vetsoapfan

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.

That's an important point. Even if fellow commentators wish to influence what other posters discuss on message boards (out of boredom, frustration, disinterest, whatever) it's unlikely to happen. Subjects which one person would prefer to see set aside, another person is curious about and wants to see explored more. Personally, I am totally surfeited with the social media attention paid to a certain tangerine-tinted individual who is constantly discussed EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME, but obviously other people are still interested in hearing about, reading about, and talking about the individual in question. If it bothers me, it's my own obligation to avoid engaging in discussions about those whom I no longer wish to discuss. On the internet, scrolling down is pretty easy. Today on Facebook, a group moderator posted a photograph of an actor whom she found attractive. While a surprising number of members were oohing and ahhing, one man announced that he did not want to see posts like this again, because lust was a sin, and all the posters drooling over the photo needed to REPENT and read the good book. 🙄 To that I would ask, why did he even click on the link??? I agree. I've always found it interesting that so many soap fans investigate their shows' histories, and become engrossed by past material they never even watched first-hand. AW's brilliant past held a cornucopia of fascinating characters and storylines which could have been mined for present-day drama, if only TPTB cared to do so. Considering all the dialogue soap actors have to memorize daily, I'm astonished when certain actors can handle it flawlessly, and I'm sympathetic towards people like Hugh Marlowe, who obviously struggled a lot. I watched the show daily during Lemay's run (while I criticize him for certain things, I have always acknowledged the excellent work he did from 1971-1975), and people like Jacqueline Courtney and Virginia Dwyer were much more adept at dealing with their lines than other actors like Marlowe. Right. Sometimes even the actors, writers and producers involved get confused about past facts. Agnes Nixon's autobiography included some obvious blunders about her time on OLTL. Harding Lemay has said that AW's ratings before he arrived were not satisfactory, and that he made them jump, but the facts don't bear out that contention. Before Lemay took over, Robert Cenedella had been the head scribe for a few years. While I would never claim that Cenedella was a writer of Agnes Nixon's or Harding Lemay's skill, he was at least adequate. Contrary to Lemay's assertion about his own tenure, he did not make the ratings increase to any significant degree (although granted, the writing was much better). In the 1968-69 season, AW had an average rating of 10.5. In 1969-70, the rating was 9.6. In 1970-71, 9.5. Lemay was hired in 1971. In 1971-72, AW's rating was 9.1. In the 1972-73 and 1973-74 seasons: 9.7. By 1979, the show had dipped to a 7.5. (All ratings taken from The Soap Opera Encyclopedia by Christopher Schemering. The yearly ratings can also be checked here on SON, in the Ratings Archives.) The cast massacre of 1975 and the declining quality of Lemay's work in the mid-1970s, IMHO, contributed to the slow sinking in the ratings. It was a shame to witness AW's decline, after it had been a daytime jewel for so long.

I had no idea this thread even existed. Thanks for the heads up!👏 I never wanted Uncle Dru to be written out in the first place. As a character who had been featured on The Brighter Day, As the World Turns, and then Another World, he was like a lynchpin of the Irna-verse. Plus, I have always found warm and wise patriarchal and matriarchal figures on soaps to be comforting. If the show could have ever gotten good writers who were knowledgeable about and invested in the show's rich past, I would have asked Jacqueline Courtney to return again and USE HER EFFECTIVELY this time. I probably would have brought Ricky Matthews and Wally Curtin back to Bay City too. To newer viewers, Wally would have been like any other new character they were asked to invest in, but his addition to the canvas would be a nice nod to history for veteran viewers. I realize TPTB would veto a sudden influx of much-older characters, but it would have been wonderful to see Beverly Penberthy and Sam Groom put back on contract as Pat Randolph and Russ Matthews.

Seeing egregious mistakes in and distortions of history can make me laugh AND cringe in agony, if that makes sense. The slight "bone of contention" I had with Liz's fall on the stairs, was that I really didn't see how she could have had the life-threatening (and ultimately life-ending) injuries from the accident. But on television, we often have to suspend disbelief and "go with the flow," so to speak. That's what I strive to do, the majority of the time on social media. I must admit, however, that if people are being willfully and relentlessly antagonistic for extended periods, I will not hesitate to..."toy" with them for my own amusement.🫢

Yep, me too. I've always said that it's better to actually BE alone, than to continue putting up with people who make you WISH you were.😁

ARGH! I reeeeeally want to see those scenes now. Thanks for the screenshots, @Liberty City. I never thought I'd see Marlena and Maggie share a scene again. Strangely, even after not being a regular soap viewer for a few decades, I am still interested in "my" characters. Once a soap addict, always a soap addict!

@Liberty City, thanks for sharing the latest photos. I can accept differences in paint color and living room furniture, but the shifting position of the front door in the foyer annoys me, LOL. BTW, I was not able to see any of the recent flashback episodes with Tom and Alice. Did DAYS feature any "real" Horton-family scenes from years gone by, or did we only get recreated flashbacks with the young actors? And I haven't seen any interaction between Maggie and Marlena in so many years. I wish I could find their recent scene(s) together on-line somewhere. What was the context; what did they talk about?

What I meant was, that I tried twice to put my participation in the discussion to rest by posting, "...it's true: you have every right to disagree. There is not, nor should there be, forced conformity of opinion." And then later, "Sometimes the wires of communication get tangled. it happens." Both comments were designed to let the issue drop, since agreeing to disagree and then moving on works best when different people have opposing, firmly-held viewpoints. Perfectly said, from top to bottom. 👏 I daresay that certain debates will rage on forever among internet commentators: https://neal.fun/lets-settle-this/ For soap fans, in particular, viewers have been rehashing and debating Maureen Bauer's death on TGL for decades. Ditto: "Who was the better Rachel on AW: Strasser or Wyndham?" And, "Do sci-fi and camp elements belong on daytime TV?" Not to mention, "Should ailing, long-suffering soaps just be cancelled and put out of their misery?" The list (and the debates!) go on. You are 100% right when you point out that not every subject will be of interest to every person. But that's just the way message boards work.🤷‍♂️

Saying that Lemay pushed hard for Dwyer's dismissal cannot be taken to mean that Paul Rauch did not agree. Obviously the move was okayed by TPTB. That being said, I had no interest in getting into another extended discussion about it, which is why I cut it short.