vetsoapfan

They made so many grave mistakes in the recasting of Alice, but then again, even when Jacqueline Courtney returned, the show clearly did not know what to do with the character, and did not appear particularly interested in showcasing her. What a waste. Anyone who accepted Harding Lemay's assessment that Courtney was a weak actress only had to compare her to all those dreadful replacements, to understand how effective she had really been in the role.

I do think a revival of the soaps is possible, but the creative team involved would have to have talent, creative integrity,and understand the medium. Hacks like Jean P., Charles Pratt, Dena Higley, and their ilk should not be allowed anywhere near the writers' room, unless it's to deliver coffee.

If I had to take a chance on a writer/producer to launch a new daytime drama, I'd give someone like Shonda Rhimes a chance. Her primetime series confirm that she can spin long-term continuing storylines pinned on character development and interpersonal relationships. Is she the best writer on the planet? Maybe not, but she is certainly better than anyone who has been writing daytime TV for the last twenty years, and a wide  audience responds to the material she produces.  (It would be so important for a new serial to be successful.)  Writer Jonathan Kellerman, who pens murder mysteries, would be another one of my choices, if we were to launch a modern-day crime serial a la THE EDGE OF NIGHT. Kellerman is very prolific, writes fascinating, hair-raising tales of suspense, and has a solid grasp on human nature. Plots are key to his novels, but he never stints on character development or relationship drama, either. I've been hooked on Kellerman's continuing series of novels involving Dr. Alex Deleware and his associates at the LAPD for a whopping 30 years.

Is that the episode is which she tells Stuart that she has been talking to her friend about going away to Colorado Women's College? I have that episode as well. I thought that was before Jennifer's death, but with my ancient, fading memory, I could very well be wrong.

I think for Conboy, Donna Mills and his other female dates were merely "beards," to help him conform with societal pressure of the day. Now, it would be less likely to raise eyebrows from him or anyone else to bring a date of the same gender.

I watched DAYS from its inception, and have many 1965 eps in my collection, and I cannot say it was bad during the first year, only...uninvolving. Fortunately, Bell was able to work magic on DAYS in 1966 and helped raise the ratings considerably. As I wrote in an earlier message, soap fans way back then did not even know had good we had it. So many of the shows were magnificent in the 1960s and '70s.

DAYS was okay during its first season, but it was not really exciting, and did not really catch fire, until William J. bell took over as headwriter. That's why I say I'd like to see all the 1966-76 episodes again, although I certainly would enjoy watching the series from its 1965 debut, even if it did get off to a slow start.

Pam Peters was a young actress at the time, and perhaps, like so many of the original cast of Y&R, she was ((ahem)) restless to leave the show after a few years. I'm not sure when she was on or off contract during her run. When the character's mother, Jennifer Brooks died, Peggy was curiously absent during important scenes. On a Friday episode, Jennifer gathered her daughters together to toell them that she did not have much longer to live. As expected, all four daughters were present and expressed the appropriate grief. When the action picked up again on Monday, Peggy had disappeared. Lorie asked, "Where's Peg?" And Chris replied, "She couldn't take this." We were supposed to believe that Peggy, upon hearing of her mom's impending death, would simply leave the house and her grieving family members behind. It was really awkward, but at the time I figured Peters was either unavailable to work on that day, or had been written out of the script at the last minute due to unknown backstage issues.

It's long been said that John Conboy tried to have Bill Bell fired from Y&R, and if that is true, it's shockingly arrogant and aggressive. Any competent producer could have produced the show, but Bill Bell was...Bill Bell. We have since seen what his leaving the series has done to its quality of writing. In other words, Conboy was easily replaceable. Bill Bell, not so much. There's an interview with Bell available on youtube, and when he is asked about his opinion of John Conboy, you can tell that Conboy was not Bell's favorite person.

In a 1970s' interview in Rona Barret's Daytimers about his tenure on Y&R, Anthony Herrera said that at one point, Pamela Peters stopped working, looked directly into the camera and announced, "I don't understand this scene!" And then walked off the set. He did not elaborate the point, but that anecdote made me wonder if Peters was something of a diva backstage. William J. Bell later called Herrera into his office, said the storyline between Herrera's and Peters' characters was not working, and then fired the actor. I guess we will never know what went on way back then.

Dick DeCoit was pretty good in the role. I wouldn't say the show tried to make his character likable; not only had he raped Peggy, he was abusing his wife Nancy and feeding her pills to keep her unbalanced. The character was quite vile.

With Uncle Mickey dead, and Bill, Laura, and Mike all long-gone off the canvas, DAYS will probably never revisit the ancient history shared by the characters, but I would love to be able to raid the vaults and rewatch all the classic Bill Bell and Pat Falken Smith episodes from 1966-76!

