vetsoapfan

21 minutes ago, PeggyBrooks said:

Thank you vetsoapfan! I am really grateful for any and all memories, info and clarification on this subject. Again, appreciate your responsiveness on such a long-ago topic.

My interest in most soaps dried up with the sci-fi and camp period of the 1980s (I prefer naturalistic soaps with multi-dimensional characters and plausible storylines), but I am always happy to chat about vintage soaps from decades past. I've always maintained that the 1960s and (particularly) the 1970s were the golden years of daytime drama.

If by some miracle I stumble across the AH/PP Daytimer articles, I will notify you ASAP.

7 minutes ago, PeggyBrooks said:

Thanks so much for your timely reply! That walking-off incident is what I'm most interested in. So, you do recall AH mentioning that in the Daytimers interview? Any ideas as to which issue?

There was a monthly columnist in Rona Barrett's Daytimers for a time, named David Johnson, and I know AH was interviewed/quoted in at least one of Johnson's pieces. I remember this specifically because Johnson made the erroneous claim that Pam Peters had been completely absent from the episodes surrounding Jennifer Brooks' final days. Not true. Peggy was in an episode when Stuart and Jennifer celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary, and then in another one when the Brooks girls were gathered in their parents' living room talking about Jen's death. At the conclusion of that ep, we saw Peggy running out of the room in tears. When the action picked up on the next episode, Lorie announced that Peggy couldn't take what was happening and had fled. David Johnson criticized the show for supposedly not including Peggy in any of this story, but Johnson was the one in the wrong. He obviously had failed to see the few times Peggy had appeared, and then lambasted the show for her "absence." I do remember this and AH's comments about PP walking off the set, which lead to the termination of the Jack/Peggy storyline. I just don't recall if the various tidbits came from one issue of Daytimers or two. Unfortunately, this was 4.5 decades ago, and while my memory of  my favorite soaps is generally good, I cannot say for certainty what quotes appeared in what specific issue(s) of the magazine.

8 minutes ago, PeggyBrooks said:

I know this is an old thread, but I'm wondering if anyone might be able to help me locate this Anthony Herrera interview wherein he speaks about the way the Ron Becker rape trial played out, particularly the question of Pamela Peters Solow's behavior and how it affected the storyline. If anyone has details of which issue of Daytimers this interview appeared in or help finding it, I would be most grateful. I looked for years on eBay etc. but with no luck. I'd be so appreciative of a scan of the interview even. Thank you!

I don't recall AH specifically mentioning Pam Peters' spotty appearances during the rape trial; that was my own remembrance from watching the show daily at the time. I found it so weird.  AH did acknowledge the incident of PP just walking off the set one day, and then later being told by Bill Bell that he was ending AH's story and run on the show.

On 10/10/2023 at 7:17 AM, danfling said:

I have two questions about Grandma Matthews (Vera Allen).   When the character was written off the show, what was the explanation that she was no longer living with Mary and Jim?    Did she leave at the same time Janet Matthews was written off the show or before that?

Granny Matthews was written out with the on-screen explanation that she went to be with her niece, who was going to have her first baby.

21 minutes ago, Wendy said:

Do it. You'll never regret it. And it opens up avenues for shows released overseas but not in the US.

Yes, that's a main reason why I ever considered getting an all-region player: because there have been some shows and films I wanted which were only available in other countries.

9 minutes ago, Wendy said:

And this is why I still have physical media: I have a region-free DVD/Blu-Ray player. I bought the German DVD edition of the TV series, Hunter, which has the ORIGINAL music, not the replacement crap on the US DVD set/streaming. (The show LOVED The Rolling Stones!) Bought it at the German Amazon branch, Amazon.de.

Replacement music on any given show is usually very hit or miss. So if I can have a show as broadcast from elsewhere, why not?

I will NEVER abandon physical media. Films and TV series are wont to disappear from streaming sites for a variety of reasons, but when you have your own, physical copies of your favorites, you can cherish them forever. Plus, all the special features and commentary soundtracks can be a blast!

I've been thinking of buying an all-region player, and you're giving me more incentive to take the plunge and do it!

