vetsoapfan

April 1974 Daily TV Serials

In the Sexiest Somerset man, I'd vote for Ernest Thompson!

It's too bad that Kin Shriner never found a haircut to suit him.

That never bothered me. I would have been messing up his hair, myself, all day and all night, anyway, if I had had half the chance.ROTF!

I've always wanted to know what happened to Trish Stewart, who was the original Chris Brooks Foster on Y&R. I adored her; she was gorgeous, very personable, and a great actress. After a few appearances on primetime TV, post Y&R, she simply vanished.

http://www.iann.net/movies/time_travellers/cast/trish_stewart_std.jpg

Gorgeous photos of a young Kin Shriner (Scotty). I had such a big-time crush on him! How Laura could abandon such a sweet, sexy Scotty for that repulsive degenerate Luke, I'll never know.

During its heyday, AW was la creme de la creme of daytime drama. The years written by Agnes Nixon and Harding Lemay were superb. They should do a DVD release on all the existing material of the original Alice/Steven/Rachel saga: the best triangle in soap opera history.

1974 episode

Ahh, the halcyon years of AW!

Hello everybody!  I'm thrilled, beyond words, to be able to tell you that I wrote and heard from Bruce Martin -- (Keith Whitney/Jonah Lockwood 1970-71).   He is, truly, gratified to know how much he is fondly remembered 40 years after his time on the show.  I told him that I had mentioned his storyline as one of the highlights of the show in my chapter 'Memories of The Edge of Night' in the book 'Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era,' published by the Universiy of Mississippi Press, Dec 2010 (hardcover edition); March 2012 (paperback edition).

He also told me that he was selected to play a role on NBC-TV's 'Somerset,' following his stint on 'Edge,' but, sadly, it fell through, because he would AGAIN be playing the son of Lois Kibbee.  The role eventually was played by Christopher Pennock.

He also told me that the Bruce Martin whose name we saw as 'Production Supervisor' on SFT and other shows was ANOTHER Bruce Martin.  The two, eventually met, with the latter saying that he could not 'stop forwarding fan mail directed to 'our' Bruce.

The Jonah Lockwood story was probably the single best, most effective (and terrifying) mystery storyline ever presented on TEON, or any soap for that matter. Henry Slesar at his best! All the twists and turns, all the surprises, all the terror; no wonder EDGE was atop the ratings at the time.He also told me that he was selected to play a role on NBC-TV's 'Somerset,' following his stint on 'Edge,' but, sadly, it fell through, because he would AGAIN be playing the son of Lois Kibbee.  The role eventually was played by Christopher Pennock.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. When I have a chance I will post more of her.

Thank you so much. I'd love to see anything you have on Trish Stewart. As I say, she and her character, Chris Brooks Foster, were my all-time faves on Y&R. How I'd kill to see the first five years of the show again!

It seems like Lemay changed a lot of the characters when he arrived. I guess some actors were probably happy with the changes, but I do wonder if those who objected had good reason.

Yes, I agree that various actors had good reason to speak out against too-sudden character changes. Were Lemay's differing choices better, and did they improve the quality of the drama? Often yes, sometimes no. But a new writer coming into an established series should at least do his best to keep a consistent through-line where character behavior is concerned. The characters whom Lemay "got" and understood were written quite well. Those he didn't quite warm up to, like Mary Matthews, suffered. But we all know that Lemay ended up being a daytime legend, and for very good reason. I'd take him over Guza, Pratt, Reilly, and many others, any day!

I don't think he changed characters immediately because Irna Phillips was consulting. He admits that there was much that he didn't understand about soaps, the structure and the never-ending story aspect of daytime and Ms.Phillips taught him how to do that. He played out Robert Cenedella's stories and jumped off from there.  He admits that he hated 'plot' believing that the best drama comes from within characters, so the changes he made were just getting rid of soap cliches.  It is a shame that Lemay and Dwyer couldn't meet each other half way.  One of my favorite blurbs in his book is about Pat Randolph being poisoned by her housekeeper and she was having awful pains and wouldn't talk to her doctor brother and/or her nurse sister about it.  He thought that was silly and got rid of stuff like that.

While I had issue with some of his writing choices, there's no denying that Lemay worked very hard to create character-driven, naturalistic material. AW during his first few years was brilliant. Once the show went to an hour, there were certain problems, like stretched-out "filler" dialogue and repetitious situations, but as I've remarked before, even the "worst" Lemay was and is miles above a lot of the dreck soap opera fans have endured from other writers over the years.

