vetsoapfan

Honestly, the entire Shayne clan was a failure, IMHO, which was nevertheless rammed down viewers' throats for far too many years. They were TGL's version of EMMERDALE'S Dingles. 🤮 Me too. I doubt I could come up with one, single favorite TGL character. I'd probably have trouble keeping it under a Top 10! Usually I have a marked preference for the actor who originated the role, but occasionally I grow to enjoy and appreciate the replacement equally. Both Sudrow and Bryce were very good as Bill Bauer.

Really? Marie Horton was your favorite DAYS character? I never knew that. Did you have any particular favorite(s) on TGL?

I just hope Alan does not muzzle Mart Hulswit, and actually lets him speak frankly. Now if we could only get a no-holds-barred interview with Eileen Fulton, in which she just let it rip. But I won't quibble and be greedy. Hulswit and Myers on the agenda truly has me giddy! Yes, while they are still with us, and ready and willing to be interviewed, we need to see the legendary veteran actors as much as possible! How about a session with Bill and Susan Hayes, Denise Alexander and Maree Cheatam?

Of course they did, because those writers did not competently and effectively steer the show. It's not surprising when viewers resent and reject one bad writer after another. He has been dreadful at every show he's touched.

OMFG!!!!! Two actors whom I adore and actually WANT to see! This is thrilling news! Thanks for the heads-up!

I always appreciated writers like Irna Phillips and Agnes Nixon, who strove to add diversity to their shows, even in decades when the networks were so resistant to it and a segment of the audience more vocal in its bigotry. Black, Eurasian, Jewish characters were rare, of course, but at least Nixon and Phillips, among a few other scribes, sought to include them from time to time. I gravitated to shows with variety in their characters because it represented the actual world I lived in, where folks came in all different forms. All-white landscapes felt foreign to me. There is still a ways to go in various media, but at least progress has been made. I'm hard-pressed to think of any community that is not represented anywhere, in any form, in popular culture nowadays.

This is very well said. I do enjoy a good romance story and strong, interesting heroines, but once TPTB start dismantling the core of shows and destroying founding families, my interest diminishes. It's usually the weakest writers and most incompetent producers who are guilty of this, so the combination of fractured families, poor writing and bad production decisions all go hand in hand. There are valid reasons why daytime soaps' ratings have long been in the toilet, but there are still people out there who would love to watch soaps that are as good as they were in their heyday. None of today's soaps measure up. My interest in DAYS dropped significantly in 1977 after Pat Falken Smith was axed, but I continued to stick with it until her second go-'round. When she was replaced AGAIN, I just couldn't endure it any more. I acknowledge that Y&R continued to have good years after I dropped it, but my desire to watch vanished after all the Brooks and Foster family members were gone by 1983. The elimination of the Bauers (et al) made me say goodbye the TGL in 1984, and losing, Courtney, Reinholt, Dwyer and even Susan Sullivan in 1975 put the nail in AW's coffin for me. As (the poster) Bill Bauer noted, for some viewers, destroying principle families can be alienating.

Personally, I thought TGL was still decent in 1968, although not as riveting as when Agnes Nixon was writing it (1958-66, IIRC). Irna Phillips returned for a while, and the Robert Soderberg and Edith Sommer steered the ship from 1969 to 1973. For me, the quality of the writing only dipped for a few years when James Lipton, Robert Cenedella and James Gentile were in charge. I wouldn't say the show was wretched under them, just so-so. Then in 1975, when the Dobsons came aboard, things improved. I found the period when the Dobsons were writing ATWT to be weak as well, although producer Mary-Ellis Bunim might have played a significant role in the on-screen mess. I was really disappointed how the show ended up handling the return of Bill Bauer. An important legacy character and patriarch of the main family deserved better than what he got. I was LIVID when they just killed him off again in 1983, to serve function to a very stupid plot. I adored Ross Marler, but I needed more characters than just him to keep me watching daily. TGL really did have a welcome and surprising resurgence during those years. To me, it was the show's last hurrah. I think MO'L thought he was much funnier than he actually was. I never saw him as viable, future-leading-man material either, just second-banana "comic" relief to be seen occasionally. There were so few Bauers left on the canvas, the show needed an attractive, commanding actor in the important role of Rick. YES!!! It was painful to see, like watching your beloved grandmother being slowly poisoned by drunken clowns. 🤮

I was just about to post the same basic analysis. If I were able to "relive" the show again, I'd want to listen to and watch 1937 to 1982 for sure (even though some of those years were not as stellar as others). I'd force myself to stick with the series through 1983 and 1984 only because some of the legacy characters still remained. I'd probably rewatch the few years following the return of Roger and Holly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but I'd skip the dreadful Gail Kobe period as much as humanly possible. Nothing after Nancy Curlee's departure could be classified as quality, IMHO.

