vetsoapfan

True, but Goutman was present during both writers' terms, and JP's tenure still featured more screen-time for the vets than Sheffer's did. Helen Wagner once approached Sheffer personally and requested more appearances on the show. In an interview later, he said that although Wagner was the matriarch, he was going to continue writing the series as he saw fit. This suggested to me that HS had at least a certain degree of control over the stories he told and the actors he showcased. And clearly, Sheffer had his favorites. I believe he (or someone at P&G) had an issue against Eileen Fulton, who was basically marginalized to the status of an under-fiver during Sheffer's tenure. Penny was such a pivotal, beloved heroine with a staunch fanbase. I knew from the moment Phoebe Dorin appeared that the audience would close ranks and protest. Viewers never accepted another Mary Ryan on Ryan's Hope after Kate Mulgrew left. Even though the first recast, Mary Carney, was good, TPTB gave up on her almost immediately, but then the second recast, Kathleen Tolan, was HORRENDOUS. Replacing Tolan with the better-but-still-tepid Nicolette Goulet failed too. And don't even get me started on the misfires surrounding the "new" Alice Frames on AW. Yikes. Some actors truly cannot be replaced, and most of us know by instinct who they are. Yes, that was an opening to keep Paul Stewart's legacy and place in the show's history alive. Sadly, Stewart Cushing disappeared from Oakdale like many other members of the Lowell/Stewart family, never to be seen again. That TPTB never mined that clan for new characters to introduce in later years indicated to me the lack of knowledge or interest producers and writers had in ATWT's history.

When TPTB initially brought Bill Bauer back from the dead, I was hoping they would use him effectively and mine all the potentially-explosive family drama inherent in the situation. I was so disappointed that he just faded into the woodwork without any fanfare. Being such an historically-significant character with rich interpersonal-relationship possibilities, I kept hoping (dreaming in Technicolor, really🙄) that an intelligent writer would care about the integrity of TGL's past and the Bauer family enough to DO something worthwhile with this. Alas, we got Pamela Long and Gail Kobe, the annihilation of the Bauers, and an egregious, idiotic storyline that saw Bill end up dead, and the history of TGL's core families trashed.

I was certain that this would be an atrocious and painful production, but after watching the first episode, it was not as bad as I feared. The acting quality varied, but there were some good actors in the mix (along with some obviously weak ones). The sets were decent, too; not as cheap as I figured they would be. It did not lure me into watching any more (too generic), but it was a curio, to be sure. Thanks for uploading.

I hope you did not think that I was in any way, shape, or form praising Passanante's work. EEEK!😬 I generally found her material to be tepid and uninspired. That being said, Sheffer's obvious preference not to write for the vets was both insulting and infuriating. JP's throwing them occasional bones made me consider her work "less bad," if only by comparison. @Reverend Ruthledge explained the situation quite well in his reply. Irna Phillips was wont to make sweeping changes and clean house when she felt like it. She had made up her mind a while before to kill off Liz Stewart, and I've always felt that (finally being able to do so), the writer wanted to put the character and the storylines surrounding Liz to rest. Paul had never been a major character anyway. (Even so, I was perturbed by Ellen's colorless reaction to hearing about his death. She gave a vaguely troubled speech about how these things happen, and that we all must just...move on. It was oddly underplayed.)🤔 Bravo! You summarized the situation and Bill Bauer's character so beautifully and succinctly. So much was left unsaid and undone for him in the end. Watching Pamela Long and Gail Kobe kill him off in 1983, to serve a heinously-stupid and pointless plot, was infuriating. So much family drama could have been mined from Bill Bauer's working on his demons, hashing out his relationship with Ed, and slowly mellowing into a sadder-but-wiser, repentant patriarchal figure. You have nooooo idea, LOL! It took a while for the character to succumb to her injuries, but when she did, the audience was infuriated and made their feelings known. Even with a replacement actress in the role, viewers made it clear that they could learn to accept a "new" Liz over time, but not NO LIZ AT ALL. (It's curious how viewers accept some replacements, but staunchly refuse to accept others. When ATWT attempted replacing Rosemary Prinz with Phoebe Dorin, viewers revolted, and the "new Penny" was shown the door less than a year after being introduced. I did not want to deal with a replacement Penny, but to be fair, Dorin had a resemblance to Prinz and seemed to be a decent actress.) I can vouch for the breadth of your historical knowledge, and I daresay that the majority of SONers want you to share more!👍 100%, yes. The original actress, Jane House, had wanted to leave the show, but the replacement (Judith McGilligan) was fired. Thank you, but more likely, I have a big mouth and just like chatting, LOL!

