vetsoapfan

This is Billy Kay, who played Shayne for a few years prior to Marty West. This is Mr. West.

Yes, you have identified everyone perfectly. They are sitting in the Fosters' living room set.

Kerwin once said that while he was playing Greg Foster on Y&R, the producers came to him out of the blue and announced that they were going to give the character an extended rest, meaning that Kerwin was about to be unemployed. He asked if the character was scheduled to return to the canvas later on, and they said yes, so his next, logical question was, "When Greg Foster returns to the show in six months, a year, whatever, am I going to be playing him?" The producers hemmed and hawed and replied, "Well, we'll certainly CONSIDER you for am audition...." Kerwin was angry because it was a wishy-washy way of firing him. He would rather have been told flat-out that TPTB were firing him instead of leaving him with false hope about a possible return. Unfortunately for Kerwin, he was the second-worst actor in the role. (Being bland and colorless, he was not as repulsive as Wings Hauser, whose casting as Greg Foster still boggles my mind.)

Well, he originally agreed to appear on AW in a short-term capacity (Mitch Blake was intended to be a villain), because NBC wanted to capitalize on his immense popularity (the way ABC had lured Rosemary Prinz to ABC for the first six months of AMC). Later, the network offered him big buck$ to return for a longer contract. In interviews, however, Espy openly admitted that he was only there for the money and the ability to make a living in NY. Rosemary Prinz loathed working on ATWT, by her own admission, but played Penny Hughes for 12 straight years for similar reasons. Back in those days, NBC was known for paying their actors a lot higher salaries than the east-coast ABC soaps or Y&R. But the reason Espy kept coming and going was because he just didn't really want to be there.

He had kept his orientation quiet, himself, and had steadfastly refused to talk about his personal life with the press. Dano took it upon herself to out him in an interview, laughing about how he was not thrilled with their kissing scenes and how shaking hands instead would be more his preference. No. Espy was a HUGE megastar and a prime reason why the show became a hit. He soared right to the top of all the readers' polls in the soap press. There was a tremendous backlash when he was replaced. Hasselhoff never attained the same popularity. You should have read some of the letters to the editors in the soap mags of the day. It was similar to Rosemary Prinz being replaced by Phoebe Dorin on ATWT. Fans were livid. Espy never returned because he refused to do so. He only accepted the role of AW for a few years because he wanted to be in NY. He did not like the grind of daytime TV and made that VERY clear.

William Gray Espy was HUGELY popular on Y&R, even more than he was on AW. The trouble was, he openly admitted that he felt confined on daytime TV and did not enjoy working in the medium. He put his fist through a wall once while working on Y&R, out of frustration.

Linda Dano outed Espy in a Cosmo article a few decades ago.

Just for clarification's sake, Greg Foster was a lawyer, not a doctor. The physician in the family was his elder brother, Snapper.

To me, the 1970s were the very best years of the soap opera genre. I mean, we had William J. Bell, Pat Falken Smith, Agnes Nixon, Henry Slesar, Douglas Marland, Harding Lemay, Claire Labine, the Dobsons, Ann Marcus, Rick Edelstein, Robert Soderberg and Edith Sommer, Gordon Russell and Sam Hall, etc., at the top of their game, giving us riveting storylines that were must-see TV. Trying to keep up with all the shows during that decade was a herculean challenge. At first I recorded them all on multiple audio cassette recorders (which I set up in different rooms of the house), but as soon as I could afford a VCR (in 1976), I bought one of those. And then another. I would use my Beta to record from one network, my VHS to record from a second network, and then watch the third network live. If I had to be out of the house, I would use my old standby, an audio tape recorder, to tape the third network. Back then, soaps were a HUGE money-maker for all the networks, so because millions of dollars in profit were at stake, competition was always fierce. Lousy writers and incompetent producers did not last for YEARS as they would later on, when ratings (and profits) plummeted and the networks and P&G lost interest in putting out quality product anymore. Back then, the audience EXPECTED to see great soap opera because it was what we were used to; what we demanded. Competition to produce quality television was strong, because viewers had so many good soaps to choose from, and wouldn't settle for mediocre (or worse) drivel. How times have changed! Today, the audience is served nothing but drivel, and we are grateful to see ANYTHING on ANY remaining show that rises to the level of, "not as awful as usual."

