vetsoapfan

Just to name a FEW, yes. Longtime fans bitterly resented losing the Bauer family, anyway, and the weak parade of newbies inflicted upon the audience only made it worse. UGH.

Charita's final scene was a brief one. She was alone on a set, talking on the telephone...about Christmas, I believe, so the December 10th reference would work. I have a jittery copy of this somewhere, on VHS, and if I find it I'll confirm the details for sure. Gail Kobe, the producer at the time, claimed certain actors were fired from he show because they did not agree with TPTB about the direction of their characters. Considering how atrocious a producer Kobe was, how she completely gutted and crippled the show, I imagine her tenure was a nightmare for people backstage. In an interview, Peter Simon spoke about how so many of the old-guard vets were being axed, and furious about it, and that Tom O'Rourke left on his last day ranting and raving down the hall. Under Kobe we lost half the regular cast, and had a bunch of uninteresting and/or annoying newbies suddenly rammed down our throats, along with a dumbing-down on the storytelling and some heinous sci-fi/fantasy crap.

Of all the replacement Alices, Harney was probably the least bad (to damn her with faint praise, LOL), but she lacked the spark, charisma, and emotion that Courtney had; all the elements which made the audience care for her so much. Lemay lambasted Courtney for her "incoherent sobbing" during emotional scenes, and accused her of overacting during the character's nervous breakdown (he wanted her to show "mute grief," if I recall correctly), yet I daresay none of the later actresses who played the role could ever had done such a fine job as Alice during this period. I was surprised that Courtney was not nominated for an Emmy during the 1973-4 season.

Those were my assumptions as well.

I just wouldn't want anyone to think I was...a PERV, drooling over shirtless men.

Lemay is vague about why Fitzpatrick was replaced, but in his autobiography, the scribe claims that Fitzpatrick was fired for reasons other than his on-screen performances...whatever that means. I agree that Lemay was way off in his assessment of Courtney, but of course he has the right to his opinion. It's just a shame that his ire about certain actors had such a crippling effect on the core of the show.

Ooooh, I'd love to lick that! (The ice cream cone, I mean the ice cream cone!) LOL!

With so many cable stations and streaming services available, I cannot believe no one has taken a chance on rebroadcasting vintage eps of Y&R, Dark Shadows was a smash in syndication and on DVD, and Y&R was more mainstream. Perhaps it would not do very well, but we are not going to know one way or the other until someone tries offering it to the public in one form or another. As you say, they could at least send up a trial balloon by offering a boxset of the 1970s. The material exists and is just sitting there in storage. It would cost them almost nothing to produce a The Best of Y&R: 1970s Collection.

YES! It was the best part of the anniversary week, IMHO. I was only disappointed that they did not have Reinholt play in any scenes with Courtney.

Lemay only came in at the very end of the Caroline-poisoning-Pat story, thought it was absurd, and quickly wrapped it up. The story had been conceived and written by Robert Cenedella. Elizabeth Ashley was totally miscast as Emma, no question about it. If Courtney occasionally had to look at cue cards/bits of dialogue written on her fingers, I cannot blame her. At the time she was the show's leading heroine, and was on-screen a huge amount of time. With all that dialogue to remember, day-in and day-out, virtually any actor would need help keeping up. She was certainly better than many other actors on the soaps, who stumbled over their lines regularly.

I, too, think it was probably the same poster on both boards. I think her need to brag and be the center of attention got the better of her. No one could possibly have all the lost material she claimed to have. When she started proclaiming that the shows' writers came to her for advice, I knew for sure that she was loony. The overheated dialogue she presented as "actual transcripts" from various shows was usually presented in the same style and tone...her own, rather than, say William J. Bell's and Harding Lemay's. I've been watching soaps for decades, and can often remember even the most minute details, but with so many shows' histories and characters floating around in my head, I can forget certain things. I'm lucky in that I was a real fanatic about the shows way back when, and kept extensive scrapbooks on Y&R, DAYS, TEON, AW, SOM, etc., which I can refer to if need be. It's too bad about Media Domain's sudden and inexplicable disappearance, but many of my favorite sites have vanished without explanation over the years. Youtube has hosted the debut ep of Y&R, some eps from 1975 and 76, and a few others from the show's first decade, but I believe most of them have been deleted now. Still, we are lucky that so many vintage eps of other soap operas is available. I don't know. Yes, it's a question of copyright violation, and yes, they have the right to keep their material private if they so choose, but it's not like they are losing money from having a few vintage eps floating around youtube. They are not selling DVDs of the series anywhere, so having a handful of classic episodes available to the public to see is not keeping potential buyers from purchasing licensed DVDs being sold. The entire series is sitting in warehouses collecting dust, so why do they care if eager viewers have access to, say, ten measly episodes? My cynical self wonders sarcastically if TPTB just don't want viewers to see for themselves how magnificent the show was back then...and then be able to compare the show's golden years to the dreck being produced today.

