vetsoapfan

After all the painful recasts of Alice Frame on Another World, I was relieved that when the character returned for her final three stints (1984-5, the show's 25th anniversary and then for Mac's funeral), the part was played by Jacqueline Courtney. And when Mickey Horton and Bill Horton died on DAYS, the flashbacks used were of John Clarke and Edward Mallory. It all helped wash the bad taste of poor recasts out of the audience's mouth. Just like, as you say, with Mary Ryan. And having Kate Mulgrew participate in Ryan's Hope's final episode was a special treat for fans.

Ryan's Hope's recasts were a mixed bag. Some were great, but certain others were dreadful. I thought Daniel Hugh Kelly was excellent as Frank, but John Blazo just creeped me out as Pat Ryan. Anyway, TPTB using flashbacks of Mulgrew after Mary died was the right decision. It helped cement her as "the real Mary" in the Ryan's Hope universe. (Which, of course, she was!)

I agree. William J. Bell had been writing the show for a year by then, and DAYS was really rockin'; mesmerizing to watch. I imagine that the show's lack-luster first year had been disinteresting to soap fans who had tried it, so it took the audience a while to give Salem a second chance.

Mulgrew did return years later, as a "ghost" during the years Yasmine Bleeth played her daughter. KM agreed to participate in the show's finale as well. The idea of reprising the role temporarily must not have been distasteful to her. I guess we'll never know for sure if TPTB approached her about coming back for Mary's death storyline, but it would have been so much more meaningful and effective if an actress we knew and loved in the role had been playing her in that end. With NG, I felt no loss when Mary Ryan passed. (And I might have cheered if the character had died while KT was there, LOL!)

Me too. I thought--given decent, percept writing, which the the show usually did not have after the 1970s--that Hunter and Thomasina might have been interesting. There were a lot of dropped and/or missed opportunities over the years on AW.

Exactly. Then the show's going for a THIRD replacement, after Tolan, was ludicrous. They should have offered Mulgrew the MOON to return, even for a handful of episodes, and let her be the one who played the role upon Mary's death.

Mary Carney was both lovely and a good actress. It's a shame she was replaced. Kathleen Tolan, who was neither attractive nor a good actress. It was painful watching her constantly flubbing and stumbling over her lines. She had no chemistry with anyone. She probably lasted as long as she did because the show did not want to admit their mistake in hiring her. Of all the recasts among the main Ryan-family characters, KT was the worst.

🤮 💩 Hold back my hair, I'm gonna hurl.

That picture is tiny and my ancient eyes are weak, LOL, but I agree with Vee: it's probably Trish van Devere.

Well, Darren was around for a little while, but never as a major player. After he left, I don't remember anyone mentioning him at all. So many men back at that time were approachable babes, although Jeff and Scotty were tops for me. It annoys me to no end that Hammy Howarth is working on his third freaking character, while Kin Shriner is only rarely seen as a glorified under-fiver. Scotty Baldwin is the show's longest-serving character. He deserves a place on the canvas. You got it. Laura was such a brat! And an idiot too, for dismissing a hunk like Darren for an icky troll like David Hamilton.

I liked Darren a lot. I thought he was cute. Of course, Scotty was my main crush, LOL. GH sure had a plethora of attractive men back then. Yum. Now they only serve up greasy or dead-eyed mobsters. 🤮

I remember the divine scriptwriter Patrick Mulcahey acknowledging that during his time on SB, he and the other subwriters had to fight really hard to "hide things." I've always taken that comment to indicate AHB sucked on SB too, LOL. Certainly the Dobsons wanted her gone. Anyway, it is true that some writers fail miserably on certain shows but fare better on others. I hated Ann Marcus' stint on DAYS, but her time on Search for Tomorrow was great. I loved Claire Labine on Where the Heart Is, Love of Life and Ryan's Hope, but I cringed at her material on The Guiding Light. (To be fair, I blame MADD for interfering.)

A scene like that would never air in today's climate, but it was simply delicious to see back then. Poor Russ had been bending over backwards for months, and slaving to make Rachel happy, when all she did was lie, scheme, cheat, and treat him like a doormat. She was never satisfied and complained about everything all the time. She had expressed intense jealousy that Lenore Moore had such beautiful things, including an expensive set of crystal goblets. Russ went out and spent his ENTIRE paycheck just to buy her one, and intended to add more to the set as funds permitted. Rachel snapped, "One? Just one? What am I supposed to do with just one?" And then she threw it against the wall and smashed it. She's lucky Russ only spanked her. I was LIVID with rage.

ROTFLMAO!

