vetsoapfan

In the end, whatever happened to Evans' stalker?

It must be said: Faulkner deserves applause for valiantly keeping this thread awash in hotness, while so many of us are slacking off and not contributing as much as we should! Keep up the good work!

You are correct on all three counts. I'd love to know whom she rattled on OLTL, to get fired early. And someone should ask Zimmer now, after the fact, what she really thought of all those crap-tastic stories dumped on Reva over the years (the clone, the time travel, the ghost, etc.)

By the time Rauch's reign of terror on OLTL was over, the show needed extensive and immediate major surgery, so I am glad it happened so quickly. In my recollection, the only other times that soaps changed so drastically, so quickly, were when Gloria Monty came aboard GH and changed...almost everything right away, and when Gail Kobe and Pamela Long took over TGL, and destroyed its core within a year or so.

This is a fairly good sketch.

Mary Student's complete record album.

Yes. She was very wispy and inconsequential, and projected no force or grit on screen at all. It was quite an downgrade from Robin Strasser, who was nothing if not determined and strong in the role. I knew immediately she was woefully miscast, and what made it worse, we also lost the wonderful Sam Groom as Euss Matthews in 1971, and his replacelacent, Robert Hover, was just as weak and poorly chosen as Impert. Imagine Tori Spelling replacing Genie Francis as Laura Webber on GH. Paris Hilton replacing Judy Garland in a sequel to The Wizard of Oz. Painful. Fortunately, neither Impert nor Hover lasted long. VW ultimately worked out as the third Rachel, and while I always found David Bailey bland and colorless as Russ, he was better than Hover. The odds were stacked against Lynde on AW. The writing was weak, her character was not particularly well defined or interesting, and she had no chemistry with her bland leading man. On Y&R, none of those disadvantages were present, and she fared so much better.

Neither did I, but he was very charismatic. The actor had been on the short-lived FOX soap Tribes for a while, and although the series was dreadful, I kept watching until the bitter end, largely because Greg Watkins was so adorable, and looked so enticing in the super-tight jeans he used to wear, LOL.

Well, to be fair, once I have my heart set on a certain couple being together, it's always hard for me to accept either one of the characters involved with anyone else. I did not fully get on board the Penny and Neil train, but maybe other viewers did. Rosemary Prinz was always featured heavily on the show when she was there, and they always seemed to be able to wrtite for her. As most of her family disappeared around her, I was very worried that ATWT would eliminate Ellen, whom I adored and wanted to see more, not less, of. She became a total talk-to over time, but we still saw her on a regular basis up until 1996. I had been expecting her to get written out for a good decade by that point, so we were lucky to have her for as long as we did. Yes, Amy did visit Oakdale again many years after her initial visit in 1973. Didn't she meet Lien at Nancy's wedding to Mac? Excellent. Reilly was very charismatic and had chemistry with everyone, including Masters and Patricia Bruder. He was a wonderful Dan, better than the original actor IMHO.

You are right! According to IMDB, Horgan is credited as playing Anton Cunningham in 1986-7 and again in 1998. That's weird. I do not remember him appearing AT ALL during those years. I don't think he joined Penny for her parents' 50th anniversary or for her mom's birthday, and there would be no reason for him to show up without her. Does anyone remember?

I loved Penny and Jeff and was REALLY annoyed at Nancy for trying to keep them apart. Nancy could be such a shrew in the early years. Mark Rydell as Jeff was not traditionally handsome, IMHO, but he had sparks with Rosemary Prinz and their on-screen chemistry was undeniable. I think a lot of us in the audience lived vicariously through their romance; we all wanted a love like that. Neil Wade was okay, but it was hard to accept Penny with another leading man after Jeff died in a car crash. Following Steven Frame's death on AW, Alice just never clicked with anyone else. It was a similar case with Penny. After Neal got hit by a car and died, Penny left Oakdale, vowing never to search for love again. I did not mourn Neil the way I mourned Jeff, because the sparks and chemistry with Penny had not been as memorable. We later heard via Nancy and Chris that Penny had married race-car driver Anton Cunningham in Europe and adopted a Eurasian child named Amy. Amy visited Oakdale briefly in 1973, but did not do much and did not stay long. Penny was on-canvas and shared no scenes with Amy that year. I don't believe we ever saw Anton.

