vetsoapfan

I personally feel Courtney was an excellent actress, although of course anyone (including Lemay) has/had the right to disagree. The only time I felt JC was not up to the challenge was when she played evil twin Maggie Ashley on OLTL, replete with a fake wig, heavy glasses, and an unsuccessful British accent. I daresay, however, that Maggie was so ill-conceived and so much of a caricature, that most actresses would have struggled to pull off the role. What Courtney did have, was that indefinable star appeal, that "je ne sais quoi," that elusive "it" factor which drew the audience in. It cannot be denied: the audience loved her and responded to what she projected on screen. Heck, even Harding Lemay eventually acknowledged this, and theorized that her presence on OLTL might well have contributed to its steady increase in ratings after she joined that show. Not even getting into their technical talent, Susan Harney, Wesley Pfenning, Vanna Tribbey and Linda Borgenson all lacked the star appeal Courtney exuded, and after JC's dismissal, Alice never again enjoyed the huge popularity she had had under Courtney.

Susan Sullivan had been cast before Lemay's arrival, as had Penberthy (clearly). Fortunately, the writer did not take exception to these actresses or denigrate their talents, so at least we were spared his kvetching about them. I don't think Lemay ever understood that often on soaps, the essence of a performer, a certain "je ne sais quoi," and/or star appeal are a large part of what endears the audience to a performer. Certain theater and film actors have been cast on soaps, but their lack of "it" quality has prevented them from becoming majorly successful or sparking devotion among the audience. A good example of this is Lynn Milgrim, a stage actress with a fairly extensive resume, who was a recast Susan Matthews on AW. Whatever success she had on Broadway did not translate well to AW. IMHO, as Susan, she just came across as affected and somewhat...icky. Brian Murray is another example. He was a Tony-nominated stage actor, but his interpretation of Dan Shearer was not a success either (again, IMHO). He came across as pompous and oily. Neither Milgrim nor Murray were as appealing on AW as the soap actors who had preceded them as Susan and Dan had been. She wasn't. She may have been technically adept, but she lacked the spark and sweetness Muenker exuded. (And I say this, even thought I found Muenker somewhat wispy when acting in heavily dramatic scenes.)

While Muenker was no teenage Genie Francis (AM was not always up to the challenge of playing heavily dramatic scenes), she was indeed more than adequate. In fact, she was very likeable and often quite appealing. I'd say that she was the audience's favorite Marianne. Lemay's entrenched vitriol towards certain actors always came across as pathological to me.🙄 Mona Kane Croft said it well: Harding Lemay's work was excellent (particularly during the first few years), and he certainly deserved all the kudos he received as a writer. If only his acerbic personality and gratuitously mean commentary didn't get in the way, LOL. When he was first cast, I thought Marlowe would do fine. The stammering and line-flubbing were not terribly obvious or distracting. Cut to a few years later, and he was often painful to watch. I'd even hold my breath at times, watching him try to stumble through scenes. According to Harding Lemay, Marlowe blamed it on Virginia Dwyer, but even if HM did make those comments to HL, it was BS. Marlowe had issues no matter whom he was performing with, and the problems actually got worse after Dwyer was fired.

The question is, would TIIC even have allowed Curlee the free reign to write the show as she thought best? The higher ups who had been obsessed with Jeva, or with Manny, or with Buzzard, or with the San Cristocrapians? Long gone are the days when writers can do what they want; network and P&G interference always came into play during TGL's waning years. Left alone to her own devices (or better yet, with actual support), I'd agree that Nancy Curlee might have been able to guide Springfield back into the light, so to speak, but not with the "suits" undermining her every move, alas.

