vetsoapfan

She said that GA would come to her dressing room door and stand there buck naked, making her feel cornered and threatened, and that he would make offensive comments which made her feel degraded. To me, this goes way beyond the "boys will be boys" scenario. He should have been fired.

Judi Evans spoke about Grant Aleksander's offensive backstage behavior on TGL as well. I think when popular stars and money are involved, P&G would look the other way. At a public appearance in Canada once, Eplin was very handsy with fans of both genders, and kept pulling people down to sit on his lap. He laughingly announced, "I'm an equal-opportunity sex offender!" It was creepy (although certain fans looked like they were having orgasms on the spot when Eplin made physical contact with them.)

Nina was principally a story editor on PP who also did some scripts, but was only ONE of many scribes who collaborated on the story outlines and teleplays for that series at the time. I have always thought that the other writers' contributions and influence minimized or negated the damage Laemmle might have done if she had been alone and in charge. Just like James Reilly on TGL. He was part of a very successful era of that soap in the early 1990s, but I am convinced that Nancy Curlee's influence helped keep the show from descending into the dreadful, low-brow camp that Reilly was known for in his solo work as head writer on Passions and DAYS.

Firing PFS in 1977 was the show's biggest mistake in its history. IMHO, 1976 was DAYS's best-written year, ever, and the quality was continuing into 1977. When Smith got axed, the entire show just fell apart and the quality plummeted. It was painful to watch. Imagine Downtown Abbey turning into The Dukes of Hazard overnight. Yikes. TIIC at the networks have never known how to manage the soaps. What always saved daytime dramas was the savoir faire of the insightful writers and producers who knew what the audience wanted to see, and would battle the networks and the sponsors to bring intelligence and excellence to the screen. As they started to disappear, the hacks took over and the soap medium crumbled. The late 1970s and early 1980s were not a good time for DAYS and AW. Bringing back PFS to DAYS in 1982 was the right thing to do, but alas, complications arose from the lawsuit she had filed when DAYS fired her five years earlier, so the network gave her the boot again, and the show fell back into mediocrity. Joe Mascolo, admitted in the press at thee time, "When Pat Falkeen Smith was fired, the quality of the show's writing went with her." So true. It must have been like playing scenes with a wet, slimy, dead fish.

While I found Elizabeth Harrower to be mediocre, she was better than Ann Marcus, who had written the show before her, and miles above Nina Laemmle, who took over later. (Between Harrower and Laemmle, Ruth Brooks Flippen had penned the show for a whopping four weeks or so, LOL.) Harrower tried to reestablish the heightened romantic tone of the series, but she just did not have Bell's and Smith's skills. Still, I would have kept her in place over Marcus, Laemmle, Flippen. Michele Poteet Lisanti, Gary Tomlin, Margaret DePriest, Thom Racina, Leah Laiman, Ann Howard Bailey, etc., etc., etc., who were also hired to write the show during the period. Laemmle's biggest bomb on primetime was Rich Man, Poor Man Book Two. She took over as writer in the second season, as completely trashed the well-written and hugely successful show.

The ONLY reason I kept sticking with DAYS, through all the awful writing regimes and cast purges was because there continued to be characters I care about on screen. David, Marie, Doug, Julie, Don, Marlena, Tom and Alice, etc., kept me loyal even when I had to grit my teeth over what was happening to my beloved soap. Such a line of dialogue from Tom was absurd, to be sure. New writers often saddle actors with dumb dialogue. On TGL once, in the mid-1980s, Kelly Nelson asked Ed Bauer, "Do you remember Steve Jackson, the surgeon?" I cringed. Steve Jackson was Ed's former father-in-law and grandfather to Ed's son Rick. Of COURSE Ed would remember him. Duh. Stupid, irritating line written by writers who were too lazy of incompetent to study the history of the show. On AW, someone asked Jamie Frame how he was related to Sally Fame. He replied, "She's a cousin or something." EXCUSE ME? Sally had been adopted by Jamie's stepmother. How did he get "cousin" from that connection? UGH. You are right: Gloria Loring sparkled. her Liz Chandler was the only character created by Laemmle who really took off. The actor who played Kellam Chandler was dreadful: totally bland, listless, completely lacking charisma. It was a relief when most of Laemmle's creations got written out.

