vetsoapfan

Copies of Ryan's Hope were unearthed in Ireland long after ABC had wiped the early episodes here in the USA. The Edge of Night aired on a Canadian network, the CBC, throughout the 1970s, so who knows what they may have kept? Am I holding my breath to see unearthed Monticello treasures? Sadly, no, but then again: I never expected to see The Doctors and Dark Shadows resurrected. I never thought early B&B would become available anywhere, and now scores of eps are on youtube. While I do believe in my heart that golden-era EDGE is lost forever, overall, the recovery of the special 90-minute broadcast from 1975 gives me hope that other surprises may one day come to light. Hope springs eternal for soap fans!

ITA. By that time, the "suits" were trigger-happy and intent on micro-managing down to the nth degree. I imagine that even if Lemay had the patience to tolerate the environment, he'd be restricted from doing what he could do best.

@slick jones, I appreciate all the tremendous work you put into compiling these lists. It's a herculean task!👏

Interesting; IMHO, Laurence Lau looks significantly better in these new pictures than he did when he appeared on AW. (He'll always be Greg Nelson to me, LOL.) There were not many actors present at the reunion from my favorite era of the show, but it's nice to see "old friends" looking well!

I agree. Some of the problems with Dusay's interpretation of Alex could be the fault of awful writing or directing, but honestly, McKinsey was not an actress who could be easily replaced.

I, too, half-hoped that FMB could help turn the show around, but as we've all seen many times before, just because a writer or producer excels at one soap does not guarantee his/her success at another one. I thought Lynne Lathan was great at writing Homefront on primetime TV, but her daytime soap stints were less-than-memorable IMHO. Ann Marcus was a good fit on Mary Hartman and made the ratings increase quite a bit at SFT, but her work on DAYS was a mess. John Conboy's success at Y&R was never really duplicated (to the same degree) anywhere else. I would have preferred to see him get a shot at headwriting ATWT or TGL, over many of the inferior writers who ended up being hired by P&G in those soaps' declining years. HL's character-driven style would have been similar to Irna Phillip's original handling of ATWT. Even if the ratings never increased enough to save them, it still would have been nice to see the remaining P&G soaps die a graceful death with quality writing and producing...instead of what they got handed by the likes of Jean Passanante, Chris Goutman and Ellen Wheeler & the Peapack experiment.

I began watching The Edge of Night before Henry Slesar took over as head writer, and kept with the show until the bitter end. While Slesar might have had a rare, weak story or two, his success rate was stellar. He was a scribe who excelled at mystery and crime plots, romance, family drama, and even comedic vignettes. He also created many complex, multi-dimensional characters. In my experience, not all soap scribes have been so adept at versatile storytelling. He's not talked about on the internet as much as Irna Phillips, William J. Bell, Agnes Nixon, Harding Lemay et al, but I've always considered Slesar one of the greats. The biggest tragedy here in that P&G fired him before TEON came to a close. Watching the series crumble under Slesar's weak replacement (Lee Sheldon) was painful. Sharon Gabet put it best when she later commented about how much she loved Slesar's work, and how much she hated Sheldon's. That sees to have been the general consensus among long-time, die-hard viewers. While I wouldn't wish advanced age on anyone, LOL, I wish more posters had been around to watch Slesar's masterpiece stories: -The Jonah Lockwood/Keith Whitney reign of terror -The Stephanie Martin conflict -The Elly-Jo Jamison saga -The Serena and Josie mystery There are far too many to list, but that just goes to show how consistently brilliant HS was. And to think, in decades gone by, I simply took quality writing on "my" soaps for granted, with Phillips, Bell, Nixon, Lemay, Marland, Labine, Falken Smith, Slesar, etc., in their prime.

This is wonderful news. With GH's gratuitously bloated cast, filled with disposable characters, Mac is one whom I WANT to see on screen!

Thanks for the update, @slick jones. Didn't Mark also lose a Somerset-themed site years ago, or was that someone else? It's a tragedy to the community that all his hard work is just...lost. He must be devastated and very, very vexed.

That's terrible. Another reason to wish for hellfire and damnation upon vile internet hackers.

I am not the sort of person who critiques material without having first-hand knowledge of it. I hope this puts your mind at ease.

