vetsoapfan

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.

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.