vetsoapfan

Genie Francis left, Pat Falken Smith was replaced by dreadful hack writers, and science fiction garbage was the name of the game. The show was cringeworthy. IMHO. GH was lucky that AW was too weak at the time to offer solid competition and steal viewers away, but TGL was great!

It was amazing how quickly ATWT plummeted into the toilet with the combination of Sheffer and Passanante. The old gal never recovered, alas.

TPTB don't need my suggestions to make horrid and baffling decisions, unfortunately.😉 Going back decades: General Hospital, Search for Tomorrow, The Edge of Night, The Doctors, Dark Shadows, Another World, Love of Life, All My Children and The Young and the Restless. Those are the ones I can think of off-hand, from the top of my head. There were also those awful Soaps & Serials novelizations of many other soaps. I've read many of them, and the Kate Lowe Kerrigan Another World books were the most satisfying to me as someone who had watched the TV versions of the shows. The S&S books were poorly researched and often inaccurate and hard to tolerate, IMHO.

Emily McLaughlin's daughter, Mary Ann Cooper, wrote a book about her mother once. It was a soft-cover trade paperback called Portrait of a Soap Star. It only remained in print a short while. When I ordered it, the book was about $15.00. A few years later, I saw it on sale on the internet for over $700.00. Surreal! Most people seem to agree. The choice to cast Borgenson in the role is as baffling as the decision to cast Susan Batten as Connor Walsh on ATWT, Charity Rahmer as Belle Black on DAYS, Jayne Bentzen as Nicole Drake on TEON and Jason Kinkaid as Tom Hughes on ATWT. It's like someone deciding that Danny DeVito would be a good choice to take over the role of Rhett Butler in a remake or sequel to Gone With the Wind. Egads!!!

When the Whitney family was first introduced to TEON, Colin was the first member of the clan we saw. He was in a television studio preparing for a broadcast, with his pushy wife Tiffany giving orders. As we got to know the other members of the Whitney family, the skeleton in their closet was that Colin's murderous brother Keith was hiding out in the disguise of a a hippy type named Jonah Lockwood. The sociopathic Jonah Lockwood terrorized Monticello for many months but eventually fell to his death while he was trying to murder Laurie Ann Karr in a deserted area out in the country. The Whitney left town to escape the bad memories, but matriarch Geraldine Whitney and Colin's wife Tiffany later returned after both their husbands died tragically. To me, the Jonah Lockwood/Whitney family saga was a masterpiece; the most suspenseful and terrifying story ever told on daytime TV. Kudos to writer Henry Slesar for weaving a long, deliciously complex and mesmerizing tale.

If any advertisement about the books falsely claimed that Kerrigan was "the author of the serial," that would have been egregious and Lemay's ire would have been totally understandable. She did not write for the TV serial. BUT! The ads I have seen made it very clear that the party was to launch the Ballantine books. They referred to Kerrigan as the "author of AW I and II." Those were obviously the novels, not the broadcast program itself. Besides clearly stating that KLK was the author of Another World I and II, the Ballantine novelizations, what else could P&G, Ballantine, or the creators of the advertisements do? Perhaps add a note that the books were based on the TV serial which was written by Agnes Nixon, Robert Cenedella and Harding Lemay. But even without that, I don't believe most reasonable people would jump to the conclusion that KLK had been the headwriter for the show. That had not been claimed anywhere. I think the prickly and easily-vexed Lemay jumped to annoyance for little cause. That is a great find; thank you. I have seen a couple of advertisements about the novelizations, and this is one of them. There is no doubt that they are talking about two books and their author, not the material as seen on TV broadcasts.

Actually, I do remember Dan flirting with Ruby. I just wish that viewers had actually SEEN Jessie and Dan drifting apart, as opposed to only hearing about it after the fact. Just like, if Dan and Ruby eventually became exclusive and Jessie accepted it, I'd want to see that unfold as well, and not have to put the pieces together in my own mind to explain the relationships. But GH didn't invest much time or interest in the "old people" by then.