I've never seen Hunter, but I do remember hearing about it when it was being produced. Certain pearl-clutching conservative types wanted it taken off the air because the actor's pants were supposedly too revealing.

10 minutes ago, kalbir said:

Also be on the lookout for cut syndication episodes vs. full original broadcast episodes. I think The Golden Girls DVDs had some cut syndication episodes and not full original broadcast episodes.

God, YES!

A French-Canadian company (Imavision, I believe) originally had the rights to release Little House on the Prairie, and their DVDs' quality was atrocious. First of all, they cut out the opening and closing credits of the episodes (WHY???), sped up the film (WHY???), and then on top of it all, offered butchered, syndicated cuts of many, if not most, of the shows. Each one should have had a running time of about 46-47 minutes, but huge chunks of some eps were missing, leaving their running times at 37 minutes. Imavision had a disclaimer on the INSIDE of the packaging, claiming that "every effort has made to include all existing scenes." So you had to buy and open the DVD sets before finding out the eps had been butchered. Of course, years later, Lion's Gate re-released the entire series and had the full-length episodes intact and remastered, so Imavision's spin about complete eps being hard to find was bullsh*t, borne out of laziness, cheapness, and/or dishonesty. 

The first season of Rhoda had primarily syndicated versions as well, cutting out a lot of the funniest material.

1 hour ago, Wendy said:

Starting on Tuesday, October 10th.

TV Line has an article detailing the music issues and what will remain and what won't.

Nowadays, before I buy anything on DVD, I always investigate the release's music rights, and see if they have been secured for the DVDs. I've been burned in the past, and left AGHAST at the atrocious butchering of some shows, whose music has been hacked out of the episodes.

Beverly Hill 90210, Tour of Duty, WKRP in Cincinnati, St Elsewhere and the first version of Roswell are the worst offenders I know of. (WKRP, after having its music deleted and replaced on its first/cheap release, was later re-released by another company--Shout Factory--with most of the music restored, but cases like this are rare.)

Because I had China Beach on both VHS and Beta tapes (two separate, complete runs of this fine show), I was okay with series not being released on DVD because of all the copyrighted music involved. The soundtrack was ESSENTIAL to the quality, tone, and effect of the drama. After YEARS of not being available, Time-Life somehow pulled off the impossible feat of releasing the show on DVD and Blu-ray, with an astonishing amount of the precious music intact.  The (few) substitutions the manufacturers had to make to the soundtrack were perfectly chosen and did not diminish the quality of the show at all. I was thrilled.

It's depressing that all the music-based problems are affecting streaming rights too.

4 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Sorry. This is my mess. What @vetsoapfan was originally talking about was another video I had uploaded along with this video which had various photos (it was on Youtube under Sally Stark). They said that didn't seem to be the same Sally Stark. I deleted that video. The video you're responding to I think they knew was Sally Stark.

Yes, the actress in the video you retained in this thread is definitely Sally Stark. I never questioned that fact.  The other clip, the one you removed, did not feature the LoL actress, however. (IMHO, of course.)

And thank you so much for the tag to this crisp LoL episode. What good quality! I was not old enough to be following the show at that time, so watching this broadcast will be fun!

34 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I was definitely shocked too. I wonder if someone just read a Wiki and went with it, unless a diehard old school AW fan runs TVLine. Maybe they can help dig up some episodes.

Vlada Gelman, who is the credited author of the poll/article is too young to have seen AW during the 1960s and 1970s. Even Michael Ausiello, TVLine's founder and editorial director, was born in 1972, so he's too young to know about AW's heyday either. He has written enthusiastically about Santa Barbara over the years, which he could have watched when he was a kid, but never about AW.

I think you are right: Gelman  probably just googled "popular TV triangles" and culled candidates from wiki articles. Or she had read about certain characters from history books. I appreciate the effort to include a selection of vintage choices, but I seriously doubt the majority of TVLine's staff or even readers know who George Reinholt and Jacqueline Courtney were.

44 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

That IS a surprise.

I see the votes are evenly divided. 

Somewhere, Harding Lemay would be pleased. 