Yep, our Bert was a pistol way back when. It's a real testament to Charita Bauer's skill that she could imbue Bert with so many layers throughout the decades, and never once play a false note. One of my favorite TGL episodes of all time is one in which Bert lambasts Ed for his attitude towards his father. She calls her son a "small man" and laments that it horrifies her to see it. Human drama at its finest; the type soaps used to do so well. (Although I adored her and would always champion her remaining on the show, I must admit that I found Helen Wagner to be a little...crusty, LOL.) I don't know what is still/currently available online, but many of the vintage B&W episodes of TGL and ATWT are well worth checking out. Once you start watching them, it's like you fall down a rabbit hole and can't stop yourself from devouring more. You have been warned! I agree. Viewers of soaps, from what I've witnessed, tend to love and enjoy nods to history. I was no fan of Jean Passanante, but I will acknowledge that she did pay some attention to the vets towards the end of the series. More than Sheffer did. Even Lisa (!!!) got a few lines here and there! Of all the scribes who assumed the reigns of established soaps, I truly respected a select few who were excellent at researching their new shows' histories in-depth and using the past effectively. Pat Falken Smith, Douglas Marland, Claire Labine and Agnes Nixon really shone in this regard. Ohhh, good point. The old stereotype about matrimony and motherhood being the end-all-be-all for women lasted a long, long time. When Bob was married to Jennifer Ryan, he told Nancy that Jennifer might be most fulfilled by being a wife, a mother, AND a career woman. Nancy immediately pooh-poohed the very idea with a dismissive, "Oh, Bob! Whoever heard of such a thing?!?"

At 10:30, that cretin who snarked that the women's husbands should just "put them to sleep" was so misogynistic and disgusting. UGH. At least his comment was met with dead silence from the audience. And Eileen Fulton gave him some pushback.

Actually, in ATWT's earlier years, Nancy was (or at least, could be when she was vexed) a bit of a pill. She used to light into Bob and harangue him a lot. If she did not like you, she'd make it very clear. When her son Donald got married to a woman named Janice Turner, of whom Nancy disapproved, Nancy sobbed loudly and obnoxiously throughout the ceremony. She always thought she was right. What made her redeemable, though, was that she was such a recognizable character; everyone in life knows or has known a woman like that. So we rolled our eyes and sighed and said, "Ohhhh, that's just Nancy!" Plus, her love of, and loyalty to, her family was staunch and unquestionable. Nancy only softened noticeably in the 1980s, when Douglas Marland wrote her and Chris Hughes back into the show. BTW, many fans always regarded Bert Bauer on TGL as a warm and benevolent matriarchal figure, but in her earlier days, she was something of a shrew. Her husband, Bill, even slapped her once. Both women came a long way as they got older.

Right. And while I generally loathe insta-relative retcons, I swallowed my distaste because because bringing in another Matthews at least gave Aunt Liz more to do. ITA. The audience might have been more agreeable to accepting a new Steve if the true version of Alice did.

I think soap fans are experienced with sudden cast purges and tone shifts on our favorite shows, regardless of what decade we began watching. All of us have been frustrated about losing the characters whom we "met" when initially tuning in. I may not have liked the Shaynes, the Coopers, the Santoses and the Winslows, and their loss would not have difficult for me (it would have been a relief, TBH), but other viewers, who first found TGL in, say, 1985, wouldn't have cared much about the legacy of the Bauers and their friends, either. We all want to keep our familiar version of the shows at least semi-intact. It makes perfect sense. That was "your" period and incarnation of TGL, just as 1950-1982 represented mine. Actually, although I could no longer watch TGL and ATWT on a regular basis after a certain point (what I saw as destructive changes were too painful), I continued to record them from time to time, scan through eps to catch my remaining favorite characters, and keep up with current storylines in hope of dramatic rejuvenations. I stuck with "y stories" through the good, the bad, the ugly and the atrocious, until the bitter end, LOL! So I totally get where you're coming from.

