vetsoapfan

Borgenson was as limp and lifeless as a wet noodle and had no chemistry with anyone. God knows how she was ever cast. The only worse Alice was Wesley Pfenning. Thank God the show finally wised up and brought Jacqueline Courtney back, even though they even screwed THAT up after just a year.

No one except writer Harding Lemay has ever alleged she was "difficult," and Lemay caustically denigrated people left, right and center. He simply hated the actress for his own unfathomable reasons, and was out to get her. (Along with others, BTW.) Maybe the alleged incident at the 1971 AW Christmas party is true, who knows? If you read Lemay's book and watched the show at the time, JC's supposed "crime" was to...um, play her scenes as he wrote them, and Lemay thought they were too melodramatic. After Courtney passed, producer Paul Rauch was quoted in an interview saying that Courtney was "a great gal" who was always a pro on AW and "gave great performances." A huge number of his colleagues have confirmed that Reinholt was a nightmare to work with on both AW and OLTL (Erika Slezak said he "was crazy," LOL), but no one has ever claimed that about Courtney. Susan Flannery has been called rude and imperious for her alleged behavior on B&B, but aside from the time she slapped Susan Seaforth across the face, I have never heard other negative accounts of her behavior on DAYS. She did, however, admit she was bored and unchallenged by the show by the time she quit. Anyway, my original point was that no matter how beloved a performer and his/her character are, no one is safe. Except...maybe/probably Susan Lucci. I cringe when I think how poorly TPTB have treated Genie Francis, even though she was hugely popular. TGL axed Mart Hulswit, ATWT dumped Helen Wagner (!!!) at one point, GH fired Rachel Ames, OLTL got rid of Ellen Holly and Al Freeman Jr, for heaven's sake. ABC even dropped Agnes Nixon from her own show. The list is endless. I don't know if DAYS would have kept Laura around in the 1970s, even if Flannery were still there. TPTB eliminated Edward Mallory and Bill and Susan Hayes at different times, all of whom should (IMHO) never have been fired. Sigh. If only *I* could run daytime TV! HA!

As a veteran viewer, I always longed for DAYS to return to its roots and offer viewers more of the Bell/Falken Smith style of adult, subtle, sophisticated, warm family drama and romance. From 1966 to 1976, the show was mesmerizing. The slowness of the physical action only added to its appeal, because the attention was always focused on intimate scenes among multi-dimensional, relatable and likeable characters. While she pontificated that the show was "dull and repetitious," Nina Laemmle's DAYS was cold, sterile, foreign and hackneyed. Hindered by mainly non-descript actors, the vast majority of Laemmle's repellent new characters were instant duds. Kellam Chandler was sooooooo boring. Really, really boring. I could barely watch him and Max. Yawn. Stephen Brooks as Joshua Fallon was an exception among the new cast. He was magnetic on screen. Unfortunately, the actor quit after only a brief tenure, claiming the pace of filming and the scripts were not for him. His replacement, alas, made Joshua as bland as most of the other newbies. Gloria Gloring was the only long-lasting bright spot, even though Laemmle's writing originally painted her in a harsh, negative light as well. I could never figure out why Laemmle and TPTB though slaughtering a huge number of familiar, often beloved, faces and instantly replacing them with a set of cold, shrewish and/or unlikeable strangers would work. It didn't. In the magazines' letter-to-the-editors' pages, viewers were enraged. And Laemmle only lasted six months. Very briefly, under Laemmle's reign, DAYS started to open their episodes with brief teaser-snippets of what was going to happen on that day's show. You know how, on some primetime series, you'd get an announcer's voice ring out: "Tonight, on The Fugitive!", followed by a few 5-second clips of scenes from the upcoming broadcast. This was meant to entice viewers to watch the full hour. Forget it. DAYS was so awful at that time, the brief snippets of each episode's upcoming events were more of a turn off than anything. The show soon dropped this practice. Thank God. Although you never know. AW fired Jacqueline Courtney in the mid-1970s, so no one was safe. I would say that 1975 and 1976 were the very best years in the history of DAYS, and that PFS was very successful in that regard. The problem was, most daytime soaps were on fire in the 1970s, and competition for ratings was particularly fierce. In the 1975-76 season, DAYS was tied for 4th place and had a respectable rating of 8.3. In 1976-77, the show has fallen a bit to 7th place, with a rating of 7.8. I wonder how much Ann Marcus' lousy writing was the cause of the decreased ratings, as she took over in 1977. When Ann Marcus took over in 1977, Bill Bell was still providing long-term storylines for the show. In an interview, however, Marcus said that she did not have to follow Bell's guidelines and could change them any time she wanted. Big mistake. I was over the moon when DAYS resurged in 1982 with the return of PFS. Unfortunately, that was not to last. Yep.