Whatever happened to the Media Domain boards? I remember there used to be a poster on Danfling's Cancelled Soap Opera Message Board who would go on and on about all the great, rare material she supposedly had, to the point it defied believability. Endless requests for clarification or trading were consistently ignored, but she would write loooooong "recaps" of episodes, claiming the dialogue was lifted directly from the actual shows. To me, everything she posted sounded like overheated fan fiction. I felt it was all a ruse for attention. There have been several vintage eps of Y&R uploaded to youtube over the years, but they always disappear very quickly. I think some copyright owners are more vigilant in reporting "illegal" on-line episodes of their material.

Yes, Reinholt expressed dislike for how the character of Steven Frame was altered by Lemay, and I can understand that he felt his past portrayal of the character was negated because of the revised backstory, but I still say it made valid psychological sense. Steve was a man who had trouble opening up and being vulnerable and trusting with people anyway. He was ashamed of his roots, and desperate to escape from them, so it's not a stretch to believe that he had hidden the truth about his origins from the world. Russom was more vulnerable than Fitzpatrick, and I guess Lemay just did not feel as inspired to write for a softer, more repentant Willis. It's too bad because as a viewer, I only started to give a damn about Willis once Russom was in the role. I don't know if any of McKinsey's work as Emma has survived, because it aired before most people had VCRs, but you never know. I personally think 1966 to 1975 were AW's best years, and finding any episodes from that era would thrill me to death. I agree. Courtney was great, and quite charismatic as a romantic heroine. She could be warm, amusing, vulnerable, and strong when she had to be. So many younger viewers take Lemay's assessment of her talents to heart, without ever having seen her on-screen, but the more you read Lemay's own comments, the more you get the sense that a lot of his negative opinions seem to be borne from petulance or annoyance. Once people actually see Courtney's material for themselves, I think they can see how good she really was. One of the best performances of her career, IMHO, was when Pat Kendall visited her son Brian's grave on OLTL. Heartbreaking, like Brad Maule at Maxie's beside, listening to his dead daughter's heart, on GH two decades later.

Yes, and she was mesmerizing. Quiet pain shone through her portrayal. She was born to play iris, of course, but I have always wondered about how Emma would have evolved if McKinsey had remained on the show in that role. I think the audience would have grown to love her and feel protective of her.

RvF arrived in 1984, Charita's last year on the program. The 50th anniversary tribute to TGL really was pathetic. Ed Bryce, the final Bill Bauer, actually did return to host a brief set of video clips, but to me it was not enough. The show had decades of excellence behind it which the supposed tribute failed to celebrate fully. And don't even get me started on the atrocious "tribute" paid to Mary Stuart after she died. The show couldn't even spell her name correctly. It appeared on-screen as "Mary Stewart." Epic cringe! Nothing else has ever outdone the glorious 30th anniversary week which Marland wrote for ATWT, but the 25th anniversary material for AW made a valiant effort, and bringing back core characters like Alice, Steven, Pat, etc., really meant a lot to longtime fans. They used a brief clip of Courtney and Wyndham from 1984, in Alice's flashback, but since we know material exists of the actresses from 1974 (the famous scene in which Rachel taunts Alice about taking away the house), I wish they had used that. Still, it outshone TGL's awful 50th anniversary week, by far.