This is a first! Yikes!😱 Still, our opinions are not completely out of sync. I did say how much I liked Gentry in the role, and you agree that Hulswit was more likeable. Plus, we both agree that neither Peter Simon nor Richard Van Vleet gelled well during their tenures on the show. I don't see a contentious board war on the horizon. 😁

Reilly was so handsome, so charming and so endearing as Dan's relationship with Kim blossomed. Sigh. *I* would have married him!😊 IMHO, the chemistry between Kim and Colenbeck's Dan was noticeably more muted. (Though, to be fair, I enjoyed Colenbeck with Jane House's Liz Talbot.) The vast majority of the time, I am resistant to recasting major soap roles; it diminishes my investment in the characters. Sometimes, however, the talent, charisma and "je ne sais quoi" of replacements cannot be denied. Along with Rodell and Reilly, Maureen Garrett was another example of a replacement who took over a role and made it more compelling than it had been under the original actress. And while I loved Robert Gentry as Ed Bauer, Mart Hulswit ended up being the perfect and definitive Ed for me.

UGH! I could write a thesis on how disgusting the Ben Reade debacle was.😡

I loved Rodell in the role and accepted her immediately when she was cast. She projected a sweetness and a vulnerability that was not as apparent under Adams. Count me in as one of those viewers who would have preferred to see Rodell continue on as Leslie. Another recast I appreciated more than the original was John Reilly as Dan Stewart on ATWT. John Colenback was fine, don't get me wrong, but Reilly came across as more charming, more affable, more masculine, and had wonderful chemistry with Kathryn Hays. To me, Colenbeck always seemed more aloof, less passionate.

I think by the time Jonathan was introduced, I had become so disillusioned with the show, and given up any hope of its recovery, that I didn't watch much of Pelphrey. My mistake had been to actually endure scenes with other characters I loathed (like Buzz and eventually Harley) for far longer than I should have. By the time TP's Jonathan was being focused on, I was fast-forwarding through most of the show. I only kept recording TGL and ATWT at all, just to catch glimpses of the few remaining characters I still cared about. I know I should have abandoned both soaps long before The End, but a decades-long addiction was hard to break, LOL.

TPTB went too far in the opposite direction when they de-emphasized Lisa. Reducing her almost to the status of a disposable day player under Hogan Sheffer felt like personal contempt for the actress. No one actor should hold a show hostage, but if they are going to remain on the canvas, characters should at least be used effectively. Constrast the history books to the Soaps & Serials novelizations which were neither accurate NOR good. ((Shudder)) As usual, I agree with Reverend Ruthledge: the history books are good, and entertaining reads, but the inaccuracies are distracting. In 1983-ish, a friend's brother bought a non-fiction book dealing with the history of television. It falsely claimed that Coronation Street was "the longest-running television series in the world." I pointed out that CS began in 1960, but currently-running American series like TGL (1937 on radio, 1952 on TV), Search for Tomorrow (1951), The Edge of Night and As the World Turns (1956) were older, and out-ranked Coronation Street in terms of longevity. The brother got curiously angry at my contradiction of his book's "fact," and insisted that the writer could not be wrong because, "It's printed in a book!" You can't reason with folks who are convinced that anything in print must be undisputed gospel. I can't disagree about the harm Deas, in particular, wreaked onto the show. We didn't need more ham in a can. I think many, if not most, viewers consider the early 1990s to be TGL's last, great hurrah. One of the aspects I love best about soaps is the sense of community, with many different characters and storylines interacting and weaving together. Harping on one character to the detriment of many others is a turn-off.

Exactly. And one commenting on this trend among the soaps, which includes (but is not limited to) TGL in a Guiding Light thread, is perfectly reasonable. I agree, in its own way, GH's infatuation with Carly (and Sonny and Jason) has hurt that soap the way the Reva tunnel vision hurt TGL. It's sad watching multiple soaps making the same sort of mistakes ad nauseum. No one wants to see another soap become extinct like TGL.

