DeeVee

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...

I have only theories, but boy, do I have theories. Although I thought Marland married them off WAY too quickly, I did think the Dobsons would eventually have them marry, and Hope would repent of it soon after. I've felt for a long time that the way Ryder and Long broke up Alan and Hope was kind of close to what the Dobsons would have eventually done--Alan gaslighting and tormenting Hope and driving her over the edge. They were kind of into writing Gothic stories. When you see those final two months the Dobsons wrote the show (many of these episodes are available online), where everyone was warning Hope, and she refused to listen to them, it just seemed like they were setting her up for a fall. Kind of like the heroine in the old Gothic romance Dragonwyck. Another reason I'm fairly sure that was the basic direction for Alan and Hope is the Barbara/James story they wrote when they moved to ATWT. There were a quite a few parallels with Alan and Hope--they fell in love on a island, Barbara didn't know much about the "real" him, and after he persuaded her to marry him his controlling personality came out. He treated Barbara in a similar way that Alan treated Elizabeth (he tried with Jackie but she basically told him to f@ck off, LOL). I don't think Alan would have become the kind of crazy villain James did (was that even the Dobsons, or later writers?) but I'm guessing the island romance would have turned into a nightmare for Hope, eventually leading to her becoming a stronger, less passive character. Which is what happened to Barbara. Maybe rather than how it ended up with Barbara, Hope's fortunes would have ended more like Margo's, who also fell in love with James and was disillusioned by him. I don't think Hope would have become a cop, BUT MAYBE she would have found proof of Alan being blackmailed by Roger and his part in faking his death. I could see Alan realizing this, fast-talking his way out of it and persuading her to marry him so she couldn't testify against him, or something like that. Speaking of a possible pairing with Ross, that could have been one way to achieve it. She could have gone to him for advice rather than her father. We also have to keep in mind the Rita factor--the Dobsons had been setting up an eventual affair between Rita and Alan even before Hope and Alan became a thing. I suspect Lenore's pregnancy delayed that. (It seems painfully obvious that Greg Fairbanks, the doctor she slept with and who was the possible babydaddy was brought in solely for that purpose because they had a much bigger storyline cooking for Alan/Hope/Ed/Rita/maybe Holly). Marland picked up on it but then Lenore's departure truncated the story again. Marland set things up for an eventual Rita return, which didn't happen because he left. I admit I'm saying all this from over 45 years hindsight--I was a big Alan and Hope fan back then. I didn't like Marland marrying them off so fast--I wanted them to be like star-crossed lovers, having to overcome many obstacles. (Give me a break, I was still almost a kid). But now I realize it would have been a big mistake--just like what Marland did was, too, going the "redemptive love" route and turning Alan into a big yawn who was no longer driving story. I'm glad to know that wasn't in the Dobsons' plans for the characters. That's so nice, thank you.

I DO like Peter Simon, probably more than most people here (I was a fan when he was on SFT) but DASHING? Never, ever would I have called him that. 😂 It's been a while since I watched it, but on the Locher Room I'm pretty sure Mart said that one reason he was let go was because he was very active in the actor's union. But that doesn't negate that he was also fired because they wanted someone (SNORT!) more "dashing." I have to say I wasn't the biggest Mart fan back in the day (I was young and shallow, what can I say) but rewatching him now, he brought something real and special to Ed. They made a big mistake when they let him go, IMO. I can't imagine what it was about Dalton that he found so offensive. If he was going to kill off anyone, it should have been Elizabeth rather than Jackie. He pretty much destroyed the character by having her abandon Phillip, no matter how hard he tried to dress it up as a noble act. Oh, thank you. It makes sense to me, because the guy literally chucked two of his heirs out of the family. He would have wanted to make certain a male line was in place, since I believe it was said he favored Alan over Alex only because he was male. If Brandon was as horrid a father as they implied, I would think Alan would see him establishing a non-Spaulding as the Spaulding heir a neat revenge on his father. The Dobsons might have gone down a road somewhat like this. There was the whole Stenbeck heir thing on ATWT.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but alcoholism runs in the Bauer family. Bill Bauer, Hope's grandfather, and Ed, her uncle, were both alcoholics. The fact that they established this through 3 generations would have made an addiction story entirely plausible (AND it would have been a reason to reintroduce Hope). In fact, I believe when AM first came back as a teen, he got into some trouble with drugs and they were worried about him, but I think he was selling, not taking the drugs. Again, that would have been a good moment to bring Hope back into the story. Lots of missed opportunities.

Here's an interesting GL history tidbit: Arianne Munker played Hope's friend Christie when she was a child. It was probably a total coincidence her new character was named Christine, but what a MUCH better story if it turned out she was THAT Christie. Maybe that was the plan--both Hope and Rita were mentioned at the time, so it seemed like there were thinking about bringing them back. But there were so many writer changes during that period it's possible that's why it never happened. Anyway, Arianne would have also been a very good Hope. And Pease, Ulrich, and McCabe. There were lots of possibilities.

