EricMontreal22

On 9/15/2018 at 4:32 PM, Pine Charles said:

 

Thanks for making me aware this was posted!  I know not every soap fan will agree but this is like perfect soap for me. 

On 5/7/2018 at 11:05 AM, MichaelGL said:

 

1.) Rita Lakin - Her Doctors stint was the last time the show was consistently enjoyable IMO.

 

 

Rita Lakin wrote Peyton Place: The Next Generation, a TV Movie that was a planned pilot for an 80s prime time soap update of PP. 

3 minutes ago, Vee said:

It was a Michael Fairman interview (naturally).

 

IIRC Gottlieb did mastermind the DID arc but left in '94. I thought Horgan and co. did a fairly good job of maintaining the existing style and tone until '96, though others disagree. She's not Linda Gottlieb but she's never gotten enough credit for her work, which is part of the reason I was happy to have her back at OLTL 2.0 - instantly the show was, tonally, serious and adult again.

Completely agreed--and I wouldn't be surprised if Gottlieb had approved the story before she left.

Great stuff--I assume Susan Bedsow Horgan was in place as EP by then (which is funny as I used to always just assume the DID must have been another story under Gottlieb).  Her first year was good, then (around the time Griffith left and Malone went solo) it became a mess--of course a mess that looked great next to the following years.

Where is the Giles interview from?  Having recently reread the Giles book they do mention how frustrated Roy was with the knowledge his character had a fatal disease but for whatever reason the writers hadn't seemed to have decided what disease it would be...  So he had to play a lot of coughing, etc.

53 minutes ago, Vee said:

Jarrod has departed because we were all too critical of bad soaps.

Well since he LOVES James Lipton....  maybe that's for the best.

On 6/18/2018 at 11:59 AM, JarrodMFiresofLove said:

During this process I see what writers in the genre have influenced me most. My greatest influences seem to be Stuart Blackburn, Kim Revill (love her), Bill Bell, Robert Shaw, Jean Rouverol, Claire Labine, Camille Marchetta, James Lipton, Henry Slesar, Barbara Esenstein & James Harmon Brown; Bridget Dobson; James Reilly; Pam Long; Doug Marland; Eileen & Robert Mason Pollock; and of course Agnes Nixon.

 

Great choices, especially nice to see the Brits (I agree with your picks) and even some I wouldn't list like Sesentsen and Brown whose Loving and The City (after a very rough first six months) I particularly enjoyed.  I guess I can see someone listing Reilly who I wouldn't but....  James Lipton?  The ultimate hack?  Has he EVER written decent soap opera (or plays or musicals--all flops) for that matter? 

And I'll say it again, while maybe he only had one great stint, I'm shocked no one has mentioned Michael Malone at all.

48 minutes ago, Vee said:

That's bizarre. Could Eli have been Pam Long? I doubt it.

Found the quote: 

PJ asks: Right after you left OLTL, Eli, the HIV-positive teenager Carlotta Vega adopted, vanished without a trace. If you had stayed, what story did you have planned for him?
Claire Labine: I don’t remember Eli.  I don’t think he was my invention, he was probably Jill's [Farren Phelps].  I wouldn’t have done another HIV story, I had done that with Stone [on GENERAL HOSPITAL].  I wouldn’t have touched another HIV story for a long time.  I felt we had given that our all and I wouldn’t have gone back to that. 

Here's the link to her full interview--well worth reading when someone has the time--it and the Wisner Washam interview on the same site are essential (well essential to me ). 
https://www.welovesoaps.net/2010/02/claire-labine-answered-your-questions.html

On 6/18/2018 at 3:45 AM, danfling said:

Concerning Agnes Nixon, I have not liked her mystery storylines.   I am basing this on the mysteries of All My Children.   Her work on the early One Life to Live (which was co-written with Don Wallace and Paul Wallace) may have been better, but the show did not air in my vicinity during that time.  (just from 1971 on)

 

The Jason Maxwell murder was not very satisfying when it was revealed that Mona was his killer (although she did not remember and spent no time imprisoned).

