vetsoapfan

I would love to know whatever happened to Trish Stewart (the original Chris Brooks Foster on The Young and the Restless). She seems to have vanished, and no current information is available about her on the web. Ditto Pamela Peters (ex-Peggy Brooks, The Young and the restless).

You are being too kind in your description, LOL! It was...offensively boring. Soooo tedious! It was like TPTB were actively trying to annihilate the audience!

The actress in the commercial with Hubbard once played Anne Jeffers on THE GUIDING LIGHT, back in the 1970s.

I always found Luke to be so unappealing; such a degenerate. I never understood his "appeal." I would have accepted Laura and Stefan as a couple, but what I REALLY wanted was for Laura to realize that she had always belonged with Scotty, and reconciled with him.

I imagine there were people involved at P&G who remembered the show's history, but not every writer cares enough, or takes the time enough, to do his research. Those of us who followed scribes like Pat Falken Smith, Douglas Marland, Claire Labine, etc., were spoiled, because it was very clear from their material that they had done exhaustive research into their shows' histories. Other writers, not so much. Also, in his autobiography about the time he spent writing AW, Harding Lemay admitted that TPTB at P&G and the network weren't particularly helpful about filling him in on the show's history. He found more background information in fan letters, LOL.

Yes, the Alice/Iris/Iris conflict was developed in the early 1970s, with the Jacqueline Courtney, Beverlee McKinsey, and James Douglas playing the parts. It was great! The character of Alice came and went several times over the course of the show. A tepid, colorless recast, Linda Borgenson, was playing Alice at the time Rachel and David Canary's Steven Frame were involved. Corrine Jacker was a dreadful writer, and the storyline was a bust, even though Canary did make a pretty good Steven.

Yes, certain writers, like Pamela Long on TGL and Hogan Sheffer on ATWT turned out their best work when paired with strong co-headwriters. Rachel and Alice did share a few, token moments here and there, under Tomlin, but the show never capitalized on their history, or never really reignited their conflict, which would have been a boon for the show.

Oh, dear God in heaven, Sam Groom's show from the 1970s? That wretched mess? Even today, I remember how bad it was.

Yes, Michael Gregory chose to leave, which was unfortunate. Chris Robinson was okay, but he lacked the gregarious, easy-going sex-appeal and charm that Gregory exuded.

Yep. Yep, again.

I don't remember how long into Monty's reign he played Rick, but he certainly had a great warmth and charisma, and there was good chemistry between him and Denise Alexander. When Chris Robinson took over the role, I found that Rick became more aloof, more reserved, and less charismatic.

Jeff Webber! The first and better Rick Webber! In the 1970s, Jeff, Rick, and Scotty Baldwin were all on my "to marry" wishlist!

The clueless powers that be on so many soaps have decimated their core characters: killing them off or shoving them onto the backburner, over fans' protests, so it's hard to know if Alice would have continued her reign as one of the show's leading heroines. Susan Harney was adequate, but fans never warmed up to her more matter-of-fact, less emotional version of Alice, and even Harding Lemay admitted that she lacked the star appeal that Courtney exuded. When Courtney returned in 1984, I had high hopes for what the show could do with her, but she was marginalized terribly: kept on the backburner, given little to do, paired with an uninteresting costar, given a dreadful and inappropriate butch haircut, dressed in hideous, mannish clothes...and then fired after a year. The writer, Gary Tomlin, later admitted in an interview that he had not studied the history of the show well enough to understand Alice, and didn't really know the backstory between her and Rachel, which was undoubtedly a principle reason why Courtney's return was a flop.

Yes, I appreciated Lemay's using history in that story, with Pat flashing back to Tom Baxter's death after she had killed Greg Bernard. There was a continuity error however. In Lemay's story, Pat had supposedly stabbed Tom Baxter to death, but in the original episodes which aired in the 1960s, she had shot him with a gun. Still, I always appreciate writers mining a show's past for present-day stories.

This storyline point was very effective, because it allowed viewers to see that underneath it all, Lorie could actually be sensitive and altruistic...well, to a point, anyway. Lorie always wanted to be Stuart's good girl and gain his approval, and so she went over to see Betty and tried her best to set the poor, frumpy woman straight. She told Jed's wife that her hairdo and fashion sense were all wrong, and made her look unattractive, and then proceeded to give the woman beauty and fashion advice, and tips on how to be more attractive to her husband. Betty was resistant to change, but Lorie was persistent, LOL. These were small, character-based scenes, but both effective and memorable. How I miss the halcyon days of this once-great series!

During the first few years of the series, Alice was indeed a supporting character; the main heroines were Pat and Missy. When Rachel showed up and married Russ Matthews, however, Alice's role expanded. The newlyweds moved in with Jim and Mary, so Alice and Rachel had a lot of interaction. Rachel grated on Alice's nerves, and Alice could see right through her, so there was a lot of tension in the Matthews home. I will NEVER forget Rachel manipulating Alice out of her own bedroom (which Rachel wanted for herself because it was bigger than the one Rachel was using.)