I like that idea, too, though she also was close to AM's age. Just eveyone pretend not to notice. 😁 The thing that's so funny about all this is that AM was born in 1981, and Nola's son "J" was born I think 1984, and when they came back on the show J was only a teenager. So whacky. Yeah, that, or a child Alan had with a character who MATTERED on the show--I am fond of the idea of Alan having had a young love affair with the one missing Reardon sister, but Rita would absolutely work. Especially if there was doubt that Alan was his father, as Ed would have been the other possibility. They could have made a big deal out of waiting for the test outcome, or (because, you know, it's Alan) someone switching tests and stuff. Maybe then they wouldn't have killed the character off. It was like Lujack all over again: why introduced a found family member only to quickly kill them off? Madness, it's madness, I say!

Hope was supposed to be around 24 when AM was born. The actress Elvera Roussel was actually in her early 30s. But she read as very young at the time. The thing is, part of the issues her family had with her marrying Alan is that he was much older. They de-aged Alan when they brought in Raines. (I never thought of it before, but that's probably why they de-aged Amanda). So they would have looked much closer in age. Which would have changed their dynamic. (Yes, yes, soap math is a b!tch, LOL). It's been said here a few times that TPTB had no interest in bringing Roussel back, even though she probably would have by that time been old enough to have had son AM's age onscreen, and they definitely could have made her look closer to her real age. Some people claim they thought she was too fat, or they didn't think she made that much of an impression in her initial run, even though Alan and Hope were a very popular couple. But one has to keep in mind she was popular with Chris Bernau in the role of Alan, and he was gone. So even if they brought her back, they couldn't do flashbacks, so they probably reasoned it was pointless. We've thrown out names of actresses from that era who could have been a good Hope--she's not a character who would have been difficult to recast. Although I doubt she would have agreed to it, if they decided to just say "screw it!" about AM's age, Marcy Walker would have been fantastic as Hope, and would have had a role that had history and purpose and real connections to other characters on the show, unlike Tangie.

I think that was also true of Rita. She also was a very complex character who could be very selfish. Evie helped to temper Rita with the audience. Marland also had Evie become friends with Ross when he decided to make him less of a villainous character. Which is kind of unusual; you don't see too many male/female friendships on soaps. But it did help change the audience's perception of Ross. Although several of AM and Harley's wedding episodes are available online, I can't remember anyone asking why Hope wasn't at her only child's wedding. Why she wasn't perhaps objecting to her 18 year old son getting married so young? (Did Ed--his great uncle--even put in an opinion on that? Maybe I have to go watch those episodes again). I mean, we KNOW the reason. They SORASed AM so fast that they would have had to hire a much older actress to play his mother. They really painted her into a corner by doing it. They papered over it at times by saying she had relapsed. But then you wonder...why wasn't her uncle helping her out? He was her sponsor. Yeah, it was a big mess because no one gave it much thought. I've said it before, I LOVE Carl, Rick was also fantastic, and it's unlikely either would have done the show if they had SORASed AM more slowly. But they made it impossible to bring back Hope, who had tons of history that could have been used for stories. They got away with it with Amanda because she had no living children who could have been SORASed.

You are very welcome! That's why I think it's possible Brandon forced him to marry Elizabeth, threatening to disinherit him the way he did with Alex. (Of course, the Alex part was written in much later, but seems consistent with Brandon's character). I do believe that they mentioned Elizabeth was raised by a rich uncle, so possibly she was an heiress and/or Brandon wanted to merge Spaulding with her uncle's business. (IIRC, Phillip is named after that uncle), Which may be another reason why Alan couldn't divorce her, at least as long as his father was still in charge of Spaulding. That thing about men wanting male heirs was all over soap operas at the time. Lots of soap men bellyaching all the time about not having a son, blah, blah, blah. (More often than not, they'd get one and completely ignore him). It's funny that Brandon left his Spaulding stock to Amanda. It plays now as a poke in the eye at Alan because he took Spaulding away from his father. He couldn't imagine that Amanda and Alan would become close and that he would be willing to mentor her into becoming the head of Spaulding. They got the last laugh on Brandon.

It seems as though they briefly considered pairing Sara with Alan. They definitely had a chem test scene in that one 1978 episode that's available.

Yeah, Phillip was doomed from the start. 😂 The selfishness of everyone involved--and I have to include Elizabeth, because only someone REALLY messed up would believe giving your 12 year old basically up for adoption would be a GOOD thing--was off the charts. One of the rare cases where Alan wasn't at the top of the list. One other beat Marland missed--Alan finding out the reason Jackie really married him. A guy with his ego would have FLIPPED OUT. Even though he was using her and much as she was using him (being married improved his chances of gaining custody) he probably believed she was crazy about him, at least in the beginning. I'm sorry, this was such a good story, regardless of believability, because of the complexity of the characters involved and the situation. Some of my favorite scenes are when Alan and Jackie were married. They were SO mismatched, both of them having no idea how to live together as a couple, both using each other, most of that staying in the subtext. Chris and Cindy played the heck out of those scenes. This is why it is so disappointing that we never got the reveals involving the characters who were chucked out prematurely. Carrie Mowery was no match for Cindy Pickett, but I still would have liked seeing Jackie having to face the chickens coming home to roost.

It was Cindy. Somehow she made Jackie empathetic.