 

The Eddie Dorance murder had more elements of mystery, but the deathbed confession of Claudette (a longtime character who had spent years in the spotlight but whose appearances had mostly disappeared to the background) was not very satisfying.  The Lars Bogart murder was also much better,  and I think that Ms. Nixon intended that Silver be the killer.  (The storyline that evolved about Lars being a Naxi and that he and Olga were siblings were not the best.)

 

The Sybil Thorne murder was probably the best in terms of mystery.

 

I have read that Henry Slesar wrote that the writer had to know who the murderer is in a good murder mystery and that the writing be done with that in mind.   I have the impression that Ms. Nixon does not follow that rule.   The Alex McIntyre mystery is one in which I felt that the show had no idea of the identity of the murderer (Will Courtlandt) and only decided to write the character off the show at the next-to-the-last minute.   

 

It took little deduction for me to know that it was Mr. U who was stealing Palmer's money (although I was not sure of the motive).

 

Furthermore, I have long felt that Taylor Roxbury-Cannon was one of the most intriguing characters that Ms. Nixon ever created with so many storyline possibilities.  However, at some point, the character was re-imagined and recast (with a very good actress who had little storyline) and that the character was ruined.   However, that may not have been the doing of Ms. Nixon.

 

I felt that the Louie Greco murder mystery was excellent, but I think that it was written my Lorraine Broderick. (Please correct me if I am wrong.)

 

Ms. Nixon may be accused of using the romantic triangle too often, but she used it effectively, and she was the master of that - therefore I refuse to criticize her for that (which made up much of her writing style).  She was determined to reunite Frank and Nancy, so other characters such as Caroline was not written as well rounded as others in her many romantic triangles.

 

Agnes Nixon, I feel, was the best writer.   She created a whole town of characters who we loved to watch.   The mysteries, however, were lacking.

 

 

 

 

Also, concerning Ms. Nixon, the introduction of Stuart Chandler was quite a shock.   It is one of the few times that I can remember in daytime television that I actually screamed when Stuart's existence was revealed.   How Bonnie McFannden, Ellen Chandler, and Erica Chandler were used in building the intrigue is extremely commendable!

The use of the Stuart in later storylines was good, and characters such as Stuart and Lily Montgomery  are not too common on daytime television.

 

The  hysteria surrounding Michael Delaney as the gay high school teacher is to be commended.   However, I figured out almost immediately that Kevin Sheffield would be revealed as a gay character.

 

I particularly liked the reactions of Hector Santos and Opal.  Opal was keeping her own secret that she had borne a bi-racial son.

 

I liked Erica's new family after her marriage of Jackson.

This is the problem about talking about a headwriter.  I know this is an old post but endulge me...

Many of the stories you mention were not penned by Nixon.  She WAS involved to varying degrees during all of the stories you talk about, but how involved is open to consideration (and from a technical viewpoint many of them were during eras when other writers--Washam, Broderick and McTavish) had the official HW credit. 

I have no idea what you mean about the Alec McIntyre being killed by Will story is lol but if you mean the Who Killed Will story (which I believe was before Alec was even introduced) it seems that was spearheaded, and the first major story by McTavish.  As  kid I found it riveting but probably would less so (McTavish repeated many of the plot points in her last stint when she had the Michael Cambias murder mystery).  In Agnes Nixon's memoirs (which are unfortunately so unclear about dates and facts--like she talks about co-HW One Life to Live with the "great" Gordon Russell, and I agree he was great, but doesn't give what years, she sometimes calls various AMC writers she mentions co-HWs, she never really mentions when she wasn't HW of that show except to mention how Pratt was so terrible, though she doesn't name him, and that he pushed her out of the writing room during that time, etc, etc). 

The Michael Cambias/Kevin Sheffield storyline was instigated by the underrated Hal Corley who worked and ran it past Lorraine Broderick (who was official HW at the time) and Agnes Nixon did offer input.  I know this from an interview I did with Corley and I have no reason to not take him at his word. 