As fun as it was to find a 50-year-old soap triangle like this among the mix, it was still quite surprising. I wonder how many people who responded to this poll were on the younger side, and voted in favor of a character who remained on the show until the very end, and whom the modern audience remembered better.

Anyway, the poll brought back a lot of memories.

The entertainment website TVLine just uploaded a new poll asking readers to vote for their favorite couples among divisive TV triangles. To my surprise, there was an Another World connection.

https://tvline.com/lists/tv-love-triangles/

2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

I can understand the need for caution, especially when it comes to soap magazines, but I do trust your word, and I'm glad you are sharing your memories. The sad truth is we will probably never see the full episode resurface. I see why AWHP doesn't want to go out without having more info, but I hope if some of us manage to find the articles where Rauch or Jacquie talked about the two-hander, they might reconsider.

True, with all the misinformation and myths floating around, it's important to be careful about accepting just anything, from any source, reported about soap opera history. From what I've seen, however, the vast majority of misinformation comes from people who never saw the soaps broadcast on screen for themselves, either because they did not chose to watch specific series at the time, or because they were simply too young (perhaps not even born yet) to do so. Sites like Soap Central seem to fill in the blanks about stories and characters they know nothing about with a LOT of "creative fiction" from unknowledgeable contributors' vivid imagination. The writers of the Soap & Serials novelizations also got many details wrong, despite allegedly using original TV scripts upon which to base their books. Of course, some people trying to offer historical data in good faith may simply misremember details, thereby still getting the data wrong by accident.

I would say that the cases of "facts" coming from non-viewers who choose the fill-in-the-blanks-with supposition method are not comparable to the commentary of first-hand viewers who actually did watch the material, who recorded the material, who read multiple articles about the material, and who remember the material in minute detail.

But ultimately, people will believe what they believe, so continued attempts to convince them otherwise will be unsuccessful and therefore pointless. (I never did convince one internet poster that Eric Braedon began on Y&R in 1980, because that poster insisted Braedon was an original cast member from 1973. I offered evidence to the contrary, which was rebuffed, so I moved on. I like my drama and strife on television, not on the internet, LOL!)

1 hour ago, slick jones said:

A message from Mike McGavin re: the two hander.

If you could clarify to everyone that the weekly synopses are from various soap publications, but the daily synopses are directly from AW material being either show scripts or from watching those that were/are available

 

Both he and Eddie apparently are having trouble with the reliability of the info about the two hander episode.    Myself, I always find @vetsoapfan's accounts accurate, but Mike asked me to post the clarification. @DRW50 The article further supports the two hander, but they feel the soap press's multiple inaccuracies over the years, well you get it.

Just the messenger. 

 

 

I give up, LOL.

All I can do is report the facts about an episode which I watched for myself first-hand, which I recorded on audiotape and listened to again later, and which was discussed at length in the soap press of the time (with quotes from Courtney and Rauch). If people who never even watched the show in 1973, and who--for whatever reason--cannot fathom the possibility that original scripts can be altered or revised before taping, there's little I can do to convince them.

I'll save myself the energy and stop reiterating the truth as I know it.

29 minutes ago, watson71 said:

Think how many Emmys AW would have won had the Daytime Emmys existed during Agnes Nixon’s time as headwriter…

Over the years, I've always found the list of Daytime Emmy nominees (and even some of the winners) to be quite...dubious, but in a fair world, Nixon's AW would have been drowning in statues!

6 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

Guiding Light had been off the air for 6 months when it returned in 1947, this time on CBS. By the end of the NBC run the Kranskys and Rutledge's were gone .

The NBC version was a new story that lead to the introduction of Meta Bauer and then the Bauer family. I guess at some point, Irna decided a core family was necessary. She had used the Schultz family a few years earlier on the second version of Today's Children  and maybe modelled the Bauer's on them.

Right, with a new network and canvas, it was not surprising that Irna created a new family upon which to build the show in the late 1940s. Families being at the heart of her dramas was a staple for her.