Classy heroines like Penny Hughes, Jessie Brewer and Nancy Karr have been underrepresented on the soaps for many years. Reva Shayne and Carly Corinthos as leads is like Hollywood abandoning the likes of Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn in favor of Roseanne Barr and Rosie O'Donnell.🤢

Yes. I could never understand how a talented, charismatic, gorgeous actress like Rebecca Hollen could be dismissed, but to be fair, we don't know what TPTB were smoking in the 1980s, LOL.

Whether that ended up being an asset or a detriment depends on each viewer's point of view.😝 Aside from Trish, whom I liked a lot, I never grew to care about any of the Lewises. I disliked Beth, under both actresses. Reva's eating of the show became unbearable to me. Alexandra was marvelous while BM was there, but once Marj Dusay took over, I felt the character became an abrasive and one-dimensional irritant. Not to be a Negative Nellie (I know, I know: too late, LOL!🤣), but IMHO, of the show's final 27 years, I only found about about five of them to be worthwhile.

PFS returning to DAYS was such a welcome event for me. IMHO, she and WJB had been the show's very best writers of all time. TPTB at NBC, however, probably just wanted to capitalize of the GH angle since under Douglas Marland and then PFS, GH had been such a hugely-popular cultural phenomenon. It was so weird that P&G signed a renowned writer of her caliber, who had already proven she could succeed Douglas Marland to great effect, and then dumped her so quickly. At the time, Smith acknowledged she was mystified. I wonder if cost-cutting played a role. Pamela Long was a novice scribe, with no proven successes under her belt, and very little experience. It's not like her run on Texas was a ratings winner, so I wonder if TPTB went with her because she was significantly cheaper than PFS. Or maybe Gail Kobe had a mandate from the suits to dismantle and gut TGL the way ATWT had been gutted a few years earlier under Mary Ellis Bunim, to pander to the youth market. Kobe might have wanted to work with a writer she already knew. Anyway, this is just speculation. The facts are lost to history at this point. But it's so disheartening that the show had continued success in the palm of its hand (heck, TGL had even done surprisingly well in the ratings during General Hospital's explosive heyday), and then threw it away. Pamela Long did improve over time, and some of her work was effective (Phillip and Rick's friendship, Bert's short story with Martin Brunner, for example), but she was no Pat Falken Smith. PFS was one of the few writers whom I followed around the dial, from show to show. I knew I'd always enjoy her work (again, with the notable exception of Ryan's Hope). Isn't it curious that some writers do brilliantly on some shows, yet just don't gel and/or fail at others?

I know, and I consider that to be a major shame. With the glaring exception of Ryan's Hope, I found Pat Falken Smith's material upon assuming the writing duties to be exceptionally good. God only knows why her RH stint was so...tepid. I wonder if it came down to tepid production values and network interference at the time.

What killed me was that for so many years, the show treated Reva as The Irresistible Sex Goddess of Every Man's Desire. Um...no. 🙄 I found 1982 to be fascinating, with Pat Falken Smith's short tenure a breath of fresh air. She hit the ground running. It was clear she had studied the history of the series and had an understanding of the characters. I was relieved to see that the show would be in capable ands after Marland's departure, just as General Hospital had been when PFS assumed the writing reigns after DM left. Personally, I think Zimmer's own personality was too "big" and too "sassy" to be an effective Hope Bauer. If TPTB wanted to age the character (whom Don Stewart once said was supposed to be about 24 when Alan-Michael was born), they still needed to cast someone who could project the essence of who Hope was. I liked Elvera Roussel, but in 1983, if TGL didn't want to continue with her, I might have considered Jacquie Courtney for the part. Courtney was 36 that year (which was in sync with the SORASing Alan Michael), and Courtney had a solid reputation of playing kind-hearted, loving heroines.

LOL! That's so true: there were an overabundance of irrelevant, disposable, and ultimately forgettable newbies in the mid-1980s. If the entire series were magically available to stream somewhere, I could see myself watching up through 1984, while my old favorites were still featured, but I'd pass right over the "forgettable newbie" period, and pick up again when Holly and then Roger came back. Being able to take a break from Reva for a few years was such a relief. At the beginning, I probably could have taken her in small doses, but when she ate the show, I grew to loathe her. The painfully stupid stories foisted upon her (Reva the Ghost! Reva the Amish Amnesiac! Reva the San Cristobelian Queen! Reva the Clone!) did the character no favors!