vetsoapfan

Agreed. Some claim that viewers would not want to watch episodes featuring unfamiliar characters/actors, but if that were true, every single brand-new series on TV would be rejected by the audience because they don't "know" any of the people on screen yet. But...we GET to know them as we watch. I'm always fascinated to check out vintage material from my favorite shows, regardless if I know any of the characters/actors featured or not. I'll become familiar with them as I view the eps. And most importantly, the first five years of this show were brilliant; William J. Bell at the peak of his talent. His mesmerizing scripts alone would lure anyone in!

He was also very good and charming as Bucky Carter on Ryan's Hope...in 1975.

Why are so many people assuming without question that NLG's allegations are true? Even she did not say it happened to her. She only referred to the alleged victims as "atmosphere" actors, and their very existence and stories remain uncorroborated and unverified. If indeed any of this took place, where are the statements from ANYONE who witnessed the supposed behavior, themselves? Are NLG's second-hand and unverified assertions enough to determine reality? NLG also claims that she reported the stories about John Callahan to TPTB, but they did nothing about the behavior. Says who? How do we know that those in charge did not investigate the allegations at the time? I would not have run back to NLG with any reports, considering she was not a victim of any abuse. The only ones who deserved to be advised of the outcome of an investigation were the victims and JC. Not NLG. It was none of her damned business. She is not The Authority Who Must Be Appeased. This reminds me of Brenda Dickson, who wrote semi-literate accounts about William J. Bell's alleged sexual shenanigans...but only after he, like JC, was dead and unable to defend himself. Are we relying on the likes of NLG and La Dickson to decide for us what reality is? Pffft. If the man did engage in such egregious behavior, that would be horrible and unacceptable, but until I hear from anyone with first-hand experience about his actions, I'm not going to blindly condemn him as a deviant based solely on Nancy Lee Grahn's uncorroborated hearsay.

They are starting with episodes from 1950, 13 YEARS after "the beginning," LOL. And not to be critical, but the new "actress" playing Meta is dreadful and robotic.

Thank you for the information. So many US-based streaming services are blocked in Canada, so I imagine this will be too, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. When the site is actually up and running, I'm sure I'll be able to tell if Canadians can subscribe.

Is this service region-blocked, i.e. only available in the USA? And what are the payment options? Can I use Paypal? If anybody knows, please drop me a line. TIA.

I always love stuff like that. Thanks for posting.

Lemay's accusations about Courtney--that she was "always" looking down so that she could read the lines off the cuff of her nurse's uniform, and that she sobbed in scenes so that she wouldn't have to be bothered actually learning any dialogue--are clearly absurd, dishonest and gratuitously childish. But that was Lemay. Once he decided to dislike an actor, he set out to annihilate them. As for Dwyer being responsible for Marlowe's trouble with dialogue...ha! That is a laugh. There came a point in the 1970s when Hugh Marlowe really started to forget, flub and mangle his lines regardless of who his scene partner was. He was always "going up" and glancing at the teleprompter. This became more apparent when the show went to an hour. Indeed, after Dwyer was fired, Marlowe's stumbling got significantly worse, and you could tell that although he would be featured in scenes, his lines were kept to a minimum while everyone else around him did most of the talking. Blaming Dwyer for his own issues was probably Marlowe's way of saving face. Lemay bought into it because it served the writer's own vindictive purposes to denigrate Dwyer, but ANYONE else who watched AW in the 1970s and early 1980s could see Marlowe was the one having trouble. Still, I wanted to see him remain on the show, even in a limited capacity, because he played the patriarch of the Matthews family, and I had a feeling that when Marlowe finally left the show, Jim Matthews would cease to exist and not be recast.

His own words convict Lemay where Dwyer is concerned. In his book, he heaps scorn on her, and is clearly infuriated, because she dared to edit and rewrite the lines he wrote for Mary which Dwyer felt were out of character. She rephrased her dialogue to be more in line with how Mary had been conceived, written and played for the previous 7 years. At the same time Lemay was raging about Dwyer's trying to keep a through-line with her character, he praised his pets Victoria Wyndham and Constance Ford to the skies for doing THE EXACT SAME THING. He applauded Ford for slashing reams of dialogue that Ada simply wouldn't be likely to say, but when Dwyer did it, he went out of his way to diminish her role on the show and belittle her personally. He purported to be able to read her mind and thoughts, and attributed negative motivations to her real-life behavior; motivations that he could not possibly have known to be accurate, and which Lemay was clearly inventing in his own mind out of petulant contempt for the women.

