vetsoapfan

Sometimes the wires of communication get tangled. it happens.🤷‍♂️

You are basing your reply on an erroneous misinterpretation of what I actually said. I neither wrote nor implied that Lemay "undermined" Rauch. Where you got that idea, I have no idea. I'd counter that his snide and untruthful commentary about certain people would contradict that statement, but... ...it's true: you have every right to disagree. There is not, nor should there be, forced conformity of opinion.

Haven't you read Lemay's book more than once? 🤣

Lemay has been repeatedly quoted as acknowledging his insistence that Dwyer be fired. Raunch could have fought against it, perhaps, but he did not, and both men have revealed their arrogance and control issues over the years.

You'll notice that Marlowe has never been quoted as saying he had trouble with Dwyer; it was all Lemay. And yes, the scribe would vehemently condemn some actors (like Dwyer) for the EXACT SAME on-set behavior that he praised his pets for.

That story came from Harding Lemay, who loathed Virginia Dwyer for reasons of his own. He claimed that it was Dwyer who made Marlowe stumble over his lines all the time. I call BS. Poor Marlowe forgot and got tangled in his dialogue a lot, with many different scene partners, and the problem only got worse after Dwyer was long gone. I'd say Lemay was smearing Dwyer to justify his very unpopular demand that she be fired.

There's a major difference between getting injured by falling as you are running up the stairs and "falling up the stairs," which is how various condescending critics and clueless soap "historians" have described the scene. Just trying to make fun of the soaps, as usual, I guess. But viewers who actually watched know good the show was back then. I had to give up on the Soaps & Serials books pretty quickly, because their glaring errors and "creative reinterpretation of history" drove me crazy. The only soap novelizations which I've read, and which were reasonably accurate, were Another World I and Another World II, by Kate Lowe Kerrigan.

Ellen never let up on Susan, either. Scenes like this add realism and relatability to the characters. Let's face it, some of us can hold grudges for life.😝 I'd pay to see that!

The death-by-falling-up-the-stairs myth is firmly ingrained in soap opera lore, but never actually happened. Liz Stewart on ATWT was seriously injured when she fell while running up the stairs. Critics have spun this as she "fell up the staircase," which of course is absurd and never happened. Folks just took pleasure in mocking the soaps. I always found it amusing how long and hard Ellen would and could hold onto a grudge, LOL.

No harm, no foul, no sweat.🙂

In no way did I ever say, or imply, that I give Stern and Black a pass. I acknowledged their contribution to ATWT was weak. I would never hire them to steer any soap again. I said they were not my choice for the absolute WORST writers in daytime's history. That cannot be construed as giving them a pass. I'd add Henry Slesar's years at The Edge of Night to my dream list of TGL, ATWT, AW, DAYS, Y&R, OLTL, GH, AMC and probably even SOM (all in their best years, not necessarily in their entirety). Most people I speak to agree he was a destructive, negative force.

The unabortion ranks down there in the pit of soap-story hell, and I agree with MMcT beings dreadful, but overall, I have to say JER was worse. Not like JER, Carlivati, Pratt, McTavish, Racina, Higley, and others whose tenures seemed to last forever. That's why I assert that Stern and Black were not the worst of the worst in the history of the genre.. When TPTB don't care about older viewers of soaps, they are signing the shows' death warrants. Older viewers are a huge part of the potential audience. Alas. 🥺 Over the years, I have also thought about the different ways which the Stewarts could have been revitalized and returned to prominence. But I knew the show, its characters and its history, and I cared about ATWT's legacy. I have a feeling this was not the case among the revolving door of TPTB. Me too. And to give Marland credit, he kept David Stewart's presence alive on the show until he had no other choice than to replace Henderson Forsythe with another actor, or lay the character to rest. And after David's death, Marland kept Ellen around and seen fairly regularly. Marland knew that on ATWT, audience love for the characters was strong.