His eliminating the most absurd soap cliches was like a breath of fresh air.

The main matriarchal figure AW had after Mary died was Ada. I think she worked marvellously in that role, but I do wonder sometimes if the average housewife at home just did not connect emotionally to her. Just as I think a lot of fans may have never truly accepted Rachel, which left something of a void when she became the central heroine.

Virginia Dwyer seemed to have her most success in radio soaps. She was on the cover of TV Radio Mirror in the early 50's, in that era when radio soap actors often had the cover (Charita Bauer, Jan Miner, etc.). The only TV soap star I remember having a cover of their own was Eileen Fulton.

Ada was very different than Mary, personality-wise, and didn't project warm tolerance and maternal instinct on a regular basis. Ada was more in your face, more ballsy, and a lot more...loud, LOL. She was a well-loved and enduring character, but she was different.

I have an episode of AW from 1969 (I think), in which Mary Matthews finds out that her son Russ' "son", Jamie, was actually fathered by Steven Frame. Virginia Dwyer really hit it out of the park; she went berserk, shrieking about Rachel, "I hate her! I...HATE...HER!!!" It was actually scary to witness how mad she went. When folks now question Dwyer's talent, thanks mainly to Lemay's complaining about her changing his scripts, I always think back to the show's earlier days, when she had meaty material to play, and did so quite well. I watched her for 11 years as Mary Matthews, and in my assessment, she was a credible performer.

I was quite young when Mary Matthews "died," but I can remember her death scene. I was never fond of her (or her husband), so I didn't mind her departure -- though in retrospect it certainly didn't do the viability of the Matthews family any favors. I think it would have been better to have killed off Jim (vetsoapfan is correct that Hugh Marlowe was already faltering) and let Mary's grief manifest itself in her trying to exert more control over her children as a (misguided) way to keep them close to her. Though I suppose Dwyer wouldn't have wanted to play that, either.

And then we might not have gotten Irene Dailey's Aunt Liz, who was a wonderful creation -- though often mishandled through the years.

By the way, when it comes upper middle class mothers of that AW era, I much preferred Helen Moore (Lenore's mom) to Mary Matthews.

We have no way of knowing if Dwyer would have felt uncomfortable playing Mary Matthews as a grasping widow, intent on keeping her grown children close to her, although that scenario would have at least provided realistic character motivation for Mary's sudden, bizarre behavior. The way Lemay wrote it lack foundation. Did he have the right to reinterpret the character any way he wanted? Technically yes, but I would never blame any actor for wanting to provide continuity and sense to their roles. Lemay didn't blame actors for doing so, either, as long as he liked them.

Around the same time, 1975, Lemay decided to transform Rachel from a selfish, often nasty and vindictive person into a more traditional heroine. Unfortunately, she had been so vile to so many other characters for so long, when other Bay City-ites started parading around town with comments like, "Rachel has changed! I can't believe how much she's changed!" it was a little...forced.

Beverlee McKinsey remarked in an interview at the time, that she would not want to play a part that had a sudden personality change overnight, as it would be next to impossible to justify and to play. I agree. So I don't see this situation as "Virginia Dwyer was in the wrong and Harding Lemay was right because he was the more celebrated genius." Personally, I wish he had listened to her during their failed luncheon, and softened his vision of the character so that her behavior was more consistent with what we had watched for the previous eleven seasons.

December 1977 Daytimers

Trish Stewart! My favorite actress and favorite character on Y&R, woohoo!

So is your overall assessment that Lemay's run actually hindered and did not help the show?

Lemay, overall, proved to be one of the best, most intelligent and talented scribes in soap history. His determination to focus on family dynamics, class conflict, and interpersonal and romantic relationships was exactly what daytime drama is all about. The problem is, his ego is huge, and even by his own account, he tends to dismiss the opinions of anyone who disagrees with him. When asked about his opinion of soap legends like Agnes Nixon and Irna Phillips, he smugly retorted that their work had only shown him "what NOT to do".

Lemay needed to be controlled, and forbidden to make sweeping, damaging alterations to the show which would fracture its core and alienate the audience. Of course, he was teamed with Paul Rauch, whose own massive ego and haughty, often abusive treatment of actors is well known. Between the two of them, Lemay and Rauch did serious damage to AW as their reign went on. From 1971-1974, however, it was the show to watch. And even though I disagree with Lemay's opinion of certain actors, and how he wrote them out, even when his writing began to deteriorate (around 1975), it was still miles above anything we've seen on the soaps in the last several years.