I don't remember anything about Uncle Dru being mentioned in 1975, and I watched religiously until the summer when Susan Harney appeared and I realized the show had fired Jacqueline Courtney. I switched over to watching other shows full-time, and only recorded AW to FF through later. I do wish I could remember, however. Alas, after 45 years, memories do fade.

LML did some excellent work on night time soaps (I'd say Homefront was her very best offering). It's a shame that her ventures into daytime on Port Charles and Y&R were so...tepid.

I don't remember anyone mentioning Uncle Dru that year either. The last reference to him I recall was shortly after he was written out, and Mary Matthews said she had received a postcard from him which was on the mantel.

The more I think about it, if the show were to eliminate Marlena from the canvas, I probably would be vexed, if for no other reason than I have known her since the mid-1970s. I have loathed many of her stories over the decades, which lessened my surface interest in seeing her, but still...I don't want Marlena killed off again. That's a good way to describe the affection for beloved characters: with a wellspring of emotion. I endured many soaps for decades, sometimes to their bitter ends, just because I cared for certain characters, As time passes, however, there are fewer and fewer people left on any surviving soap in whom I am emotionally invested. I get more enjoyment nowadays watching vintage episodes on the internet. If I watch newly-produced eps of DAYS, Y&R and GH now, I tend to fast-forward to scenes of Julie, Doug, Maggie (DAYS), Jill (Y&R), Laura, Scotty, Monica, Bobbie and Mac (GH),,,and that's about it. On GH, even the most vile and degenerate criminals, guilty of rape and murder, are treated like romantic leads. I find this repulsive, so at least I give DAYS brownie points for understanding when they have screwed up some characters beyond repair. But that begs the question: why go too far with characters who should be kept around long-term?

The possession story is what made me finally abandon DAYS in disgust, so I was there to endure that nonsense, hence my being turned off Marlena. I was no longer watching the show on a daily basis by the time the awful plot with Maggie and Daniel began, so I can totally ignore it and pretend it never happened. It was reported that the original intention was for Kitty to die quickly, to provide a major obstacle for Bill and Laura to overcome, but Bell thought Gleason was an interesting actress, and kept pushing back Kitty's death. Bell could always make bad girls interesting, and Kitty Horton was no exception! Writing Nick into a corner and then killing him off was yet another bone-headed move by TPTB regarding the future of blood Hortons on the show.

Julie, Doug and Maggie are the only characters left on the show whom I care for. I would have included Marlena until endlessly-atrocious plots destroyed her character. As you say, with her parents and siblings dead, Marie would not have any urgent need to return to Salem. Both Mike's fathers are dead now, and his mother is not there, so aside from possibly visiting his sister, there's no important reason for Mike to come back either. I do think the show's life span is mostly behind it now, but to be fair, I thought that the "real" DAYS died forever in 1982 after Pat Falken Smith's second, brief tenure as head writer...and yet, somehow, the show has continued to limp and stagger along for another four decades, LOL!