There are other examples I can mention in your examples (like I think Taylor was probably created, as much as we wanna vilify her, by Megan McTavish--credit due).   And of course as mentioned many of things we credit to Agnes were Wisner Washam, although I disagree with Khan--I think the Cortlands were all Agnes.  She mentions basing Palmer in many ways on her father, etc.  Plus she does have a penchant for the Gothic (she repeated much of it with the Natalie in the Well/Wildwind/Wife in the Attic story arc during her second last stint as official HW).  When she wrote Loving in late 93-94 she did the very Gothic Dante with his "pet" Curtis in a cage story as well as the Gilber/Jeremy double.  I know several here have dissed Agnes Nixon's Gothic storylines but I find them kinda endearing in their craziness, even if I admit they're not fully successful.  Nixon was a fan of Dark Shadows afterall (hence her hiring their writers for OLTL) and loved the Gothic qualities of Victorian authors including the serials of DIckens and Collins.

In fact she strikes me as truly the most Dickens (or more so Wilkie Collins) influenced headwriter.  Her mix of tones often struck established soap viewers as odd when AMC started--even Schemering mentions this in his Soap Encyclopedia, but it echoes Dickens entirely.  The sense of a community.  The unabashed dependence on tropes that many mock like coincidence, characters leaving and coming back as quite different (new career, etc), near-caricatured rich as well as lower class characters with the non-caricatures "identify" characters tending to be squarely middle class.  Somewhat bland but endearing young lover heroes and heroines.  Amnesia.  The use of psychological AND physical doubling.  The use of HUMOUR--including villains who could be broadly humorous one moment and then genuinely scary the next.  A huge reliance on revelations of a characters past.  And, of course, the use of controversial and genuinely groundbreaking social relevancy and discussion in her storylines.  I've written a lot in grad school about the Dickens and later "sensation fiction" serials of the Victorian era and the similarities to soaps, but especially Nixon's soaps is striking.  One big complaint of critics at the time (aside from the familiar to soap fan complaint about how people were being mindlessly hooked on serials, were confusing fiction with reality, were wasting time obsessing and worrying about fictional characters, etc) was that a Dickens serial from installment to installment would move from satire, to touching sentimentality, to outright Gothic horror, etc.  Guess what?  Many 1970s critics of Agnes Nixon, and particularly of AMC (which is far more traditional in setup than her work on OLTL) was that the tone would vacillate sharply from scene to scene.  And I love that. 

It's a cliche used to make soap opera writing sound "important" when soap fans mention their ancestry in Dickens' serials, but with Agnes Nixon it's true and this is where she is different from Irna, or Bill Bell, or more literary later writers like Lemay (I think Michael Malone, who shockingly has not been mentioned here, also has that Dickens influence and is very similar to Nixon albeit FAR more literary). 

On 6/18/2018 at 12:31 PM, danfling said:

Ms. Labine and son certainly did tug at the viewers' heartstrings when she created Eli, the young man with AIDS on One Life to Live.  However, that character later simply disappeared from the story, and that was unfortunate.

 Who are these:  Stuart Blackburn, Kim Revill and Camille Marchetta?

In her We Love Soaps interview, Claire is asked about the Eli storyline and she claims it must have been before or after her time and to have ZERO knowledge of it, for what it's worth.

On 5/16/2018 at 4:58 PM, Soaplovers said:

Now that I've seen Cenedella in action on The Doctors.. I can see why some @vetsoapfan isn't too keen on him, but he certainly isn't the worst of writers... more like the middle of the pack.  I can't wait to see pre GH Depriest on The Doctors (I liked her brief stint on AMC and her first stint on AW wasn't that bad.. but everything after...no comment).

 

I see a lot of Gabrielle Upton mentioned as a headwriter of the 70s... I've heard good and bad things about that writer.

