vetsoapfan

11 minutes ago, wonderwoman1951 said:

not sure where black and stern fall in the pantheon of bad headwriters. what i can tell you is that it was at les moonves’s “suggestion” that black and stern became atwt’s headwriters, which they both told me, and was confirmed by lucy johnson, head of cbs daytime. 

I wouldn't be surprised. Network suits have a habit of championing creative personnel from primetime TV, as if (just by the mere fact that they have worked on primetime television), their work should be good. Jessica Klein, Lynn Latham, Stern & Black, Charles Pratt, Nina Laemmle, Anne Howard Bailey, and a host of other scribes who failed on the soaps, prove otherwise.

6 hours ago, Khan said:

For years, there were rumors that suggested then-EP John Valente had sabotaged ATWT deliberately because he was mad that P&G transferred him from AW.  I don't know whether there was any truth to those rumors, but watching that episode again, it does make me wonder.  Like, maybe Black & Stern got caught in the crossfire between Valente and P&G; and maybe - just maybe - if they had had a more supportive EP, whose only agenda was to help the show get back on its' feet after Marland's death, they might not have been such total disasters as HW's.

I've always heard they were gawd-awful at Falcon Crest, and crippled that show instantly when they took over the head writing reigns. I don't think Black and Stern were were as bad/damaging as JER, Charles Pratt, Thom Racina, Leah Laiman, and some other, notoriously-awful writers, but I have the feeling that their material would not be stellar under the best of circumstances.

This famous scene (starting at 42:04) aired on Another World in 1974, and was particularly engrossing because viewers had waited for six YEARS for Alice to unleash her fury on  Rachel.

(Actually, Irene Dailey's Aunt Liz was far too meek here. Audra Lindley's version of Liz Matthews  from the 1960s would have whupped Rachel's a$$, and torn her hair out, from the moment that bitch marched in the room.)

It is an acknowledged landmark of daytime TV, but I did want to mention Ellen Holly's and Lillian Heyman's stellar work on One Life to Live, when Clara was desperate to pass for white. Her confrontation scenes with her mother were particularly outstanding.

Years later, Al Freeman, Jr., was Al Freeman Jr., and always shone in his scenes.

Paul Raunch really f***ed up, yet again, when he fired these beloved vets.

6 hours ago, carolineg said:

I am of the mind that Marlena/Roman/John's believability as down to earth characters went out the door in 1991.  They continued to be viable IMO.  Although I have a hard time thinking any character outside of Tom/Alice is very believable on Days.  Days hasn't been a realistic soap since the mid 80's or at least the mid 90's.

I agree about when the show's believability went completely out the window. For me personally, once a character is inundated with a plethora of sci-fi/fantasy/camp material, their viability as credible characters (who can be used in believable storylines) is also decimated. They can then continue to be featured in fantastical, outlandish plots, but I'll never see them as identifiable, human people with feelings worth caring about again. Fembots have never inspired my heartfelt sympathy.

2 hours ago, carolineg said:

Personally, I think once you get to the point where Andre has a face mask pretending to be Roman it becomes unbelievable.  Once you have 2 Romans running around, Marlena and Roman back from the dead, and it's all a silly Stefano plot the credibility was gone.  GH was the same in the 80's and grounded themselves in the 90's.  Days just went wild with JER.

Right. JER turned DAYS into a cartoon, a joke IMHO. The show has never recovered. There are genres of television programs geared towards that sort of material, and it's fine if a portion of the audience enjoys it, but soap operas and outlandish, wacky cartoons simply don't mesh.

As I've noted previously, The Great Gazoo does not belong floating around Maggie Smith's head on Downton Abbey, LOL.

1 hour ago, carolineg said:

I was actually referring to 84 when Andre framed Wayne's Roman as a serial killer lol with his Roman mask

OMG, what a stinker story that was. DAYS had already fallen so far from the well-written soap it had been just two years before, when Pat Falken Smith  was guiding it in 1982.

