hope. Another issue is that I don't believe she ever had any real chemistry with Chris. Mainly because I think she needed to dominate scenes. They really clashed. (I don't mean personally, though she's hinted that they did a little in her memoir and in interviews). That's why RN was a such good screen partner for her--he's way more laid back. It wasn't so bad when Alan was playing the spoiler in her romance with Josh (O.K., I"m lying, I couldn't stand the two of them together, LOL)--but the two of them playing a real romantic couple with a long history? Even after they had broken up? No, I don't see it working. Once Chis exited in 1984--who would they have paired her with? Without the history between the characters like what Reva and Josh shared, I just don't see a Josh and Hope pairing working. Ross? Who knows, I wouldn't have thought to put Sherry Stringfield with him, but Sherry was playing a manipulative character and that was part of why they were an interesting pairing, at least in the beginning, Here's an idea--if they were to bring her in as someone else, maybe Rita? In that case, KZ's obvious sex appeal would have worked far better for the character. But then, the lack of chemistry with Chris would have been a problem there, too.

OMG, I thought the same exact thing about her! She definitely has that vibe. I wish she was a little less cartoony. Leslie, too. It's not necessary to make the villains so over-the-top. Bring it down a couple of notches. Well, now you all have me hopeful that they're going to kill off Tomas. I'll cry if they don't.

Birgitta left soaps after LOL ended--she was offered a role on Y&R but declined. Then she went back to Europe for a while. Apparently, she never returned to acting. Her obituary (she passed in 2024) says she worked for Saks Fifth Avenue. I adored her when she was on LOL, my mom and I were GLUED to the TV when she played the bigamy story with Christopher Reeve. Then the show made her into one of their heroines, but unfortunately at that point LOL was in its decline. Veleka also seemed to leave soaps around the early 1980s. Not sure why. I've said before I think Marcia would have been a very good Hope. When SFT went off the air GL should have snapped up both Mary Stuart and Marcia, as that was a P&G soap and they were likely still on contract. But that was in 1986 when GL was a mess with revolving door of head writers, so...

This is all reminding me of the Locher Room interview with Vincent Irizarry who talked about his first stint on GL and said there was a male actor who harrassed him (not sexually, just was kind of menacing/annoying). He refused to name the actor. At first, it seemed like it had to be Grant Alexander because who else would have been threatened by him. But Grant has a reputation of being nice to newbies. Over at the GL board we concluded it might have been Greg Beecroft, who played Tony Reardon. Apparently, he didn't behave that great when he was at ATWT either. So we don't know for sure that was the case, maybe someone else does?

A decade later NBC would be appointment TV. I looked up Fantasies. It did not have just soap stars from GH. I was pretty certain I remembered Peter Bergman in it, and looking it up confirmed that. But they also had Robert S. Woods and John Gabriel, along with Bergman, so it was ABC soap stars. This just goes to show how strong a draw soaps were back then. There was a feature film around that time called Young Doctors in Love that was a spoof of soaps. I had the opportunity to see a raw print of the film that was shown to theater bookers because I knew someone who did that and he knew I liked soaps. It starred Michael McKean and Sean Young. It was packed with cameos by soap stars, most of them from GH, but from other shows, too, including Kin Shriner, Janine Turner, Demi Moore (yeah, they were really pushing her), Jackie Zeman, Stuart Damon, etc. It was directed by Gary Marshall so it wasn't completely awful, but there was no, um, affection for the genre so a lot of jokes landed like lead. BTW, the theater bookers thought it was effing hilarious. I was a representative of the audience they were making the film for and I kept looking around, thinking, "What's wrong with you people? It's not that funny." Possibly some were plants by the studios to encourange the bookers to book the film, I don't know. Definitely one of the most bizarre movie going experiences of my life.

When was it ever? He's a star, not an actor. In the right role he can be good. Usually in comedy. I liked him in Burn After Reading. But people saying he’s due an Oscar...oh, please.

I must have dreamed Hutton being on GL because it sounds like only Murphy appeared on the show. I love that the person who wrote the review had a crush on Murphy because I did, too, going back to when he was on the show Alias Smith & Jones. 😁 Another reason I probably forced myself to sit through the movie.

Oooh, I think I know which one you're talking about. I don't remember the title, but Pleshette played a soap writer. It was a murder mystery, and members of the cast were getting killed off on the soap. Does that sound right? The Cradle Will Rock thing didn't just have the soap characters/actors play roles in the movie, they wrote into episodes of GL the leads of the movie--Ben Murphy and I want to say Lauren Hutton? Murphy played a doctor. I recall a scene on GL, not in the movie, where Hope comes to his office to talk to him. An interesting concept but I don't think it went much further than that.