I think Canedella is the definition of mediocre.  I've recently befriended a woman who was a sort of "pitch hitter" writer on soaps in the early 70s--she has copies and sent me several of her scripts which have notes from the individual headwriters, etc (apparently back then, when writing staffs were so small, HWs would call people like her when they needed a script or re-write fast and their team was too busy).  She worked with Candella on AW and Somerset and Nixon on AMC and OLTL.  Not to anyone's surprise but the quality of the work and the detail of the notes by the two HWs is so vastly different, it's shocking.  I know one soap writer called working with Nixon and Marland on Loving Hell because Nixon would write SOOO many notes for revision in the margins of his scripts.  That would be frustrating to work with, but it also shows how much she cared about the quality, and maintaining a voice and tone, she felt towards her shows.

This brings up DePriest who, with her work at The Doctors (which at the least is more exciting than Canedella's) led me to a question.  Most of her soap stints have been brief.  Was that by design?  At one point she seemed to be a go-to woman to come in when a soap was floundering and shake things up as an interim writer and then leave--specifically at AMC when it was slinking in the ratings just as FMB came in as EP around 1989 and she came in briefly (though of course it was Nixon herself who replaced her) and then she seemed to (less successfully) move on to do the same job at the very troubled OLTL.  I will say I loved her work at Sunset Beach, the only time I can say that about the show--it was fun, soap parody (unlike the awful, insulting and just plain dull soap parody of Passions).  And certainly her own Where the Heart Is is the one "lost" soap I'd most like to see (well along with Lovers and Friends) although she was quickly replaced there I believe and people liked it best when it was Labine/Avila's first writing stint.

9 hours ago, danfling said:

In the Dick Cavett clip above, Jack Wood is mentioned. I don't know much about him. Does anyone the can share information post about him?

Nixon's memoir is a mess of course (and for good reason--writing it--largely by dictation--post stroke, passing away before a final draft, etc) but has some great anecdotes.  I believe she mentions Wood and might even go as far as calling him an associate headwriter with a little anecdote.  It's around the section where she mentions how she met Broderick (although timeline wise that musta been ten or so years later) when Broderick was a university faculty member and had heard a male student bragging about being a writer on AMC (apparently he did a test script that was turned down) so Broderick wrote in that she wanted to try.  I'll have to check on what she says abotu Wood but she clearly thought of him at some point as one of the top writers/collaborators.

Pine Charles thanks for that clip again--I hadn't seen it since it was first posted and deleted--it's pretty great.

15 hours ago, Taoboi said:

IT'S AN ERIC!!! Hey, hope things are well. I, too, have seen past posts over at A.V. and wondered how you been.

Ta!  Nice to be back

57 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

Nice to see you posting again! Your awesome Aidan Turner was classic....:)........

Ha from Geri's Bag it Up video!  I forgot about that, I'll have to pull it out again

10 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

Eric returns!

On 9/11/2018 at 8:41 PM, Khan said:

 

At one time, AMC was reportedly the most videotaped series on TV.

Yes and (reportedly) even when AMC's ratings were declining in the late 90s it still remained the most recorded *soap opera* (of course I'm sure that didn't last...)

3 hours ago, All My Shadows said:

Just another reason why I'd give anything to see more episodes from this truly golden age of AMC. In the ep surrounding Tom and Erica's wedding, we see brief glimpses of Frank and Caroline at the wedding while Nancy had just given birth the same day to Carl Jr.

ETA: And yes, Eric, you have been so missed!

Great to see you here  

Thanks for detailing the blanks--and yeah, man, I'd love to see some of that.  As you say, it should mostly all be there... 
Lisa Wilkinson as Nancy is one of the guests who came to Ruth and Joe's housewarming for the 25th anniversary week.

3 hours ago, Vee said:

It is so good to see you back as opposed to finding ghosts of your posts at the old A.V. Club.

Nice to be back and see familiar faces (particularly yours!)  I'll try to stick around for a while. 

1 hour ago, danfling said:

Just to be thorough, All My Children did have an African-American character in its original cast.   Hilda Haynes played nurse Lois Sloan.   I never saw her, but I understand that she was Ruth's good friend and confidant during her marriage (or part of it) to Ted.    She may have also done some protesting with Amy's group.

