vetsoapfan

Really? That's fascinating. Unfortunately, IMHO, any real-life chemistry they may have had did not translate over to the screen.

The story about her back problems precipitated commentary in the daytime press. She claimed she was too injured and in pain to work, yet there were pictures of her around town having a very active social life. Lynde did say she had been challenged by Leslie's nervous breakdown/mental hospital story, but if I were William J. Bell or John Conboy, I would have been really pissed about her complaining to the press that she hated Leslie and that the character was a nerd and a nebbish. I thought she was wonderful in the role, very effective, but sometimes an actor becomes more trouble than s/he's worth. Hallick really made a mistake leaving Y&R. His role on Days tanked, and he never really did much else of note in his career. Bell very well might have kept Hallick and Lynde center stage for years (as he was wont to do with popular romantic couples) if the actors had cooperated. Julianna McCarthy once noted that although Espy was very private and taciturn, he was really kind and sweet with her young son. I guess he could open up when he did not feel pressured or threatened. David Bailey was a bland and colorless Russ, and there was no chemistry between him and Lynde. I adore Michael Storm of OLTL, and he was great with other actresses, but there was zero chemistry between him and Lynde as well. Leslie Brooks was her signature, most memorable role. It's a pity she did not appreciate it at the time.

She was interviewed about Y&R for a magazine once, and the headline quote across the front cover was about how much she "just hated Leslie!" She said the character was a "nerd" and a "nebbish." Also, the show did not want to give her "outs" that were not specified in her contract and there was bad blood about that. Finally, Y&R did not renew her contract and replaced her with Victoria Mallory. Years later she admitted that her attitude was borne out of being young and ungrateful.

Like John Wesley Shipp and Marsha Clark were a "couple" and "quite involved." Or like Rock Hudson and wife Phyllis Gates. Decades ago, being outed was career suicide. Gay celebrities hid behind beards. He quit and made it clear at the time how much he disliked working on Y&R. After almost 30 years away from the show, he agreed to make a slight cameo appearance, just like Janice Lynde would later do, although she too had bitched endlessly about the soap back in the 1970s.

Ford did go up a lot too, but I guess that there was no way of knowing before they hired him that he would also have trouble memorizing his lines.

KLS mentioned the change of actors in one of her DS books. The only thing she wrote was that the change was necessary because the original actor could not remember his lines.

Irna certainly was sadistic, LOL. She was planning to have AW's Alice Matthews burn to death in a fire when she became annoyed at Jacquie Courtney's bubbly performances. No one was safe when Moss Phillips was vexed. Nancy also commented to Lisa that they had both lost a child, and once you lose a child, you can get through anything else. There are A LOT of errors in the Soap Central synopses. Susan was electrocuted when she was struck by lightening at the pool. She might have then banged her head which resulted in a head injury, but I don't specifically recall. All this had happened off camera before the show began. We did not see any of it. Because Susan had been her favorite, Nancy subconsciously resented Penny for surviving while Susan was dead. As has been mentioned, Nancy was NOT the most pleasant of mothers when the show began. In fact, she could be quite the shrew. She used to light into Bob all the time. And when Don married a girl Nancy did not care for, she cried very loudly and obnoxiously through the ceremony, LOL. When Nancy did not get what she wanted, she could make her family suffer. Like Bert Bauer, however, she did mellow over the decades. Charita Bauer exuded a natural charm, joy and sweetness which made Bert's transition to loving matriarch believable, however. Helen Wagner (while I adored her) came across as much more aloof and reserved. I couldn't watch ATWT consistently under the Dobsons' work either. They and producer MEB really fractured the show the way Long and Kobe did TGL. Suddenly Oakdale was not home anymore. Neither did MEB, which made the problems worse. No wonder the show started to tumble in the ratings.

I think TGL was left seriously crippled after the mass slaughter in 1983-84. It was then bludgeoned into a coma when Maureen was senselessly killed off. Finally, it was left brain-dead when Reva the Ghost, Reva the Clone and Reva the Time Traveller showed up. What made it worse was that the host was also infected with the San Cristo-crap and toxic mob viruses. By the time Peapack came about, our once-beloved show was hanging by a thread on life support, and it was only a matter of time before the Light would be extinguished.

At the beginning, when Agnes Nixon was writing the show, David Siegel was clearly portrayed as Jewish. He married the Irish-Catholic Eileen Riley with whom he had two children, Tim and Julie, however, and not a lot of emphasis was placed on Tim and Julie being half Jewish until ex-nun Jenny Wolek wanted to leave the church and marry him. Jenny's second cousin Vinnie Wolek disapproved of the idea based on religious grounds, but he was portrayed more as being opposed to Jenny breaking her vows to God rather than her marrying a man outside her faith. Rick Edelstein very effectively wrote for the Jewish Bachman family on How to Survive a Marriage as well. Of course, nobody but me even watched that show, LOL.🙄

Thanks for the links, my friend. And ITA with your comments about Bruder and that slug, Goutman.

The early years were known and applauded for their lush, rich production values (sets, music, lighting, etc.), and while some of the cast was "green" at the beginning, most of them had remarkable on-screen charisma and were quite talented (Janice Lynde, Trish Stewart, Julianna McCarthey among others). I'd say that it was only in the late 1970s that the show started to flounder somewhat. Where any sort of art is concerned, it's not possible to please and appeal to every viewer. What bores one person mesmerizes another. When Charita Bauer was playing out Bert's amputation story on The Guiding Light, someone said to me that it was a mistake to giver her a major story because, "Nobody in the audience wants to see that! We want to watch young, sexy people having romances and adventure!" Bert's story was the last plot I enjoyed on that show for YEARS. To each his own.