I was not watching live so I didn't see the chat. I remember that movie The Cradle Will Fall, yes it was a terrible TV movie based on a wildy popular bestseller at the time. CBS was doing an experiment where they were going to tie in soaps with TV movies to see if they could get soap viewers to tune in to the TV movies. I'm not sure if they did it with other soaps, but since GL was my show I did watch it (so yeah, it worked, because I read the book and thought it was trash, lol). The funny, or maybe kind of sad, part about this is that they had Hope involved in hospital business--which wasn't the case on the soap. At all. All of a sudden, she was doing stuff that had no connection to Alan. It was kind of wild because it was like, why weren't they doing this with Hope on GL? It should have been a wake-up moment for the writers to realize that the problem with her character was how they kept her tethered so tightly to Alan. Jerry ver Dorn also did the movie, which gave Ross and Hope some scenes together, and hells bells, what an opportunity to have created an interesting quadrangle with Alan/Hope/Ross/Trish. I gather from what others have said about her firing was that Kobe was making a point--that nobody was safe. I honestly do not understand why the network let her get away with this. Even if you weren't a fan of Roussel or Hope at that time, they eviscerated the cast. In the short-term it didn't hurt the show, but in the long-term it was catestrophic. I can understand them not bringing her back in 1997--a lot of fans wouldn't have even remembered her.

Clearly, Carl's resemblence to Chris was a big advantage to getting that part. I'm guessing that they knew there was something to that Brad Pitt kid and they should call him back in even if he was wrong for the part. Possibly if another part came up later that would be right for him. Maybe that's how he got the brief stint at AW, which I think happened around this time.

I'm only at the part where Carl got cast as A-M, but I can't help thinking: They had Brad Pitt auditioning, who was clearly wrong for the part, but instead of creating a character for him, they did it for--Frank D. For some reason, this is hilarious to me. 😂

In soap years he's around 47 and has a grandchild by now. 😂

If that had happened, Harley would have beat Reva in the "sleeping your way through a whole family" Olympics. But thanks for the really gross images in my head. Alan and Beth were bad enough.

He was so forgettable I forgot about him. 😂

You just reminded me! Tony and Annabelle had at least one kid: a boy named Tommy. Bea and Maureen went to visit and they even did some scenes of them taking care of the baby. So add Tommy Reardon to the list. That's one of my pet peeves about the show. Phillip spreads the Marler pollen almost literally everywhere. Meanwhile, none of Alan or Alex's biological children had children. It's ridiculous and I can't understand why TPTB never stopped to think about this. I can only imagine it was due to the belief that GA was their biggest star except for KZ. Who also had a heck of a lot of children for someone who it was thought was going to have difficutly having anymore babies at one point.

If you're going to include Stacy, I would include a reimagined/less annoying J. Chamberlain. India's daughter Dory. Rita's kid, who was never brought into the story. (It was never confirmed she had one, but they were setting that up for ages). And they could always invent children for Alan Michael, Amanda (so not every Spaulding descendant is actually a Marler), Nick, Samantha, Trish and Mindy Lewis, etc.

Boy, that's mean, doing it on April Fools Day. What would a revival look like? The return of Reva and Zimmer taking over again? The children of Bill, Lizzie, Michelle, etc., with new actors? Going back into the history of the show with recast Bauers, etc.?

While I agree with everything you're saying here, the problem is likely money. More sets would be needed, more extras and day players and recurring characters. That's why we don't see a lot of this stuff, and it's a problem. Naomi is an attorney who seems to work exclusively from Orphey Gene's. It's weird. Eva and Derek, same thing. All the clinic stuff seems to be happening there, too. Soaps just aren't the cash cow they were 30 - 40 years ago, so sets and actors are kept to a minimum. I wouldn't even care because way back in the 60s and 70s soaps had minimal sets and only a handful of characters (some were as short as 15 minutes long) but they still told compelling stories. So it's not just the lack of sets and actors, it's the writing, too. For me, it's the lack of momentum to stories that bothers me the most. So many are stop and start, stop and start, oh, remember this thing that happened 8 months ago, let's deal with it again out of the blue. It's just heartbreaking because IMO, the show has the bones to succeed. They need someone to come in here and take control of this.

And the Reardons. It would have been interesting to have old rivals Nola and Morgan back on the canvas.

YES, they absolutely should have done this. Why did Reva get TWO secret children and Josh got none? (I know, rhetorical question). Josh and Morgan had history. Morgan had ties to several people on the canvas. I think she even dated Phillip for a little while. (Of course, this all presupposes they would cast a good actress to play her. Like, what if Marcy Walker had come on the show as Morgan instead of the ill-defined Tangie?) Kelly was one of my least favorite characters, but if he was punished by being pulled into Reva's orbit, I could get on board with it. 😂

I hate to disappoint you, but she does not talk much about either RH (except what happened around her pregnancy) OR Voyager. It's not that kind of memoir where she gives away juicy bits about the shows/movies/plays she did. It's more about her rather eccentric family and her search for her daughter. And the difficulty of being an actor, and later being a successful one while raising children.

Wasn't she gone by then? I don't remember if she was still on the show when they introduced Rogers.

You have to remember she was VERY young, and TPTB really adored her. If you're working with someone so clearly favored by your bosses, you're not going to like that person very much. She was also going through a bad juncture in her life--she was unmarried and pregnant (she gave her daughter up for adoption). She writes about that in her memoir. She had to play being pregnant and then deal with scenes playing with a baby after she had given her own baby up. She expected to be fired but Claire Labine said no, and they swore the whole set to secrecy. But of course, it got out eventually. If she had been anyone else, she likely would have been fired. Again, the favoritism probably did not endear her to the rest of the cast.