vetsoapfan

I loved the Beulah Land trilogy of novels; very engrossing and heartfelt. The miniseries, however, was painful.🤢

There have been many theories and rumors about why ABC axed her, possibly the most prominent being because ABC was in talks with Paul Rauch to eventually take over the show. The network's weak announcement, "We had run out of storyline for the actress" was obviously spin, since she was already being woven into a new story with Michael Zaslow. At this point, we will never have a definitive answer, but the bigger mystery is why ABC allowed so many of the show's still-viable, beloved, core cast members to be fired. None of the newbie, replacement characters seemed to catch on and ignite the same level of devotion from the audience. It still boggles my mind that after she passed away, Rauch proclaimed that Courtney "was a great gal who always gave first-rate performances." She certainly was a fine, capable actress IMHO, but ahhh...how Rauch's tune had changed by then.

I remember this! Thanks, @DRW50 . ABC sure shot themselves in the foot by firing Jacquie Courtney. (And Ellen Holly. And Al Freeman, Jr. And Lillian Hayman. And (later) Michael Storm. And so on and so forth.)

Thank you for bring this video to our attention, @MissPalmer , and for tagging me, @Vee . I loved OLTL from 1968 to 1983!

I appreciate the tag, as always, @slick jones .😉

Gracias, @DRW50 . 🙂

She just seemed to zone out and go on somnambulistic cruise control.

I've always thought Jed Allen would have been great as Mike Bauer. He could play all sorts of different "colors," romance, anger, vulnerability, sweetness, strength, and was more natural and less stiff and reserved than Don Stewart. (Tht being said, I would have kept Stewart on the show as my first choice.) Well, I mean as a personal preference. TGL was horribly gutted by then, or maybe by 1986, and in my heart, I would have preferred to see the old gal go out with some semblance of dignity, rather than watching rabid crows picking at the rotting corpse. Of course, as it turned out, the show rebounded in the early 1990s under Nancy Curlee, so at that time, I was glad it had endured the dark years of the 1980s. I saw that with the right PTB, it still could have been saved. Alas, after Curlee left, the show never again had effective behind-the-scenes personnel who understood it or the audience, and it plunged back into its long, long decline. I thought PFS's brief tenure on TGL was wonderful. She instantly seemed to "get" so many of the characters and wrote lovely scenes for them. The sense of community was also there. I was aghast when she was fired, and the endless revolving door of much-less-talented writers took over. I could have have accepted Coster as Mike, although my first choices would have been Don Stewart or Jed Allen. No other actor but Hulswit would have been acceptable to me. God yes!

Scott Phillips on SFT was Simon's strongest role, IMHO. I enjoyed his work on that show. While I found the actor's storyline on ATWT to be laborious and tedious, I felt that Simon showed enough signs of life while working there to be acceptable. I always thought Jacqueline Schultz was colorless and drippy, however, and hated when she was cast as a ridiculously de-SORASed Patti on SFT. I would have hated seeing her cast as Hope Bauer.

Axing the principle Bauers in the 1980s, killing off Maureen Bauer and Ross Marler in the 1990s, foisting all the sci-fi crap onto the once-erudite soap, populating Springfield with so many irrelevant and disposible faces in its dwindling years...TPTB had been making painfully atrociously decisions at TGL for a loooong time. I was ready for/expecting it to be euthanized by 1985. God, yes! Peter Simon and Nancy St Alban were dull as dishwater; Ed and Michelle were basically useless as remnants of the core family without the likes of Mart Hulswit and Rachel Miner (or even Joie Lenz) in the roles. Rick became an unnecessary talk-to as he hovered around the backburner, and O'Leary's mugging made me yearn to see a new actor take over the part. I always regarded RVV as "Chuck Tyler pretending to be Ed Bauer." He was totally miscast on TGL. I liked Peter Simon on SFT, and felt he was good on ATWT, but he was abrasively lethargic and colorless as Ed. This was NOT the Ed Bauer I had watched for 20 years. They never should have written Hope off at all, but particularly with Bert, Hillary and Maureen dead, we needed a beloved Bauer woman aboard the sinking SS Springfield. It kinda looked like TIIC were sabotaging the show right into the grave.

I'm sorry to hear about your family members' food poison, @slick jones . Hope they feel better by now.

Leaving Peter Simon's Ed in Springfield was probably TPTB's way of turning the audience against the Bauer family for good, since PS's version of the character would bore anyone to tears.😒 I referred to PS's Ed as "the fake Ed" for 27 years, LOL, while I referred to Johnny, Lacey, Jack and Lainie as "the retcon Bauers who do not exist."☹️

Okay; thanks. I appreciate you letting me know.

Drats. The chat transcript will not open for me. I hope I did not miss any previously-unreported gossip/facts.

Thank you so much. I'm going to check it out.

Sorry, what chat are you talking about? Any discussion of BTS drama from the years TGL got decimated would interest me very much. Was this a Youtube chat, or what? Thanks in advance.

We are very fortunate to have @Reverend Ruthledge sharing these beautifully-written synopses with us. They preserve history which would otherwise go unrecorded and end up forgotten, and allow us to experience the richest years of the show.🥰

No, actually, I haven't checked out the channel yet. I appreciate the heads-up!

That is so interesting. I love the rare times when soaps do stuff like that. Unfortunately, it draws a blank for me. I do not remember anything like it, and the hefty scrapbooks I kept chronicling the show's history does not include any information about Mark Lenard making a return engagement to the show. I wish there were a definitive way we could find out the answers to your questions.

Thank you @Franko and @DRW50 . I always love seeing curio pieces like this, but would probably miss them if kind folks did not post them and alert me to them!

Ernest, who was the first member of the family to be introduced in 1964 was also the last to go. He remained in Bay City after everyone else had left (or, in the case of his brother, died). When his romance with Janet Matthews fizzled, he also left town.

YES!👍

@Tisy-Lish bringing up "urban myths" is spot on. It's long been purported that Agnes Nixon came aboard and killed off all the Gregorys in a plane crash. That doesn't correspond at all with what I remember. Ernest, Karen (and I presume the Gregory parents) left town, and the only one who died was Alex, but in a car crash. Not a plane crash. And P&G didn't stop Pamela Long and Gail Kobe from slaughtering the Bauers on TGL or Mary Ellis Bunim from dropping tent-pole characters Nancy and Chris Hughes from ATWT, so if TPTB wanted the Matthews family gone, they would have been dispatched.

Actually, that's a good point. While it's long been reported as fact that the Gregorys were meant to "replace" the Matthewses, it makes more sense that they were substitutes for the Baxters. At no time were the Matthews family members backburned or decimated. And if P&G wanted them gone, Nixon would not have continued keeping them center-stage.

@Khan , IIRC, the first of the family to arrive was Ernest Gregory, in 1964. He must be have a creation of Irna Phillips'. He was involved with Janet Matthews (Jim's sister). Ernest's brother Alex and Alex's wife Karen both popped in 1965, so they would be Lipton's additions. Ernest and Alex had parents, both of whom came and went very quickly, also during Lipton's tenure in 1965. I can't think of anyone else (but, as always...it's been 50 years, LOL). I believe there were five Gregory family members, four created by Lipton. And the entire clan was forgotten once Agnes Nixon began writing the show. Alex died, Karen and Ernest moved away, and the men's parents just disappeared as far as I know. It's hard to guess today what Lipton's intentions were. Maybe P&G felt the Matthews family wasn't enough a draw and therefore mandated the introduction of another one. Anyway, none of these interlopers made much of an impact; they became forgotten in the dust-bin of history.