UGH! JER eviscerated DAYS, IMHO. MMcT might have been somewhat less heinous, but she really stunk up the joint in Springfield and Pine Valley. It is bewildering that soaps have failed to cultivate and hire quality writers in so many, many years. Obviously, recycling familiar hacks who have failed everywhere else does not work. At the very least, hiring Stern and Black was a stab at trying something different. Having watched the show my entire life, I was quite partial to the Lowell/Stewart family, and Ellen was its remaining lynchpin. I was furious when TPTB dropped the character without any reason given on-screen (at the time, anyway). I had to admit, however, that with almost all of her family gone, and with Ellen a widow, I was surprised she lasted as long as she did. Actually that is a good point: GH's use of "older" characters may very well be an attempt to interest/lure back lapsed (now older) viewers. The show would probably not feature appearances by Scorpio, Anna and other folks of a certain age to bedazzle 18-year-olds in the audience. One could say that DAYS might be continuing to use Julie, Doug, Maggie, Marlena and John because of longtime viewers' loyalty to those characters, not in an attempt to pander to Gen Zers. The fact that ATWT held on to so many of its older veteran actors was an incredible gift. It was just an infuriating waste that Sheffer barely used them most of the time. I'm not fan of Jean Passanante, but at least she did pay attention to folks like Bob and Kim more than Sheffer did. Yes, the "suits" should have backed off decades ago and let soaps be soaps and do what daytime dramas do best, without all the ((ahem)) helpful hints and outright mandates from TPTB. The micro-managing was always misguided at best and harmful at worst. I will hold my breath, pinch my nose, and give Frank a brownie point for that. In all seriousness, many executive producers would have dismissed many of the veteran actors and characters. With a lot of them still on GH's canvas, there's at least a chance they will be used well someday. Fingers crossed, Patrick Mulcahey. What a shame that we will never see ATWT get the chance to shine again.

This is an honest question and NOT in any way meant to come across as snarky. What are the remaining soaps doing these days that indicate they are working towards improving their general ratings? From my (admittedly limited) interest in today's soaps, I only see them making the same old mistakes over and over again. And also, do you think that the way TPTB are handling the surviving soaps will do any good and actually help the anemic ratings increase? Again, no snark intended. But things can always...get worse, LOL! Seriously, from my personal experience viewing their ATWT material, I do not believe they were the worst-of-the-worst soap scribes. Not great by any means, but soap fans have endured weaker and more destructive head writers, IMHO.

Oh, yes, if intelligent, perceptive and knowledgeable PTB had been in charge a few decades ago, and had worked effectively to stop the hemorrhaging of daytime dramas, old warhorses like ATWT (which still had a viable, but misused, foundation upon its cancellation) might very well have survived and potentially even thrived. Unfortunately, the money-hungry and oppresive, micro-managing suits just continued to drive the shows into the ground. You can listen to vintage radio soaps and watch older television episodes from the 1950s, and quickly become immersed in the drama because it was predicated on identifiable human emotions; experiences the audience often shared and could identify with. It's telling to me that in 2024, so many viewers are caught up in the Hortons losing their house, the family's Christmas ornaments being at risk, and Doug's impending death. Nobody expresses this much emotional involvement in brain implants and uber villains threatening to kidnap the central heroine for the 17th time. The viewers want the timeless basics of the genre. They're not getting them. The soaps are dwindling away. And after decades, TIIC still don't get it.

The soap press died a long, slow and brutal death; much like the soaps themselves. I get sh*t for saying this from stans who insist that I must praise the soaps to the heavens at all times, to convince TPTB to keep them on the air, but honestly? With little-to-no hope of the genre ever healing, I wouldn't be too crushed if the remaining four shows were laid to rest. Put them out of their misery.

Perfectly said. When ATWT was number one in the ratings for its first two decades, and when it commanded fierce and unwavering fan devotion, a sense of community, warmth, humanity, family values and decency were the cornerstones of the show. When all those "old-fashioned" tenants were wiped out in favor of harsh, mean-spirited and callous shenanigans, the show was in deep, deep trouble. None of the modern era's PTB knew how to fix it, and I daresay most of them didn't care to return Oakdale to its roots. The soap just got worse and worse. Jack Snyder's sexual abuse by Julia came across (to me) in a sniggering way, which I found offensive. It was like the audience was supposed to find some truly ugly events amusing (wink, wink), and they just weren't. The uglier the events on screen became, the less ATWT resembled...ATWT.

