vetsoapfan

I'm happy to hear that you are enjoying the thread. It's hard to know what to post; what will interest the SON community, but I am trying to upload material from many different soaps and stars and hope something, anything, hits a bulls-eye with readers. Yes, EM had a daughter, Mary Ann Anderson, whom the actress adopted later on. I spoke to Anderson personally, when she was selling a biography of EM which she had written. Very interesting. That's an apt comparison, comparing Pamela Peters to Judy Strangis. Both young actresses were cute and perky, and quite pleasant to watch in light roles, but I would not cast or expect them to do well in heavier parts, like...Anne Frank or Helen Keller. On Y&R, Peters was appealing as Peggy until she was asked to stretch beyond her range. I definitely wanted her to remain on the show, as part of the Brooks family and as an original cast member, but I preferred when the heavier material rested on more capable shoulders like Trish Stewart, Janice Lynde, Julianna McCarthy, Jeanne Cooper, etc.

From Daytime TV Super Special # 2, 1975 From Daytime TV, April 1973 From Daytime TV, April 1973

From Daytime TV, April 1974 From Daytime TV Super Special # 2, 1975 From DaytimeTV, February 1975 From DaytimeTV Library Series #2: All My Children

From Daytime TV Super Special # 1: 1974 From Daylight TV, August 1975 George Reinholt Fired from Another World

The soap press of today is pablum and lacks any integrity or purpose, but back in the 1970s, editors like Jon-Michael Reed told it like it was, and I appreciated their blunt honesty so much. Often what critics wrote corresponded quite well to what the audience was feeling. You don't see sharp, insightful commentary about daytime TV in SOD anymore. I am one of those viewers who loved the long, intimate, drawn-out scenes focusing on character delineation and subtext...if such scenes ultimately had a purpose, a point. Masters like Harding Lemay, William J. Bell, Pat Falken Smith, Irna Phillips and a few others were so gifted that they could make the audience feel like we were eavesdropping on actual conversations between real people, so even the longest of scenes could be fascinating. The trouble is, many soap writers did not have the talent to write extended, character-driven scenes effectively, so the 10-minute conversations ended up sounding like endless "filler," which was deadly, and a struggle to sit through. Pamela Peters was very cute and had a pixie-ish quality about her, which was quite appealing. Unfortunately, she was not the best dramatic actress in the world, which became obvious during Peggy's rape storyline in 1976. (Useless trivia, LOL: Peggy was raped on June 16, 1976.) When Peggy was raped, Y&R showed flashbacks from when Chris had been attacked in 1973. This allowed the audience to compare the performances of Trish Stewart and Pamela Peters, and it was easy to conclude that Stewart was the far-superior actress. (Still, IMHO, Peters had more skill as an actress than many of the hair models we have had to endure on soaps during the last few decades.)

As Hope Bauer on The Guiding Light, Robin Mattson lacked substance and was simply...colorless. She was not awful, per se, but she was dull. After seeing two other dreadful actresses in the role of Heather Webber on General Hospital, I cringed when Mattson was hired. I thought that if they could NEVER hire a decent actress for the part, Heather should just be eliminated from the canvas ASAP. Surprisingly, Mattson had matured as an actress from her days on TGL and ended up being a decent recast on GH. She was pretty good on AMC too (although not-so-great as Delia Reid Ryan on RH). Some performers just click better in some roles than in others.

The first two years of Y&R were a soap fan's heaven. It was mesmerizing every day, and that original cast had charisma to spare. I think I have a couple of interviews, from two different years, with the Ladies Who Lunch, which I'm sure you guys will enjoy. All those gals were such fun!

The last time I moved, I threw out a huge amount of classic magazines, which was the BIGGEST and DUMBEST mistake of my life. I'd kill to get them all back now. I'm lucky that I have any left at all. I've found some Afternoon TVs from the 1970s and plan to upload content from them. I loved that mag's book-length life stories of both characters and actors. I know I have the ones of Bert Bauer, Julie Olsen, and Viki Lord. Woohoo! I don't think he was as bad or as bland as some of the other actors cast in the role, but I agree that AA was not right for Mike.

This works extremely well, and it only takes a few seconds to enlarge the text to a very readable size. Thank you so much for offering us this solution. I downloaded the articles in full size, but the text appeared significantly smaller once it was uploaded to SON. I was wondering if potential readers would just give up in frustration, which would be a shame because I wanted to share some long-lost goodies with the community. While I cannot promise anything (I can only share what I find), what kind of stuff do y'all want to see?

My pleasure...now that I have figured out how to do this. It's a shame the print is so small. I hope folks don't get eye strain from reading the articles. I have tons more stuff, BTW, but my ancient scanner is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo slow. It took me a couple of hours just to post what you can already see in this thread.

I'm posting rare and vintage clippings in the Cancelled Soaps Forum, if anyone is interested, featuring both past and present shows.

The Ladies Who Lunch: Audrey Peters (Vanessa Sterling, Love of Live), Ann Flood (Nancy Karr, The Edge of Night), Mary Stuart (Jo Vincente, Search for Tomorrow), Charita Bauer (Bert Bauer, The Guiding Light), Lydia Bruce (Maggie Powers, The Doctors) and Eileen Fulton (Lisa, As the World Turns) The Somerset cast, 1976 William Gray Espy (Snapper Foster), Julianna McCarthy (Liz Foster) and James Houghton (Greg Foster) from The Young and the Restless, with Susan Flannery (Laura Horton, Days of our Lives) in the picture below. Beau Kayser (Brock Reynolds, The Young and the Restless) Erika Slezak and Lee Patterson (Viki and Joe Riley, One Live to Live) from their gorgeous wedding filmed in on location Central Park. From Daily TV Serials, July 1977

From Daily TV Serials, June, 1976 Editor's Year in Review From Daily TV Serials, July 1977 The Best and the Worst of Daytime TV, by Jon-Michael Reed

From Daily TV Serials, June 1975 Editor's Year in Review

From Daily TV Serials, June 1977 Winners of the Year!

From Daily TV Serials, June 1974 The Very First Readers' Poll: Viewers' Choice for Best Shows and Actors/Actresses From Daily TV Serials. June 1975 Winners of the Year! From Daily TV Serials, June 1976 Winners of the Year!

I have recently found a huge stash of soap magazines from the 1960s and '70s, and I want to see if I can scan articles from them onto my hard drive and then upload the vintage material to SON threads. I am making a test in this post, using a vintage Y&R photograph which was already saved to my laptop. (No disrespect to @PaulRaven who just posted this same image a few pages back, but this version does not have the watermark in front of the actors, so I though no one would mind if I reposted a cleaner copy.) I hope this works.

Sorry, she does not look familiar to me.

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.