According to the daytime press at the time, the viewers had been clamoring for some closer for Bert Bauer, so I think the show had little choice but to finally acknowledge her passing. The problem is, there was no emotional resonance. Characters like Warren Andrews (!!!) attended her funeral and were seen reminiscing about her, even though Bert loathed Warren, and would not have wanted him in her house at all, let alone at her funeral. I doubt the show even approached Don Stewart, Ellen Demming, Fran Myers, Elvera Roussel, etc., to reprise their roles at the time, but with atrocious writing and newbie faces mourning Bert, how were we supposed to care? Mike, Hope, Meta, Peggy, Steve Jackson, and several other key characters should have been there, and even though I understand why the producers could not bring ALL these characters back, having at least Mike and Hope there should have been essential. Richard Van Fleet had never even worked that much with Charita Bauer, so it meant nothing watching his version of Ed grieve. TGL was unwatchable between 1984 and 1989, IMHO.

Steve Frame was initially presented as a young Cash McCall-type character, with no indication that he had grown up dirt-poor on a farm. When he later told Alice about his roots, I could accept it because it made valid psychological sense. He had lied about or at least hidden the true story of his origins because he was ashamed of where he came from. It was a depressing, dead-end world he was desperate to escape from, to deny. In real life, people do create elaborate backstories for themselves once they are far removed from their original, unpleasant environment. I wonder if Reinholt took exception to this redirection of his character mainly because he disliked Lemay, rather than because the writing was poor. As much as I criticize Lemay for his petulance and arrogance, and for his dismissal of beloved actors like Courtney and Dwyer, the first several years of his tenure on AW were brilliant; the stuff erudite soap fans dream about. I had no problem with Steve's revelation about being born on a farm, any more than I had a problem about the formerly-virulent Aunt Liz becoming softer and more vulnerable after fate and her own atrocious behavior led her to losing her entire family in one way or another. It made the characters richer. I watched AW consistently during Courtney's first 11 years there, and while I found her a bit too overly-expressive and "bubbly" at the very beginning, I thought she grew into a very strong, impressive actress with an obvious star appeal. Heck, when she passed away, even the controversial producer Paul Rauch, who had fired her from AW to begin with, said that she had been a "great gal" who always turned in stellar performances. It's a shame that younger soap fans, who had never seen her work for themselves, seem to accept Lemay's denigrating comments as gospel. I would refute his comments very vigorously. As for Willis Frame, I actually found him to become more likable when Fitzpatrick was replaced by Leon Russom. The second actor brought a layer of vulnerability and humanity to the role that had been lacking during Fitzpatrick's portrayal.

Is the debut episode of SFT from 1951 available anywhere on the web?

Some writers who worked on THE DOCTORS were great, and some were...god-awful. I think the Pollacks' best work was on this show (I did not like their material anywhere else), but some other scribes like Marland and Harding Lemay had mixed success here. Of course, Margaret DePriest was mediocre-to-awful everywhere she went.

He was very "blah," if you ask me, and I had the feeling he would not work out, as he had been equally tedious as Linc Tyler on AMC.

Stuart did not think she had chemistry with actor George Gaines (a recast Sam Reynolds), and worked to make sure that her character not end up being tied to him. In 1976 (I think) there was another actor named Paul Dumont whom Stuart did not have any chemistry with (he was tedious), who came and went pretty quickly.

Head write by themselves, I don't think so, but they were associate head-writers, breakdown writers or dialogue writers on other series. Also, now that I am thinking more about it, I believe that they FOLLOWED Marland, and penned THE DOCTORS after he left that soap. They were still sucky, but the awful writing mess that Marland had had to clean up when he took over was probably Margaret DePriest's. Mel Brez, as per Wikipedia. The Doctors Head Writer: 1978 (with Ethel Brez) Another World Script Writer: 1974, 1995 As the World Turns Co-Head Writer: 1997 Associate Head Writer: 1997, 1998 Days of Our Lives Associate Head Writer: 1993 - 1994 One Life to Live Associate Head Writer: 1985 - 1992 Passions Associate Head Writer: 1999 - 2002

I believe Eunice's death was after Marcus had left. Stuart thought that Marcus concentrated too much on violence and action plots, with a lot of new characters, and glossed over opportunities to use Jo effectively. I think Stuart felt Marcus was marginalizing her. I agree that Jo's reaction to her husband Tony's death was minimized and not dealt with fully, and I also agree that some of the "action" could have been toned down, but the show moved like a bullet at the time, and was quite watchable.