vetsoapfan

I agree with this. When Lemay took over the show and carried on with the structure, themes, and characters established by Irna Phillips and Agnes Nixon, everything was splendid. Plots were not really his forte, but his writing worked because of the absorbing character delineation and interpersonal-relationship vignettes. Daily episodes were like a slice of life; slightly romanticized, but within the realm of reality. Unfortunately, when he and Rauch started to dismantle the original core of the show, the tone shifted badly, and a lot of ultimately-pointless characters and contrived plots were foisted on the audience, weakening AW's previous effectiveness. Lemay's writing spiraled downwards and the magic was lost. Still, I will never deny that during his initial heyday (1971 to 1974), Harding Lemay worked miracles in Bay City. His irrational, venomous commentary on Virginia Dwyer and Jacqueline Courtney was both baffling and (frankly) embarrassing, but to his credit, he did keep them front and center (particularly JC) for half of his tenure as head writer.

I always appreciate the fascinating, in-depth and accurate contributions you share with the SON community, about soap history. It's great to have information about the shows' earlier days, which we otherwise would never know. Thank you.👏

I agree. IMO, TGL had felt like it was on its death bed for a number of years, but with the advent of Calhoun and then Nancy Curlee, it made a remarkable comeback. Unfortunately, the renaissance was short-lived, but it did confirm that TGL could have been saved if competent PTB were to stay in control of the show. (Spoiler alert: they did not.🙄)

I do believe that since the dawn of movies and television, it has been the case.🙂

Sorry I got too personal. If I had stopped and thought about it first, I probably would have been more circumspect. And in my defense, I was originally trying to tie in this conversation angle to TGL actors, specifically, whom the viewers found attractive. It seemed to be having a snowball effect; everyone is chiming in! The first guy on the show I found truly adorable was Johnny Fletcher, as played by Don Scardino. Sadly, I can't find any good pictures of him from that era.

Did you have any non-TGL celebrity crushes when you were in high school? That's old enough to check out attractive people on-screen, even if no Springfield hotties grabbed your attention. Throughout the decades, I found many soap performers appealing. I started noticing them when I was, like...12. (Don't judge me, LOL!)🫢

I'm tempted to compile a list of all the actors from TGL whom I find/found the most desirable, and see how many SONers have the great taste to agree with me!🙃 Bwahahahahaha!😝

That's interesting. Was there a replacement actress in the role whom you felt was the most miscast? Wesley Pfenning being hired baffled me. It was like seeing Grayson McCough as Dusty Donovan, Susan Batten as Connor Walsh, Roger Howarth as Paul Stenbeck and Jason Kinkaid as Tom Hughes on ATWT. I kept thinking, "Huh?!? What were TPTB thinking?" To me, JC was the one and only Alice. Beverly Penberthy won me over 100% as the replacement Pat (she was excellent) and Barbara Rodell made Lee Randolph her own, but La Courtney could never truly be replaced.

Well, as of now, anyway, it's still quite easy to download and keep copies of current soaps on DVD-Rs, flashdrives, your HDD, etc., since there's they are not copy-protected. I just have to wonder, if fans today find anything on the modern soaps worth keeping, or intriguing enough to warrant review and discussion decades into the future.

Possibly, The Mod Squad had used the footage before AW, but had taken it from a stock-footage company, which would allow any interested producers to use their material. According to Google: "Some scenes (of TMS) were filmed with the actors, while others, particularly car chases and other large-scale action sequences, were sometimes augmented or even entirely replaced with stock footage. This was a common practice in television production at the time to save on costs and production time." Walter Curtin's crash crash being generic stock footage, available to anyone, would explain AW being able to get it easily instead of having to barter for rights with TMS and ABC.

I wonder if, 50 years from now, soap fans will be reminiscing about anything that took place on any daytime drama in 2025!🤔😬

Thanks for doing the leg work. I was just about to see if I could find this information.

LOL, I did not think that you would be.🙃 I get a bit of chuckle when folks go absolutely ballistic over different opinions, different recollections, different preferences regarding popular culture. Folks can disagree amicably. It's not as if anyone is fighting over the single correct path to saving the planet from extinction. Memories can get hazy and/or distorted over time. People can swear on a stack of Bibles about remembering incidents from long ago, which other people's memories contradict. C'est la vie. I remember all that St. Croix stuff, quite clearly, too. We're aligned about most facts. But different memories and perceptions can lead to additional conversation fodder and even jog further memories, which just keeps conversations lively. Your bringing this up made me remember reading the same story. It is. You know, someone I interacted with a while ago was insistent that Paul Williams had given Nikki Reed an STD on Y&R way back in the 1970s. I was sure it was the other way around. Both of us "remembered" being right. In the end, we both agreed that if the story was memorable enough for us to be discussing it decades later, it was a success, and that was the most important thing.

My recollection is, the shots of the snake were real (they looked like filmed stock footage inserted into the scene; different in texture/quality from AW's usual videotape), and we just saw close-ups of it by itself in a patch of grass. The actual attack was not seen. We only heard the commotion from off-camera. It's like Walter Curtin's fiery car crash footage from the early 1970s. AW used a filmed clip of an automobile, outside at night, getting into a terrible wreck. That specific material was edited into the episode and looked noticeably different from the rest of the day's videotaped footage.