IMHO, TGL's best writers were: --Irna Phillips --Agnes Nixon --The Dobsons --Nancy Curlee & Her Team --Robert Soderberg and Edith Sommer Even during her ultra-brief reign, I thought Pat Falken Smith was excellent. I don't think the show would have been crippled in the 1980s if she had remained on board.s I'll refrain from listing whom I feel are the show's worst scribes, since that would take up an entire page, LOL.

I thought Martin Bruhner arrived in the summer, but if he showed up in March, then the Cullitons and Tomlin must have been writing. And here I was trying to give Long a compliment on her first stint as TGL's headwriter; the first time THAT has happened in almost four decades, LOL! Thanks for the clarification.

TPTB in the 1980s and beyond (except for the marvelous writing team headed by Nancy Curlee) tended to ignore or even contradict anything that had taken place on TGL before the Kobe/Long era. I doubt they would have even given Bruce much thought, if they even knew who he was.

I think we all remember certain things with spot-on clarity, while other facts become cloudy over time. I am usually very obsessive about historical facts and accuracy when new writers and producers come aboard a soap, and I watch them like a hawk. There were loads of continuity and factual errors after Douglas Marland and Pat Falken Smith left. It seemed to me that the new PTB either did not know the show's history, or simply did not care to follow it. That's why my gut tells me that if Bert Bauer's long-unmentioned sister had been referenced, I would have zeroed right in on it and started doing extensive research to see if Bert had had a sister whom I had been in the dark about for decades. That being said, I trust your memory too, so.... That's how I remember it too. To give Pamela Long credit, I thought the little story with Bert and Martin Bruhner was lovely. I'm not trying to convince you that your memory is faulty! If you believe that the show referenced Bert's sister, I believe you! Just because I have no memory of it at all does not mean I am correct. I might just be having a "senior's moment," LOL!

To my knowledge, the show never acknowledged Bruce Banning's existence at all when Bert went to take care of Meta in the mid-1980s, nor did they mention him when Meta returned to Springfield in 1996. Of course, I may have missed an off-handed comment in passing about the character.

I have no memory of Bert going to a sister's funeral in 1983 at all. Thank heavens we can all pool our memory resources. Watching the show every day, I'm annoyed I could have missed/forgotten a fact like that. I believe Lisa's mother's name was Alma Miller, not Elsa.

I wish I could remember for sure if the comment did indeed come from Lucci. Maybe another poster will remember better. The same person also criticized ABC for giving the writer almost two years to gut the show, and then Agnes Nixon and Lorraine Broderick a matter of a few months before its demise to repair all the damage.

And didn't someone (maybe even Lucci?) later acknowledge that he had said he couldn't care less about the show's history?

I agree. Some writers make their contempt for and/or disinterest in history quite clear.

I know Soap Central lists Alma Jean Miller as Bert's sister, but that website is riddled with errors, so I always figured this was yet another one. In all my decades watching TGL, I had never known Bert had a sibling. I only knew about her mother. If you heard Alma Jean being verified on-screen, however, I trust you.

Well, Allen had worked on The Secret Storm, which was filmed in New York, so you never know! I did want Stewart to be rehired, but was open to a recast, as long as it was better than the ones we endured for some other characters. TGL had written Bert out of the show by saying that she had gone to Florida to care for Meta, who had had a stroke. Bert passed away in Meta's home the next year, when the show finally addressed Charita Bauer's death. It would have made perfect sense for Ed to have asked Meta to come back to Springfield at that time, so he could keep an eye on her. There was no word of Meta's final husband, Bruce Banning, and what had happened to him. As far as I know, however, TGL made no mention of Meta again until they hired Mary Stuart to take over the role in 1996. I can't find any acting credits for Demming after TGL, so I imagine she was retired, although that is purely speculation on my part. In the mid-1980s, she was only 64; not too old to return to act on the show if they had asked. Heck, even in 1996, she could have returned. Many folks in their mid-70s are still healthy. I'm not sorry we got Mary Stuart, of course, but for nostalgia's sake, I would have preferred to see Demming again. I adored her. It ended up being too top-heavy on the "new" version of TGL from the Reva years onwards for my taste, alas.

Thank you, @DW50! I love Trish Stewart so much!

Just to clarify, I loathe Ron C as much as I loathe Pratt, and give neither one of them a pass. 💩🤮

I guarantee you, this viewer would not. I have loathed everything of Pratt's that I have ever seen.🤮

Gay guys don't have muscles? ROTF! (And yes, MC briefly played Tina Clayton Lord on OLTL.)

God love closeted gay actors; they wanted to protect their jobs and careers. I imagine the same folks who bought that Liberace was straight accepted JWS was as well.