I believe you are correct on all counts. To be fair to the show, if the audience was not warming up to Vana Tribbey, and TPTB wanted a major story to play out with Rachel, Mac and Alice, it kind of makes sense that the producers would try out another actress and keep their fingers crossed that viewers would accept her. How they bungled the casting process and hired such an awful performer remains the principle mystery here.

Yes, there was a party scheduled for launch of the novels, and Kate Lowe Kerrigan was being credited as the author of the adaptations. Lemay became vexed because he had been the headwriter of the actual show for years by then, and had created the story and situations dealt with in Kerrigan's novels (well, particularly Book Two, since a lot of what took place in her Book One had been based on the work of Agnes Nixon). I never heard about Agnes Nixon getting vexed about any of this. (Just sayin'.😉) Isn't it common practice for the novelizations/adaptations of TV series and movies to be penned by different people other than those who wrote the original TV and film scripts? It happens...all the time. The copyright owners can do whatever they please, and hire anyone they want, to write the novelizations based on their property. That being said, it would have been courteous and diplomatic for P&G to have a notice printed on the copyright pages of Kerrigan's books (or perhaps on the back covers), along the lines of, "Based on television stories and scripts written by Agnes Nixon, Robert Cenedella and Harding Lemay." Then Lemay would only have had his third-place billing in the credits to grumble about. LOL! (I jest, I jest!)

I doubt these paperbacks are the sort of thing most libraries would carry (soap-based novels are too low-brow, LOL), but you may be able to find them on eBay or amazon. I've seen the books being sold on both those sites.

No, I would have been furious if P&G had allowed Lemay and Rauch to kill off Alice too, after killing both Steven Frame and Mary Matthews. My first choice would have been to write out the character completely. That way, after Lemay and Rauch departed the show, future writers and producers could have brought Alice/JC back, without permanent damage having been done to the character. I wonder if Lemay would have preferred killing off Alice. The character was basically ruined and/or useless after 1975 anyway.

Honestly, after watching her for the first 11 years of the show, I did not want to see any other performer cast in the role of Alice, other than Jacqueline Courtney. I think Tina Sloan could be a good actress, but she did not project the intense vulnerability and heightened emotionalism that JC had in spades. All that being said, I think Judith Light could have done it.

Thank you so much. Another way to experience this story is by tracking down and reading the Another World novelizations (there are two), written by Kate Lowe Kerrigan. While the Kerrigan books are not high art, they are miles above the dreadful AW books put out by the Soaps & Serials company years later. The S&S paperbacks go over the same basic storyline, but in much less detail, with noticeably weaker writing, and with lots of mistakes. If you read the Kerrigan books, and watch/listen to all the video/audio material which survives from the period, it's the closest you can get to experiencing this mesmerizing storyline "first-hand."

Yes, I've read that too.

If I were forced to choose one worst-Alice actress, it would probably be Borgenson. So bland, so lifeless, so lacking in emotion. She was a non-entity. I thought Tribbey was a better actress than Borgenson, but after watching Courtney for a decade, Tribbey's cooler, sarcastic Alice just did not feel right to me. I would have preferred her as another character. In any case, I'll bet that Borgenson would "win" the title of the worst Alice in a poll, LOL.

No. They went away together, and a bellman in a hotel gave Jessie a saucy wink to signify that he knew naughty plans were afoot, but Jessie and Dan never consummated their relationship as far as I know. After their mini vacation, I don't believe any focus was ever given again to their relationship. Jessie and Dan just went back to chatting occasionally at the nurses' station.

Jessie's final story was her romance with Dan Rooney, culminating with them going away together and discussing sexual intimacy. Jessie confessed it had been many years since she had been with a man; the last time had been with her husband. This was 1980, I believe. I thought Jessie and Dan were sweet together, but the relationship simply petered out without any fanfare. And yes, McLaughlin's health issues had begun in earnest in the mid-1970s. I remember when GH had to emergency recast her with actress Aneta Corseault in 1977. Later, the show created a minor character named Nurse Georgia Price, played by Lisa Figus, who would step in and say Jessie's lines when McLaughlin was unable to work. Figus' Georgia substituted for Jessie for many years, probably 1981 to 1988.