I think that all the new ABC soap operas after the introduction of One Life to Live featured African-American characters.  (All My Children, The Best of Everyting, A World Apart, Ryan's Hope, etc.). 

 

ABC's final soap opera which was MOSTLY white was Dark Shadows, and even that show featured at least two African-American characters for brief times.

Thanks for the correction--I see she gets a brief mention in the AMC coffee table book.  Of course not a major storyline like Ellen implies...

Loving didn't have any black contract players at first, did it??  (I mean Debbi Morgan had a somewhat important role in the pilot but that doesn't count...)

On 1/27/2017 at 3:03 AM, Vee said:

Amazing! Which of the 80 writing teams in the early '90s did these '94 eps?

Ha, I haven't been here in a very long while.  So to answer a year and a half later...  Carl said in this thread I would know for sure--and yeah, this is from the Agnes Nixon return that I really like (Nov 93 to about Nov/Dec 94).  I always wonder if there was any advertising at the time about her return--it doesn't seem like it.

Her Loving return featured, as Carl also says, a large cast, but also is one of her several rather Gothic eras (I guess she had just written the whole Natalie in a well/Wildwind/wife in the attic stuff for AMC so maybe it was a phase in general), leading off with the whole Dante's "pet" story that introduced Tess (the pet being of course Curtis) and later going into the ridiculous but, I thought, enjoyable Gilbert--Jeremy's evil twin--story.  I watched all this as it aired, but there used to be more of the Dante stuff on YT--it all seems to be gone, which is too bad.  (Oh, I think she also introduced Jacob--speaking of doubles--but that may have been Addie Walsh's brief period after her which was an interim before Brown/Esensten came to close off the show).  I really wish there was some interview or writing about why she returned and the stories, but of course it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere. 

Sadly that May 4th episode seems to be gone and I missed it--however a month back the same person posted the May 6th episode following the May 5th one which is still linked here, and I haven't seen it in this thread yet, so here ya go (the sound goes badly off sync in the middle for four or so minutes but gets back).  Some funny stuff, even if nothing major was happening in these episodes. 
 

On 9/7/2018 at 1:03 PM, Darn said:

My mother tells me that the black audience knew Clara/Carla was black. We're usually good at spotting our people.

Some of the audience seemed to catch on in general.  Austin Texas of course pulled the show due to protests when Carla kissed the black doctor.  And several sources have quoted this letter from a bigot (male) in Seattle:   I protest that white woman kissing that black ape doctor.  But I’m getting confused.  If Carla turns out to be black, I want to register a protest for her kissing the white Dr. Craig

On 9/5/2018 at 7:58 AM, danfling said:

I was referring to the character played by Francesca James, who was not very nice.  I don't remember her last name, and her name may have been spelled "Marcy."

Marcy, dressed as Nicki, was going to kill Vince and frame Vicki/Nicki.  Steve confronted her and Marcy decided to change her plan to kill Steve (Vicki's husband of course).  During the struggle Marcy dropped her purse (which had a note from "Nicki" talking about her plan) and a vagrant stole it--Steve lunged for the gun and it went off, killing Marcy.  Ed Hall was convinced Steve killed Marcy and the only evidence that it was in self defense was in that purse.  At the very last minute a stranger coming into town found the purse--it was Joe Riley.  Joe was suffering from a fatal brain aneurysm and didn't want to reveal his return, memory gain, bla bla, so he sent the evidence to Steve's lawyer and Steve got off.  And francesca James moved to Pine Valley

The Marcy storyline always seems like one of those great, crazy-ass Agnes Nixon stories that I admit to loving, yet it rarely ever gets mentioned in soap books, etc--and yet every fan of OLTL I know who watched back then seems to remember and love it.

17 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

 

Thanks. I didn't know that. Did Arley ever do more daytime? It's a shame OLTL didn't keep her on in some role. 

