vetsoapfan

I watched regularly from 1968 to 1983, and loved the show until so many beloved characters and actors started getting dropped, science fiction elements crept in, and Paul Rauch decimated Llanview. Pinkerton was an excellent Dorian, although I must say that the character was one of the rare soap characters who was recast multiple times, and every single one of the actresses chosen to play the role ended up being quite good. Honestly, he wasn't terribly memorable. I remember wondering at the time why this actor was cast. Jacquie Courtney was briefly paired with a potential love interest named Adam Brewster, played by an actor called John Mansfield. He was painfully wrong for the part. Sometimes, actors just don't make much of an impression. (Or worse, they make a bad one.) The show changed so much in the 1980s, from the down-to-earth, grounded show it had been in the 1960s and 1970s. I'm glad you got to experience the glory years! Since Courtney confirmed in a 1974 Daily TV Serial interview that she had had kinescopes made of many of Alice's important episodes, I've been hoping that they would show up eventually, but I imagine the likelihood of that happening now are slim. It's a shame. Those were golden years. Eugenia's portrait originally hung in the drawing room, but after Dorian married Victor, she took that down and had one of herself done. She unveiled it at a party, to an aghast Victoria. (Later, after Pinkerton left the show, Dorian's portrait was redone to feature Claire Malis.) Actually, James Storm was Larry Wolek # 2. The character was first played by actor Paul Tulley who (IMHO) lack screen presence. James was fine, but I immediately accepted Michael Storm as the definitive actor for the part. He had the remarkable ability to play a good, noble man...and keep him interesting and layered. It was egregious how the show just dumped him later on. Yes, yes, yes. Daily TV Serials was one of the finest soap-based publications, ever. Being an avowed soap addict, I read them all in the 1960s and 1970s. Daily TV Serials ended up being the best, but Daytime TV, Afternoon TV, and a few others were great as well. At the bottom of the barrel was TV Dawn to Dusk, which was poorly produced and blatantly fudged their "facts." 🙃

I loved OLTL dearly from 1968 to 1983, but the issue of Peter's accent was handled in an incredibly stupid manner. One day, out of the blue, he announced that he was living in America now, and should adopt an American accent in order to fit in better. It was, like...WHAAAAT? That is NOT how accents work. Since the change happened overnight, it meant his Americanized way of speaking was an act Peter just decided to fake. Was he intending to use an artificial stage accent for the rest of his life??? It was so stupid. I wonder if the sudden termination of his original accent (which was, admittedly, weird) was mandated by ABC or something. Peter's accent was never mentioned or heard again, so I guess we'll never know why it was written out.🙄

Looking back, that's probably why I first fell in love with Kim.

Ahh, yes, I see scammers all over Facebook. I agree that reporting is the correct route to take, but, alas: in my experience, it almost always leads to nowhere. Facebook seems not to care about the safety of its users.

My pleasure. I hope it works for you! I'm hopeless with anything technological, and remain computer illiterate, LOL, so when I finally figure out how to do something, I am super proud of myself! Feigned indignation is a common ploy among scammers, who want to cower you into acquiescing to their often-unreasonable demands without question. It probably works for them, since many folks don't like confrontation, and desperately want to get their hands on the material which the scammers are allegedly offering. But like you, I know better than to cave in to scam-artists' aggressive BS. When you stand up to them, they usually throw a hissy fit and then disappear, which only confirms their shady intentions as far as I'm concerned.

As always, thank you @DRW50. I loved Kim and Dan. I used to look forward to seeing them in the park with Betsy. The scenes were so warm and romantic.

@MissPalmer: You just have to enter the "@" symbol into the new message/text box, followed by the posters' names. Don't leave a space between the symbol and the name(s). Usually, just typing the first few letters will make them pop up for you. Then those posters will be "tagged" and alerted to your post. So, @ + MissP (or the complete MissPalmer if you choose) gets the job done. I just did it, above!🙃 That's what made me get out of the trading business. I'd send other "traders" some of my rare material on the agreement of a trade, but they wouldn't send me anything in return (or if they did, it was garbage and not as promised). Then I'd see them SELLING the stuff I had originally sent them to other soap fans...at outrageous prices. Fortunately, the folks at SON have been honest, trustworthy and generous, in my experience. Thank goodness for USB flash drives. As soon as see I something on the internet which I desperately want and "need" to own, it goes right onto a flash drive for safekeeping. Me too. Even soaps like TSS and Love of Life, which were not among my top, all-time favorite shows back in the day, are a joy to see now.

Thank you @MissPalmer and @DRW50. Yes, some of these episodes have been around for a while, but the 1972 color one is new to me. TSS had been great in earlier years, but I had drifted away from it by the 1972, so I don't even think I watched this color episode way back when. (It's interesting that episodes which would have seemed inferior in the '70s look so much better today, compared to what soap fans have to endure in 2025.)

