vetsoapfan

This is new to me, and I'll happily take episodes of vintages soaps any way I can get them. Thanks, Carl!

I agree. JvD had become the beloved spokesperson of the show and should have been retained at all costs. Watching the final months of the series, there were so many miscast actors and totally irrelevant, useless characters in the mix, they all could have and should have been let go before our Ross Marler. While there are mixed opinions on TGL's Ritournelle/light-through-the trees opening and the "lifesavers"/floating breast implants opening, I am relieved to see universal disdain for TGL's dreadful 2003/power-point mess and ATWT's hard-to-stomach "gold" disaster. Even I did not love the "hairy-arm" opening, despite being touched by hearing the iconic Destiny poem every day. I would have preferred having a recording of Rev. Ruthledge narrating the piece (the audio exists), with vintage stills of the show's 70-year history playing on screen. The hairy arms and the kids' narration were off-putting, to say the least.

I did not like TGL's disco theme/opening, and was relieved that it did not last too, too long. An executive at the time reported that it was hugely unpopular with the audience, and fans made their ire well known, so it was replaced. Personally, I loathed other openings more than that disco one, however. This one looked like it had been made by a high-school kid during a rushed 30-minute lunch break at school and was really cheap and tacky; such a come-down from the likes of Ritournelle, My Guiding Light and even Hold onto Love (which I thought was a decent fit for the show. The boob-implants floating across the screen atrocity was also dreadful. As for ATWT, I voted thumbs down to the 1981-93 opening, the 2006-09 one, and the 2009-10 (final) one. The visuals for the toilet-flushing opening were fine, but I disliked the music. Probably the worst opening ATWT ever had, though, was the "gold" opening. Weak music and awful visuals.

I was thinking of TGL yesterday, because of its anniversary, and I realized that there were some of its beautiful theme songs that I still remembered and enjoyed, so I checked them out on youtube. Of course, this led me down a rabbit hole of tons of my favorite themes and musical cues from all my favorite series. Great memories! (Of course, along with the lovely themes of the past, there were some real stinkers too. TGL and ATWT foisted some dreadful ones on us!)

Even today, the classic themes (the ones I loved) make me verklempt!

The Guiding Light made its debut 86 years ago today, on January 25, 1937. While all soaps have their ups and down during their lifespans, to me, TGL boasted the longest, continuous run of quality in the genre.

@DRW50, I also felt that 1996 was a very bad year for our show. John Valente was not good for the show. The writing was weak. The screen was filled with a plethora of people I did not want to watch. Little did I know that everything would get even WORSE as the years went on.

Thank you very much for the Vaults. It's such a relief to have so many vintage episodes preserved.

Julianna McCarthy clarified the situation a bit more. Julianna McCarthy: Well they wrote him out with no notice or warning He found out from Wardrobe They had a little farewell party with white frosting ghost cupcakes He was much loved But management? Kay Alden Nelson: Julianna McCarthy Julianna! I had no idea things happened that way with Robert. I would guess the power battles might have begun by then, because Bill Bell adored that man.

In a facebook post announcing the passing of Robert Clary, Julianna McCarthy (ex-Liz Foster on Y&R) wrote that she was still angry about the disrespect TPTB at the time heaped on him. Janice Lynde (ex-Leslie Brooks) then chimed in and echoed the sentiments. I'm saddened to hear that RC was treated so badly by the show; badly enough for both actresses to still be annoyed about it today. Clary was an asset to Y&R and deserved better.

Right. More gratuitous butchering of historically-important characters. The business with Rick Webber and the crap with Jeff were both choices made by incompetent PTB who understood neither the core of the show nor what viewers want to see on their soaps.

Exactly. ME and his eight million characters should have been dispatched from the show years ago, not foisted into a slimy story with Liz. Turning Liz into a supporting player in (supposedly) her own story is an affront, and destroying the character of Steve Hardy's only biologal son is an egregious slap in the face to the history of the series. Just vomit.🤮

The classic character of Jeff Webber, so beautifully written during the Douglas Marland and Pat Falken Smith years, and so sweetly played by Richard Dean Anderson, has been trashed...for a stupid, illogical and alienating storyline. Sigh.

Thanks @j swift and @DRW50!

Exactly, considering that on Ryan's former show, ATWT, we also had characters like Lisa Miller Hughes Eldridge Shea Coleman McCall Mitchell Grimaldi Chedwyn, LOL!

Meg Ryan once remarked in a derogatory manner about her experience on ATWT: "My character's name was Betsy Stewart Montgomery Andropolous, so that shows how many times she was married!" She said this as if Betsy's being married a "whopping" two times in her life was so absurd. Pffft. Many people in real life get married two (or more) times. I do think TLJ was just snarking to degrade the soaps. His story about how he left OLTL doesn't ring true.

Having an affair on his fragile wife, killing a patient, letting Larry be suspected of the crime, and then leaving a badly-injured Dorian to die after her fall down the stairs...seems bad enough to me for TLJ to realize that his character was a villain LONG before his final week or two on the soap.

Hi @DRW50, Either TLJ is having false-memory flashbacks, or he's shooting a lot of bull. Soap opera storyline arcs are written and approved well in advance, and no writer could instantly turn a hero into a villain, generate all the required scripts, and write him out within two weeks. Mark Toland's descent into ambiguous "villainy" started much earlier than a week or two before TLJ left the series. He was cheating on his sweet wife, Julie, by early 1973 (two years before being written out), and was responsible for accidentally killing a patient named Rachel Wilson in 1974. When Dorian Cramer (Mark's affair partner) intended to inform the authorities of how Rachel had actually died (the police at the time suspected Larry Wolek), Mark tried to flee, resulting in Dorian's falling down a flight of stairs and going into a coma. Mark just ran off and left an injured Dorian there, possibly to die. Then in 1975, Mark discovered that Tony Harris was really Victor Lord's son and tried to blackmail the elderly man with the information. Before he could do much damage in that area, however, Mark was shot and killed in early 1975. Anyway, all this to say: despite TLJ's peculiar account of how Mark supposedly turned into a villain and was written out pratically overnight, Mark Toland's dastardly behavior began two full years before the character left the show.

On GH, is it ever acknowledged or referred to that Laura and Liz are cousins? (Rick Webber adopted Laura, IIRC, and his brother Jeff is Liz's father.) Also lost to history is the fact that Gail Adamson (Baldwin) adopted Monica. Lorie Brooks being Liz Foster's niece on Y&R was swept under the rug and forgotten about, as was the fact that Jo and Stu (SFT) were step-siblings (their widowed parents married each other).

Thanks @DRW50.

Thanks for the tag, @victoria foxton! IMHO, AMC and RH were at their very best in the 1970s!

I don't believe it is either Courtney or Myers, but the actress does not look familiar to me and I cannot identify her, alas.