I was watching the series "live" back then, and the scene in which Mary found out about Rachel's treachery--and then went berserk--was chilling. Her rage was explosive, and if Rachel had walked into the room at that moment, blood would have been shed. Virginia Dwyer really knocked that scene out of the park. The stupidity of keeping ancient material in storage, but never bothering to transfer it over to a format that can be saved and viewed, boggles my mind. Why even hang onto vintage episodes if you KNOW they are just rotting away in the basement? Either do everything you can to upgrade and save them, or auction the episodes off to fans who WILL do the work to save them from disintegrating. UGH.

There was A LOT of badly-researched "reporting" at that time. Once Gail Kobe and Pamela Long took over the reigns at TGL, history and continuity were completely butchered. This was egregious and irritating, because throughout the preceding decades, the show had been remarkably consistent and stable in its storytelling. We had watched Brandon Spaulding die ON CAMERA years earlier, so the character could not possibly have still been alive. Bringing him back was stupid. The story that purported all the families' patriarchs were fishing buddies was also 100% impossible, and contradicted many years of established, on-air history. (As @zanereed pointed out, only Bill Bauer might have realistically visited Springfield at that time, during one of his business trips.) From this point forward, clueless/incompetent producers and writers made endless mistakes in terms of history and characterization. Amanda suddenly being Alan's sister instead of his daughter-- which was also completely impossible in terms of established history--was one of the most baffling and offensive. Springfield prior to 1983 ceased to exist, more or less. Decades of history were chopped off and TPTB did not care to reattach the severed limb. That annoyed me too. Josh told the young Rev Ruthledge, "Your grandfather is a legend around these parts." Pffft. The original John Ruthledge never lived in Springfield, so unless he traveled there doing missionary work and performed legendary deeds that continued to be spoken about for decades, Josh's comment could only have been attributed to a lazy script writer who did not bother studying the series' history. And as you say, @Khan, Mary Ruthledge Holden's children would not carry her maiden name, unless we discovered that her husband Ned had died and Mary and her kids had then decided to change their family name back to Ruthledge. But realistically, why would they do that? When viewers know more about the show and its history than TPTB, it is not a good sign.

As far as anyone knows, that material no longer exists in the P&G video archives. The company routinely wiped/erased all their soap episodes up until the late 1970s. In an interview back in 1974, Jacqueline Courtney (Alice) mentioned that she had had kinescopes made of her most important episodes of AW, and I imagine that the engagement party "reveal" would have been a highlight that she wanted to keep. We have no idea for sure, however, and with Courtney's passing, the existence of any kinescopes she had ever had remains in question. Several years ago, AUDIO-ONLY clips of that episode surfaced and were put out on CD by Eddie Drueding, who runs the AW Fan Page. I'm afraid that is all we are going to get.

Actress Lisa Figus was hired to play another nurse named Georgia, not Jessie Brewer, when EM was unable to work. By that time, Jessie was basically being used as day player whose nondescript lines could just as easily be recited by any anonymous nurse. Figus apparently did a good enough job that GH kept her around and still used her occasionally even when EM was up to performing. But if EM was absent from work, Figus got Jessie's lines.

Unfortunately, TIIC never learn. They continue to make the same bone-headed mistakes over and over again, year after year...or decade after decade. Daytime TV needs a massive transfusion of fresh blood; creative, energetic PTB with vision, who understand that characterization and relatable human emotion are the foundation of successful serialized storytelling. Of course, at this point, it appears to be too late. The soap opera genre as we know it is on life support, slowly-but-relentlessly butchered by those who understood neither soaps nor their core audience.

I must strenuously disagree about DAYS and OLTL. The wretched sci-fi/fantasy plots did not work for them either, IMHO. Such material may have engendered attention from the press, and even resulted in temporary ratings boosts, but in the long run all the traditional shows were severely crippled by the nonsense. Even GH couldn't sustain the sci-fi camp model, and (IMHO) only survived because Wendy Riche and Claire Labine were miracle workers who salvaged the carcass and returned GH to its traditional roots. As soon as the Ice Princess/Freezing the World dreck began, I knew it would ignite a negative trend on daytime TV and ultimately destroy the genre, and alas...it did.

Right. At its core, TGL was intended to illuminate the human experience; to showcase community, family, perseverance in the face of adversity, and the fundamental hope of mankind...none of which will ever be irrelevant as long as people exist. I would kill for a chance to reboot and head-write this show. (Although what fan does NOT have such a fantasy?)

I miss all my favorite soaps so much, but truth be told, TGL really holds an extra special place in my heart and if I could revive only ONE gone-but-not-forgotten daytime gem, I'd vote to see Springfield one more time. Sigh.