Yes, although some of the recasts of major roles were jaw-droppingly awful, I think the declining writing is what ultimately lead the show to fail. At least in its final months, when Claire Labine returned as headwriter, the show enjoyed a resurgence in quality, and the once-beloved series went out with a bang and not a whimper. So many other soaps had atrocious final episodes, but in the end, RYAN'S HOPE felt like...RYAN'S HOPE, and came to a comforting, poignant conclusion. Just the other day, I rewatched the scenes from the finale, in which Maeve Ryan thanked Jack Fenelli "for loving my Mary," and I choked up as if they were my own family members, to whom I had to say goodbye.

I am glad that all the eps of this series have been preserved, even if they will probably never be broadcast anywhere ever again.

Yes, while Hawkins was affable and attractive, and came across as very endearing, it was clear from watching his scenes on various soaps that he was struggling with the dialogue. I don't really fault an actor for this. Jonathan Frid (Barnabas Collins) often stumbled over his lines on DARK SHADOWS, but that did not prevent the audience from adoring him and making him a soap superstar. Eileen Fulton as Lisa would also get tongue-tied on AS THE WORLD TURNS, as did Hugh Marlowe as Jim Matthews on ANOTHER WORLD. While Andrew Robinson was technically a much better actor than Hawkins, he was not particularly attractive, and came across as somewhat...creepy. (Maybe I was still being influenced by his role as a psychopath in DIRTY HARRY, but still....) I would have kept Hawkins as Frank Ryan, but just reduced his dialogue and kept his appearances to a few days a week. Anyway, the show decided to replace him, and later really hit pay dirt when they chose Daniel Hugh Kelly for the role. Hawkins had the looks and the charisma for the part, Robinson had the technical acting skill, and Kelly had everything. He was perfectly cast as the third and best Frank Ryan.

No one ever went into specifics with Mike about the night he was conceived, just that he was Bill's son. I can understand why the rape was eventually brushed under the carpet; it would have been very difficult to deal with, for the writers or for any of the characters.

On June 16, 1976 (and God only knows why I remember this date), Peggy Brooks, Chris' sister, was raped by Ron Becker. In an interview about this storyline, in which a second Brooks sister was raped within a three-year period, actress Trish Stewart theorized that Bill Bell wanted to revisit the subject because so many viewers had judged Chris harshly for inviting George Curtis home. The way the later story was set up, no one could have accused poor Peggy of "asking for" anything, as she was alone in Chris' apartment when Ron Becker forced himself in and raped her.

Unfortunately, during and after the Ron Becker rape trial, something must have happened behind the scenes with Pamela Peters, because Peggy just sort of  disappeared for an extended period of time. It was particularly awkward, I thought, because other characters also stopped referring to her. I scanned the daytime press at the time to understand what was going on, but there were never any reports about the actress' absence.

They did not actually show much of the assault on-screen, when Bill raped Laura. The characters were in a hospital supply closet, if I recall correctly. (It's been 50 years--literally--so I may be hazy on some of the exact details.) Bill advanced towards Laura and she started backing away, protesting...fade to black. We understood what had happened in the next scenes, however, and both characters were horrified about what had just taken place.

The first rape story on Y&R, when George Curtis attacked Chris Brooks, was much more explicit and quite upsetting to watch. After unsuccessfully trying to fight him off, we saw a close-up of Chris' face as she was pinned down underneath her rapist, and she weakly cried out, "Daddy!" It made my blood run cold. Idiotic viewers later criticized Chris for "asking for it," because she had been friendly to Curtis and let him come home with her. Thank God society's attitude towards this sort of thing has changed. NO should always means NO, even if you do offer a man something to drink at your apartment. Poor Chris. UGH. The scenes of her in the shower, trying to scrub away the memory of what had happened (Curtis had already sauntered out of her apartment and lit a cigarette), were just as heartbreaking as the scenes of the actual rape.

Yes, Pat Falken Smith finished the storyline about Mike's paternity reveal, although Bill Bell was still credited as story consultant at that time. I have an interview with Smith from 1977, in which she refers to working with Bell earlier, and being skeptical that Bell would ever be able to turn the story of a man raping his sister-in-law into a viable love story. I was relieved she agreed with me about that disturbing plot twist, although as we all know, DAYS and Bell managed to pull it off, as did Falken Smith later on with Luke and Laura on GH.