16 hours ago, DRW50 said:

I do think Russ had the potential to be a more interesting character than he was (RIP David Bailey but what I've seen of his time in the role felt very much like the usual self-righteous "good guy" - not sure how Sam Groom was but I wish they'd tried a fresh approach).

Sam Groom was so handsome, so noble and so appealing as Russ. The actor somehow made the character an ultra-good guy without Russ being boring, trite or a cliche. Hw was excellent. Neither of his replacements ever did the character justice, IMHO. With Groom, Strasser, Courtney and Reinholt on board, the show was golden.

13 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

The myth of the Gregory family taking over. It was constantly mentioned that Agnes killed them off in a plane crash.

Even in published history books, there is a lot of information about the soaps which is inaccurate. It's long been reported that Pat Matthews killed her first boyfriend, Tom Baxter, by stabbing him to death. This drove me crazy whenever I read it anywhere, because Pat shot him; she did not stab him. I saw the original episodes. Years later, when Pat killed Greg Bernard, Harding Lemay's script reiterated the false myth that she had stabbed Tom with "a letter opener or something." Argh.

6 hours ago, Neil Johnson said:

Do you feel this was solidly confirmed?  Are you aware one of the existing scenes from that day's episode actually includes Pat, Dennis, and Louise (along with Alice and Steve)?  So to me, that seems to confirm the episode was not a two character episode.  Unless I'm misunderstanding something.  

I am 100% sure of the fact that although the original script had other characters set to appear that day, Paul Rauch made the decision after the script had already been written to cut out the other actors from the episode, lengthen the Steve-Alice scenes, and only have Reinholt and Courtney appear on screen. I watched it live at the time and  remember it very well. Plus, it was talked about and lauded in the soap press at the time, and Courtney did an interview about it. Even Paul Rauch put his two cents' worth in. The existing scenes with Pat, Dennis and Louise took place on the same "Bay City day" as the two-hander episode, but were broadcast in the NEXT DAY's television broadcast. The material available on youtube has a lot of clips lumped together in one upload; that does not mean that all the scenes came from a single day's NBC broadcast.

Plus, the two-hander Steve-and-Alice episode was confirmed in the article from Daily TV Serials posted a few pages ago in this thread.

20 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Oh. That's odd if so because I don't know if the Gregorys were any more notable a core family than others who just lasted a few years, like the Sheas, or most of the McKinnons, etc. But I have not seen anything of their era. 

In no way were the Gregorys a core family. They were simply an unmemorable blip on the radar. It's like making a claim that the Rosales clan was a core family on Y&R. Um...no.

20 hours ago, soapfave06 said:

AW was never my soap but some of the time periods fascinate me, as well as its rise and fall. Would the exits of George and Jacquie long-term have caused them to fall off in the late-70s or would that more so be the 90 minute experiment? Perhaps the show was in a good place once they were recast but the thrill wore off on top of the 90 minute experience? 
 

That’s one thing I don’t understand is how they squandered Courtney’s return in 1984, if they positioned that well with some good marketing, it could have set them up well for years to come. 

AW continued to ride the wave of immense popularity that it had enjoyed for years under the Nixon/early Lemay years, but as the writing deteriorated in the mid-late 1970s, and as the competing soaps steadily climbed in the ratings, AW began to suffer noticeably. As someone recent said (was it Neil Johnson?), viewers will stick around through weak writing out of loyalty to beloved characters, but with bad writing AND the elimination of so many important, cherished characters, there wasn't a lot of incentive to stick around Bay City anymore. The 90-minute format might have just been another nail in the coffin. And...NOBODY has ever understood why and how TPTB bungled Jacquie Courtney's return in 1984 so badly. The incompetence of underusing and misusing her (and giving her the worst haircut known to man) is unfathomable. All we do know is that writer Gary Tomlin later admitted in a interview that he did know the character's history very well and did not know how to use her well.

21 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Guiding Light is the only one I can think of, shifting focus to the Bauers in the late '40s. 

After TGL lost several of its original, key players in the 1940s, there were several characters isolated in their own individualized storylines. There wasn't as much of a "homey" feeling as with the Ruthledges and Kranskys at center stage. I believe Irna Phillips, understanding soaps and the audience so well, knew that having a central family at the core was important, hence the introduction of the Bauers. It ended up being a savvy move, since the show enjoyed huge success for decades afterwards, with the Bauers at its core. The audience once again had a central family to call their own.

