vetsoapfan

The show did start cutting back his lines. By 1979 or 1980, Marlowe would be included in scenes but have little dialogue to recite. An example of this is the episode (available on youtube) in which John Randolph dies. Jim Matthews is in scenes with Aunt Liz and Dan Shearer, but remains largely quiet while the other characters do the majority of the talking. He does get a few lines, but nothing close to the number of everyone else's. "Ouch" is right. Lemay had been introduced to work by people like Irna Phillips, Agnes Nixon and Henry Slesar, and in his opinion, they only knew what NOT to do? Pffft! Those legendary scribes ruled the roost!

Exactly. Lemay complained that Dwyer changed and edited her lines to better reflect the nature of her character, which allegedly threw Hugh Marlowe off. Ironically (or should I say, hypocritically?), while Lemay lambasted Dwyer for changing her dialogue, he reaped praise on his pets like Constance Ford and Victoria Wyndham for DOING THE EXACT SAME THING. And Hugh Marlowe was clearly having issues by then. He had begun to stumble over his lines no matter WHOM he had as a scene partner, and his flubs continues long after Dwyer left the series Oops, I did not see your well-written post before I made similar comments. Anyway, great minds think alike! To me, the defining moment of Lemay's ego came when an interviewer asked him what he had learned from legenday soap writers of the day. Lemay pompously sniffed, "Only what NOT to do!" That basically says it all. Marlowe was my second favorite actor in the role of Jim Matthews (after Shepperd Sttrudwick). I did warm up to HM, and appreciated his presence, but his inability to remember his lines was obvious his own, and not anyone else's fault. Lemay's just wanted to justify his firing of Dwyer by dragging her into the issue. No one else in scenes with her struggled like Marlowe did. And Marlowe DID have trouble with his lines while performing with other actors. I think HM "went up" more than Jonathan Frid on Dark Shadows, and poor Frid had 20x the dialogue to learn! (I'm not attacking HM, by the way. No one chooses to have memory problems.)

You said that perfectly. I agree with every word. Mary Matthews was created to be, and was, an important and strong matriarch from 1964 until 1971 when Lemay took over. He claimed that people like Mary didn't really exist, and tried to change her into a shrewish harpy. It didn't work, and Lemay became increasingly annoyed at Virginia Dwyer for trying to keep an honest and consistent through-line for her character. Killing off Mary was an egregious error that seriously damaged the show. How deciding to axe Dwyer, George Reinholt, and Jacqueline Courtney all within a few months of each other didn't make someone, anyone, at P&G and NBC stand up to Lemay and Rauch and bellow, "Hell to the NO!" is baffling. Susan Sullivan quit at the end of the same year, we lost Alice, Steve, Mary and Lenore in 1975. IMHO, AW never recovered after that.

I was truly shocked at how well Miami Vice was brought to DVD. Even though the studio could not get the rights to use all the original music, the changes were fine, and (thankfully), all the major, must-have material (like Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight) remained. I must say, however, that the best, most gratifying and rewarding DVD release of a TV series which featured an enormous amount of popular music was China Beach. Time-Life took years, and obviously went through a ton of work, to get everything just right. Only 30 seconds of the original TV series had to be cut out, because a character quoted lyrics from a song that the producers could not obtain the rights to use. But no fan will complain after discovering that the complete collection on disc contains more than 300 (!!!) popular songs from the past. Soap fans who have never seen China Beach should definitely try to check it out. It's more riveting, emotional and addictive than anything on daytime TV right now. (Is that...an unpopular opinion?) https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/61151/china-beach-the-complete-series/ Here's an interesting article about the problems associated with obtaining music rights for DVD releases. https://www.vox.com/2014/11/3/7145231/shows-not-on-dvd-music-rights-wonder-years-wkrp

I had the same thought, originally, until I saw how ATROCIOUS, DESTROYED and UNWATCHABLE the episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 were in their dubbed-over version. Entire chucks of episodes were cut out. Characters sang along to music, supposedly playing live for them at the time, which had been dubbed over with generic musak. It was idiotic to watch the characters "sing along" to tunes that were no longer even there. I had had the first several seasons recorded on VHS (in good quality, too), and was furious that I had gotten rid of them before even realizing that the official DVD releases would be so heinous. I wish a company like Shout! Factory would do a reissue and restore the music, like they did with WKRP (as much as humanly possible; there were still some changes. The original DVD release of WKRP infuriated fans, but the re-release, with so much of the music restored by Shout!, made most people quite happy.

Not that longtime viewers of the REAL General Hospital would know, alas, considering how unrecognizable the new, pod version of GH is from its roots. Sigh.

La Courtney really does look stunning there. Viewers were so lucky back then to have so many stellar actresses in the cast (Slezak, Courtney, Holly, Light, etc.), as well as excellent actors like Gerald Anthony. I'll never get tired watching vintage classics like this.

Compared to the cramped, flimsy pieces of junk soap fans are now used to seeing, this set is at least "good enough," IMHO. Is anybody recording the scenes with Leslie Brooks? If so, please let me know where they will be uploaded. Thanks!

