vetsoapfan

And with Jacquie Courtney passing away, I presume her kinescope archives went to her daughter. I wonder if she still has them and has ever had them digitized for safe-keeping.

Over on Facebook, there's a group entitled Vintage Soap Opera Episodes Trade. One of the administrators is a guy named Robert Forester, who announced he had gotten vintage videotapes from Rosemary Prinz (including the AMC pilot) to digitize. He has a list of his stuff for sale. I've never dealt with him (he doesn't send to Canada), but you can always try contacting him through that FB group.

I have no doubt that various actors, directors, etc., have kept copies of their favorite episodes over the years. In interviews, both Jacquie Courtney and Robin Strasser acknowledged having had kinescopes made of highlights from their days on AW. Just recently, the debut episode of AMC from 1970 appeared in soap-trading circles. We've seen footage of Gillian Spencer, Ellen Holly and Lillian Hayman from the early days of OLTL, so that era's material cannot be lost completely. I think the issue now is, getting the people who possess the buried treasure to share it with the rest of us.

I've held a grudge for decades against the unscrupulous "trader" whose unethical behavior originally made me lose out on the chance of getting this TEON treasure. I've longed to get my hands on it for so many years. No matter how many times I come to accept that no other gems from the past will ever be uncovered...they keep on coming!

OMFG!!!! This is a Christmas miracle! I have been looking for this episode for decades. I was in negotiations once to trade for it, but a dishonest individual circumvented the deal and ripped me off. I thought I had missed my chance forever, since I had not seen anyone, anywhere, offer this special broadcast for trade or sale in forever. Thank you sooooooo much for @ing me! Happy Holidays, everyone!

The problem was, however, that Bailey was a dreadful writer.

Locking out the Dobsons and retaining Anne Howard Bailey was just incomprehensible to me.

Shirley Anne Fields was excellent in My Beautiful Laundrette, a wonderful film starring Daniel Day Lewis, which I can highly recommend.

I remember him very well. May he RIP. Thanks for tagging me.

Thanks @DRW50. I love her.

I appreciate all the information about how the TV Guide print magazine has evolved over the years. I would probably still buy it, since it is still being published, except that it has not been sold in Canada for decades. I used to look forward to the Fall Preview issue every year, in which the magazine would preview the score of new television shows coming that season. If it is now including coverage of the soaps, I'd say that it a good idea, considering there are no other paper versions of any actual soap magazines these days.

I'm surprised to see that TV Guide still publishes a print version of its magazine. I thought it was discontinued ages and ages ago. The (inferior and not-missed) Canadian version has been gone for a few decades.

The actress looks vaguely familiar, but her identity is not coming to me. If her name does, I'll let you know.

The clips that people refer to are from a compilation reel of various Jacquie Courtney scenes throughout the year for JC to submit for Emmy consideration. Any scenes being grouped together on such reels should not be assumed to be from a single episode. In fact, from watching all the material available, it's clear that the clips are not only from one day's broadcast. Ultimately, it's not worth rehashing a debate about something which cannot be proven to newer viewers. I would like the truth confirmed for historical accuracy, but with the passing of 50 years, few surviving individuals are left to corroborate the facts. Even printed verification, magazine articles published back in the day, are mostly lost to history. To those who never saw the show live, this will make no difference whatsoever. To those who did, we know what we saw, and again...nothing whatsoever will change. So c'est la vie, as the old saying goes.

I have been told directly that other characters and their scenes being included in the original, pre-revised script "proves" the inclusion of additional actors other than Reinholt and Courtney in that specific episode. The "final scene" (the aftermath of Steve and Alice's reunion), with other characters, took place on the same day in Bay City time, but was broadcast in the NEXT episode, the following day, in real life.

Don't ask me about any of the tedious subjects I endured throughout high school; they are completely wiped from the hard drive of my memory. But when it comes to minutiae of soap opera's halcyon years, certain facts are simply engraved in stone and will remain with me forever. This reminds me: I have (or at least had) an episode of Y&R on audiotape in which Janice Lynde (as Leslie) sings If in its entirety. I also have (or, again, had) an episode of AW from 1973, in which Steve and Alice hashed out their issues after a long, painful separation. Only Jacquie Courtney and George Reinholt appeared that day, since the original script had been revised at the last minute in order to eliminate other actors' involvement. TPTB chose to maximize the lovers' important reunion instead of having it diluted by other actors' scenes being included. Certain fans reject the idea that this episode ended up featuring only Courtney and Reinholt, based on the existence of the original, pre-revised script. Digging up that audiotape may be beneficial for historical accuracy. I've had so many audio and videotapes in storage for decades, going back to at least the early 1970s, I should get off my duff and see what has been saved (after multiple moves), and what is still in playable condition. I know that various tapes disintegrated into dust eons ago, alas.

Thank you for the mention @slick jones.

My recollection of the music used on soaps before the 1980s was that it was primarily classic standards, but there were occasional exceptions. An episode of Dark Shadows in the 1960s had an instrumental version of a Beatles song playing in The Blue Whale. This surprised me when I watched the episode on DVD, considering all the hassle music rights causes for official TV-show releases. In the 1970s, Brad and Leslie Brooks Elliot on Y&R had Bread's If as their theme song, and it was used a lot. The song had been released just a few years earlier, in 1971, so I would classify that as more of a "Top 40" title as opposed to a vintage standard song. Steve and Alice had Softly As I Leave You on AW, but that song had also been released in different versions and sung by various artists, years earlier. I would say that using Top 40 titles became more of a practice in the 1980s than it had been in the 1960s and '70s.