I know she was a producer for the final year of Search for Tomorrow--but that's all I know

On 9/7/2018 at 2:22 PM, Darn said:

This interview is fascinating. She's claiming that in 1969-70 that a 1/3 of the audience was black and that ABC had the numbers to back this up, although because she didn't have representation she wasn't privy to this. Wasn't there research from the 90s-early 2000s claiming the same thing?

Also she mentioned that AMC had some big black story when it first started? Did it? I feel like the black presence on AMC started (and ended almost) with Angie and Jesse.

 

 

 

 

Watch the whole thing. Heartbreaking!

The 1/3 black audiences must have been some private poll or something.  The Nielsens didn't take *any* demos at the time--that started sometime in the early 70s when they realized the "importance" of the 18-49 age range though I know nothing about them starting to keep track of viewers outside of gender and age.  I wouldn't doubt it, myself--where else in daytime (and barely in primetime) could black viewers see black characters in an actual storyline at that time?  But, I'm not sure how official we can take that number (and would it be 1/3 across the country or just in NYC?)  Not that it really matters.

AMC certainly did not have a "big black story" at first--in fact its original setup was very WASPish and traditional (ironic since Nixon so wanted to move out of, as she said, "WASP Valley" when she created OLTL--but of course she wrote AMC's bible--which she stuck to extremely closely--back in 1964-65).  I *believe* (Carl can you correct me?) that Frank Grant joined in 1971 as a doctor at the hospital--basically a sounding board--and Nancy Grant, his wife, first appeared in 1972.  In All Her Children, published in Jan 1976, author Dan Wakefield in his long interview with Agnes Nixon about upcoming stories tells him how she finally has found "the room" to tell their story that she's wanted to for a few years and that it should start soon--so... 1975 ish I guess?), and Dan mentions he's glad because Frank has had no life of his own so far and Nancy has barely appeared.  She goes on about how the story will not be related to race but to gender issues--and I know the major story they got involved Nancy wanting to move to Chicago (?) to be a social worker or something but Frank not willing to relocate himself, even though he had a job there he could take, just for her sake.  So she moved anyway and I believe had a non-sexual romance there, eventually Frank coming to his senses, etc.  However as far as I know their next major story came with the introduction of Jesse.  So long story short, she is mistaken there. 

On 9/8/2018 at 9:16 AM, DRW50 said:

 

 

 

 

I wonder how much of Jean Arley's exit was down to celebrating Ellen Holly and Lillian Hayman. I figured she was mostly let go because of ratings issues. 

I've just finally watched these now.  Great (and also depressing) stuff.  I will say that as to Arley's firing, I think this is ONE instance where Ellen is projecting--I hate to say or suspect that, I can understand where she's coming from, but...   In Llanview in the Afternoon the various interviewed people make it sound like ABC never had all that much faith in Arley (remember it was Nixon who hired Stuart away to Loving--I think too since he was starting there he said he would get a bigger chunk of the profits or something) and it seems like she was kinda a place holder, and as soon as Rauch showed interest they jumped at hiring this "super producer".  For contractual reasons originally it was said Arley and Rauch would co-produce (has that ever worked?  I guess technically DAYS has done that), but that everyone there knew Rauch would never go for that and Arley was just quietly dismissed. 

On 9/8/2018 at 2:22 PM, KMan101 said:

IShe probably felt she'd be used and discarded. (Although, social wise, that was a fairly solid period for the ABC soaps; she would have worked well in the more diverse Llanview Gottlieb/Griffith/Malone wanted - and hopefully treated better, but I remember them not having a use for Wanda and discarding her)

 

As Vee said, Marilyn Chris chose to retire.  I do wonder if Malone et al. were considering doing more with the Woleks.  The 25th Anniversary episode (which wasn't a clips episode) is anchored by scenes between Larry and Wanda talking about how great Llanview is, etc, (to... one of the kids who had just been rescued... CJ?)  And then a month or two later Wanda, who was still being seen relatively regularly, left, and that was when we began to see virtually nothing of Larry except in the hospital (to be fair that started happening when his last Dan recast left in 1991).  Maybe when Chris left they just decided to give up on the Woleks?  I mean I know the Vegas became their working class family on the show, and were hispanic, etc, but...