Even the Dark Shadows cast said they played it straight. Before Sheffer's dumb antics, ATWT was not known for low-brow camp...thank God. I know Leslie slept with both boys on Y&R, but did Lorie sleep with Lucas too, or just Lance? Yes, Lisa was hugely important to ATWT in the 1960s and '70s. Fulton was a true superstar.

P&G had allowed Pat Matthews to have an abortion on AW, but back then, girls who chose that option had to suffer horrible consequences like sterility afterwards. I figured from the start that Lisa would end up either not being pregnant at all, or would lose the baby naturally via a miscarriage. A character having sex with multiple partners from the same family is rather revolting, but it happens often in daytime. Laura Spencer and the Horton brothers on Days, Leslie Jackson and the Bauer boys on TGL, Reva Shayne and all the Lewis men, TGL, Brooke and the Forresters (B&B), Bob and the Sullivan sisters (ATWT). I've always found it icky. I could never sleep with my husband's brother or father. Ewww.

Yes and yes.

I think La Fulton was being a bit...theatrical in her description of Lisa's "phantom fetus" story. It did not play out as dumb as she describes it, LOL, at least to me. While dating Donald Hughes, Lisa began experiencing signs that suggested she was expecting. She thought she knew the symptoms after having had two children already. She did wonder aloud how she could possibly be pregnant, when she had been celibate recently. I'm sure Fulton felt the storyline went on forever, but keep in mind that particularly back then, time was pretty elastic on the soaps. A few weeks in Oakdale could stretch out for months in real life. So Lisa was perplexed about potentially being pregnant, worried about it for a few Oakdale weeks, and then was diagnosed as having an ovarian cyst. Voila, the mystery was solved. It might have been improbable that a woman could think she was pregnant under such circumstances, but we have seen crazier stories on daytime TV. Before hooking up with Donald, Lisa had had an affair with Dr. Michael Shea, who was married to Ellen Stewart's mother Claire Lowell. This destroyed poor Claire and was the genesis of the decades-long bitterness Ellen felt towards Lisa. (Ellen continued to snipe at Lisa for YEARS.) Dr. Shea was a self-serving villain who initially refused to divorce his meal-ticket Claire even when Lisa ended up pregnant. After Claire was told about the baby, she divorced Michael and told him to marry Lisa for the sake of the child, but by then, Lisa had come to realize what an awful person he was, and she did not want Michael anymore. Unfortunately, Michael discovered that Lisa's son Tom was involved in drugs, and by using this information, he blackmailed Lisa into marrying him. He wanted another rich woman to use, and he was not going to take no for an answer. Lisa, being Lisa, did not take this lying down. She may have been blackmailed into marrying Dr. Shea, but she could not resist tormenting him and making his life miserable. Knowing what a horndog he was, Lisa would get all dolled up and parade around in front of him in sexy negligees. Once he was aroused beyond endurance, Lisa would march into the bedroom--alone--and bolt the door. "Do you want me, Michael? Do you want me the way a man wants a woman?" "Oh yes, Lisa! Yes, yes, yes, YES!!!!!!!!" "Well, THAT'S JUST TOO BAD!!!" SLAM GOES THE DOOR. It was hilarious, and the audience enjoyed watching Lisa taunting him. Eileen Fulton played this material to the hilt, let me tell you. Viewers who only saw Lisa in the show's later, declining years, when the character was an irrelevant talk-do, don't know what they missed!

Mart Hulswit's Ed was adorable! At the time, Vanessa was shallow and flippant and I thought Ed was too good for her.

I was SHOCKED when she returned. Thrilled, because I adored Penny, but shocked that Prinz agreed to do it. I guess enough time had passed and some of her bitterness had faded. I remember her saying that she would only return to ATWT if her father were in a Nazi death camp, and her reappearance as Penny was the sole way to get him released. I would say that way back then, the women on the show were portrayed as more emotional and neurotic, while the men in their lives were the stoic ports in the storm.