Oh heavens, no! I was referring to Orlagh Cassidy (ex-Doris), Bonnie Dennison (ex-Susan), Jessica Leccia (ex-Natalia) and Caitlin Van Zandt (ex-Ashlee). I love Elvera, Denise, and Jerry, and was even happy to see Michael (although I wish he appeared with Lisa Brown).

Actors who were woefully miscast in their roles, and therefore forgettable, or actors who played irrelevant characters who added nothing to TGL in the first place. Strange selection of performers. Not one of them made a real mark on the show, so it's like...why bother? Where's Lisa Brown, Mart Hulswit, John Wesley Shipp, Kristen Vigard, Kathleen Cullen, Marsha Clark? Actors who actually mattered while they were on the show?

I don't believe so, although Russ Matthews had to give Rachel a good over-the-knee spanking once. (I was shocked that the scene was approved by the censors!)

Mac had been in a serious accident, and a smitten Liz (who wanted him for herself and who was deeply hurt that he was gravitating towards Rachel instead) went berserk when she thought that Mac might die. I'll never forget how vile Rachel was when she snapped at Liz to get out of her face. "I don't enjoy seeing you any more than Mac does." What a bitch. UGH..

That was great.

Another show that cut off and discarded its history was TGL. In its final 25 years or so, TPTB completely ignored anything from before 1983. (Ironically, what was discarded and ignored were the show's very best years!)

I'd give the show even more credit. The earliest storyline I followed, myself, was Meta's murder trial in 1950. With master writers like Irna Phillips and then Agnes Nixon (among other scribes) at the helm, I feel that TGL was strong from 1950 until 1982. Cracks began in 1983, and then the bottom started to fall out in 1984. While I did not experience the series first hand from 1937 until 1949, I would bet that those years were solid as well, with Phillips in charge. Of any soap, I'd say that this one had the longest, uninterrupted run of quality storytelling; literally decades.

Of course, you can acknowledge your own personal disinterest in watching the show's early days, and that opinion is perfectly valid, but trust me, you do not speak for everyone else. Y&R revolutionized daytime TV when it premiered, and millions of viewers grew to love and admire its wonderful first decade. I, for one, would kill to see every single episode again, starting from the show's debut.

During the Strasser/Lindley era, Rachel tried her very best to ingratiate herself to Aunt Liz, but Liz never really gave her the time of day. It is possible that Aunt Liz had mellowed during her time away from Bay City. Her son Bill was dead and she was alienated from her daughter Susan and daughter-in-law Missy, and extreme loneliness can force people into reflection. I just wish we had SEEN more of Liz's transformation, rather than just being asked to accept it after the fact. (Still, Irene Dailey was so brilliant that she could sell us on anything.)

I agree, and I think most other fans would too. We understand if the show has absolutely no choice (for example, when the actress passes away in real life), but if it's TBTB's choice, viewers revolt. I've always felt that Y&R made dreadful mistakes when the show killed off both Jennifer Brooks and then decades later, Liz Foster. John Abbott, too. (We can't forget about beloved patriarchs!)

That's Audra Lindley, screaming her way through yet another scene. I loved watching her rant and rave. Virginia Dwyer was brilliant in the episode where Mary finds out about Rachel's baby. It was actually unnerving to watch the character fly off the handle. And yet, no matter how much Lemay altered and diminished the character of Mary, the audience continued to adore her. The daytime press was awash with complaint letters from AW viewers that year, thanks to the show's axing of Dwyer, Reinholt and Courtney. They lost Susan Sullivan shortly as well, and all the departures left a huge hole on the canvas.

Lemay admitted, himself, that he diminished Virginia Dwyer's presence on the show by shifting story focus from Mary to Aunt Liz. But even Liz Matthews went through a transformation under Lemay's pen. Previously, she had been much more fierce and aggressive, particularly when Audra Lindley was in the role. Lindley's Liz would fly into rages and scream and SCREAM at people, whereas Lemay turned Liz into an overly-emotional busybody with good intentions. There's a famous scene (available on youtube) in which Aunt Liz is looking after Alice, who is teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Rachel marches into the house and announces that she is kicking Alice out of it so that Rachel can move in with Jamie. As Rachel attacks and berates Alice, Aunt Liz just sits there meekly on the bed with tears in her eyes. HA! The Aunt Liz of yore would have ripped Rachel's hair out, dragged her down the stairs and thrown her out the door...screaming at her all the way! As Lemay's writing started to deteriorate in 1975, I believe that it was mainly the core elements of the show still intact, and the talented actors involved, which kept it afloat.

I will give Lemay credit for keeping certain core actors around for years even though he detested them and/or belittled their talent, but he clearly did not understand some of the characters, and this showed. Alice became an ultra-fragile Dresden doll; Mary Matthews became something of a shrew. Because I had watched from the beginning, I could justify the changes in my own mind. It made psychological sense that under constant pressure, Alice would eventually start to crumble. It was also understandable that, after seeing the harm they did to both Russ and Alice, Mary would be bitter and unforgiving towards Steve and Rachel. So it did work psychologically, and it made for years of riveting drama, but I wonder how much of the personalty changes for characters like Mary and Alice were precipitated by the writer's contempt for the actors.

I did it with many soaps, including ATWT, but I must give some credit to World Turns for keeping several of its vets on canvas. Even through its dreadful, final years, I always had Nancy, Dr. Bob, Kim, Lisa (rarely, alas) and others to give me an incentive to tune into Oakdale. I'd FF through the excruciatingly bad plots and revolting newbies, but stop and watch my old "friends." I think the entire fabric of TGL had been obliterated, so that's probably why I spent so much time figuring out ways to fix it. I FIRMLY believe that many knowledgeable and creative viewers would have been better suited to fix and guide the shows back to health than the actual PTB, most/all of whom were woefully ignorant and incompetent.