I think at this point, nobody on the show cares about long-gone characters, since they have aged beyond many viable storyline possibilities. I'm sure we'll never see Tommy, Sandy and Steve Olsen again. Perhaps Mike Horton and/or Marie might pop up at some point, but I wouldn't count on seeing them again either. TPTB gratuitously killed off Bill Horton and David Banning. They just don't give a damn...or, at least, think the target audience does not give a damn. There are various mistakes on Wikipedia, Soap Central, etc., which alert fans pick up on. If Julie and Jennifer mentioned Uncle Tommy being alive in 2016, no one I know seems to have caught it. And it's very telling that Tommy is never mentioned at Christmas, or even during funerals for his siblings and parents. To save myself further aggravation, I have just told myself he has passed away.

He had disappeared without mention for YEARS before. Then he disappeared AGAIN. It was a baffling and disrespectful way of handing a once-important character; the eldest Horton son. He was neither seen nor mentioned at either of his parents' funerals (in fact, his existence was actually denied at Tom's funeral, when Alice referred to Mickey as "Tom's eldest son."), so after decades of being left in oblivion, I think we are meant to assume Tommy is dead.

David knew, and he said he was going to tell Trish as well, although I don't remember seeing any scene in which he revealed the truth to her. The show seemed to want to be over and done with their dispatched characters instantly.

I agree: sometimes, shorter and faster scenes can be effective to move the story along, but the longer, slower, intimate scenes are essential at certain times, especially when deep, character delineation is being explored. Many soaps in the early 1980s needed to remember that faster does not automatically mean better or more absorbing to the audience. ATWT, DAYS, Y&R, AW, etc., originally did extremely well and enjoyed high ratings and audience loyalty by featuring extended talk-to scenes...as long as the characters and undercurrents in them were captivating. It was a stupid move; depriving us of a good climax to a long-running story and wasting a good actress whose storyline still had more fodder to it. I watched in horror in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as the show kept getting butchered more and more, and I longed for Pat Falken Smith to return. Or *I* wanted to take over the writing reigns!

Personally, after growing up on Irna Phillips-style soaps, I loved and preferred the long, drawn-out and intimate scenes. To me, under Gloria Monty, GH was too abrupt and choppy. I wanted to see people TALK, and have them explore and reveal their feelings and motivation. It's curious that there are no references to Flippen in the newspaper articles you found. Although she only lasted a brief time (about a month), she was definitely listed atop the list of writers for a while in 1980. After Laemmle took over, Flippen's name disappeared completely; she was not even listed among the dialogue writers. She goes down as a minor footnote in DAYS' history, like Lorraine Broderick, who also lasted for about a month as the show's headwriter before disappearing. Personally, I found Flippen's work to be better than Ann Marcus' and particularly Nina Laemmle's.

Bennett once acknowledged that she had signed a long-term contract at the beginning of DS, with a guarantee of three episodes per week. I have no idea if the show later downgraded that, but I tend to think as the (nominal, at least) star of the show, she might have been the exception rather than the rule, and still been paid even during times when her on-screen appearances were rare.

After Harrower left, Ruth Brooks Flippen took over as head writer. She did not last long before being replaced by Laemmle. Who knows how much (if any) power Flippen might have had. RBF was known for low-brow sitcoms and Scooby Doo; how she got hired always baffled me. The writer passed away soon after her stint at DAYS. Laemmle at least had dramatic-soap credits on her resume, but I had seen how Peyton Place had fallen apart and how Rich Man, Poor Man Book II had been a disaster under her, so I was aghast at DAYS hiring her. I felt the show's writing would go from bad to worse...and it did. Nina Laemmle arrogantly remarked that DAYS was "dull and repetitious," but the show became the worst it had ever been while she wrote it. IIRC, she slaughtered 14 characters in quick succession and then introduced 9 newbies of her own. Only Liz Chandler had any real appeal and staying power. Most of Laemmle's other characters came and went pretty quickly. It was a major mistake, and fans were in an uproar. I think Margo Horton died while Ruth Brooks Flippen was writing the show, but Laemmle eliminated a staggering number of characters and actors upon starting her 6-month reign of terror. Viewers were livid.