1 hour ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

And of course (Reva) had her special fans trained so that if a single solitary day went by without her on their screens that they would immediately call in & scream about how she was necessary for the future of the show. Even when she was working with a 4 guarantee, oh my god, that would leave a 5th day in the week when she might not be on! Don't get me started.

I always considered Reva to have "stans" as opposed to fans. Manny and the San Cristocrap gang too. 

1 hour ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

So later Crystal Chappell played *another* person also named Maggie? 

Yes, she played Maggie Carpenter in the mid 1990s.

53 minutes ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

Of course, you are correct.  That is EXACTLY what brings up ratings.  The more popular actors a soap has, the better!!  Soaps that focus too much on one star usually end up in a bad place.  

The epitome of this is Reva Shayne on The Guiding Light, who was heinously overhyped, overrated and overused, and saddled with one idiotic plot after another on The Guiding Light.

On DAYS, the endless kidnappings, presumed deaths, back-from-the dead stories and other moronic material (Possessed!) dumped on Marlena Evan crippled that character's believability and viability decades ago.

15 minutes ago, Jdee43 said:

Speaking of accents, I thought John Aniston's southern accent on Search for Tomorrow was ridiculous  I'm glad they didn't make him do another one when he went to Days of our Lives

One Life to Live saddled poor Jacquie Courtney with a "British accent" when she played evil twin Maggie Ashley on that show. I adore La Courtney, but that wretched accent, which she could not pull off, God bless her, was wretched.

12 minutes ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

How true! Such a memorable time. And, BTS Bell, PFS, Al Rabin, Betty Corday! 

DAYS has never been better!

11 minutes ago, Gray Bunny said:

I don't think this is the most recent. It is currently gray and it's shaped like a box; no angled walls anymore. 

Okay, thanks. This was the latest that I've seen. 

The walls aren't even angled anymore?

Is the front door still in the center of the archway, like in the photo I uploaded?

2 minutes ago, carolineg said:

Lol!  It's almost like Marlena and Maggie can't exist on the same canvas.  Except they have on separate sides for years and years.  I have never once thought Maggie was stealing Marlena's airtime or vice versa.  They fill two different roles.

Yes.

Mary Matthews and Ada Downs existed side by side without issue on AW, as did Alice Matthews, Pat Randolph and Lenore Curtin on the same show.

Lorie, Leslie, and Chris Brooks all managed to shine and be showcased during their shared time together on Y&R.

Viki Riley, Carla Gray, Pat Kendall and Karen Wolek all had their moments in the spotlight during a shared era on OLTL.

There's no competition among characters co-existing on the canvas at the same time, except in the minds over overheated fanbases.

To me, the MORE popular actresses on a soap at the same time, the better for the show.

DAYS was on fire when Susan Flannery, Denise Alexander and Susan Seaforth graced the show together.

On 2/21/2024 at 7:52 PM, carolineg said:

I don't even like Maggie and I don't know why anyone would want her off the show.  She's been on the show for years and years.  She's part of the history of the Hortons.  

Exactly, and now Maggie's even propping Marlena up by appearing in scenes with her.

God bless our Maggie!

On 2/21/2024 at 8:08 PM, ranger1rg said:

LMAO I'm sorry, but I can't help but laugh at the idea of Suzanne Rogers' Maggie bothering someone that much.

It's funnier than the proclamations that viewers who enjoy the Hortons are "just jealous of Marlena."

On 2/21/2024 at 8:14 PM, carolineg said:

I mean, I love a good slut shaming of an 80 year old woman.  

 Next we will hear that the Emmy-award-winning actress can't act!

On 2/21/2024 at 2:16 PM, carolineg said:

There is no proof SR did anything of the sort and I don't even like Maggie.  It's just a rumor. 

Exactly. A flight of fancy, more than likely. 

On 2/21/2024 at 4:43 PM, ranger1rg said:

Uh...I don't think you know how any of this works. 

