vetsoapfan

Watching both TEON and SOM live during the time Slesar wrote the series, I was thrilled to see that each one was on fire creatively; excellent entertainment that kept me glued to my TV set. Soap historians rightfully praise the likes of Phillips, Nixon and Bell for their contributions to the genre, but Slesar was also a master writer in his own right, and deserves so much respect. No one else has ever been able to match his ability to weave intricate, absorbing mystery dramas on daytime TV. I'd say Slesar reached his zenith in the early 1970s with the original Whitney-family/Jonah Lockwood saga, but even his later material, which isn't seen as his best, was miles above anything we've seen on soaps for the last few decades. Slesar could write it all: mystery, romance, domestic strife, and even comedic bits. The best aspect of his work is that during it all, his characters were layered, complex and INTELLIGENT.

That's interesting, because when Meta was on the witness stand during her trial in 1950, she was asked her age and she replied that she was 31, making her year of birth 1919. She went from 24 in 1948 to 31 in 1950...an early case of slight SORASing, I guess! 🙃 (Actually, I know there were changes in factual information in Irna's scripts at the time, like the Baum family being renamed the Bauers, Bert's original surname later being changed to Miller, etc. Nobody would even know or remember the inconsistencies today if vintage scripts and radio episodes had not resurfaced.)

Steve and Audrey Hardy, Jessie Brewer, Lee Baldwin...the characters that made me live GH in the first pace, and remain loyal to the show through the 1960s and 1970s.

I want Scotty on GH, too, but I wish they would write for him effectively. That hasn't been the case in years. As the longest-running character on GH, debuting in 1965, I think he deserves a place on the canvas. (I know there are people who don't care about such things.) The character of Julie on DAYS also debuted in 1965, but more than likely Scotty began appearing on GH before November of that year, which is when DAYS was launched.) For me, part of the joy and comfort of soaps is watching characters whom we have known for years/decades. Newer viewers (well, newer compared to me) have told me that older characters are irrelevant to today's audiences and could easily be discarded, but I want to see people like Scotty Baldwin, Jill Foster, Julie Williams, Maggie Horton, etc. on screen. While soaps cannot be top-heavy with dozens of characters over 60 (bringing in fresh blood has always been important), I truly believe that even youngsters in the audience enjoy seeing the vets. Alice Horton, Lila Quartermaine, Bert Bauer, Katherine Chancellor: younger viewers loved them as much as we, the oldtimers, did. If Leslie Charleson or Denise Alexander are ever up to appearing on GH again, I'd happily accept them in any capacity. Seeing Rachel Ames as Audrey Hardy again (I know this is dreaming in Technicolor) would make me ugly cry.🥺

I remember thinking at the time that if TIIC even DARED to try replacing Charita Bauer with another actress, there would have been WAR. Literally, the fans would have gone berserk.

When James Carroll Jordan briefly took over the role in 1972, Steve was again confirmed to be Julie's younger brother. I don't remember if it was mentioned specifically when SS was cast in 1978. By that time, I assumed everyone already knew, and I probably didn't pay much attention. I should say, however, that if Steve was then said to be OLDER than Julie in 1978, I'm sure I would have picked up on it and remembered it. Inconsistencies with details like that always grate on my nerves and stick in my mind. In 1964 on AW, Pat Matthews shot and killed her ne'er-do-well boyfriend, Tom Baxter. For years afterwards, it was reported in the soap press and even by the likes of writer Harding Lemay, that Pat had stabbed him to death. Lemay even had Pat flashback to "stabbing" Tom after she had killed Greg Bernard. UGH! Doug Davidson of Y&R expressed good-natured vexation in the press that it had become known as "fact" among fans that Paul Williams had given Nikki Reed a sexually transmitted disease. Nooooooooo. Those of us who were watching way back when knew it was the other way around; she infected him. Other fans have not believed me, because they "read it in a book" that Paul was the one responsible. The soap opera landscape is littered with misinformation which has become accepted as factual through decades of erroneous reporting.

In the early days of the show (1965), Julie is said to be the older child.

She was earning a whopping $1,000.00 a week in 1959, which translates to $10,614.00 today. It was incredibly stupid to pull a power play and screw that up. I'd fire her too, frankly, unless she could reign in her husband. I believe all three actresses who played Vanessa were capable enough, but I agree that Audrey Peters was the best/strongest of the bunch. It's appropriate that she stayed in the role the longest.