I think all of the issues which you mentioned were destructive, really. To be honest, while I did not want Marland replaced at TGL, I think the show could have continued to flourish under Pat Falken Smith, just as GH did when she replaced Marland as head writer over there. I though PFS was instantly excellent at TGL, and seemed to understand the show and its characters very well. (The only show PFS failed at, IMHO, was Ryan's Hope. Her tenure there was painful.) Pamela Long was not without talent (some of her stuff was lovely), but the dumbing-down of the show with heretofore-unseen sci-fi/fantasy/camp idiocy damaged the tone, style and integrity of the soap. Long's biggest blunder, however, which she must share blame for with Kobe, was the cast purge. Kobe is notorious for pontificating to Mimi Torchin that, in soaps, the PLOTS are what's important, not the characters. Neither Long nor Kobe understood this show or what was important to its audience. It showed. Joe Willmore's run didn't have a huge impact on TGL either way, I'd say. It didn't improve, but it didn't deteriorate as noticeably as when Long & Kobe first gutted it, or when Ellen Wheeler & Peapack were in full swing. Killing off Maureen Bauer was, literally, a shocking decision. I never thought anyone could win me over as the new Bauer family matriarch, but Ellen Parker miraculously did the trick. I found her Maureen to be warm, loving, maternal and wise, but never saccharine. For me, the destruction of the show's core family (killing off Bill and Hillary Bauer, replacing Ed, and writing out Mike and Hope in the early 1980s) was the first blow, but all that could have been reversed somewhat by bringing back some familiar faces to placate the alienated audience. It was bad enough we had lost Bert (which, of course, could not be helped). Bill could have remained and become an older-but-wiser, repentant patriarch, striving to follow in Papa Bauer's footsteps. Killing him off was gratuitous. Meta could have returned to help guide him. Mike and Hope could have, and should have, been brought back. I'd have reached out to Mart Hulswit as well. A miscast (IMHO) Ed and Rick weren't able to carry the mantle of Springfield's tentpole family, and the series as a whole suffered.. When Ellen Parker's Maureen worked out, and TIIC killed her off as well, in my heart I knew the show was doomed. Reva, Buzz, the Santos mob and the San Cristocrapians just put the fork in it. Losing Nancy Curlee was a huge detriment, to be sure, but with all the incompetent and damaging decisions foisted upon the show by TPTB, I wonder if even her fine writing could have mitigated all the carnage done between the time she left and when TGL was mercifully put out of its misery. Could she have single-handedly repaired a cannibalized shell of a once-great soap?

I couldn't agree more. To me, soap viewers are a hardy bunch, who will stick with their favorite shows even during the darkest of times, when things are not going well on screen. The audience's loyalty to beloved characters keeps us holding on, even when the writing is subpar or the production values are weak. We USED TO know that things would get better. In the 1950s-1970s, egregious weaknesses seemed to be paid attention to and tweaked a lot faster than in the 1980s and beyond. Since the turn of the century, slop is taking forever to get mopped up, and often it just never does. We no longer expect bad situations to improve to a significant degree. We can only hope for soaps to become "less bad" when recycled producers and writers get shifted around. When TPTB cripple the structure, style and quality of a show, AND annihilate a huge swath of the vets, it leaves us with no rational reason to keep holding on. This is particularly true in the modern era, where we know positive changes are unlikely to happen. If a show is in the toilet and many/most/all of our favorite characters are gone...why should we force ourselves to endure drivel, focused on characters we neither really know nor have emotional investment in? It's much easier to tune out and stay away, when our principle motivations to watch, good writing and beloved characters, are no longer part of the equation. I think TGL was an early example of this problem. Starting in the 1980s, its quality deteriorated drastically, 2/3 (it seemed) of familiar characters were axed, and the revolving door of writers and newbies began. After waiting, petitioning and even begging TPTB to fix things for YEARS, I think the long-time, die-hard Springfield fans finally got burned out, fed up, and started drifting away. They never came back en masse. Robert Calhoun's reign was remarkable, and Nancy Curlee's writing divine, but once the emotional attachment has been severed, it's very difficult to lure the audience back in. If TGL's glorious resurgence in the early 1990s had lasted longer, disgruntled fans might have eventually been tempted to check the show out again, but it was basically in the toilet once more by 1994-95, and all-but-extinguished throughout its Peapack run. P&G and CBS did not do what needed to be done; they went into an indifferent, cost-cutting, tone-deaf mode and allowed this once-proud show to stagger to an ignorable death. The fact that TGL had a pitiful rating of 1.6 (!!!) during its final season confirms how much the audience had turned away from it, and how much TIIC had failed it. I truly believe that if the suits had vetoed the harmful changes that began happening in the '80s, and if they had invested continued care in the writing and production, the show may very well have still gotten cancelled anyway (P&G seemed determined), but at least it wouldn't have been the unmitigated slap in the face it end up being. An iconic serial that lasted a whopping 72 years deserved so much better.

Thanks for the heads-up, @slick jones. As I always say, the amount of time and effort you put into this is staggering (and appreciated). I don't understand why the EDIT function is no longer available. I'd say it's pretty essential for most of us (I always find typos in my original posts which I later need to fix).

Same here. Sigh. Legend has it that that my very first, complete sentence uttered as a baby was, "And now, The Guiding Light!"🙃 I have probably watched all the major soaps broadcast during the last 60 years or so, and eventually gave up on and drifted away from the vast majority of them before the end. The Guiding Light and As the World Turns were the exceptions. I stuck with them and recorded their episodes regularly until cancellation, even though the material was painful, and even though I often just fast-forwarded through entire episodes at a time.