On 2/21/2024 at 4:43 PM, ranger1rg said:

And "with contempt"? You don't even know what happened or when. You know absolutely nothing, and yet you want us to treat an actor with contempt. Jesus.

"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

Oh wow, I hadn't seen such a recent shot of the Horton living room.

The front door has moved several feet to the left from its original and traditional position.

The dimensions of the room look smaller too.

I prefer the "real" layout.

8 hours ago, Khan said:

I don't know whether Bill Bell actually said this to Ken Corday, but if he did, then he was right: all you really need to make good drama are a man, a woman and a waterfall, "and for God's sake, who needs the waterfall!?".

William J. Bell knew what's what. That's why he is an acknowledged master of the genre.

6 hours ago, cody_1990 said:

I’ve honestly thought about this for years now. Especially since Days got CHEAP looking during the Tomlin producer years.  Anytime you see any episode of a soap from the 50s-the early 80’s, the sets look so drab and honestly cardboard looking. I am sure that’s partly why soaps got such a bad rep in the early days, but as a fan, it doesn’t matter because everything is so damn compelling.

Back then, we just didn't get sidetracked by the rudimentary, sparse sets. The writing on soaps by Phillips, Nixon, Bell, etc., was too involving. Nowadays, we notice the cheap sets, and all the other technical flaws, because the writing isn't enough to keep our attention. We are bored, s we look around, LOL.

6 hours ago, cody_1990 said:

Look at some of those 60s episodes of Days available online, they basically had the Horton house and a few other basic sets and that’s it. You don’t ever once while watching think I wish the sets were bigger or I wish the stories were more fantasy based, because stories based in reality are 100% more captivating.

This, 100% this. I've been expressing the same sentiments for decades now. The Mickey/Laura/Bill triangle on DAYS, with the secret of Mike's paternity at its core, was slooooow moving and based on family dynamics, repressed emotions and unrequited love. It lasted a DECADE, but was never boring, and kept viewers mesmerized. No clones, vampires, devils or extraterrestrials in sight! It was soap opera heaven!

6 hours ago, cody_1990 said:

Just look at the August-September 1966 episodes when Bill Bell first started at Days. Marie grieving for her miscarried baby with her marriage falling apart or Julie in angst about losing David to Susan. Give me that over the stuff being produced now any day. 

I wish everyone could have witnessed the engrossing material that Denise Alexander got to play as Susan Hunter Martin.

Daytime TV magazine once reported that a husband wrote into DAYS, asking producers to give Susan some relief from her suffering. He wrote, "My wife is pregnant and needs her rest, but she can't sleep because she's so stressed about Susan!"

Okay, I agree that such a reaction from a viewer is over the top, but when soaps dealt with real emotions and human, adult drama, fans were FIERCELY involved. With the dreck being produced today? Not so much.

1 hour ago, te. said:

I think that part of it is the cast expansion that happened with going to an hour - suddenly you had a lot of characters that needed homes and places where they could realistically interact. When you had maybe a maximum of six speaking characters appearing per day (like apparently Dark Shadows had as their limit) you didn't need a lot of sets. When soaps started downscaling again, you were left with a lot of characters without homes or any places where they would logically have interactions, hence the recent "housing crisis" in Salem. 

While I initially applauded the idea of hour-long soaps, people like Bell, Falken Smith, Nixon, Marland and Lemay were still writing, so the quality held up for a while. The budgets were high back then too. DAYS would sometimes have more than 15 characters on an episode. As the years went on, however, we lost writers and producers with the talent and understanding to run soaps well. Ratings plummeted, budgets were slashed. Keeping soaps at 60 minutes per day became increasing untenable. I think it would have been wise to cut all of them back to 30 minutes, years ago. A lot of dead wood could be pruned from the casts if they did that today. Core characters could be focused on, and all the useless filler material could be eliminated.