Although the ratings had been acceptable when the show was written by the legendary Bill Bell and Pat Falken Smith, Corday productions and NBC felt the numbers could be higher, so they fired the best writers the show had ever had, and replaced them with a multitude of other scribes in an attempt to attract more viewers. It ended up being a disaster. New writers came and went on a regular basis, and most of them only axed popular characters, created stories that were not appropriate for DAYS' established tone and theme, and generally decimated the show's core more and more. Nina Laemmle, who (IMHO) had been a complete and abject failure on the nighttime serials she had written into the ground, was inexplicable given a great deal of freedom to restructure the show as she saw fit. She said it was dull and repetitious, and that several beloved characters had outlived their usefulness. So she axed half the cast, brought in about nine new characters of her own, and inflicted some of the most uninteresting and tedious stories possible onto the audience. Ratings plummeted, Viewers revolted, and Laemmle was axed within six months. The majority of her new, failed characters were eliminated shortly thereafter. From Laemmle's era, only Liz Chandler became a successful DAYS staple.

It was the year writer Nina Laemmle came aboard the show, full of bravado and contempt for the show's past storylines and writing, and ended up massacring Salem. Believe me, it was painful to sit through her material. No wonder so many viewers fled.

Thank you very much for letting us know about this episode. I will be thrilled to watch the episode again, even though it is from the period when writer Nina Laemmle was absolutely butchering the show, LOL! Up until 1980, Laemmle was the single most destructive scribe DAYS had ever had. (Of course, little did viewers know that even WORSE was yet to come!)

From Rona Barrett's Daytimers, June 1978 New syndicated soap: HIGH HOPES (it bombed) Emily McLaughlin's health woes (what a gratuitously insensitive headline!) Judith Light of ONE LIFE TO LIVE

From Rona Barrett's Daytimers, May 1978 Woohoo, Josh Taylor was a mega hunk back in the DAYS. Eileen Fulton's No Soap Critic David Johnson: LOVE OF LIFE

From Rona Barrett's Daytimers, April 1978 Our beloved Rachel Ames of GENERAL HOSPITAL! Critic David Johnson complains about ANOTHER WORLD...again!

Alas, I am old and decrepit, LOL, and have neither an iphone nor an iPad. I only have my trusty ol' laptop and an inexpensive (read: cheap) scanner I bought eons ago. If I were not on a very tight and fixed income, I would upgrade, but as it is, I have to make do.

More of everything is coming. I am trying to find a decent second-hand or free scanner, which will allow me to share better-looking material, free of dark spots and smudges.

LOL! So she's a soap addict who eventually faced facts and came out of the closet, just like so many vehemently anti-gay preachers and politicians who later get outed in gay bars. Some magazines were racier than others. And RBD became more provocative as time went on. She did want extensive time off to do other things, and the year before she left Y&R she had been absent for an extended period with "back issues," claiming her doctor had forbidden her to work. As pointed out in the press at the time, however, while she was supposedly unable to work on Y&R, she was photographed socializing all over town. I think William J. Bell finally decided enough was enough and did not renegotiate her contract. Unfortunately, her replacement never captured the essence of Leslie Brooks, and the character lost all her depth and color after Lynde left.

Just a quick note: sorry about the "smudgy" or stained quality of various uploads. No one has to remind me how annoying it is that the scans are not perfect, LOL. My scanner itself is ancient and mediocre anyway, but in addition to this, many of the magazines which I am copying from have faded, dark, and/or smudged print which only looks worse when it's scanned into my laptop. If any pages come out looking illegible, I discard those uploads, but I figure that if *I* can read the pages, other people should be able to as well. This may be the ONLY way for soap fans to have access to these vintage articles, so I hope folks agree with me that if it comes down to a choice between mediocre quality or nothing at all, mediocre is better! (I feel the same way when I find rare vintage videos: I'd love them to be perfect, but if they are not, I want to watch them anyway!) It's curious how some writers are brilliant and effective on some shows, yet totally destructive and ineffective on others. Marland was not the best fit for TD, IMHO (although other scribes during that soap's run were significantly worse), yet there's no denying he totally turned GH around and worked wonders on that show. Claire Labine was amazing on RH, GH, Where The Heart Is and Love of Life, but I found her TGL and OLTL to be painful. Pat Falken Smith scored with DAYS, TGL, and GH, but failed miserably on RH. Ann Marcus made the ratings soar on SFT, but her stint on DAYS was atrocious. I found Lemay's work on AW to be excellent, intelligent and absorbing for the first four years or so of his tenure, but after the show went to an hour, he seemed to peter out and run dry. I think the show continued to do well in the rating for a while primarily because in the mid-1970s, GH was a total mess and offered no real competition. Once it took off and became a sensation (along with TGL which also improved alot around the same time), AW started to sink in the ratings. Viewers finally had worthy alternatives!

