vetsoapfan

DAYS has never been better!

Okay, thanks. This was the latest that I've seen. The walls aren't even angled anymore? Is the front door still in the center of the archway, like in the photo I uploaded?

👏😘👍 Yes. Mary Matthews and Ada Downs existed side by side without issue on AW, as did Alice Matthews, Pat Randolph and Lenore Curtin on the same show. Lorie, Leslie, and Chris Brooks all managed to shine and be showcased during their shared time together on Y&R. Viki Riley, Carla Gray, Pat Kendall and Karen Wolek all had their moments in the spotlight during a shared era on OLTL. There's no competition among characters co-existing on the canvas at the same time, except in the minds over overheated fanbases. To me, the MORE popular actresses on a soap at the same time, the better for the show. DAYS was on fire when Susan Flannery, Denise Alexander and Susan Seaforth graced the show together.

Exactly, and now Maggie's even propping Marlena up by appearing in scenes with her. God bless our Maggie!😘 It's funnier than the proclamations that viewers who enjoy the Hortons are "just jealous of Marlena."🤣 Next we will hear that the Emmy-award-winning actress can't act!😉

Exactly. A flight of fancy, more than likely. 🙄 👏 "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."🙃

Oh wow, I hadn't seen such a recent shot of the Horton living room. The front door has moved several feet to the left from its original and traditional position. The dimensions of the room look smaller too. I prefer the "real" layout.

William J. Bell knew what's what. That's why he is an acknowledged master of the genre. Back then, we just didn't get sidetracked by the rudimentary, sparse sets. The writing on soaps by Phillips, Nixon, Bell, etc., was too involving. Nowadays, we notice the cheap sets, and all the other technical flaws, because the writing isn't enough to keep our attention. We are bored, s we look around, LOL. This, 100% this. I've been expressing the same sentiments for decades now. The Mickey/Laura/Bill triangle on DAYS, with the secret of Mike's paternity at its core, was slooooow moving and based on family dynamics, repressed emotions and unrequited love. It lasted a DECADE, but was never boring, and kept viewers mesmerized. No clones, vampires, devils or extraterrestrials in sight! It was soap opera heaven! I wish everyone could have witnessed the engrossing material that Denise Alexander got to play as Susan Hunter Martin. Daytime TV magazine once reported that a husband wrote into DAYS, asking producers to give Susan some relief from her suffering. He wrote, "My wife is pregnant and needs her rest, but she can't sleep because she's so stressed about Susan!" Okay, I agree that such a reaction from a viewer is over the top, but when soaps dealt with real emotions and human, adult drama, fans were FIERCELY involved. With the dreck being produced today? Not so much.🤨 While I initially applauded the idea of hour-long soaps, people like Bell, Falken Smith, Nixon, Marland and Lemay were still writing, so the quality held up for a while. The budgets were high back then too. DAYS would sometimes have more than 15 characters on an episode. As the years went on, however, we lost writers and producers with the talent and understanding to run soaps well. Ratings plummeted, budgets were slashed. Keeping soaps at 60 minutes per day became increasing untenable. I think it would have been wise to cut all of them back to 30 minutes, years ago. A lot of dead wood could be pruned from the casts if they did that today. Core characters could be focused on, and all the useless filler material could be eliminated. I know. Since I started noticing how absurd and nonsensical television sets were, I see the impossibilities everything. Rhoda's loft was supposedly "upstairs" from Mary Richards' apartment. Interior scenes showed a staircase outside of Mary's front door, leading UP to Rhoda's place. Yet, outdoor footage of the building clearly revealed there WAS NO upstairs. Mary's apartment was literally on the top floor. Rhoda's garret was to the right of Mary's place, and even slightly lower. I don't know how TPTB never notice these things.

Right. Compelling human drama is far more mesmerizing than clones, extraterrestrials, brain implants, mad scientists freezing the world, devil possession, time travel, etc., particularly when there's no budget to handle the outlandish plots. Viewers who enjoy that sort of entertainment have theatrical films and cable TV series with king-sized budgets to enjoy. Watching soap heroines leaping into paintings and travelling through time, or becoming possessed by the devil and going on a killing spree just don't cut it by comparison. Particularly on soap budgets of $1.49, filmed on sets that look held together by Scotch tape and bubble gum, LOL.

I've never liked the over-the-top sci-fi/fantasy/camp nonsense on soaps, primarily because it's so contradictory to the exploration of the human condition, which is the essence of the genre. What makes the fantasy elements so much worse, however, is that the budget to produce such stories just isn't there, so all these dumb plots end up looking embarrassing. Soaps need to go back to their roots.

@Althea Davis, You are making me think all sorts of indecent and naughty thoughts with this Matthew Bomer GIF. Thank you so much!