On 9/8/2018 at 2:53 PM, BetterForgotten said:

 

 

On 9/8/2018 at 3:02 PM, BetterForgotten said:

I guess Holly and Hayman could have rightfully wondered why Agnes couldn't find room for them on her much higher-rated and higher-profile soap (AMC). But I do respect them for not wanting scraps after they were fired from OLTL - LOV changed its identity a million times during its run, who is to say they wouldn't have eventually be treated the same way there? 

 

 

Although Agnes Nixon kept ownership of LOV so she would have had final say--unlike at OLTL, so I'd like to think she wouldn't have allowed it (even if she appears to have only returned to actually do all that much with the writing during her first two (?) year stint when Marland left and then in very late 93-94.

As for joining AMC--though ABC owned the show, of course at that time Agnes could have gotten them on it.  I hate to say this, but it might have been felt (not necessarily by Agnes but by TPTB) that AMC already had its "fair share" of major black characters at that time?

57 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

It's good to see you here again! I had forgotten I used to type those up. If there's ever anything else for AMC in those years (in terms of magazine articles) you think you might need, let me know and I'll see if I can help. 

Thanks!  Really ANY critical reviews like this from AMC at ANY era (even recently), OLTL during the 60s/70s and the first Malone era and Loving would be of help for my focus.  As you say somewhere here... most of the soap press really wasn't offering critical views at all, so I know it's pretty obscure stuff, but...

Nice to see you again as well

On 7/3/2011 at 2:16 AM, DRW50 said:

From the July 1974 Daytime TV Stars.

 

Deborah Channel reviews AMC.

 

It's Gregorian Chant, Pretending To Be Bach

 

The basic dramatic conflicts and plot core of All My Children are usually satisfying and well-constructed; the only problem is, however, that these elements are terribly conventional and at least three or four years behind the broad, rapid, and important creative developments that have happened on other serials. It is almost as if Agnes Nixon, the creator and over-seer of All My Children, were still struggling with the mechanics of Gregorian chant, while the rest of soapland has advanced to Bach, and occasionally even Beethoven. Where most other serials - learning their lessons from the overall disaster that happened in soapland three or four years ago, when creativity in the writing and producing of serials had dropped so low that millions of viewers were simply giving up on them and turning to the game shows (awful as they are) - have stopped using "devices" such as the obligatory murder trial in which the heroine or hero is threatened and then exonerated, or the return of a husband after being assumed dead, or the fabricated conflicts between a rich family and a poor one, Mrs. Nixon chooses to run these worn out, useless plot talismans into the ground on All My Children. Interetingly though, even Mrs. Nixon's mentor, the late Irna Phillips (who, along with the Hummerts of radio, had practically invented all those old devices, such as the amnesia victims who stumbled in and out of her radio serials), eventuall thought it prudent to abandon, in her own writing, the old-fashioned techniques that Mrs. Nixon still refuses to let go of.

 

Of course much has been written about All My Children's "relevance" in using many references to the Viet Nam war, filming a double-amputee Vietnamese boy saving the life of Phillip Brent (Nicholas Benedict), speeches by Ruth Brent (Mary Fickett) against the cruelty of war. Very admirable. But this is like packaging a Gergorian chant LP in a jacket decorated with a Jackson Pollock painting. Mrs. Nixon's product is still in need of a real creative overhaul, and real relevance, not the decorative kind. For example, the serial's obsession with focusing on the wealthy Tylers, especially Phoebe Tyler, and their continual concern over marrying their children "into the right families" is no longer a typical dilemma of twentieth century America, and is therefore unreal and irrelevant. Society today is concerned with interracial and interethnic problems, rather than intereconimic ones (which were interesting to writers like Henry James fifty years ago, but not today). Trying to justify dinosaurs like the Tylers with contrasting "contemporary" story lines such as that of Phillip Brent's troubling re-aclimation to Pine Valley after his return from Viet Nam (which is just a rehashing of the old amnesia-victim device) is merely embarrassing camouflage of the truth of All My Children's real vintage.