21 hours ago, Neil Johnson said:

Yes. I wonder if Irna Phillips was writing GL during the make-over?  If so, that would be another case of the creator making the changes.   

Nixon didn't really change the cast of characters drastically. But she certainly improved the writing.  In terms of cast, she really just got rid of 3 or 4 members of the Gregory family, and introduced Ada, Sam, Rachel, and Steve.  Nixon made AW perhaps the best soap on TV while she was there.   

Yes, Irna Phillips was the one to weave the Bauers into TGL, starting in 1948. She knew her own show and what it needed, which is why her choices were beneficial to the series.

And you are right: Agnes Nixon did not make sweeping or damaging changes when she took over AW. She simply corrected the ship's course by writing out a few of James Lipton's tepid characters and introducing some inspired new ones of her own and attaching them to the show's core Matthews family. She got back to basics, rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water.

3 hours ago, Neil Johnson said:

I believe revamping Y&R was only successful because Bill Bell was still in charge, and he had been the creator of the show.  He knew his audience, he knew his show, and of course he was a brilliant writer.  

I can't think of another soap opera that was reinvented successfully.  Soap opera fans generally tune-in for the characters they know and love.  The audience will tolerate a good deal of bad writing without abandoning the show.  But if their beloved characters disappear, the audience loyalty typically disappears also.  

Again, perfectly said. I truly believe that beloved characters are the glue which binds the audience to the soaps. Once they are gratuitously eliminated from any show (particularly in large numbers over short periods of time), the audience reacts quite negatively.

10 hours ago, Sapounopera said:

What I understand from all this is that Rauch and Lemay sabotaged their own show by overestimating Wyndham's (or Mac and Rachel's?) star power and getting rid of major parts of AW's fabric. I can't know why they did this, but they messed things up. 

Reinventing the (very successful) wheel generally does not work with soaps. Bill Bell was able to do it with Y&R in 1984, but most writers and producers who toss out everything that had been there before they arrive end up crippling the show. 

9 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

I'm sure Jacquie would have been thrilled to have an acting coach suggested for her.

Lemay from a theater background, preferred stage actors overall. His first encounter on the set with Jacquie was her referring to her lines hidden all over the set. That first impression stayed with him.

When he arrived Paul Rauch was already planning to drop Margie Impert as Rachel. She had been a Lyle Hill hire and he was not impressed. 

I believe it was Virginia Dwyer who vexed Lemay by leaving script pages around the set. He said Courtney annoyed him  by reading her lines off the cuffs of her nurse's uniform. Neither of these supposed "crimes" were ever noticeable on-screen.

To be fair, Margie Impert was woefully miscast and a pretty weak Rachel. Her being replaced was for the best, IMHO.

8 hours ago, Xanthe said:

I would say rather they underestimated Jacqueline Courtney's star power. They did keep Alice on the canvas with recasts and it was later regimes in the 1980s that dispensed with the character and started killing off the younger Matthewses (Sally and Julia).

Likewise, Mac and Rachel and Iris (don't forget about Beverlee McKinsey's star power!) do seem to have been effective in their heyday and it was the Texas spinoff that diluted AW. 

 

They really did underestimate her drawing power. Jacquie was a huge star; extremely popular with the audience. None of the actresses chosen to replace her (admittedly, some were better--or "less bad"--than others) had the star appeal she exuded as Alice. Lemay even admitted that JC's presence might very well have contributed to OLTL's steady rise in the ratings once she began appearing on it.

7 hours ago, Neil Johnson said:

Lemay was a wonderful writer, but he often allowed his ego to get in his way.  He did not like actors who were known as soap opera stars (Dwyer and Courtney, for example), regardless of their acting talent, popularity, or status on the show.  He claimed to have populated Another World with actors he "grabbed" from the theater, but actually nearly every major role cast during Lemay's tenure was cast with a former soap actor who also had theater experience (which was typical for all New York soaps).  He did grab a few theater actors directly off the stage, but nearly all of those had minor and temporary roles on AW.