William J. Bell and Agnes Nixon (to name just two writers) knew how to weave socially-relevant material into naturalistic dialogue. Anne Howard Bailey did not. She was later given the headwriting duties of a primetime soap opera on CBS, called Beacon Hill, fashioned after Upstairs, Downstairs. The ratings for the premiere were stellar, but AHB's script was painfully bad and trite, and the ratings immediately plummeted. She was quickly replaced, and the new scribes were excellent, but...like with HTSAM, it was too late. Once burned, twice shy, as they say.

I crowed with joy during the scene of Russ Matthews (played by Sam Groom at that point), taking the malicious Rachel (Robin Strasser) over his knee and spanking her, during their short-lived marriage. By that point, I had wanted for someone, anyone, to smack her for a long time.

The 90-minute debut episode of HTSAM is rumored to exist among private collectors, who will not share it. I had the final episode on tape for decades, but it had deteriorated to dust before I figured out how to transfer it to disc. (Fortunately, the vast majority of my vintage treasures managed to get saved and transferred. They have all shown up on the internet at one time or another.) It's true that during its first few months, the show was quite preachy, with some unlikeable male characters being pigs and women pontificating about equality, liberation, etc. (I agreed with the message about empowerment for women, but the lectures were so shrill, I had a feeling folks in the audience would be alienated.)

The author obviously did not know much of anything about the show, or soaps in general. He snidely remarked about how surprising it was that an episode of a half-hour soap would take an entire day to produce...yet 30-minute primetime series took (and take) an entire week. Back then, even at 30 minutes per episode, soaps produced the equivalent of an entire movie in ONE week. A theatrical film would require months to accomplish what AW did in five days. The author was a condescending and obtuse snob.

Some writers just "get" certain shows better than others. Harding Lemay's work on Strange Paradise really sucked, yet he soared at Another World. Douglas Marland's The Doctors and Loving were tepid at best, yet his General Hospital was miraculous. Claire Labine was excellent on Where the Heart Is and Love of Life, but her stint at The Guiding Light was painful. Rick Edelstein was (IMHO) okay at The Doctors (in comparison to many other writers who worked on that series), but his HTSAM was wonderful. He was the one in charge during the memorable storyline about David Bachman's death.

Constance Ford would have opened him up a fresh can of whup-ass, LOL!

Yes: smug, self-important nobodies who denigrated others to make themselves feel superior.

No, even with the expansion of other soaps, there still would have been room on the schedule for HTSAM. Lin Bolin and NBC clearly had high hopes for the show. Bolin boasted about how she had spent a fortune just on scenery for the show. They gave it a 90-minute premiere and lured daytime legend Rosemary Prinz to the show at a high salary, and then promoted the heck out of it with reams of publicity. The problem was...everyone involved forgot about CHARACTERS and STORIES that the audience could become invested in. Anne Howard Bailey relied heavily on didactic, preachy speeches about women's lib and the need for independence. Characters were not much more than caricatures with little depth or nuance. Originally, the show was both abrasive and BORING. It must have been humiliating for Lin Bolin, who championed HTSAM as her pet project. I have many vintage articles about this show, since I adored its fine "middle period," when Rick Edelstein was writing it. When the series initially failed to attract an audience (I knew it wouldn't, considering the dreck Anne Howard Bailey was putting out), certain actors commented that Lin Bolin just stopped coming around and turned her back on the production. I do think that the decision to move HTSAM against ATWT was NBC's way of acknowledging that they had given up on the show and were feeding it to the wolves. Under Rick Edelstein's sensitive writing, the show might have succeeded, given time to rebound and sandwiched between Days and Another World, but in the mid-1970s, no fledging show (particularly one which had initially turned off potential viewers) was going to survive against ATWT.

The author of that article is incredibly ignorant and condescending.

After being plagued by terrible writing and casting chaos upon its debut, it looked like RTPP was doomed. Miraculously, however, in its later run, the show stabilized and the writing improved dramatically. It actually took a huge leap in the ratings in the months before its cancellation, but by then NBC was dedicated to HTSAM, and cancelled RTPP anyway. Like RTPP upon its debut, HTSAM was dreadfully written and went through some casting problems. This show stabilized as well, and the writing reigns switched from the atrocious Anne Howard Bailey to the excellent Rick Edelstein. It was thrilling to see the surge in quality, but the impatient (and incompetent, IMHO) PTB at NBC struck again. Instead of learning from their mistakes with RTPP, they moved the fledging-but-blossoming HTSAM into direct competition with the powerhouse ATWT, and then cancelled it altogether when the ratings (predictably) did not impress them. Viewers ended up losing two soaps which had become very watchable and viable. It was a frustrating waste

Ahhh, thanks.