1 hour ago, te. said:

I genuinely never realised how messed up some of those floor plans were until I started trying to build things in The Sims 1. Besides not making sense from an architectural point of view (why would you have a gigantic upper floor plan while a relatively small downstairs?), but also just rooms running into each other, windows technically looking into other rooms and so on...

I know. Since I started noticing how absurd and nonsensical television sets were, I see the impossibilities everything. Rhoda's loft was supposedly "upstairs" from Mary Richards' apartment. Interior scenes showed a staircase outside of Mary's front door, leading UP to Rhoda's place. Yet, outdoor footage of the building clearly revealed there WAS NO upstairs. Mary's apartment was literally on the top floor. Rhoda's garret was to the right of Mary's place, and even slightly lower. I don't know how TPTB never notice these things.

6 minutes ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

Agreed.  Soaps need to go back to their roots.  Compelling human drama is so much cheaper to represent on screen.  It requires no special effects, no location shooting, and minimal sets.  All it really takes is good writing and good acting.  

Right. Compelling human drama is far more mesmerizing than clones, extraterrestrials, brain implants, mad scientists freezing the world, devil possession, time travel, etc., particularly when there's no budget to handle the outlandish plots. Viewers who enjoy that sort of entertainment have theatrical films and cable TV series with king-sized budgets to enjoy. Watching soap heroines leaping into paintings and travelling through time, or becoming possessed by the devil and going on a killing spree just don't cut it by comparison. Particularly on soap budgets of $1.49, filmed on sets that look held together by Scotch tape and bubble gum, LOL.

2 minutes ago, Khan said:

Especially in this era, when budgets, or lack thereof, restrict the kinds of stories you can still tell, or even the number of characters you can feature at one time.  I think whatever the hell is going on right now with Konstanin (sp?) is bad enough on its' own, but what makes it even worse is the fact that DAYS simply doesn't have the budget or production values anymore to make it work even a little bit.

I've never liked the over-the-top sci-fi/fantasy/camp nonsense on soaps, primarily because it's so contradictory to the exploration of the human condition, which is the essence of the genre.

What makes the fantasy elements so much worse, however, is that the budget to produce such stories just isn't there, so all these dumb plots end up looking embarrassing.

Soaps need to go back to their roots. 

On 2/20/2024 at 8:38 PM, Althea Davis said:

That hot medium. 

@Althea Davis, You are making me think all sorts of indecent and naughty thoughts with this Matthew Bomer GIF.

Thank you so much!

I know they only worked together for a relatively brief period of time, but my dream guest for this tribute would have been Laurence Fishburne.

What ABC and Paul Raunch did to this fine actress was egregious.

6 hours ago, Khan said:

The storyline in the Dial commercial that @Wendy posted upthread plays almost exactly like something you might've seen on Bill Bell's DAYS: the bridesmaid is upset because she's not the bride (who is likely marrying the man that the bridesmaid has been in love with forever), but thanks to a bouquet toss and a piece of cake handed to her across a crowded table (not to mention, a little Dial soap), she just might be embarking on a romance of a lifetime with a tall, handsome stranger who is literally sweeping her off her feet.

Right! Human, realistic and warm stories on Bill Bell's and Pat Falken Smith's golden era of DAYS, how missed they are! So many miles above what was offered by JER, Higley, Carlivati and their ilk.

6 hours ago, te. said:

@JAS0N47 has a complete floor plan for the Horton house from the book "Days of our Lives: A Tour Through Salem" on his website :

That's a nice treat to see. Thanks for posting.

I just have to wonder how Tom and Alice fit five growing children into two "guest" bedrooms!

Thank goodness the house had four bathrooms!

6 hours ago, te. said:

TBH, I can see why they removed that door beyond space saving reasons as it's a bit confusing how the floorplan is laid out at first sight because you'd instinctively think that the den/study would expand to the left due to the front door. It's sort of counterintuitive, especially with the windows by the staircase, plus we so rarely see the outside to clarify how it might be laid out. 