I was just about to post that picture of Dorin. In this shot, she is not wearing the little facial mole the show had her wear, to look more like Prinz. But you can see the resemblance. Ha! I wish someone would interview Fulton now, about Sheffer and the damage he did to the show. Without fear of network or sponsor retaliation, I'll bet she would have a thing or two to say!

Phoebe Dorin was a decent actress and actually looked a bit like Rosemary Prinz. I thought if she had been cast as another character, she would have found greater success on ATWT. However, Prinz was BELOVED by the audience, one of daytime TV's first real superstars, and I knew from the moment Dorin first walked into the Hughes' kitchen that the audience would reject her. She lasted less than a year, as I recall, in 1971.

ATWT in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s was astonishingly good and consistent in terms of quality, tone, and characterization. Oakdalians spoke and behaved like people you might actually know in real life, and had long, intimate, character-delineating conversations. It was subtle. This lured you in, forced you to pay attention, and got you emotionally attached to the Hughes and Lowell/Stewart families. Many long, drawn-out scenes had deep and powerful subtext which would only be apparent to viewers who knew and understood the characters well. Storylines, while romanticized and occasionally melodramatic, were still grounded in reality. Family mattered, community mattered, relationships mattered. Multiple generations interacted with each other. The actors were chosen for their interesting screen presence and acting ability, not because they had six-packs or looked like Playboy bunnies in bikinis. We were presented with contemporary, adult material in a tasteful, thought-provoking manner. In the early 1980s, producer Mary Ellis Bunim and P&G tried to "youthify" and "modernize" the show, but only ended up decimating its core, destroying its tone and style and consistency, and driving a huge portion of the loyal audience away. Thank God, Robert Calhoun replaced Bunim as producer, and Douglas Marland came aboard as head writer after a string of weak writing regimes. Core characters like Nancy and Chris Hughes returned full time, a sense of community and continuity were restored, and Oakdale felt like home again. Towards the end of his run, some of Marland's work was weaker than usual, and I was never a fan of the Snyders, but I appreciated Marland's dedication to using the veteran, core characters and weaving history into his present-day stories. Even the "worst" Marland material was better than Passanante's ((ahem)) "best" work. I would say ATWT was great from 1956 to about 1980, and then again from about 1985 to 1992-3. After that, we had ups and downs, but for a good 32 years at least, it was a pleasure to visit Oakdale every day. I have many fond memories. The reason I bemoan the final decade of the show is because that is when it became clear the show would never again be the literate, polished, adult character study it was created to be. But it had been a class act for decades!

Many people, from all walks of life, stay in jobs hoping that conditions there will eventually improve, or because of economic necessity. As she grew older, other acting opportunities would have been rare, so it makes sense that Fulton would choose to stay and ride out the storm. The baffling part to me has always been why the show kept her at all, and why TPTB did not eliminate Lisa completely during the Sheffer years instead of nominally keep the character around but "using" her in such a minimal and degrading way.

The whole situation with Fulton is baffling. I remember many years before the show ended, P&G wanted Kathryn Hays and Helen Wagner to agree to cuts in their 2-day-a-week guarantees, and they refused. Everyone must have worked out a deal because the ladies stayed put, but in later years, particularly starting with Sheffer's reign of terror and moving forward, neither Hays nor Wagner were seen at least twice a week. Fulton must have had a similar guarantee, at some point. Did all the vets quietly allow their guarantees to be eliminated? P&G clearly did not respect or value Fulton any more. The fact that she continued on the show at all, sometimes not appearing for weeks and often showing up to recite a handful of irrelevant lines about other characters' stories, is hard to understand. They continued to give her special billing at the end of the crawl right up until the show went off the air, too. Why did they just not fire her 10-15 years before the show's death? Emily McLaughlin's (Jessie, GH) daughter stated that her mother was being protected by some PTB at ABC, even when the actress was unable to fulfil her guarantees and even when the character of Jessie had became a minor background player who was almost never seen. Maybe Fulton had an ally at the network or P&G, and she did not want to quit on her own, so she remained and languished in the background.