Happy Birthday, The Guiding Light! Today, in 1937.... Thank you for 45 great years of solid entertainment (from 1937 to 1982), and then another four or so more (1989 to 2003), which were an unexpected but welcome (if temporary, alas) rebirth. 49 out of 72 ain't really so bad. The painfully atrocious years with clones and time travel and mobsters and a crappy foreign island will never diminish the light for die-hard fans!😘

If there was a scene of Evie dancing with Ross and telling him she was leaving town, I missed it. Around that time I was hyper sensitive about characters being discarded from the show, so I think I would have remembered it, but you never know. I did not remember Ben forcing himself on Amanda either. maybe I just blocked it out because it was gratuitous and against the grain of the character. Yuck. With the actor they chose, I don't think Andy would have been viable as "the new Roger," just because the performer was capable but not particularly compelling, and the character was not as nuanced. Michael Zaslow brought levels of pain, torment, antagonism, sexuality and vulnerability to Roger which would have been impossible to emulate. As a short-term villain, Andy would have worked, but he did not strike me as having ongoing staying power. Except for Pat Falken Smith and Millie Taggart and Carolyn Culliton, the writers of the show from the 1980s onward seemed to know little about the show's rich history, and cared about it even less. It's a shame because TGL's strength came from its consistent storytelling and ties to generations of the Bauer family. Kristen Vigard may have been flaky and unreliable IRL, but she exuded a certain spark on screen that was alluring. You wanted to watch her even when the character was being annoying. Same with Kevin Bacon as TJ. Their replacements, Jennifer Cooke and Nigel Reed tanked in comparison. In the 1980s, the show became cold and brittle, and was damaged by weak writing, the casting aside of history, and the introduction of many irrelevant, pointless characters. Sigh, Thanks for posting that, so we have clarification. I've never heard anything about Yates' reaction to that awful plot, but I do remember Peter Simon talking about Tom O'Rourke ranting and raving in disgust as he left the building after he was fired, LOL.

Yes, Joe Bradley was killed off, which I always considered a mistake. The actor was great and the character was deliciously sleazy. I would have kept him around for years. Tim was recast with a fourth actor named Nigel Reed, who lasted until 1982, if I recall, but he remained backburnered. I couldn't understand how Reed had even gotten hired. He was not right for the role. He was sort of...icky, like Adam Brewster on One Life to Live. I do not recall Ben raping Amanda. Morgan and Kelly mentioned that Steve Jackson was invited to their wedding, but he disappeared without warning or explanation in 1981. In a ludicrous scene a few years later, Kelly asked Ed if he remembered who Steve Jackson was. Duh. The writers were ignorant of history, but Ed would have remembered his father-in-law and his son's grandfather, so Kelly came off as an idiot. I believe Evie lasted until 1983. After Pat Falken Smith was fired (idiot PTB!) Helena Manzi asked Justin how Eve was doing, and he casually mentioned she had already moved away to be with Ben. The 1980s were not the best years for TGL and its continuity.

And Mike and Pat had been involved in Bay City, back in the 1960s, so there was history between them. After Maureen died, having a beloved Bauer matriarch in Springfield, in the form of Pat, would have filled a great void.

Simon was not this morose and listless on Search for Tomorrow, but his Ed Bauer was irritatingly hang-dog and lethargic. He certainly was not a "younger, sexier" version of Ed, regardless of what TPTB claimed they wanted. Hulswit was adorable: cuddly, sweet, charismatic, with a hot temper underneath; in short, exactly what the character of Ed should have been. He was well positioned to grow into the new patriarch of the Bauer family. All that was lost when the show cut him loose. Douglas Marland was so obnoxious to refer to Hulswit as a "dodo" whom Lenore Kasdorf did not want to work with. After Simon left the first time, TGL should have jumped at the chance to rehire MH. Instead, they cast an even MORE inappropriate actor in Richard Van Fleet. EEEK! Yep, Simon was dour as Ed from the time he started. I thought he was great on SFT, where he had a lot more energy, LOL. He worked well with Morgan Fairchild. (I'll never forget their screaming fight, when she went hurling through a plate-glass door.) I agree about bringing back Mike. I wanted him to return, married to either Elizabeth Spaulding or Pat Randolph. The thought of Mike Bauer with Marj Dusay makes me cringe, however.

This is what a real soap should be. A sense of community, with all sorts of characters and their stories intertwining with each other. A plethora of "plates spinning" in the air: various plots, subplots, and character moments on display. Multi-dimensional characters colored in shades of gray. There's not one character I'd rush to eliminate. Adults having actual conversations that draw you in. Characters who are written as INTELLIGENT. MOVEMENT. No cartoon plots, low-brow camp or sci fi in sight. Older people with (gasp!) lives of their own. Ahhh, the good old days. We have nothing like this on daytime TV anymore.

Woohoo! Vintage TGL!!! Thanks!

Right. After she became a murderess, she had to be punished, so there was not much the show could do with Augusta for a long time. It's not like today on GH, when the more a character murders other people, the more air time she or he gets.