Lemay also did not understand the purpose or importance of the traditional soap opera matriarch (Nancy Hughes, Mary Matthews, Alice Horton, for example).  Plus he did not like writing for happy characters who had little conflict. (If you notice, nearly all important characters on AW during Lemay's run were fundamentally unhappy people.)  So he set about to turn Mary Matthews into an unlikeable meddling shrew, who would stir up trouble for her adult children.  That is more the Phoebe Tyler, Liz Matthews, Mona Croft type of character.  Virginia Dwyer knew that this would not work for Mary, so she worked to minimize his efforts.  She did play some of it however -- specifically when Mary turned against Steve and actively discouraged Alice from returning to him. In reality, Lemay wanted Mary to behave like Liz Matthews. He clearly explains this in his book.  When Dwyer didn't play it his way, Lemay hired Irene Daily to return as Liz and minimized Mary's presence on the show by having Mary often out of town, or by simply not writing for her much at all.   He also more and more gave Mary's lines to other characters -- specifically Liz and Ada during important scenes.  Lemay's ego and his growing hatred for Dwyer (and Courtney) should have been controlled by someone in management -- either Paul Rauch, or higher-ups at P&G.  Lemay could have written everything he wanted to write, without dismantling the structure of the show.  But again -- ego.

So within a four-year period, Another World lost five leading actors (four were fired, and one left for Hollywood).  Those five are Virginia Dwyer, Susan Sullivan, Jacquie Courtney, George Reinholt (all in 1975), and Michael Ryan (in 1979). Four of the five were important members of the Matthews family.   

Bravo, @Neil Johnson! You put that perfectly. Lemay's petulance and ego got in the way of his talent and what was important for the show, and AW sank because it it.

5 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Well said @Neil Johnson .

As @vetsoapfan has said before, I think it's obvious when watching old clips that Courtney is perfectly strong as Alice. We even have clips of the breakdown story which Lemay ended early because he felt she wasn't a good enough actress. And we have similar clips of Susan Harney breaking down after John's death. Harney who was, per Lemay, a better actress, just not possessing star power. To me, Courtney is just as good as Harney, or better, at the dramatic work.

I think there was resentment of people who didn't want to be in Lemay's inner circle (the way some like Constance Ford, Susan Sullivan were), and when you add in Lemay and Rauch's anger toward George Reinholt, Courtney had so much stacked against her in surviving that regime. 

The irony of Lemay's disdain for soap melodrama is so much of his run was full of melodrama. You need grounded actors to make melodrama work and make viewers care. That was Jacqueline Courtney. 

And of course as years passed, Vicky Wyndham faced the same alleged sabotage and efforts to make her quit, but she was in a very different position than Courtney and chose to stay. (if the show had run a few more years I do wonder if she would have).

Bravo to you too, @DRW50! The contention that Harney was a "much better actress" than Courtney is absurd. SH's scenes after John Randolph died were just embarrassing.

8 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

The more I read that book, the more I think that there may have been some actual scheming on Lemay’s part in order to get Jacqui Courtney and George Reinholt to leave the show. 

When Lemay began at AW in 1971, he focused on the show's core, legacy characters and everything in Bay City flourished. The material he gave Courtney and Reinholt was wonderful for the first three years. I wonder if he eventually became emboldened by his own success, and wanted to flex his muscles and revise the show into something more to his liking. It eventually crippled the show, like Pam Long's and Gail Kobe's inexplicable gutting of The Guiding Light destroyed that series.

On 9/13/2023 at 8:35 PM, Xanthe said:

I wonder how much promotion or coverage it got at the time and how long they spent on the planning. It's fascinating that the concept was not decided with the original script but rather edited from a conventional script.

 

That's why I have to begrudgingly give kudos to Paul Rauch, who made fairly last-minute changes to the concept of this episode, based on his (astute) belief that the Steve-Alice reconciliation would be historic, and deserved special treatment.