Perfectly said. Vintage soaps on the internet have been a godsend to many of us.

Thank you very much! Thank you for this synopsis. It saved me the trouble of writing a similar one up, myself. I never understood the point of bringing the Larkins in. They barely did anything, they were not terribly well-developed, and then they just suddenly reconciled and disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again. Bill Bell was probably going for a Greg/Linda romance, but there was no chemistry there at all. Both the actors playing Linda and Larry were bland. I did not miss them when they left.

Am I the only SONer ancient enough to have watched DAYS from the very beginning? I've thoroughly enjoyed reading all the recaps and opinions about the 1970s' material. To me, the show instantly collapsed after Pat Falken Smith was replaced by Ann Marcus. I felt like I was suddenly watching The Road Runner, LOL. Marcus was at the height of her game on Mary Hartman and Search for Tomorrow, but she did not understand or fit DAYS at all. The show was absurd, disjointed, and foreign under her reign. Elizabeth Harrower was slightly more DAYS-ish. She technically had a better understanding of the show's tone and characters, but she lacked the finesse, sophistication and skill that Bill Bell and PFS had been gifted with. Her version of the show was tepid and lopsided, with most focus going to a handful of characters. While I was miserable watching both these writers' material, little did I realize that they were better for the show than the heinously-awful Nina Laemmle would be in 1980. Egads! Laemmle butchered this show much more severely than the Dobson crippled ATWT in the early 1980s and Gail Kobe and Pam Long decimated The Guiding Light a few years after that. All three of these once-excellent series went through a very dark period as we moved into the '80s. ATWT rebounded for years after Douglas Marland took over, and TGL had a long resurgence in the Nancy Curlee era. Alas, DAYS only rebounded briefly in 1982 when Pat Falken Smith returned for a few months, but then collapsed again and has never been written well ever since. (Admittedly, some scribes have been slightly better than others, but many writers over the last 35+ years have been absolutely horrendous. The show has never regain the finesse, subtlety and quality that it was known for in the 1960s and '70s. It has long been a cartoon. The Cathy Breton character was originally poised to be outed as Marie's long-lost daughter, as the rumors went at the time, but the actress was a dud and so she was written out suddenly. Synopses may not capture the nuance of the Margo story well, but I liked the actress and felt the storyline was sweet. It just went on too long. Julie's facial scar had the bad habit of "shifting" around on her face from episode to episode, LOL. The show later retconned the story about Alex Marshall and his brother, as the actor became popular with the audience. Later, the show tried to bamboozle the audience into thinking that Alex only "felt guilty" that his brother had died, but WE SAW HIM MURDER HIS BROTHER ON CAMERA. For DAYS to later pretend it did not happen was really offensive. It was like when Luke Spencer clearly raped Laura at the Campus Disco on GH, but we were later supposed to accept that the violent and heinous rape had merely been a "seduction" once fangurls in the audience got the hots for Tony Geary. UGH.

Yes, that's him on the left.

Ahhh, so many (but not all, alas) soaps were written very well in the 1970s. It's a treat to relive their glory days!

I loved Daytime TV magazine and bought it every month without fail, but my favorite was Daily TV Serials. I also adored Afternoon TV and Rona Barrett's Daytimers. I wish I had kept all my old issues from the 1960s and 1970s; I had tons of them! Alas, I had to downsize when I moved from a house to a small apartment, and chose to keep scores and score of videotapes instead of magazines.

He is so vile.

It was incredibly stupid not to take advantage of the opportunity to reunite the show's most legendary and popular characters while both the original actors were guesting. Plus, they should have used more available flashbacks.

Well, she was paid $1000.00 a week, a huge sum back then, so no matter how bored Bennett was, or whom she got to play, she was well compensated.