I've read that article about Slesar before, but I love that sort of stuff, and was thrilled to see it again. Thanks, @DRW50.

I wasn't necessarily referring to the implications of replacing an actress in the midst of a wedding, so much as simply replacing the leading actress of a show during any significant event. Recasting a performer on her character's wedding day, or during the heroine's final/deathbed appearance, or when she is reunited with loved ones after a long bout of amnesia, etc., would all be unfortunate choices to me. Emotionally, viewers want to see the faces we know and love play out the key, important moments on soaps. I do agree with you that the Vanessa/Bruce courtship was probably not as important to the audience as the Steve/Alice wedding, which AW devotees had been obsessed with seeing for so many years. Still, if TBTB knew their leading lady was leaving the show, Love of Life should have scheduled the wedding to take place before Bonnie Bartlett departed, and then introduced Audrey Peters after the honeymoon. Love of Life had made a miraculous turnaround just a few years earlier, under Claire Labine's creative genius, and had become must-see TV. To witness its collapse and falling into such a state of disrepair during the tenures of people like Holloway was painful. The soap did start to pick up again after Ann Marcus took over the writing reigns, but by that time, alas, it was too little, too late.

I didn't accept many of the recasts in later years, but I adored Ellen Demming as Meta, Barbara Rodell as Leslie, Mart Hulswit as Ed, Maureen Garrett as Holly, and several other golden oldies. Ellen Parker was by far the better Maureen, IMHO. Jennifer Cooke, as the recast Morgan, was possibly the first replacement performer whom I disliked intensely (probably because by the time TPTB replaced Amanda, Alan, Justin, Alexandra, etc., I was barely watching the series and usually fast-forwarded through them, LOL). Love of Life was fortunate in that both replacement Vanessas gained the audience's acceptance. It must have been jarring for most viewers, however, to see Audrey Peters assume the role on Vanessa's wedding day, of all days. If Susan Harney had replaced Jacquie Courtney on AW's 10th anniversary, the episode in which Steve and Alice got remarried, I would have had a fit.

While AW was beyond its prime and years of solid ratings, at least it had a once-loyal audience who may have been lured back if the quality had picked up and the structure of the show had been stabilized. As a newbie soap, Port Charles did not have the same assets (aside from some beloved crossover characters from GH), and really destroyed any possibility for success by introducing the ludicrous supernatural, idiotic storylines.

Oh, I absolutely adore many radio soaps, and agree they could be absolutely fabulous. The Guiding Light, Ma Perkins, One Man's Family, and several others come to mind. Alas, Jean Holloway's tenure as Love of Life's writer was (IMHO, of course) subpar. Not because it harkened back to the radio era, but because her material was just bad. LoL was very good in the 1950s; better than any soap being produced now in 2024! I usually resist soap recasts unless the original performer is noticeably weak, but Ellen Demming became my favorite Meta. I adored her, and it was painful to see the actress and actress fade into oblivion by the 1970s.

Um...no. You REEEEEALLY don't want to put yourself through that.😬

Actually, there are many episodes of TGL from 1966 (25+) that have been floating around among collectors for many years, and most of which have been on Youtube. Lots still are. The quality is usually not great, but as soap fans know, beggars can't be choosers!

ITA. I think Kobe killed the show in 1984, and Wheeler finally just cremated it. I can't really see RR as a good replacement for Mike, either. I just meant that casting him as Alan was even worse than casting him as Mike. The last year I truly loved the show and felt it was the "real" TGL was 1982. Then I appreciated the resurgence of Roger and Holly in 1989, Robert Calhoun's run as executive producer (1989-91), and Nancy Curlee's tenure as head writer in the early 1990s. Other than that, I loathed much of the final 25 years.

The idiotic butchering of Amanda's paternity was such an awful and unnecessary mistake; it really needed to be wiped out. She was Alan's daughter, period. I would have happily accepted your concept of how to repair the damage. Yep. (Although I would have been happy with Stewart, Mart Hulswit as Ed and Ellen Parker as Maureen all being part of the canvas. I wanted Ellen Demming to return as Meta in 1985 after Charita Bauer died, too.) History just not relevant to TGL at that point, alas. If Stewart was definitely off the table, I wanted Jed Allen cast as Mike Bauer. As for RR, I could see him as a better replacement for Mike than for Alan Spaulding.