To be fair, as he pointed out, Julia Duffy quit with little notice, which made Marland scramble to alter and apparently abandon his storyline plans.

From Rona Barrett's Daytimers, November 1977 STFU, Marie. THE DOCTORS' Douglas Marland: Head Writer Don't Piss Off La Fulton, LOL. Rona Barrett's Daytimers, December 1977 Abandoning Controversial Storylines. From Rona Barrett's Daytimers, January 1978 Be still my racing heart! Ricky Dean!

From Rona Barrett's Daytimers, July 1977 Critical Review of AW. From Rona Barrett's Daytimers, August 1977 Actress Smacks Down Nasty Troll (LOL). Explosive Backstage Drama at DAYS. Recappping on Soaps. Joel Crothers (TEON) pontificates on heterosexual relationships.

From Rona Barrett's Daytimes, April 1977 (debut issue) Don Stewart (TGL) defends the soaps. Pre-internet, comments from the public were just as weird as they are today on social media. From Rona Barrett's Daytimers, May 1977 Douglass Watson from AW. From Rona Barrett's Daytimers, June 1977 Tina Andrews on DAYS' interracial romance. Harding Lemay, AW's head writer. More Warped Fans write to Eileen Fulton.

Guthrie was quite beautiful, and projected such a sweetness on screen. The closeting of actors was par for the course at the time, but both perceptive viewers and savvy readers could always read between the lines, so to speak, and get a sense of the performers' true selves. We knew about Guthrie, Wesley Eure, Val Dufour, Chris Bernau and others, without needing to be told outright.

To be fair, throughout the decades there have been many atrocious actors on daytime TV...but probably no more than have appeared on primetime television. On primetime, even the weakest actors have 7-10 days to film a single episode, and therefore are afforded the luxury of rehearsing and fine-tuning their performances. Soap actors actors cannot say the same. She was excellent on CB, agreed, but how many episodes did the writers, directors and actors have to churn out each season? If they had been required to produce 20 hours every MONTH, like soaps do, how would the show's quality have fared? Delany should have known better than to criticize actors who have to churn out TEN TIMES the material she had to do every season. Right. If she had been on a Claire Labine, Harding Lemay, or Agnes Nixon-penned series, her perception of the soap genre might have been different. Bill Bell is known for pushing to recast certain parts when he's not happy with the actors. Not of the previous Julies were particularly good. On the other hand, Denise Alexander was astonishing from the get-go. I was crushed when she quit DAYS and went over to GH. GH was badly written at the time, and unfortunately, Bennye Gatteys was a pallid choice for the role of Susan Martin. It was like watching Victoria Mallory take over for Janice Lynde as Leslie on Y&R. Hard to accept.

AFTERNOON TV, June 1977 (all articles)

IMHO, the actors who denigrate their time on soaps were either too lazy to put any real effort into their performances, too indifferent to try because they felt soaps were "beneath" them, or simply not technically adept enough to keep up with the fast pace. Don't tell me that Michael Zaslow, Beverlee McKinsey, Judith Light, Julianne Moore, Charita Bauer, Larry Bryggman, Susan Flannery, Jacqueline Courtney, David Canary, etc., did not treat viewers to complex, layered, great acting. Pffft! Delany bombed out on daytime TV. Many others did not.

Neither Reckell nor Delany had interesting roles to play on ATWT, and the writing for them was tepid, so I'm not surprised their characters tanked. Clearly both actors had talent, as evidenced by their later success on other series, but Oakdale was not the place for them. Still, a new romance with new young characters was not a terrible idea per se, so I did not fault the show for that. The idiotic choices I was thinking about were gratuitously axing several veteran, older (and beloved) characters in favor of nubile newbies; introducing campy adventure stories like Mr. Big and Babs' past-life regressions; the cheesy disco-ball-off-its-axis opening which debuted in 1981, etc. YUCK. The established audience was not thrilled. What did Dana say that annoyed Jeanne Cooper, do you remember?