There's that oft-discussed episode in which Rachel marches over to Alice's house, berates her, and snaps, "Where's the child YOU'VE ever given him (Steve)?" Aunt Liz just sat there meekly. The most she did throughout the entire abusive encounter was murmer, "Rachel, you had better go." She should have showed some real rage, and at least tried to drag Rachel out of there physically.

Gary Tomlin, who was writing AW when Alice returned in 1984 acknowledged in an interview that he had not studied the Alice/Rachel history. It showed. Long-time fans, LOL! Yes, but Rachel's egregious transgressions should never have been swept under the rug in the first place. In real life, nobody in the Matthews family would have forgiven her for what she did to Russ and Alice. And Audra Lindley's version of Aunt Liz would have pulverized her.

James Douglas was reported to have left AW over stalled contract/salary negotiations at that time, so I'm pretty sure it was him.

Alice, Pat, and Aunt Liz all had valid reasons to hold a grudge against Rachel for the heinous actions she had committed against their family, although by the late-1970s, fences were generally mended among them. In a (frankly idiotic) scene, Alice even went over to Ada's house and had lunch with Rachel (who offered her soup) when Susan Harney was playing Alice. Once Pat started to work for Mac, she and Rachel were cordial. Aunt Liz and Rachel even become friends and would spend holidays together (I never accepted that as believable, either.) Lenore left the show in 1975 and really had minimal contact with Rachel after Rachel got together with Mac.

When Rachel was married to Russ Matthews, he finally lost his patience with her atrocious behavior, took her over his knee and spanked her like a disobedient child. That was satisfying too, but when he did it, Russ was stone-faced, methodical and restrained. When Alice went after Rachel physically, she was totally out of control, and might have literally broken Rachel's neck, which...I was kind of hoping to see, LOL.

Yes, videos of Jacquie Courtney as Maggie are on youtube, or at least have been in the past. (As we all know, many things get deleted without warning.) Maybe in the Viki/Clint OLTL playlists; I don't remember where I saw them. BTW, I would say that Justine on AW was even more painful to endure than Maggie on OLTL. The idea that Courtney decided on her own to "improvise" all the verbal conflict with her friends and family, and the physical attack on Rachel, when Lemay had written for Alice to be in a "muted catatonic" state is just ridiculous. When Alice was at her worst, and Lenore found her huddled in the hall closet, did Courtney just run in there by herself, without following any script or directorial advice? 🙄 Of course not. She played the scenes as written, regardless of what Lemay claimed later. I guess the scribe felt when he wrote his book that no one would ever be able to see the vintage episodes again, so no one would ever be able to label his accounts improbable/absurd. Believe me, as a viewer who had waited YEARS for Rachel to get her a$$ kicked, watching Alice finally lunge at her and throw copper pots at her as Rachel fled from the house was enormously, deliciously satisfying. To me, it was one of the most memorable episodes in the show's history.

The problem with Lemay's assertion is, that the way the story and scenes were being written completely validated Courtney's interpretation and performance choices. Alice goes beserk during Rachel's taunting visit, and physically lunges at her? Alice hides herself in the downstairs hall closet when people come to check on her, and then becomes belligerent with them? None of the scenes as written suggested "muted catatonic grief," as Lemay later tried to claim. If he had not wanted Alice to be in the throes of hysterics, he should not have written her that way in the first place. His feeble justification is BS, in my opinion, because he simply loathed the actress personally and he so often looked for any reason to denigrate her. As for Rauch lying, when Courtney passed away, he gave an interview in which he said she was a "great gal," who "always gave first-rate performances on AW." I wouldn't completely trust anything these self-serving men had to say.

ITA that her take on Maggie Ashley was not successful, but I tend to blame the conception of that character and the production end of things for the failure. The clipped British accent, which poor Courtney couldn't pull off...why was that even imposed on her? The awful, fake wig...why? Those frumpy glasses which kept sliding down her nose and made Maggie seem like a caricature rather than an actual character...why? I daresay that a majority of actresses would have failed bringing Maggie successfully to life under those punitive conditions. Ugh. Throughout entertainment history, there have been many actors whose technical skills may have been narrow, but nevertheless, they had a certain something, a certain magic, a certain star appeal that the audience responded to in droves. While I felt they improved as the years went on, I don't think people like Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe or Cary Grant were regarded as the world's greatest thespians...but the audience loved them anyway. I thought Courtney was very good, and very powerful, when asked to play a "good girl" and romantic lead. I didn't care if she couldn't pull off inhabiting the role of an evil twin, because that was simply not the function she was meant to serve on either AW or OLTL, anyway. Lemay changed the personalities of many characters he had inherited. Sometimes it worked, made sense and was justified. Sometimes not. He clearly did not understand Mary Matthews, for example, and his take on Aunt Liz was a complete turnabout from how that character had always been presented. Alice had an acute schizophrenic nervous breakdown in 1974 and practically recovered overnight, which was both absurd and irresponsible writing. Yet through it all, the audience adored Jacqueline Courtney. I liked Coster and Robert Delany as well, as his being let go (along with so many other popular stars in the 1970s and early 1980s) surely contributed to AW's decline in popularity. Still, I loved the show from 1964 to 1975 (particularly from 1966 to 1974), so I had quite a long stretch of satisfying entertainment from it. All soaps go through their ups and downs, and I never expect the "good times" to last forever.