I think he showed promise at the beginning of his tenure, when he worked with Carolyn Culliton. Later, when there was nobody to pull in the reigns, he went wild. He downplayed the vets and the Hugheses far too much, and overplayed his favorites. God knows what his beef was with Eileen Fulton, who became like an irrelevant, rarely-seen under-fiver during his reign. I felt there was a mean-spiritedness to his writing, which lacked heart, warmth and family values which were the core of ATWT.

UGH! Hogan Sheffer really s**t all over the show and its legacy, and did tremendous damage. By comparison, Stern and Black, and even the dreaded Jean Passanante did less harm. Now that we can look back, hindsight tells us that Stern and Black, while bad, could have been worse. They could have been Sheffer or JER or Carlivati bad.

I wouldn't be surprised. Network suits have a habit of championing creative personnel from primetime TV, as if (just by the mere fact that they have worked on primetime television), their work should be good. Jessica Klein, Lynn Latham, Stern & Black, Charles Pratt, Nina Laemmle, Anne Howard Bailey, and a host of other scribes who failed on the soaps, prove otherwise.

I've always heard they were gawd-awful at Falcon Crest, and crippled that show instantly when they took over the head writing reigns. I don't think Black and Stern were were as bad/damaging as JER, Charles Pratt, Thom Racina, Leah Laiman, and some other, notoriously-awful writers, but I have the feeling that their material would not be stellar under the best of circumstances.

This famous scene (starting at 42:04) aired on Another World in 1974, and was particularly engrossing because viewers had waited for six YEARS for Alice to unleash her fury on Rachel. (Actually, Irene Dailey's Aunt Liz was far too meek here. Audra Lindley's version of Liz Matthews from the 1960s would have whupped Rachel's a$$, and torn her hair out, from the moment that bitch marched in the room.)

It is an acknowledged landmark of daytime TV, but I did want to mention Ellen Holly's and Lillian Heyman's stellar work on One Life to Live, when Clara was desperate to pass for white. Her confrontation scenes with her mother were particularly outstanding. Years later, Al Freeman, Jr., was Al Freeman Jr., and always shone in his scenes. Paul Raunch really f***ed up, yet again, when he fired these beloved vets.

I agree about when the show's believability went completely out the window. For me personally, once a character is inundated with a plethora of sci-fi/fantasy/camp material, their viability as credible characters (who can be used in believable storylines) is also decimated. They can then continue to be featured in fantastical, outlandish plots, but I'll never see them as identifiable, human people with feelings worth caring about again. Fembots have never inspired my heartfelt sympathy. Right. JER turned DAYS into a cartoon, a joke IMHO. The show has never recovered. There are genres of television programs geared towards that sort of material, and it's fine if a portion of the audience enjoys it, but soap operas and outlandish, wacky cartoons simply don't mesh. As I've noted previously, The Great Gazoo does not belong floating around Maggie Smith's head on Downton Abbey, LOL. OMG, what a stinker story that was. DAYS had already fallen so far from the well-written soap it had been just two years before, when Pat Falken Smith was guiding it in 1982. I always considered Reva to have "stans" as opposed to fans. Manny and the San Cristocrap gang too. 🤢 Yes, she played Maggie Carpenter in the mid 1990s.

The epitome of this is Reva Shayne on The Guiding Light, who was heinously overhyped, overrated and overused, and saddled with one idiotic plot after another on The Guiding Light. On DAYS, the endless kidnappings, presumed deaths, back-from-the dead stories and other moronic material (Possessed!) dumped on Marlena Evan crippled that character's believability and viability decades ago. One Life to Live saddled poor Jacquie Courtney with a "British accent" when she played evil twin Maggie Ashley on that show. I adore La Courtney, but that wretched accent, which she could not pull off, God bless her, was wretched.