I never thought of Lemary from your perspective vetsoapfan. He did praise a lot of his newly hired actors for working off the page, but panned Virginia Dwyer. He made it a point to pay up her ego, though never mentioned any of the members of the company complaining about her unlike Reinholt.

That quote about people going to the back porch when times get tough is so true. My familiy's New York house is often vacant during the non-Holidays. One time, I was the first one back, and it was so eerie to see all the lights turned off and the furniture covered with dust catchers. I could imagine viewers feeling the same way coming back to a empty Mathews home without their beloved Mary their to offer a friendly welcome.

Lemay was the only one to publicly complain about Dwyer, but then again, he was the one who campaigned to get her fired, so he needed the justification.I think his referring to her supposed ego was unfair. When Constance Ford, Doug Watson or Victoria Wyndham changed their dialogue to enhance their characters, Lemay never lambasted them for having "egos". If a new creative team had taken over the STAR TREK franchise, and had been intent on writing Spock as a dizzy comedic character, better suited to a Jim Carrey film, would Leonard Nimoy have been accused of having "ego problems" if he had tried to change the dialgue and play against the camp, in order to protect his legacy character?

The 1975 firing of Jacqueline Courtney, George Reinholt, and Virginia Dwyer from ANOTHER WORLD was a major soap opera scandal at the time, and of all the principle players involved, Harding Lemay has capitalized on it the most over the decades.

Much of his criticism of the actors involved is self-serving, if not downright hypocritical. He justified his terminating Dwyer, in large part, because of her changing his dialogue to better keep in line with how her character had always been established and played. Mary Matthews had been conceived and presented as a strongly maternal, protective woman with a wry sense of humor. Think Ruth Martin with a touch of Myrtle Fargate thrown in. Or Audrey Hardy with a touch of Lila Quartermaine's tongue. This is how Irna Phillips and Agnes Nixon had written the role, and it was quite effective. Lemay, however, did not believe that warm, nurturing mother types actually existed. (Dwyer, for her part, disagreed, saying that she modeled her portrayal of Mary after her real-life sister.) Lemay envisioned Mary Matthews as a grasping, aggressive woman with control issues. Dwyer would play against that and try to keep the integrity and consistency of her character intact, which irritated the writer who had a different intention of how Mary Matthews was supposed to be under his reign.

Interestingly, when Dwyer cut, edited, or changed dialogue to protect her character, Lemay balked. When his pet actors like Constance Ford or Victoria Wyndham did the exact same thing, he praised them highly for "embroidering" their dialogue and enhancing their characters.

As well, Lemay complained of Dwyer's supposedly throwing off actor Hugh Marlowe, who played her husband on the show, when she would change dialogue and leave him without proper cues. Anyone involved with the series at the time, however, knew that Marlowe was forever going up (forgetting his dialogue), no matter with whom he acted. It appeared he was starting to have trouble memorizing lines at the time, as he continually stumbled with most of his scenes, whether he was appearing with Dwyer or not. His troubles continued long after Dwyer was gone, and the show started to give him fewer and fewer lines to memorize over the next few years. To blame Dwyer for Marlowe's faltering memory is unfair.

One of the most absurd parts of his book is when Lemay recounts his luncheon date with Dwyer, which he clearly did not want to attend. He takes it upon himself to attribute all sorts of negative motivations to her behavior in the restaurant, as if he could read her mind and "know" what she was thinking when, clearly, his perceptions were colored by his personal distate for the actress rather than anything she actually did.

In the end, the writer had taken a dislike to Dwyer and how she played her character, and just wanted to get rid of her. The excuses he gave were just that: excuses.

This show was such a class act during the Agnes Nixon and (first several) Harding Lemay years. Viewers of 1960s-70s soaps didn't realize how lucky we were to have watched the master writers at play. 1966-75 was definitely AW's halycon period, with the great Alice/Steven/Rachel saga of 1968-75 being the highlight!

"The Encyclopedia of Daytime TV lists Susan Oliver as appearing in 73"

They made a boo-boo.

"I also recall them showing flashbacks with Lee Grant despite the recast"

I have this film on DVD, and just for clarification purposes, there were no flashbacks with Lee Grant.

"I believe Norman and Betty were recast as well."

Betty was recast in the 1977 MIPP; Norman was not.

"Only Frank Ferguson, Pat Morrow,Evelyn Scott and Susan Oliver appeared in both."

Actually, Susan Oliver was not in the daytime soap version.