On 9/13/2023 at 9:34 PM, Donna L. Bridges said:

I was thinking about this. If Paul came out of the booth & usurped the director, which is what it sounds like, Pete may have been uninvolved. But, maybe it's just me but I don't think of them being personally hostile to GR & JC & Virginia Dwyer. As I understand it the firings were for cause. Now, George's reprehensible behavior went on all the time so that could have been an issue. And, JC the only problem was that Pete did not feel she could act. I wish I could turn back time & put her with an acting coach to change her style to whatever Pete wanted to hear & see! 

It was reported at the time that Rauch worked with the director to add depth and nuance to the Steve and Alice scenes, in order to "milk" the characters' long-awaited reconciliation and gratify the audience who had been vehemently calling for the pair to reunite.

Aside from Reinholt, whose backstage issues/behavior on both AW and OLTL have been well-documented, I just don't believe firing Courtney and Dwyer was "for cause." Lemay simply had an irrational hatred for both women. The justifications he used in his book to fight for their dismissal were blatantly ridiculous and hypocritical. Considering that Courtney consistently ranked at the top of audience popularity polls and was awarded for her acting multiple times (in Daytime TV, Daily TV Serials, Afternoon  TV magazines, etc.), it wasn't her acting that needed to be changed to placate a petulant writer; Lemay needed to get over himself and accept that it's destructive to fire hugely popular leads from any series based on personal ire.

2 hours ago, slick jones said:

@DRW50   I sent the scan to Mike McGavin, who told me someone whose information is always suspect had been going on and on about the episode.

@vetsoapfan I also sent him your succinct posts about it. He and I have a good rapport, and help each other with a few casting/ storyline things often.

Thanks for the remarkable memory, @vetsoapfan.

Someone who is less-than credible has been "going on and on" about the Mike and Nancy episode from TEON, or the Steve and Alice one from AW?

I cannot and do not remember every single thing about soaps gone by (alas!), but the Alice/Steve/Rachel triangle is/was my all-time favorite soap opera saga, and I do remember it (including specific scenes and dialogue) quite well.

The ONLY good thing about my being older than Methusela is that I was "there" to witness, first-hand, the halcyon days of daytime TV.

I wrote the lines of text which you reposted in your last message. I just lifted a quote from Jacquie Courtney (about filming the dress rehearsal of the two-person ep) from memory of a vintage soap magazine article. Back in the day, I literally bought and read all of the publications, so I can't specify which one.

57 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

@vetsoapfan may know that. 

1 minute ago, DRW50 said:

Thanks. I'll have to look through some of my scans again, if I ever find where I put them.

I'm always grateful when the random '50s soap episodes pop up, but I'd be so happy if any '70s moments resurfaced, especially for AW. 

DAYS, AW, TEON, Y&R, OLTL...so many soaps produced stellar material throughout that decade. It's frustrating that among all the surviving episodes available to fans, the 1970s is the least represented period.

31 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Thanks @vetsoapfan so much. I should have tagged you, but I didn't want to annoy people with my OCD questions. I had wondered if that might have been somewhere in those clips (I thought it might have been the episode before he went to prison where he asked her to smile), but since those were so many clips, I wasn't completely sure.

It's a shame that this never got any recognition in soap magazines, the way that the Edge episode did (I saw that mentioned in that "101 greatest soap moments of all time" SPW issue). I guess Rauch's and Lemay's hostility toward Courtney and Reinholt overshadowed any memory or discussion of this moment.

Two-hander I mostly just know because that's how EastEnders episodes along those lines are often described by fans, although they don't do them very often now. 

Never hesitate to tag me or ask me questions. I enjoy reflecting on soaps of the past.

Some magazines of the day did write about the special Steve and Alice ep. One of them remarked that it was brilliant to do the two-person episode, since the romantic duo was enormously popular, and the fans had been loudly clamoring for a reunion for the pair for a long time.

TEON's Mike-and-Nancy episode was also brilliant, by the way. EDGE was primarily known for its intricate mystery and suspense plots, but Henry Slesar never skimped on characterization or interpersonal relationship drama either. He could throw emotional punches to the audience with the best of the daytime scribes.

Soaps were so powerful in the 1970s!