What surprised me was that Lemay admitted Courtney was very possibly a reason why OLTL's ratings steadily increased after she was hired on that program. AW's ratings had also risen after her return in 1971 and remained high during her 1970s' tenure there, but started to drift downwards after she left. Certainly I am not implying that JC was the sole reason why a show's numbers would rise or fall (the improved writing on OLTL versus the weakening writing on AW had a significant impact, IMHO), but viewers do loathe losing their favorite on-screen faces. In the earliest days of the show, Alice was quite bubbly, akin to the Hollyood teens of the era; animated and energetic. Then after a few months, she became quieter, more somber on-screen. According to Courtney's recollections many years later, Irna Phillips did not like the "Gidget-esque" version of the character, so JC was asked/told to tone it down. She said to herself that, from then on, she was just not going to move a muscle on her face, LOL. It worked. Irna loved it, and a more introspective, tender Alice Matthews was born. It lowered over the years, and became huskier. Ptrobably due to smoking.

Frankly, I think it's a combination of both. I think Harney might have been more accepted by the audience if she had come aboard as another, new character, but the longtime audience never warmed up to her as Alice. Even Harding Lemay, who vocally derided Jacqueline Courtney at every opportunity, admitted that although he continued to focus on Alice when Harney played the role, her version of the character never gained the popularity that Courtney had engendered. Courtney simply had an indefinable "star quality" that the viewers reacted strongly to. Ahh, Paul Rauch, another producer with an atrocious reputation.🤮 He fired Coster from AW, too.

TPTB often don't understand that the familar, beloved faces we see on our screens for years or decades are a prime reason we tune in.

That's right. The family had to move away, at least for a while, to accomodate Courtney's husband's career. But Lyle B. Hill, the producer at the time, told Courtney that they would hold the role of Alice open for a while, in hopes of her return. During her absence, she made several guest appearance on the program.

Jacqueline Courtney had taken an extended leave of absence and was off AW from June of 1970 to July of 1971, except for a few guest appearances. She was deemed too popular to replace (this was later conclusively proven to be true, when the show tried to do so in the later 1970s and early 1980s), and the Alice/Steve story was put on hold for more than a year. I doubt it would have been backburnered at all, if the show had had any choice. When Courtney returned, the story became the focal point of AW again, and reigned surpreme for the next several years. Corrine Jacker later acknowledged that she disliked writing for the show, and it was evident from her dreadful writing.

Yes, from 1968 to 1975. Lemay's writing started to falter in 1975, but until then, the Alice/Steve/Rachel saga had remained strong, vibrant and compelling. I'd counter that it certainly wasn't played out in 1971 when Lemay arrived. The years 1971-4 were particularly engrossing for both this story and the show in general. On Days, Bill Bell and Pat Falken Smith kept the Bill/Laura/Mickey plot going for a solid decade and it was never boring. Ditto the long-running Roger/Holly business on TGL. the endless Jill/Katherine feud on Y&R, etc. With intriguing actors/characters and solid, imaginative writing, the longer soaps can extend audience-pleasing plots, the better. That being said, later trying to revisit/extend the Alice/Steve/Rachel storyline with different actors and dreadful writing was a major blunder. Since there was no chemistry whatsoever between the bland Linda Borgenson and David Canary, the new versions of Steve and Alice should have been shifted into other orbits in the early 1980s. By then, there was no question that the story was dead and should have remained buried.

When my memory does not fail me! It's strange, though: there are many minute details from 60 years ago which I remember with great clarity, yet specifics from a TV show I watched last Monday have already slipped my mind. Whenever a new season of something arrives on Netflix, I never seem to recall how the previous season ended, and I have to hunt down recaps before watching the new episodes. 🙄

As noted, the 1974 wedding telecast is available on audio over at the excellent Another World Homepage website. Fans can at least listen to it, as if it were a radio play. Allegedly, according to rumor, the color video version of that episode is also floating around out there among private collectors, who refuse to share it publicly. I have never been able to verify this as a fact, although a few folks have claimed to have seen bits of it. I'm glad I was "there" to see both weddings when originally broadcast. The only good thing about being ancient, LOL, is that was around to witness so many memorable historical moments!

Yes, the storyline had been a huge, extremely popular ratings' booster for the show, and upon Jacqueline Courtney's return, P&G wanted the Alice/Steve/Rachel saga to continue. Harding Lemay originally said that he thought it was already "played out," but AW got another four years of mileage out of the plot. Yes, Lemay wrote Alice's and Steve's first wedding in September of 1971 and later their May of 1974 remarriage.