After the incomprehensible cast slaughter of 1983-84, and with a noticeable shift in tone and (IMHO) quality, I found the "new," unnecessarily (again IMHO) rebooted version of the show to be painful to watch. To me, Springfield felt like a foreign landscape in the 1980s. I realize that losing Bert Bauer was unavoidable, but in a few years, we had a new, miscast Ed, and saw Bill Bauer, Mike Bauer, Hillary Bauer and Hope Bauer killed off or written out. We also lost stalwarts like Sara McIntyre, Justin Marler, Kelly Nelson, Amanda Spaulding, Nola Reardon and others. I don't think any soap should gut its core family, a huge portion of its cast, and historical foundation so quickly. That being said, I think all the changes on the show resonated differently for viewers who had watched it in the earlier decades (1950s-1970s). Those who came aboard in the 1980s more readily accepted all the new people on the canvas. For those viewers, that's just how the show was.

ITA about the modern era, absolutely, but the early 1950s under Irna Phillips and the later 1950s and 1960s under Agnes Nixon were also halcyon years. I was shocked when the show fell into disrepair in towards the middle of the 1980s. It had been so good for decades, and I had just taken its quality for granted. 1985-88 were unwatchable years, IMHO.

Yes, the show really rebounded for a few years. The return of Michael Zaslow and Maureen Garrett helped significantly, and for a little while, TGL felt like...TGL again. It didn't last, alas, but it was Springfield's last hurrah, and great while it lasted.

To the audience, Steve and Alice were endgame. Mac and Rachel had become endgame as well. Some may argue that creating supercouples whom the audience refuses to see permanently separated limits future plot possibilities, but...that's just the nature of the beast. The idea that Steve would ever romance Rachel again betrayed history and made the whole situation pretty dumb. If, after decades (in terms of storyline time), the characters STILL had not come to an understanding of whom they truly loved and wanted to be with...pffft! They were too old for that cr@p. How I loooooathed that OLTL opening. So generic and pointless, and not even well done. I called it, "Bed sheets in the wind." Yuck. I wish AW had stayed with its original, classic opening. Like ATWT with its globe, TGL with its lighthouse, DAYS with the hourglass, etc., AW's interlocking rings was iconic. Agreed. No one could reasonably deny Canary's obvious talent, but his interpretation of Steve Frame was quite different from George Reinholt's. It would have been less jarring and more likely to succeed if Canary had been directed to play the character in a more reserved, subdued manner. While I never accepted any of the recast Alices, I understand your point here. Borgenson had a "stillness" about her which was true to the character of Alice, but with Courtney, I detected a reservoir of deep, turbulent emotion bubbling just below the surface. Still waters run deep. With Borgenson, I personally never felt she had any depth; any passion at all. It would have been interesting to see how Canary, Borgenson, and the renewed Steve/Alice saga could have turned out with better writing. Probably the best chance would have been to lure Jacquie Courtney back, and then pair her with Canary. Having a beloved familiar face playing the romance might have helped the audience warm up more to the rebooted couple. Of course, we will never know.

Yep.👍

With the endless cast defections among the actors playing the Brooks and Foster characters, I can understand Bill Bell finally throwing up his hands and deciding to start over with a largely-clean slate. He was William J. Bell; he was soap-savvy and creative enough to make it work. Other (and lesser) writers and producers over the years, who tried to reinvent classic soaps, just never had the ability to succeed. Instead of introducing and then axing so many new characters and families over the years, AW should have concentrated on strengthening its roots and returning Bay City to its core. I would have worked for them, cheaply, LOL!

Thank you for refreshing my memory. He really was caustic and condescending towards people whom he decided to vilify, LOL. People try to argue with me that Lemay did not have the power to fire Dwyer, and technically that was probably true; he needed the approval of TPTB. But with relentless determination to fire an actress he disliked, it's clear he was a prime motivating factor in her dismissal. After Jacquie Courtney was fired, she wrote a magazine piece about leaving the show, trying diplomatically to say that she did not agree with the way TPTB were taking her character. Lemay later wrote that she may have had it "written for her." Huh? As if she were incapable of stringing sentences together in a text like anybody else? His snide insults are hard to fathom. It makes me wonder (again) why Bill Bell killed off Jennifer Brooks on Y&R in 1977. Generally, soaps are loathe to kill off the principal matriarch unless they have no choice whatsoever (i.e. death of the actress). At least AW held on to Aunt Liz and Ada for a long time.

It certainly is an entertaining read!

I don't specifically recall him saying he took her favorite seat, LOL, but I do remember him spinning a tall tale about how she was so intent on making herself seen by the public. The Lemay quote which will always stand out for me comes from when he was new to daytime TV. A reporter asked him if he learned anything from the experienced writers of the genre. He snarked, "Only what NOT TO DO." UGH. What hubris.