Gail Kobe said afterwards that creative differences between the actors (Stewart, Roussel, Cullen) and TPTB led to certain actors being let go. But even if that were true, it doesn't explain why beloved, necessary characters like Mike and Hope were never recast, or why later PTB never offered Stewart and Roussel their jobs back. Courtney also had star appeal and charisma which the audience responded to, and which TGL could have benefited from when it started to wane in the 1980s. Most of the show's pre-1983 history was severed when Gail Kobe and Pamela Long took over, and except for Maureen Garret, Jerry verDorn and Michael Zaslow, TGL felt like a completely different soap.

With Stewart being 11 years older than Courtney, his playing her father would have been an unlikely stretch (although not as bad as some other actor combinations chosen to play parents and their adult children over the years). Mike Bauer did have Hope when he was very young, so I suppose Stewart could have been asked to play Mike as older than Stewart's actual age. The oft-used gray-hair-around-the-temples trick might have been able to age Stewart/Mike enough to be believable on-screen. With all the new, unfamiliar faces on TGL, I would have preferred Stewart (and Mart Hulswit and Elvera Roussel) to reprise their roles, but as noted earlier, rapidly SORASing Alan-Michael in the 1980s really screwed up all the characters' ages. Bad decisions made in that decade damaged TGL for the rest of its run, IMHO.

The Craig-Dani coupling on ATWT was incredibly offensive. So was the fact that Frederick and Christina/Rick and Blake, boinked each other on TGL.

Don't even get me started on how they screwed up Leah Bauer's age. UGH. Yes, both Mike and Hope phoned Springfield once, after they had been written out. Mike conversed with Phillip and Hope spoke to Alan Michael. The actor chosen to represent Mike had a southern drawl, IIRC, but the voice actress standing in for Hope sounded pretty good to me. In the end, I sometimes feel lucky that TIIC at the time didn't try to recast Mike and Hope. Ed, Alan, Alex, Amanda, and various other characters were seriously damaged by weak (IMHO) recasts. I didn't trust anyone in charge to recast once-beloved roles well.

Yes, the originally-conceived age gap between Hope and Alan would have decreased with any actress cast as Hope who was reasonably old enough to play Alan-Michael's mother. TPTB de-aged Alan when Ron Raines (whom I also felt was miscast) took over from the late Chris Bernau, so the ages of all three characters was off-kilter. SORASing AM and Hope, while de-aging Alan, screwed up continuity. Unfortunately, there were so many egregious problems with this show's continuity, beginning in the 1980s.

Yep, TPTB definitely decimated the Bauer family in the early 1980s. Producer Gail Kobe acknowledged in the press that the fans were enraged about it, and that they kept demanding the return of the core family. She said, "Don't be surprised to see Mike and Hope written back into the story." Soap Opera Digest also reported that TGL's fans' most-requested move for the show at that time was to bring back the Bauers, but as we all know, that never happened. Instead, we got a bunch of Santoses, San Cristocrapians, Coopers, etc.🤢 BTW, I wanted Elvera Roussel to return as Hope, but barring that, I would have cast Jacqueline Courtney in the role. (Thanks to the extreme SORASing of Alan-Michael, Robin Mattson was too young in the 1980s to return to the show. She was born in 1956, according to Google. In 1987, she would have only been 31 to AM's 17. I know soaps cast wildly age-inappropriate actors to play parents and their adult offspring all the time, but it's a practice I find irritating and distracting. At least in 1987, Courtney was in her 40s.) If neither Roussel nor Courtney had worked out, I would have accepted Barr.

Don Stewart said in a magazine interview, when Hope was pregnant with Alan Michael, that she was supposed to be about 24. That was in 1981.

Both Uta Hagen and Farley Granger were nominated for their stints on OLTL, and the shame of it was, they both sucked, big time. Both of them stumbled and stammered their way through their lines, clearly out of their depth. It reiterated the point that daytime Emmy nominations were often dispersed to people who had recognizable names outside of the soaps, and NOT for what they actually did on daytime TV.