Lorie's relationship with Mark on Y&R was handled differently in the end, than Marie's relationship with Tommy. Even after knowing that Mark was her brother, Lorie went to his clinic and begged him to be with her anyway. (Marie Horton did not do that; she flipped out and ran away to become a nun.) Mark refused Lorie's pleas outright, and left her alone to weep hysterically on a bench in the hallway, for what seemed like FOREVER. I'll never forget that scene. Usually, soaps will cut away and fade to a commercial after a few seconds of a character crying, but the camera remained on Lorie as she sat on that bench and sobbed and sobbed...and SOBBED. I think this was the turning point for the audience, who had considered Lorie more of a "bitch" up until then. It was hard not to feel sorry for her and start to see the character in a more sympathetic light. She certainly got her punishment for all the bad deeds she committed against her sister

Meredith was such a sweet character, and an important part of two core families (the Lords by "birth" and the Woleks, by marriage), I could never understand why they killed her off instead of mining more story potential for her. Victor Lord was apparently not Meri's biological father, and the show could have used that point to spin various, interesting scenarios for the Lord family. Maybe the writers wanted to free up Larry Wolek for other romances, and he did end up having an amazing storyline with Karen a few years later.

Nancy Pinkerton was a great Dorian. Have you have the opportunity to see much of her work? Some episodes with her are on youtube. Of all the characters on soaps who have been recast many times, I'd say OLTL had the most success with Dorian. All five actresses who played the role were very good.

The plant references are both pointlessly sarcastic and hard to figure out. Carol was infertile, so the "infertile geranium" comment might have been about her. Nothing of interest really went on with Wally and Jennifer; the character of Jen was only really important (and interesting) when she was with Bob. To me, Don and Lisa never really had much chemistry, and the thought of her ending up with her former brother-in-law (on such a conservative soap and in such a conservative family) icked me out.

Yes, I think that it was during her relationship with Don that Lisa believed herself to be pregnant again. She walked around saying, "But...but...how could I be expecting?" It was almost amusing. In the end, she had an ovarian cyst and was not actually pregnant for the third time.

I was fortunate enough to be watching DAYS (and many other soaps) back in the 1960s, and did not even realize how good we as viewers had it, with masters like William J. Bell, Agnes Nixon, Irna Phillips, etc., in top form, spinning enthralling stories to keep us glued to our seats. The Tommy/Marie saga and the Bill/Laura/Mickey triangle could not have been better handled in those days. Tommy and Marie never actually had sex, thank heavens, and their romantic relationship was based more on long gazes and poetic dialogue than physical contact. I was shocked when I saw Bill raping Laura in the hospital, and never dreamed it could turn into a beautiful love story later on, but...it did. (I loathed the idea of a rape victim falling in love with her rapist, just as I did when GH wrote Luke and Laura as a romantic couple.) The Bill/Laura/Mickey drama lasted for YEARS, up until 1976 when Mickey discovered that Mike was Bill's son and not his own. No soap nowadays would dream about extending a story for almost a decade, but because DAYS did just that, the final reveal about Mike's true parentage, and the fall-out with Mickey's nervous breakdown, was enormously powerful. To this day, I consider 1976 to be DAYS' very best year, ever. (Kudos to the great Pat Falken Smith, who was its headwriter at the time.)

• While I always appreciated Channel's incisive and perceptive reviews, to me, TGL was still great and still riding high in the early 1970s, regardless of the similarity among the plots (i.e. marital conflict). Doesn't EVERY couple through through ups and downs in their relationships? The character development and interpersonal relationships were at the core of the drama, and the Bauers were center-stage, where they belonged. The writing really did weaken when Robert Soderberg and Edith Sommer left, to be replaced by the likes of James Gentile, Robert  Cenedella, and James Lipton (the stories became more plot-driven and the characters less nuanced), but TGL rebounded again and then enjoyed several years of good writing under the Dobsons, Douglas Marland, and even Pat Falken Smith during her blink-and-you-missed-it tenure on the show. Comparing the 1970s' TGL to its final years, when it was handled by the likes of Ellen Weston, David Kreizman, Lloyd Gold and their ilk, well...there IS no comparison.

I agree that Irna Phillips' last tenure as ATWT's headwriter was marred by inexplicable and disturbing plot twists. I was not completely thrilled with the "new" Liz Stewart, having appreciated Jane House so much in the role, but to kill off the character was a pointless and almost mean-spirited mistake. She still had so much storyline potential, and the character was immensely popular. I never adapted to Susan Harney replacing Jacqueline Courtney as Alice Frame on ANOTHER WORLD either, but I would have been aghast if TPTB had had Alice die.

The letter by Helen Pfeiffer reminded me about how much I preferred John Reilly to John Colenback in the role of Dan Stewart. While Reilly was charismatic and affable, Colenback always struck me as morose and humorless. It was a shock watching the character go from one interpretation to another. Similarly, after Mart Hulswit's sunnier portrayal of Ed Bauer on THE GUIDING LIGHT, I was never able to adjust to Peter Simon's grim, more listless version of the character.