I know they only worked together for a relatively brief period of time, but my dream guest for this tribute would have been Laurence Fishburne. What ABC and Paul Raunch did to this fine actress was egregious.

😁 Right! Human, realistic and warm stories on Bill Bell's and Pat Falken Smith's golden era of DAYS, how missed they are! So many miles above what was offered by JER, Higley, Carlivati and their ilk. That's a nice treat to see. Thanks for posting. I just have to wonder how Tom and Alice fit five growing children into two "guest" bedrooms! Thank goodness the house had four bathrooms! I agree. LOL! The exterior shots of the buildings just did not match or "work" with the interior sets for shows like All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show or The Golden Girls either. We just have to go with the flow, I guess.🤷‍♂️🙂 Personally, I don't recall ever seeing a family room. In the diagram, the dinning room probably should have been there, since we know that existed. Ada's first living room went through some weird changes back then too. Soaps should pay attention to sets. Fans notice and remember everything. Even changes in the sounds of doorbells makes observant fans go, "Huh???"🫢

Yes, there used to be a door where you mentioned: between the staircase and the front door. At the beginning of the show it led to Tom's office. Later it was a closet. It was a weird change, and I always wondered why no one on the show remembered that lay-out or kept it consistent. (The same sort of change happened on THE LUCY SHOW, when the section of the set beside the staircase changed without explanation. It's strange when the houses are supposed to be the same, but the walls, rooms and closets just magically come and go, LOL.) Overall, however, the Horton set has remained FAIRLY unchanged.

You are far too kind. Thank you so much, @Darn As I always say, soap fans are a strong and durable bunch. If we can endure years of JER, Dena Higley, Jill Farren Phelps and her friends, Charles Pratt, Ron Carlivati and Christopher Goutman, we can outlast ANYTHING!😝 Cool! The set in the commercial certainly does look like our favorite family's living room!

No doubt. The incompetent PTB at the time reeeeeeeeeeeally had to try hard, to bungle the return of a beloved vet so badly, so completely.

Oh cool, thanks for the heads up! We can never have too many Horton memories!

The best of DAYS (and all the remaining soaps, sadly) may be in the past, but we are fortunate that so much pictorial and video material has survived.

Yes, that was our Jacquie Courtney, who did some commercials for Porcelana cream back in the day. I though her hairdo for this ad was a little too poofy on top, but at least it was a million times better than the awful, butch style she had for a while during her 1984 return to AW

It's my pleasure, believe me, to remember the good old DAYS!

Remembering Days of Our Lives' first family: the Hortons. Today, Tomorrow, Forever!😁 More of the beloved core family:

@DRW50, you are not putting me on the spot at all. I can't say if you have seen the clip before, but I know I have. I remember Phil's comments about the vintage scene from when I watched the Donahue episode originally.

Exactly. It's...curious to proclaim that a viewer is jealous of a fictional character in the first place, but advocating for the stabilization of the core family should not precipitate anger from viewers who prefer other characters over the Hortons.🤨

That'll tell 'em. 😉🫢🤣

The idea that the Horton family became irrelevant after Alice died is not just true. Yes, short-sighted decisions by incompetent PTB have led to many important family members being written out, killed off, or just disappearing over the years. JER's idiotic decision to let Susan Seaforth Hayes go was just par for the course for the enormous damage he inflicted on the show, but all is not irreversibly destroyed. Using Julie as the matriarch, the family could be rebuilt by using familiar characters and their descendants from the past. I wonder how the audience would react to seeing the popular Stephen Schnetzer return as Julie's brother Steve, to introduce some of his descendants. Sandy Horton could also be brought back quite easily, with adult children of her own. Jennifer, Melissa, Scotty, etc., there are several legacy characters who could be woven into today's fabric. My point has always been that the show keeps introducing random newbies to the canvas, anyway; people whom we initially neither know nor care about. Why not tie some of them the show's core foundation and have them related to the Hortons? We'd warm up to Horton newbies as quickly as we would to any other new faces. Dismissive viewers who don't care about DAYS' legacy wouldn't be affected either way, but the rest of us would love and appreciate the nod to history and continuity. UGH! Watching the Bauers being gutted in the early-mid 1980s on TGL was hard to endure. Producer Gail Kobe and writer Pamela Long clearly did not understand the show, and did not care about its consistently rich cast of characters. I cringed when Pamela Long was quoted in the press as saying that one of the first things she and Kobe had to do was "get rid of the dead wood" among the cast. In a very short period of time, 2/3 of the existing characters were axed, in spite of their continuing story potential. We had just lost Mart Hulswit as Ed Bauer before Kobe and Long took over, and it was no one's fault that we lost Bert, but the new team killed off Bill and Hillary Bauer, and wrote out Hope and Mike Bauer. Being left with a new, fake Ed was just not the same. Soaps never learn, alas, and keep making the same mistakes ad nauseum.