I agree with Dan's comment about how disrespectful it was to have that repulsive shoot-out on the show. The decision to shoot up the Bauer kitchen, an iconic symbol of the series, was inexplicable. It showed how little understanding of the show or its audience TPTB had. Certain decisions would simply infuriate the fans, and alienate them gratuitously. Imagine DOOL having a Satan-possessed Marlena gleefully masturbating with the Horton family's Christmas ornaments before smashing them into the fireplace. Or a churlish Sonny being so furious that his mob cannot take over the administration at GH, that he urinates on the picture of Dr. Steve Hardy in the hospital lobby. UGH!

I had such a long history with The Guiding Light, and loved its storylines and core characters from 1950 to about 1983, and then watched in agony as incompetent, clueless powers that be started dismantling the core and turning the show into a low-brow campfest. I kept hanging on, but nail by nail, they cemented that coffin shut. I loathed: --The 1983/4 cast massacre --The start of the campy, stupid stories: The Dreaming Death, The Ghost in the Attic, Jonathan Brooks' Talking Computer --The Grating Reva Show of the 1980s --The Killing of Maureen Bauer --The Firing of Michael Zaslow --History Denied: Brandon Spaulding is Alive! Amanda Wexler is Alan's Sister! Springfield Patriarchs Went Fishing Together! --The Replacement Beth Raines and her Ill-Defined Characterization --Cartoon Harley --The Santos Boobs...er, Mob --San Cristocrap --Meva and Crassie, the Shayme Sisters --Goopy Richard Winslow --Reva the Ghost --Reva the Amish Amnesiac --Reva the San Cristocrapian Queen --Reva the Clone --Reva the Illegal-Immigrant Savior --Reva the Blind --Reva the Time Traveller --Reva the Saggy & Bedraggled Object of Every Man's Desire --Releasing ESSENTIAL Vets like ver Dorn and Garrett --Peapack ((Sigh))

Killing off Maureen was far from being the only misstep TGL took in its final decades. The overemphasize on the Reva character, the San Cristocrapian nonsense, the nauseating Santos mob, the reliance on adolescent and cartoon plot devices over character delineation and interpersonal relationships, the destruction of (and contradiction of) history...the list goes on. However, I have always felt that soap fans will remain loyal to their series, even through periods of bad writing, if the core characters whom they love and want to see remain on-screen. If both the main beloved characters AND the quality of the writing are absent, it's a lose-lose situation, because we have no one left to care for, and the plot mechanics forced upon us by incompetent writers turn us off. That's when the ratings are wont to take a nosedive.

Yes, it is.

Killing off Maureen Bauer was one of the most bone-headed and inexplicable decisions ever made by the powers that be at The Guiding Light. For YEARS, the fans had been begging for a return to the show's roots, and a return of its core family, the Bauers. Losing Bert was unavoidable, of course, but killing off Bill and Hillary for the sake of a simple-minded short-term story, replacing the affable Mart Hulswit with the more aloof Peter Simon in the role of Ed, and firing Don Stewart and Elvera Roussel as the popular Mike and Hope had a major crippling effect on the show. Ellen Parker's warm, sympathetic portrayal as Maureen allowed her to develop quite nicely into the matriarch role left empty by Charita Bauer's passing, and by killing off Maureen, the show was essentially gutting itself of its heart in order to give us a grating...Buzz. UGH.

That's a good question. Courtney was so popular, and so iconic in the role, my first thought would have been NOT to recast the part at all. If the network or P&G forced me to do so...mmmm. I have no idea. What actress would have been your choice?

DRW50! Thank you so much for finding and sharing those AW articles! As always, you are amazing. I have these same articles, but being 100% clueless about how to upload them to the internet, I was frustrated that I could not share them with y'all. I thought the articles were published in Afternoon TV, but it was actually Daytime TV Stars. (After almost four decades, my memory was fuzzy.) Do you also have the interview with Jacquie Courtney from LaGuardia's book, or the article with Virginia Dwyer, published after her firing, entitled something like, "I would not die for them!" I'm also happy to see that magazine cover with Trish Stewart and William Gray Espy. Along with Courtney and a few others, Trish Stewart is one of my absolute favorites. Her Chris Brooks is probably my best-loved Y&R character of all time. Again, thanks so much for generously sharing your treasures.

Jacqueline Courtney was the definitive Alice, of course, and none of the replacements (whom I always referred to as "the fake Alices") ever really impressed me. Courtney moved over to OLTL on November 12, 1975, and I became a staunch and loyal supporter on that show from that moment on (even though I had already watched and enjoyed it previously). My rating of the Alices: Susan Harney: ** (out of four stars) Wesley Ann Pfenning: BOMB (What was Rauch thinking?!?) Vana Tribbey: ** Linda Borgeson: *

Yes, I had seen that article, but thanks for pointing it out again. Reinholt's ego was out of control, LOL, but he was right to resist Lemay's writing an entirely new and contradictory backstory for Steven Frame, than had originally been played out on screen.