Hutch just ended up having no real spark with anyone. His story with Rose seemed manufactured and tepid. Yes, he was well-built and had a great body, but soaps' leading men are not made successful by looks alone, if they are otherwise colorless. Some of the genre's biggest superstars weren't even conventionally attractive (Tony Geary and Jonathan Frid come to mind). I do agree that under Douglas Marland and Pat Falken Smith, Luke had originally been a complex character, which is why (IMHO) viewers first noticed him. After Marland and Smith left GH and Geary's ego was catered to, however, Luke became hard to stomach. This ended up tarnishing the character. Unfortunately, the rapist-turned-romantic-lead horror had already been ignited by Geary/Luke, and continued unabated with all sorts of degenerates being glorified to this day (Sonny, Jason, Todd Manning, et al). I imagine if Hutch had struck gold with a viewer-captivating romance, he would have stuck around longer than he did, but I was relieved when the character was eliminated. I was always grateful that TGL never turned Roger, a rapist with serious crimes under his belt, into an exalted saint and exonerated of all his sins by the good people of Springfield. When Laura Webber of GH talks to Sonny, in a chapel no less, and praises his virtues, it makes me gag. Roger's complex nature was a large part of his draw. Roger was indeed intense in the 1970s. In real life, I would have steered away from him too. From the safety of my home, however, far away from Springfield, I found him quite mesmerizing. I don't recall hearing about Zaslow ever being burned by the press. It was rare for soap mags to do that 50 years ago. Back then, there wasn't a lot of mud-slinging. I wonder if the culprit had been a rag like National Enquirer. They were openly inflammatory about Emily McLaughlin's (Jessie on GH) health woes.

In the 1970s, one of the soap mags wrote in their gossip section that they were getting a lot of mail singing Zaslow's praises and saying how sexy he was. One woman wrote that she wished TGL would put him in tighter pants without any underwear. I was surprised that comment got published...but seconded the sentiment, ROTF!

So many shows, daytime and primetime, seem to think that skimpy, tight clothing and lots of male and female T&A can keep audiences invested. Nope. After an initial glance or two, that sort of thing quickly becomes irrelevant. Mister Mxyzptlk-like is a great way to describe that jaw-dropping failure of a character, Lacey Bauer. I must say, speaking of the tightest jeans on the rack, that honor must go to Rick Moses as Hutch, the hitman, from his days on GH. LOL.

While I could assess both Alexander and Shipp to be attractive, it was just in a clinical way. Neither of them really appealed to me. I found Jerry ver Dorn a lot cuter, TBH. And Michael Zaslow in his prime was a helluva lot sexier. WOOF!

Carolee Campbell was great, but if she had to be replaced, Rowland was a solid choice. God knows, we've seen a plethora of woefully-bad recasts of formerly-beloved characters on soaps.

I had never seen this. Thanks, @DRW50. I always found Jada Rowland to be so sweet and likeable.

Afternoon TV and Daily TV Serials were my favorites as well, although Daytime TV was a classic under editor Paul Denis. Those were the days. It was hard to watch the soap press crash and burn so badly.

Another soap mag which was around in the early 1970s was TV Dawn to Dusk, but it was a rag; poorly produced and run, in comparison to Daytime TV and Afternoon TV. I don't think TVDTD ever gave out awards. It was such a cheap publication. They'd devote a full page to an oft-seen publicity photo, with an empty comment like, "Mary Stuart enjoys playing Jo on SFT." Big woo. 🙄 They also reported storyline details incorrectly, suggesting their staff didn't pay attention to the soaps. The same misinformation about plots would show up in "letters to the editor" commentary, which told me TVDTD made up those fan letters, themselves (or at least some of them). It was carelessly done and inundated with filler material. Yuck. On the other hand, Daytime TV, Afternoon TV, Daily TV Serials, Rona Barrett's Daytimers and Soap Opera Weekly were class acts. I read them all, cover to cover. Soap Opera Digest was "iffy" at first, but eventually blossomed into a good magazine, before petering out and coming pointless in its declining years. I'm trying to think of what character Lyman could played on TEON temporarily, a while before she began playing Elly Jo. Maybe Sarah Louise Capice? I could see DL filling in for Christopher Norris. Phoebe Smith is another possibility. Nobody would have hired Lyman to sub for Emily Prager as Laurie Ann Karr. At least Sarah Louise and Phoebe Smith were both young blondes.

@slick jones, I enjoyed watching Arlene Dahl as well. She was very colorful and really threw herself in the role. I dropped OLTL in 1983, when ABC fired Jacqueline Courtney, but would still watch it from time to time for years, to see what everyone else was doing. The decade was a disaster for the show, IMHO. Losing Judith Light, Jacquie Courtney, Ellen Holly, Lillian Hayman, Al Freeman, Jr., and so many other once-core players was bad enough, but the decision to go full-out sci-fi camp was painful to see. As the writing deteriorated, the show become unrecognizable. It amazes me how so many soaps self-destructed in that decade.

@DRW50, I clearly recall Lyman's great run as Elly-Jo Jamison on TEON, but have no memory at all of her temporarily subbing for another actress before taking on that part. Soap Opera Digest had not yet been created, of course. The only soap mags that gave out awards at the time (to my recollection) were Daytime TV and Afternoon TV. Of those two, Afternoon TV awarded statues to actors in many different categories, so I wonder if Lyman could be thinking of that publication as the one which gave her an award.

ATWT was one of the few soaps which didn't sink into camp hell in the 1980s. Thanks, @DRW50.