Anyway, even with ATWT's going through a rough patch during Phillips' final reign, the show was still significantly better written (and truer to its roots) than it ever was under the likes of Jean P, Stern and Black, Hogan Sheffer, etc. I'd take a bad Irna Phillips story over the ((ahem)) best of Jean P any day.

Losing Meredith was a major blow to OLTL. Over the years, it became absurd how many of Viki's family members dropped dead around her. Killing off Meredith Lord, Tony Lord, Victor Lord (and reconning the story to turn him into a degenerate psychopath) decimated one of the series' core, founding families and it was sad to see.

She does not specifically say in her autobiography, although she DOES admit to disliking Ann Marcus' material.

So the troll known as Michael Brownstein was into flame-bating long before the internet came into existence. He would be fried to the wall if he posted such a smug, pompous, oily attack on a beloved series today.

Still, my heart bleeds for anyone with such crippling ADD that he could not sit still through slow-moving, nuanced adult drama and wanted, instead, to be fed a daily dose of women being stalked, thieves blackmailing, and heroines dealing with death, but not everybody in the audience was saddled with his issues. Erudite, adult viewers could actually watch television series that did not flaunt "good lookers" in speedos and negligees. There were many films and TV shows being produced at that time which were designed to excite and titillate the low-brows in the audience, so Brownstein and his ilk were well-served, but some of us wanted something more. Some of us actually preferred Jane Austen to CANNIBAL HOOKERS IN HEAT.

Wherever he is today, I hope our hapless critic is not still ranting and raving over the fact that character-driven drama continues to be produced, and continues to delight the viewing audience. Pffft!

Another incisive and perceptive review. SFT had been anemic for quite a while before Ann Marcus took over as headwriter and reinvigorated the show. While I loathed her work on DAYS, to this day I consider her stint at SFT to be excellent; the best work she's ever done.

Chris Delon, played by Paul Dumont, was such a snooze-fest. I don't remember if he was a creation of Marcus or of the writers who replaced her, but both the character and the actor were listless and bland, and axing him sooner rather than later was a good idea. Our Jo Vincente deserved better.

I don't think I have seen this episode before, so I cannot help you with the original air-date.

The very best thing about the soaps in their golden years was that each one was unique and had its own identity. In 1973, for example, ATWT, as a traditional, glacier-paced, character-based and conservative soap was very different than the sensual, racy, emotional melodrama that was THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS, which in turn was quite different than the folksy, "topical" and often-humorous ALL MY CHILDREN. Once the networks decided all the soaps had to follow the same patterns and present the same kind of characters, material and tone, daytime dramas became interchangeable and colorless, and lost the identities that had set them apart from each other in the first place. I loved the fresh boldness and extreme emotionalism of early Y&R, but I also adored and felt comforted by the more quiet, conservative family values depicted on ATWT. When ATWT was dumbed down and "modernized" to make it "hip," with dreadful stories like the atrocious Mr. Big garbage, it was like watching a beloved, sedate-but-wise elderly relative being forced-fed LSD.

It was not a pretty sight. The plummeting ratings said it all.

When PEYTON PLACE hit a rough patch, what did TPTB do? They fired Dorothy Malone and Tim O'Connor, and went for hardcore "relevance," which ended up being a disaster and annoying the audience. Whether it be on daytime or primetime, TIIC never learn their lessons. They keep making the same stupid, audience-alienating mistakes over and over again, throughout the decades. Gutting the vets and drastically changing the tone and style, on ATWT and TGL in the early 1980s severely crippled both shows.

Thank you. In the next chapter, she discusses the situation on AW, and tries to be very...politically correct. It's interesting, considering all the behind-the-scenes drama that would soon explode.

To be honest, as a staunch advocate of the traditional, family-based, character-driven, slow-moving classic soaps, even I got fed up with all the cheerleading for hip, modern, relevant (whatever any of that meant, anyway) storytelling on soaps. Nixon was bright even to weave "relevance" into traditional soap structure and storytelling, which is why she was so successful. If she had just had her characters sitting around pontificating on a woman's right to choose, or the war, or equal pay for equal work, the audience of her shows would have been as bored as the audience was for HTSAM under Bailey. "Relevance" does not equate to interesting or popular. Nor does it guarantee any quality to the scripts.

Another well-written piece by Channel, who "got" why ATWT was so beloved and had such a staunchly loyal audience...until it caved into the mindless pressure to "modernize" itself, thereby fracturing its core, throwing out its principle themes, axing beloved vets, and alienating a huge portion of its fan base.

That Daily TV Serials piece on Courtney is probably my favorite interview ever given by the actress. Thank you so much for posting it for everyone to enjoy. I hope you have the next, concluding chapter!