I agree.

6 hours ago, te. said:

And obviously this is a bit wrong anyway, as I'm sure the "family room" in this was always the dining room? But sets on television shows tend to work like the TARDIS either way. 

LOL! The exterior shots of the buildings just did not match or "work" with the interior sets for shows like All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show or The Golden Girls either. We just have to go with the flow, I guess.

5 hours ago, Gray Bunny said:

I have the book. They definitely had a little fun coming up with a full functioning house for many of the Salemites' residences.  Was there a separate family room ever shown back in the day? Also a notable no-show is the dining room. 

Personally, I don't recall ever seeing a family room. In the diagram, the dinning room probably should have been there, since we know that existed.

4 hours ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

 I think something similar happened to the Matthews house on Another World.  I believe in the early years, the door in the foyer near the stairs led to another room (a study or something) and was often shown open.  But by the early-1970s, that door was just a closet.  They also had stopped showing the Matthews front porch (the full porch) and kitchen by around 1972.  

Ada's first living room went through some weird changes back then too. Soaps should pay attention to sets. Fans notice and remember everything. Even changes in the sounds of doorbells makes observant fans go, "Huh???"

3 hours ago, Mona Kane Croft said:

Has the Horton set changed a lot over the years?  I know it is basically the same layout, but isn't the foyer smaller now?  Wasn't there originally a closet door between the bottom of the stairs and the front door?  What else has changed on the set, aside from paint color and furniture??  

Yes, there used to be a door where you mentioned: between the staircase and the front door. At the beginning of the show it led to Tom's office. Later it was a closet. It was a weird change, and I always wondered why no one on the show remembered that lay-out or kept it consistent.

(The same sort of change happened on THE LUCY SHOW, when the section of the set beside the staircase changed without explanation. It's strange when the houses are supposed to be the same, but the walls, rooms and closets just magically come and go, LOL.)

Overall, however, the Horton set has remained FAIRLY unchanged.

2 hours ago, Darn said:

...your comments are some of the absolute best here. So intelligently shared bringing your wealth of knowledge to us on a daily basis.

You are far too kind. Thank you so much, @Darn

As I always say, soap fans are a strong and durable bunch. If we can endure years of JER, Dena Higley, Jill Farren Phelps and her friends, Charles Pratt, Ron Carlivati and Christopher Goutman, we can outlast ANYTHING!

2 hours ago, Wendy said:

That lone pic of the Horton house set. I forget if this was posted on the board [probably; if it was, I apologize for repeating as I do not mean to troll!], but I do believe that set was also used in, of all things, an ad for Dial soap back in the day! (Days had an affiliation with Screen Gems in its '60s heyday, if I recall reading, which was probably a big deal as a lot of shows fell under that banner. So maybe sets were a part of that?) I just found this pretty funky!

Cool! The set in the commercial certainly does look like our favorite family's living room!

4 hours ago, BetterForgotten said:

Perhaps that awful hairdo was an omen for how well that return stint would go…

No doubt.

The incompetent PTB at the time reeeeeeeeeeeally had to try hard, to bungle the return of a beloved vet so badly, so completely.

1 minute ago, janea4old said:

@vetsoapfan  Wed Feb 21 episode has flashbacks of some characters, and also a lot of old photos similar to what you posted!

Oh cool, thanks for the heads up!

We can never have too many Horton memories!

The best of DAYS (and all the remaining soaps, sadly) may be in the past, but we are fortunate that so much pictorial and video material has survived.

5 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

@vetsoapfan Is that Jacquie Courtney in the ad around 56 minutes? (in the 1985 AW video posted above)

Somehow sad and fitting all at once for Jacquie to close out AW (months after being written out of the show).

Yes, that was our Jacquie Courtney, who did some commercials for Porcelana cream back in the day.

I though her hairdo for this ad was a little too poofy on top, but at least it was a million times better than the awful, butch style she had for a while during her 1984 return to AW