I have already noted that in my previous post.

Thank you, my dear!😊 It's like the absurd anecdote in his book about having lunch in a restaurant with Virginia Dwyer, when she was unhappy about how much he misunderstood her character. According to Lemay, she was all about preening; sitting and conducting herself in a manner to maximize potential attention from onlookers. And Lemay's declaring that Jacquie Courtney sobbed through her scenes because she couldn't be bothered to learn her dialogue.🙄 I swear, his remarkable talents as a writer were far outstripped by his prowess as a mind reader, ROTF! To be serious, however, I think the quote about discarding a bunch of her clothes came from Virginia Dwyer, herself. After being fired, she gave an interview in Afternoon TV entitled, "I Told My Daughter, 'I Will Not Die for Them!'" The anecdote may have come from there (although I'm not sure).

You are on a roll these days, with many great posts!👏 I wish everyone here could have been around to watch a scene from the 1960s, in which a subdued Jim Matthews had to reveal to Mary Matthews that their daughter-in-law, Rachel, had not gotten pregnant by their son Russ. Steven Frame was the child's actual father. Mary, so often composed, warm and understanding, did NOT take the news well. She couldn't hold back her rage and just went berserk. She started shrieking, "I hate her! I...HATE... HER!" I actually froze and got goose-bumps, the scenes was so harrowing. To this day, I think it was Dwyer's finest moment. Like you, I greatly admired HL's initial work, but...

I think two of the Alice recasts were adequate (although they still didn't capture the essence of the role, IMHO), but the remaining two were simply dreadful. I'm glad, at least, that Courtney reclaimed the part in the end and became the "last Alice standing."

I think Rauch did well on AW in the beginning, when he and Lemay kept the core of the show (the way Phillips and Nixon had created and developed it) intact. Once he and Lemay started tampering with and dismantling the drama's roots, however, the bottom fell out. As you say, the last several years of PR's reign there were a mess. His stints on Texas and For Richer, For Poorer failed. IMHO, he was a disaster on OLTL (which he decimated) and TGL. His stints on Santa Barbara and Y&R were not terribly noteworthy, although not as harmful as his time on OLTL in particular. I do agree he would have been better than Charlotte Savitz to re-helm AW, however.😁 The endless miscasting of Alice Frame still baffles me. How some of those actresses were chosen will forever remain a mystery.🙄 I remember reading an irate letter from a fan in a soap mag that went, "I never appreciated Jacquie Courtney (I never voted for her in any fan-magazine polls) until I saw her replacement!" I think that most performers can be replaced effectively, but with some, TPTB shouldn't even try. After TGL's Charita Bauer passed away, a friend asked me if I could accept a Bert Bauer recast. UGH. Over my dead body. I never accepted any of the "fake" Alices, LOL.

The pre-Lemay ratings which even you just posted were as high, or higher, than the ratings seen under Lemay. So how does that equate to HL's claims of being responsible for noticeable increases "hold up"? The numbers achieved by Agnes Nixon grew higher than Lemay's, and even the ones seen under Cenedella were higher or comparable. Were Lemay's ratings impressive? Yes, but that's not the issue. The question was, did he make the ratings markedly improve, and were Cenedella's worse, as HL claimed. The evidence indicates no. For example, Cenedella may have garnered a rating of 9.6 (1969 and 1970) and 9.5 (1970 and 1971), whereas Lemay had 9.1 (1971 and 1972) and 9.7 (1972 and 1973), but in reality, 9.5 and 9.6 under one writer is not noticeably weaker than 9.1 and 9.7 under another. If in doubt, anybody can review the ratings here on SON, in many soap opera history books, or even on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_daytime_soap_opera_ratings

I realized quite some time ago that my ancient Betamax and VHS tapes (going back to the 1970s) were starting to disintegrate (literally, shedding "dust"). Some had become unplayable. I was crushed. Fortunately, other tapes (usually the higher-quality ones like TDK, Maxell and Sony) were still in good shape. I wasted no time in converting everything over to DVD-R. I am grateful that all the videos I wanted to preserve the most were salvageable. I had audiotapes going back to the 1960s, some of which I had transferred as well. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to a cassette-tape player. But my trusty VHS survives! True, memoirs are always colored by, influenced by, the subjective feelings and interpretations of the author. Lemay certainly had every right to express his own opinions, whether the public found his analyses believable or accurate. And in the end, he was an excellent writer who provided the daytime audience with stellar material for years. That's all we could ask for; all we have the right to expect.