I just found it weird that a teacher of English Literature would refer to the legendary writers being studied in class as JRR, William, or Charles. In a serious, professional setting, it's not appropriate. It's like a foreign politician referring to Queen Elizabeth as "Liz," or referring to Barack Obama as "Barry" when talking publicly about their lives' work.

LOL! When I was in college, I studied English Literature with a teacher who would do that all the time. --"The principle message JRR wanted readers to grasp...." (Tolkien) --"William was rightly famous for his masterful use of dialogue...." (Shakespeare) --"Charles knew how to keep his readers begging for the next chapter...." (Dickens) It kind of came off as pretentious. (To be fair, I'll refer to someone with their first name and an initial, if I don't know--or care enough to check--how to spell their last name. Case in point: "Jean P.")

IMHO, the writing had been declining for a while at that time. This was a disappointment, since I thought 1973 and 1974 had been some of the very best years of the show (which I began watching in 1964). I've always believed that many fans will remain loyal to their favorite soaps, and stick with them through periods of poor writing and decision-making, if an emotional investment in the characters remains. Once a show's quality deteriorates, and my favorite characters are axed, there's neither quality nor emotional investment to keep me around. So I bail. This is what happened for me with AW. Back in 1975, I was already overloaded with a plethora of soaps to follow, so being able to dump one that was turning me off was actually a relief. On the other hand, I continued to watch ATWT until the bitter end (albeit fast-forwarding A LOT in the atrocious Sheffer/Goutman/Jean P years) because with Nancy, Bob, Kim, Lisa, Susan, John, etc., it still felt like my show. Thinking of it now, the vast majority of the soaps I abandoned drove me away by decimating the core characters and bastardizing the shows' roots. Many years ago, actress Carol Roux (Missy Matthews on AW) gave an audio interview which was available on line. She spoke about her experiences on AW and SOMERSET, and acknowledged there had been negative on-set issues, claiming that some PTB had not be nice to her. I posted about Roux's interview and comments, figuring that other long-time fans might be interested in hearing her first-hand accounts. Unwittingly, I enraged one fan, who refuted the idea that there could have been problems back-stage. He said he had a magazine article from 1970, in which the author had supposedly visited the studio and "confirmed" that it was a very happy environment with a family feeling. I asked him why a magazine writer's perception of the atmosphere would, or could, negate Roux's first-hand account and feelings of her OWN life. The poster just got mad, said the was no validity to the reports of on-set tension, period, because it contradicted the magazine. All this to say: you are right. There are fans who are easily influenced, and just assume what they choose to believe is true. You can't force them to look elsewhere if they have blinders on.

My acknowledging that personal, subjective interpretations and opinions are not akin to subjective, empirical facts does not diminish anyone's lived experience. "My god is the only one, true god" may be a person's lived experience, but as a fact, it is unprovable and cannot be taken as empirical truth by everyone else. Saying, "I saw with my own two eyes that John Doe shot Mary Smith" is an eyewitness testimony that may carry some weight. Saying, "I saw John Doe shooting Mary Smith and I believe he was thinking about how ugly her dress was at the time" is a subjective opinion, nothing more. (Of course, you have the right to hold any opinion that feels best to you, but again, opinions are just opinions.)

You've got that right. It's painful to endure people who take the attitude of, "Well, if *I* don't know this fact or that fact, it just doesn't exist! I stopped watching AW on a daily basis in 1975, after the cast massacre, but seem to recall that Mac had a serious riding accident in 1975. Since this happened a few years before Matthew was born, because it contributed to the problem. Sandy was definitely a sex worker at one time. Cecile was desperate to be with him sexually at one point, and a dismissive Sandy taunted her with, "I used to do this for a living. What will you pay me for tonight?"

There was an interview posted in an on-line soap-opera website once (the name is not coming to me), in which the ill-formed interviewer was asking Claire Labine about her past work on Love of Life. He wanted to know the details of how she handled Ben Harper's victimization in prison, when thugs tried to rape him. The thing is, that storyline happened a long time after Labine had left the show, and she had nothing to do with it. If the interviewer did not want to do his research, why couldn't he have simply asked, "Ms Labine, were you at the show when Love of Life tackled the issue of sexual assault in prison?" Why start with the premise that she had been involved, when you have no clue?🙄 So wait...she wrote that Bay City was originally set in Michigan, AND she wrote that Ryan's Hope was the first soap to be set in a real locale? Didn't AW debut in 1964 and RH in 1975? Isn't Michigan a real place? Bay City is an actual city in that state. I guess Nancy Karr was introduced on The Edge of Night after Mary Ryan debuted on RH. UGH. I can understand newbies making obvious errors like this, but MdL should not. (Alan Locher is terrible with facts, too, which is why I have trouble watching his interviews on youtube.)

Right. The same applies to Harding Lemay's book. So many fans take it as gospel, yet it is filled with one man's subjective opinions, nothing more. (That's not to say it is bad for someone to interpret situations and people subjectively in his own memoir, but it just does not equate to universal, subjective truth.) ITA. Often people read something somewhere that completely contradicts what viewers witnessed first-hand, on screen. In my experience, newer viewers (who never watched the material in question) tend to disbelieve folks who actually did see the events as they played out on screen, if it contradicts other reports from second-hand sources.