What a kind thing to say; thank you. I am simply acknowledging your perceptive and erudite commentary, which I always enjoy reading.👏

It seems that every time I scroll through the comments here on SON, I find another post written by you that is perfectly expressed, and which I agree with 100%. Bravo. You're saving me a lot of time by typing out my thoughts for me, LOL!

This certainly was a curious piece. I only recognize Hansen.

Whenever I finally abandon a once-beloved soap, I do tend to continue keeping up with it slightly (maybe 2-3 episodes per month out of habit) for a while. I monitored OLTL like this for a few years, and while I acknowledge Peggy O'Shea was a good writer, the tone, feeling, stories being told and the cast of characters involved changed so much during the 1980s that Llanview no longer felt like home. Losing Pat, Karen, Carla, Ed, Sadie, etc., just made the show feel foreign to me, and even though O'Shea was a decent scribe, it wasn't enough to keep me invested on a regular basis. I'd say with confidence that virtually all soaps have their good years and bad years, depending on TPTB at the time. Some writers and producers just "get" certain soaps more than others, while we have all suffered through scribes and suits who are totally incompetent. For me, personally, I am more tolerant of weaker periods on soaps if the characters whom I care about are still featured regularly. If many/most of them are written out AND the writing sucks, I am more likely to turn away from the show. I think in his first tenure, Malone started off making various mistakes (short-term stories about people we didn't care about), but he became much better over time. The less said about his second run on the show, the better.

I watched and loved OLTL from 1968 to 1983. I would say it was always good, but its best years were in the early days when Agnes Nixon was at the writing helm, and then later when Gordon Russell and Sam Hall worked as a team. The show started to lose me after Russell left, and so many negative changes began crippling the show in the 1980s. A slew of important, beloved actors getting axed, and the writing drifting into the toilet, made me finally abandon ship.

I wanted to say that Bob and Frannie had been living in his parents' old house at the time, but my memory is hazy on this point. It's weird; I can remember all sorts of trivia in minute detail, while other facts are but elusive shadows in te back of my memory. It's so egregious that ATWT began to marginalize Fulton around the time of Sheffer's reign of terror, and then kept her on the outskirts of the backburner forever more. She deserved better.

I love BBQ chips. I usually pick up Ruffles, but I'm going to give Pringles a try! I don't recall for sure, alas.

Thanks, @DRW50, vintage ATWT from the 1970s is always a treat to see. Those Pringles potato chips look delicious!

I always appreciate your informative posts and contributions to this site, @slick jones. 👍👏🙃

Gracias, @slick jones.

That's amazing. Thanks. I'll definitely be checking the channel out. It's been so long since I originally watched the early Emmerdale Farm eps, the series will feel like brand-new again. It's unfortunate, but I suppose it's to be expected that some ancient episodes would go missing, particularly after several decades. The best thing about these earliest episodes is that the Dingles have not yet infected the community.

Fingers crossed. I loathe when shows allow men (Sonny, Luke, Jason on GH: Todd on OLTL, etc.) to commit all sorts of heinous, degenerate crimes, and then encourage the audience to accept them anyway, as romantic leads who forever go unpunished.

I don't mind if the new Sugden is moody or temperamental. I realize the show needs conflict to create drama. I just don't want TPTB to write the character into a corner; make him irredeemable to the point where he needs to be eliminated from the canvas. No rapes or murders, please. I want a viable Sugden who can remain center-stage, on canvas, for years to come.

Wait, what? I had not heard about this. What is the name of the channel, please? Also, I am curious: how is the introduction of the new Sugden character coming along? I hope TPTB are making him a character who is viable to be a long-term presence on the series.

Thanks for the alert. I was one of those obsessive soap addicts who used to set up tape recorders in my house to record the audio of soaps which I was not able to watch live, for whatever reason. I reused the same tapes most of the time, but kept copies of special episodes that I knew I'd want to listen to again later (Jennifer Brooks' death episodes from Y&R, the finale of How to Survive a Marriage, the reconciliation episode featuring Steve and Alice from AW in 1973, in which only Courtney and Reinholt appeared, AW's 10th anniversary from 1974, Adam and Nicole's wedding from TEON in 1973...lots of things.) I just never thought anyone would else would even care about recordings that were not on video.

Thanks for the alerts, @slick jones!

WORD!!!👏👍