I've always contended that it was the intimate, personal, theatrical quality of soaps that first attracted audiences to soaos, and kept us glued to them for the first sevveral decades f their existence. Even stereotypical storylines can be elevated by fine, perceptive dialogue writing. When WAS the last time we had that?

100%.👏👍 Even the worst of the 1970s was better than what soap viewers have had to endure in later decades. What's most egregious is, standards have deteriorated to the point that even damaging soap-hacks like Hogan Sheffer, Ron Carlivati and Jean Passanante have won awards for their material!

Yes, both TGL and ATWT saw some weak years in the 1970s, but at least the shows were not both atrocious at the same time. TGL's initial slump occurred in the early part of the decade, while ATWT's first decline happened towards the end. Both soaps had been doing quite well before then, and both rebounded, more or less, within a few years. Compare that to later on, when TGL remained in the toilet from the mid-1990s to its cancellation in 2009 (after recovering briefly from a horrific run in the '80s), and ATWT was weak-to-awful from 1993 to its death in 2010. The fact that Chris Goutman was allowed to remain at ATWT from 1999 to 2010, despite his atrocious handling of the series, astounds me. ATWT's being saddled with writers such as Stern and Black, Leah Laiman, Hogan Sheffer and Jean Passanante, and TGL's misfortune in having the likes of Jeff Ryder and Ellen Weston as scribes? Yikes! Only the enduring loyalty of die-hard fans helped these soaps survive (if on life support) as long as they did.

Well, that's is what I meant, yes. A vintage soap magazine once posted something like, his work on The Doctors was not Marland at his best, but it was better than the garbage he inherited. Even watching the show live at the time, I think I overvalued Marland's contribution to TD, mainly because it was not as god-awful as what had come before him. I always wonder how much of the weak material we see from otherwise-gifted writers is the result of network and sponsor tampering and interference. Pat Falken Smith should not have been as bad on Ryan's Hope as she was. Claire Labine's material on TGL was mysteriously subpar. Ditto Lemay's on The Doctors. Many esteemed scribes have openly spoken about the interference from TPTB which hindered their work at one time or another. Poor production values and a largely-mediocre cast only make the situation worse. We were offered a lot of great drama in the 1950s and '60s, but yes: I do think the soaps reached their creative peak in the 1970s. The science-fiction dreck, the dismissal of the vets, the low-brow camp, the characters being reduced to caricatures, and the shallow focus on glam, glitz, temper tantrums and adolescent antic severely crippled the genre in the 1980s. It has never recovered, IMHO. In the golden days of the 1970s, I didn't appreciate how blessed we, the viewers, were.

I agree about Lakin's and Edelstein's work on The Doctors. While IMHO, Marland's material on The Doctors did not really jell as well as fans of his later work would have thought, I will admit that his writing for TD was still better than many of that show's other scribes (before and after his tenure). Interesting, Harding Lemay's work on TD was a snooze-fest as well.🤔

Anne Howard Bailey got the axe about halfway through the run of the series. NBC replaced her and the executive producer, and dropped some actors. The surge in quality, from AHB's material to Rick Edelstein's, was instantaneous and even exhilarating to me, but NBC had clearly given up on HTSAM. I knew it was a lost cause, once I heard it was being moved to an earlier timeslot, competing directly against ATWT. In the early 1970s, TIIC at NBC had launched four soaps in the late-afternoon (Somerset, Bright Promise, Return to Peyton Place and HTSAM), all of which were saddled with terrible writing from the start. Each one later fired their original scribes and hired newer and significantly better ones, but even though all four soaps improved significantly and became quite compelling, I think viewers were too burned out to give new NBC soaps much of a chance...yet again.

Both of those soaps were firing on all cylinders in those years! The 1960s and particularly the 1970s seduced me into believing that daytime soaps would always provide viewers with high-quality, intelligent, absorbing and adult entertainment. Little did I know what would happen to the genre in the 1980s and beyond.🤢 This.👏 Still, to be honest, I would take Upton's work over later soap-killing "writers" who harped on science fiction and low-brow camp. (I can't believe I am saying that, but it's true.) Lipton...no.