Well, we do not know where Meta and her family lived when she was "a girl." We only met the Bauers in 1948 when all three children had already grown up. So it doesn't actively contradict established history to indicate that perhaps the Bauers had lived in, or visited, Five Points twenty+ years before we met them. And as a travelling minister, Rev. Ruthledge could have visited any other town which the Bauers called home before they began appearing on TGL. So I gave write Claire Labine a pass on this scene, because she was trying to weave history into the present day, and I got so verklempt just hearing Rev. Ruthledge's name. I can accept that the Bauers had known John Ruthledge because it ties together the first two "periods" of the show's history. Yes, this is a more egregious/careless error; harder to explain away or excuse. As far as we know, Rev. Ruthledge only had a daughter named Mary. Steven Ruthledge was said to be the original John Ruthledge's "grandson," but to bear that family name, Mary Ruthledge Holden would have had to give birth as a single woman to Steven, and bestow upon him her own maiden name rather than his father's surname. Or, possibly Rev. Ruthledge had met a woman while he was in Europe and sired a son by her before his death in 1946. Both these theories are possible, but viewers should NOT have to do mental cartwheels in order to justify what we see on-screen. With the introduction of Steven Ruthledge, it looked to me like the writers had done a half-assed job of examining history, and did not care much if they had made a continuity error. They probably figured that no one in the audience would know or care.

Thank you (and all the other fine fans) for providing us with vintage links like these. I cannot tell you how grateful we are.

Well, to be honest, that is the decade I am most interested in, but it's always a treat to see episodes from the soap's golden era under William J. Bell. And we are VERY FORTUNATE to have access to ANY material at all from Y&R's first decade. I'll always be thrilled to see more episodes if they ever pop up, but I am totally appreciative for the ones we already have. I'm more likely to re-watch material from the 1970s than to endure new episodes produced in 2019, LOL.

You. Are. Wonderful. Thank you so much for everything that you share with the soap community.

Me too! Thanks.

There is an entire coffee-table book filled to the brim (or should I just say BULGING?) with photographs like this: TWINS by Steven Underhill. That was clearly the idea, although years later, Bruce tried to downplay the erotic pictures, saying that Underhill had only photographed the boys "standing close to each other." Um...no. There was serious subtext under the physical proximity.

Let's kick back, have a smoke and a drink, and revel in the view from here.

Bruce-Michael and Seth Hall, the only reason to endure this show.

After TPTB stupidly killed off Maureen, the Bauer family was left without its matriarch, its heart. At that point, Hope Bauer was desperately needed as the matriarch-in-training. Alas, the show just did not care.

It's because we are ALL better writers than JER. (I amuse my evil self.)

Right: breathe in and breathe out, but through your mouth because PASSIONS reeks.

I remember how enthusiastic he made his target audience. 😉

I'd have to counter that a soap which remained firmly in the toilet of the ratings for its entire run (either in last place or occasionally second-to-last place) never had a successful season.

That. Is. HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally, Irna's soaps were set in a few different states, but TPTB just transferred them all to Illinois later on. TGL was originally set in Five Points, Illinois, but then moved to Selby Flats, California. When the show mysteriously began referring to its town as Springfield, it was only said to be in the mid-west. (So maybe Illinois again, maybe not.) On ATWT, the Hughes family originally lived in Ohio. Another World's Bay City and its spin-off Somerset were in Michigan. They mentioned this ON-AIR, so someone at P&G should have made a note of it, LOL. I think as the years went on, producers and writers at P&G and the networks were too lazy to research their own shows, and all sorts of continuity errors cropped up.

Jack and Lainie and all those "fake" Bauers alienated me. I was furious that TPTB did not mine the show's rich history for REAL Bauer family members. They could have had Paul Kinkaid reappear and prove to be Bill Bauer's offspring. After leaving Springfield in 1974, Meta could have adopted an orphaned teen and later had grandchildren. Rita Stapleton could have turned up with Ed's son. Mike, Hope, or Trudy could have had additional children. Sloppy and indifferent writing and producing, all around.