vetsoapfan

No Leslie Charleson. Sigh. From the first photo, I'd only keep 11 actors, and eliminate most (if not all) of the rest. GH needs a major overhaul, and a new producing/writing team.

Thanks again, @victoria foxton. It's wonderful to see vintage uploads in such good condition.

I appreciate the heads up, @DRW50!

Ditto! Thanks for the heads ups, @victoria foxton!

This is so depressing. RIP, Jerry ver Dorn. You inherited the honor of being TGL's patriarch at such a young age, and did a fine job.

Ditto! Thank you. I look forward to these.

I actually enjoy flashbacks (within reason), if they allow us to see important scenes again (or for the the first time if we missed them during their initial broadcasts). It took Bill and Laura Horton YEARS to get married on DAYS, and fans had been clamoring to see it for so long, I was not surprised to see a flashback to the wedding a few months after it had originally taken place. I WAS surprised, however, that the show televised the ENTIRE WEDDING act in its entirity during the flashback. It took up a huge chunk of that new episode. UGH, no, you really don't. ROTF! When AW first went to an hour, there was a long, loooooooong scene between Steve Frame and Angie, discussing ordering a supply of chairs for a warehouse. Yikes.

Hold back my hair. I'm gonna HURL. 🤢 🤮

That episode was terrifying to watch in real time. At least the stunt woman "playing" Julie was a professional. Suzanne Rogers must have been terrified. I doubt I would have agreed to participate in that scene, and good luck to NBC/Corday if they tried to force me into it legally. I would have won in court!

With Jamie on the outs with Rachel, I could see and accept him and Alice working together and developing a close bond, one which developed into a psuedo maternal-like relationship. Alice would naturally feel closer to Steve via her friendship with Jamie, and Rachel would feel increasingly insecure and jealous. It would drive her up the wall. That would work. 🤗

Julie was said on-screen to be 17, so slightly younger.

Yep. They simply do not make soaps like they used to.

IMO, 1966 to 1976 were DAYS' golden years. I loved Denise Alexander as Susan Martin.

Well, Alice had known Jamie since he was born, first as her "nephew" when Russ believed Jamie was his son, and then as her own stepson. I think the "emotional incest" stygma might have prevented her from ever seeing Jamie in a romantic light. I still cringe when I think of Rick/Freddie and Blake/Chrissy hooking up on TGL, because of their step-sibling relationship. Even worse: Craig Montgomery bedding his stepdaughter Dani, whom he took care of as an infant, on ATWT. 🤮

Thanks for the link to the OLTL stuff. From 1968, this material focuses on the wedding of Lenore Moore and Walter Curtin. Courtney appears as Alice. This clip is erroneously titled as being from 1975 and 1974. It is not. It's from 1973 and 1974. These are probably Courtney's best scenes from her ill-fated return (particularly the last one with Rachel).

There are several important scenes available on YT, from Courtney's earlier run on AW. She's seen in eps/scenes from 1968, 1973 and 1974, which show how effective she was an actress. Alas, her return in 1984 was a disaster, but I blame incompetent writing for that. (There was one good scene between Alice and Rachel from her return, however, surrounding Rachel's amnesia.)

😘

Over aggrandizement and hero worship: yes. This succinctly describes the problem. And it is the worst among commentators who do not have full knowledge of or a complete grasp on the subject at hand. They think that their favorites must be the ultimate end-all, be-all actors, writers, producers, whatever, based on their own, personal hero-worship of these individuals. The devotees of a certain orange-tinged politician come to mind. 🤭 No one actor, no one director, no one producer and no one writer will ever be exclusively responsible for a show becoming popular and surviving. We have all seen soaps survive, and even thrive, after some of their most important/popular team members depart. Harding Lemay did great work (and made some mistakes) at AW, but that does not mean his reporting about the show's history represent the empirical reality. When Lemay took over the reigns of AW, I don't believe it was because the ratings were terrible under the previous scribe's pen. They weren't. So I'll focus on the years on quality that he brought to the series, and forgive his self-aggrandizing myths about raising the show's ratings. By the way, I can't tell you how many youger fans have commented to me over the years, "Jacqueline Courtney was a terrible actress!" I inwardly roll my eyes, but ask anyway, "Why do you say that?" "Because Harding Lemay said so." "Um, okay. What shows of Courtney's did you watch?' "None. I've never seen more than a few minutes of her work on youtube, but I agree with Harding Lemay." "What years of Lemay's work on AW did you see?" "None, but everybody says he was great, so I know he must have been." Cue the need to bite my tongue, LOL.

Lemay's early years were indeed golden. Although he did not seem to understand certain important characters, and changed them in ways that baffled me, there's no question that his work was initially excellent. I personally felt the cracks started to show in 1975, about four years after he took over as head writer, but even at his "weakest" (so to speak), Lemay's work was better than many other scribes who have worked in daytime soaps. Yes, those who actually have a grasp on soap history acknowledge Nixon's invaluable contribution to the series. And the genre as a whole. Unfortunately, not everyone studies or cares about the legends of the past. Over the years (or decades, LOL) fans have said to me that Maurice Bernard has "saved General Hospital," or "Kim Zimmer saved The Guiding Light," "James Reilly saved DAYS," "Paul Rauch and Harding Lemay saved AW," etc. When people say these things, I usually try to bite my tongue, but my honest thought is always: Bernard, Zimmer, Reilly, Rauch, Lemay, etc., did not "save" shows that were in good (or sometimes even BETTER) shape before they even arrived. Was it ABC executive Brian Frons who pushed Agnes Nixon out of her involvement with All My Children because she supposedly "no longer understood" the soap opera medium? UGH.

Actually, it's a myth that Harding Lemay saved AW from either cancellation or even low ratings. The numbers drawn by his predecessor, Robert Cenedella, were basically on a par with Lemay's. (Cenedella-era ratings: 9.5, 9.6. Lemay's initial ratings: 9.1--they went down slightly at first--9.7.) Lemay's ratings hovered at 9.7 for the next few years. After the departure of key actors from the soap in the mid-1970s, however, Lemay's ratings began to slip (down to 8.9 in 1975), and then took a noticeable drop when General Hospital had its resurgence in 1978 (AW fell to 7.5) and finally gave AW some solid competition. The real savior of AW was Agnes Nixon, whose writing saw the show rise to its highest ratings ever (10.5 in 1968); higher than Lemay's in his heyday. In fact, when Lemay finally left as official headwriter in 1979, the show had slid to lower ratings than it had enjoyed way back in 1966.

Thank you so much for tagging me!

It all depends on what kind of content you prefer. Personally, I enjoy more realistic family drama and interpersonal relationsips, so I'd start with the long slew of radio episodes from 1950 which are available on the Internet Archives. Youtube has many TV eps of TGL from 1966 which are also great. The years 1989 to about 1993 are also worth a look. After that, based on my personal anti-camp mindset, I couldn't recommend anything. ITA. I loved TGL from 1950 to about 1983-ish, then found it unwatchable until 1989. From 1989 to 1992 it was great again, but then just...collapsed and never recovered until the show staggered to its ultimate (and long overdue) death.

Awww!☺️😚 You guys are making me verklempt! And I'm already feeling hyper-emotional after hearng about our beloved Kathryn Hays. Thanks, Khan!

This is heartbreaking. I feel like I have "known" her for 50 years. RIP.

That's a sweet thing to say. Thank you. I always feel that I have expressed all my thoughts on vintage soaps eight billion times by now, and that I became...redundant long ago, LOL!