@Reverend Ruthledge summarized the situation perfectly, as always, but I would like to add my personal opinion from viewing that time period of the soap. Agnes Nixon only left at the tail-end of 1966, if I recall correctly, and TGL was excellent for most of that year. Then the revolving door of writers began. Perhaps P&G kept hiring and firing different scribes in an attempt to find the perfect one to helm the show, but there were probably more than a dozen head writers credited from the time Nixon departed to when the Dobsons came aboard in 1975. The quality of their material was uneven, to say the least. Some very capable writers were hired, like Jane and Ira Avery, Robert Soderberg and Edith Sommer, even Irna Phillips. Unfortunately, there were dregs among the choices, too, like James Lipton (who somehow managed to get hired twice--UGH) and Gabrielle Upton. The constant shift in quality, tone and focus was jarring and off-putting. IMHO, the weakest years of the show were 1973, 74, and into 1975 until the Dobsons arrived. Of course, TGL had the misfortune of heavy competition from NBC (Another World) and ABC (General Hospital) in the early 1970s. Both those shows peaked from, say, 1971-74. A disorganized soap with poor writing was bound to falter in such conditions. (I still remained steadfastly loyal to Springfield, however!) Then, General Hospital completely fell apart around 1975, with its own revolving door of weak writers. With one of its principle competitors sinking fast, and with a renewed vigor thanks to the Dobsons, TGL started to rebound in the ratings. Even in a few years, when Gloria Monty and Douglas Marland brought GH back to new heights of popularity, TGL continued to acquit itself nicely with solid ratings. (By that time, it was AW's turn to wane.) Anyway, all this to say: back in the 1960s and 1970s, all soaps had their ups and downs. Fans just understood that if we remained patient, the ships' courses would be corrected soon enough. That has not been the case for decades now, however, as soaps have been allowed to sink into a state of lethargy and disrepair, and remain that way indefinitely. So many soaps have ended in cancellation, with the same hacks in place who helped destroy the genre in the first place. At least in the early 1970s, TPTB knew TGL needed help and working on fixing it. (BTW, I am not saying that I totally loved everything that happened to TGL under the Dobsons, but I'd take them as writers over James Lipton any day.)

There were four actors who played Julie's first husband, Scott Banning: Robert Carraway (briefly), followed by the excellent Mike Farrell, then Robert Hogan, and finally Ryan MacDonald. Carraway was first, but didn't last long. He wasn't terribly interesting. Mike Farrell was great: affable, warm, a truly endearing presence. Hogan was a solid actor and good in the role, but I had trouble accepting him after Farrell, who played the kind of decent and supportive husband Julie needed--even if she didn't know it at the time. Ryan MacDonald was okay, and the hunkiest of the lot. He made a splash appearing in Playgirl in the early 1970s, and was the final actor to play Scott when the character was killed off in 1973.

Intellectually and rationally, I have to agree. What we HOPE for, and what we believe will actually happen, do not always align, alas.🥺

From the promotional material available so far, BTG does appear to be focused on glam, high fashion, gaudy excess, and at least one petulant vixen with an attitude problem. It might be an advertising ploy, however, to attract a certain type of audience (fans of over-the-top 1980s' soaps and todays "Housewife" nightmares). TPTB tend to underestimate the intelligence of the audience, and dumb down everything to the lowest-common denominator. The actual show may be much deeper than the shallow images we are being given so far. I am hoping for the best, but if it ends up being slap-fights, tiaras, tantrums and glitz, without real and meaningful human characters and storylines, I think many people are weary of seeing that sort of show, and yet another one will be a hard sell. I would prefer that as well: having a solid mixture of haves and have nots, with a multi-ethnic and realistic-looking group of actors, dealing with identifiable issues. I guess we will soon see what the show turns out to be. Fingers crossed. The more successful this show is, the better it will bode for the future of daytime soaps. I'm jaded from decades of mismanagement by the executives, but I really do want this show to be a winner.

Yep, that was me. Under Bailey, HTSAM was cold, stiff and quite unappealing. Then, when Edelstein assumed the reigns, the quality of the scripts surged. It was amazing, IMHO. Very few shows have rebounded so instantly and left my jaw agape: GH when Doug Marland came aboard, Somerset when Roy Winsor took over, and Love of Life under Claire Labine were the most memorable examples to me.

Thanks for the tag, @DRW50. I don't recall seeing this episode before.

I do hope the writers chosen will be up to the task of adult, layered, nuanced writing. Some of the names announced so far fill me with unease and/or foreboding, but I hope I am proven wrong and there ends up being quality writing involved.

At the height of my soap addiction, I was watching a significant number soaps every day, and what I appreciated most was that, back then, they were still rooted in reality, with characters we could relate to and identify with; characters who could be like our own families. Yes, everything fell under the category of "romanticized reality," with soap life being just a little bit more idealized and special than real life, but we didn't have mad scientists freezing the world, devil possessions, clones, people jumping into painting and travelling through time, all of which destroyed the reality bubble of the genre and decimated (IMHO) viewers' identification with the characters and dramas overall. Being able to relate to the families on vintage soaps made their Christmases so captivating.

The Christmas episodes on soaps used to be something I looked forward to, and loved, every year. The Hughes, Matthews, Bauer, etc., families always had the kind of holidays we all wish we had.

Alas, Family is geo-blocked on Tubi in my country.🥺 There is a lot of interesting content on that streaming service; it just drives me crazy that Family, which I really want to see, is a series that ends up getting blocked.