Now I am curious: if you have seen most or all of the Alices on youtube, whom did you think was worse than Pfenning? I thought all of the recasts were wrong for the role, for different reasons. I don't think Harney had chemistry with anyone at all, to be honest.

Wesley Ann Pfenning. UGH. So many painful, failed recasts in the role of Alice. It's a relief that the show eventually gave up trying to replace Jacqueline Courtney. Add the notoriously toxic Paul Rauch to the mix...what a nightmare. I agree. New writers who come aboard and cannot/will write for a show while retaining its heart, soul, and DNA, should not be allowed to decimate it to fit their own personal likes and dislikes. You cannot take over the reigns of the original Star Trek, and decide that Kirk, Spock and Bones are not good actors, and then be allowed to dismiss them, regardless of how much eliminating the series' core would hurt the show and infuriate the fans. You cannot turn the Starship Enterprise into an interplanetary disco, where celebrities from various planets "trek" to party amongst each other. Forget about exploring the universe! Soaps are a unique medium unto themselves which thrive on continuity, history, and viewer loyalty. Destroy those concepts, destroy the genre. I would say definitely not. To me, the writing started to show signs of weakness with the expansion to an hour, but familiar faces gave the audience a solid incentive to stick around. (It also helped that 1975 was a weak year for AW's principle competition TGL and GH. Viewers getting bored or frustrated with AW would be unlikely to abandon a familiar show, even with it going through a rough patch, for other soaps which were just as bad--or worse--at the time. Plus, the 60-minute format was an intriguing novelty.) With the loss of Courtney, Reinholt, Dwyer and Susan Sullivan, the show's golden days faded. As soon as the competition started to pick up and soar, AW's steady and significant rating decline began. It was engrossing.

I agree. His material was excellent and memorable (from 1971 to 1974, I'd say), but blatant evidence of his arrogance, mean-spiritedness and ego are hard to dismiss, particularly considering how Lemay and Rauch ended up crippling AW before they were through with it. Yep. The potential romance slated for Alice and Willis, proposed to Jacqueline Courtney by Paul Rauch, supports this idea. Of course Courtney objected to it; a romance between them was idiotic and out of character for Alice.

On my screen, we get the picture of the cast on the stairs, and then the "starring" line, followed by...nothing. The screen is blank under the cast list, with no "seasons" listed.

I wonder if just the series Family is region blocked, because I do have Tubi, and regularly watch all sorts of stuff without any problem. For me, it's only Family that has no links to any content on its page. When I do a search for the show in the Tubi search bar, it does not even come up, which suggests I'm not supposed to have access to it in my region (Canada).

The cover page for Family shows up, but there's nothing to click on in order to access any episodes to stream.

There were specific rumors about why he had it out for her, but in the end, who knows? Not all rumors are true. As the writer steering the ship, it was his job to do what was best for the SHOW and the AUDIENCE, not to cater to his own whims.

Yes, McLaughlin's health concerns were no secret, and there had been times when she was unable to fulfil her contractual obligations to the show. By the early 1980s, Jessie had become a supporting player rather than a lead, thanks to the Youth Invasion and emphasis on idiotic science fiction. The network terminated her contract when her personal issues persisted, and there were times when Jessie would go unseen for months. McLaughlin rebounded later on, and during Joseph Hardy's reign as producer, she would appear on average once a week. The network was respectful enough to keep her top-billed in the credits (after John Beradino) and paid her a generous per-episode salary on the days she did appear, but then she got sick again and Jessie simply disappeared, for good this time. The character had been so marginalized by this point, I did not expect much in the way of a tribute, but I did expect GH to at least have Steve, Audrey, Bobbie...ANYBODY who had known and cared for Jessie...to acknowledge her whereabouts/death on screen. No one did, and she remained unmentioned for an extended period until the 30th anniversary episode, when Steve Hardy told Angie about Jessie's passing. I say this very...carefully, but I think Emily McLaughlin deserved a memorial episode or tribute just as much as, say, John Reilly did, considering her huge and original importance to the show.