 

While Mrs. Nixon does not display much creative vision with Children, she at least knows how to tell a story. Her invention of the character of Nick Davis (much like her invention of Steven Frame when she ws writing Another World) was sheer felicity. Her instinctive understanding that the combination of heel and incorrigible romanticist is always of great interest to an audience - and especially so when the heel is played by an actor with as much talent as Larry Keith - shows that Mrs. Nixon at least knows her viewers. His great love, Ann Tyler, is also a well-executed, involving character, played with delicatesse by the marvelous Judith Barcroft. The story of the star-crossed lovers Ann and Nick, although it has been going on for years, and although there seems to be little interest on the part of the writers to explore the real source of the barrier which keeps them from finding the happiness that they seek, is nevertheless continually compelling.

 

The other story lines range from lukewarm to catatonically uninteresting. Charles Frank and Susan Lucci do an excellent job of portraying the romantic antagonists of Jeff and Erica Martin, considering the poverty of dialogue and storyline that they have to cope with. Erica comes off like the Evil Queen in a fairy tale: beautiful but deadly, neurotic but together enough to be more cunning than anyone else in the story. She parades about in beautiful clothes, getting involved in murder conspiracies, leaving her serpentine words all over Pine Valley to haunt all the good people, while poor Jeff - struggling to get free of her so that he can marry the spotless Cinderella of the story, Mary Kennicott (well played by Susan Blanchard) - must endure months and months of a murder trial, after Erica's New York boyfriend is bumped off by some unknown fiend. Jeff and Mary are all good; Erica is the demon incarnate. This is all bona fide Soap Cliche; but even so. It might work better if the dialoguers and plotters (Mrs. Nixon has overall control, but this sort of work is done by sub-writers under her direction) were to give these fairy tale people more substance, more dimension in their interrelationships. Jeff, as written, seems duller than pea soup, for he does little more in the story than defend himself from the tyranny of others. Erica is hardly more interesting, although she is a shade more laughable. Supposedly Pine Valley has never been menaced by a more loathsome human being, but all I see is an actress doing her best to prance around, look glamorous, and appear menacing with such remarks as, "Oh, Mary, what a beautiful engagement ring Jeff gave you...but you know, the one he gave me was much bigger!"

 

However, what I find much more patently offensive about All My Children than some of this one-dimensional writing is the show's direction. This is highly unusual, for on every other serial the work of the directors is at least as good, and normally much better, than the day to day dialogue writing. Yet on All My Children the directors seem to do their best to destroy any script interest they find. Actors are encouraged not to talk to one another, but to declaim, to announce their feelings, as in the old silent movies. Every time Bill Mooney, as lawyer Paul Martin, must say something, it's as if he were in a courtroom; when he talks to his wife Ann, or father-in-law, Dr. Tyler, he doesn't just talk, he addresses a jury. There's so much shouting going on on All My Children that occasionally I have trouble trying to pick out what the characters are really trying to say to one another.

 

Another offensive example of the above is Ruth Warrick's incredible portrayal of Phoebe Tyler. I simply can't believe that a fine, experienced actress like Ruth Warrick has by herself, without coersion, chosen to caricature her role - not simply play it. On camera, she wiggles and giggles and gsticulates as if she were playing in a parlour game. With every line, she finds it necessary to throw her arms about spastically and underscore every other word she says with kindergarten monotonousness. Recently, when Ann, her daughter, was close to death after a terrible car crash, I saw not a hint of true grief in Miss Warrick's acting, only a lot of absurd writithing on chairs and dreary semi-orgasmic hysterics. Granted, Phoebe Tyler is supposed to be a silly woman, but even silly women show real sadness when their offspring are on the verge of death. Judging from the way other actors on All My Children are directed, my only conclusion is that Miss Warrick has been seduced into this God-awful freak show she puts on as a "grand dame" by either the directors, or the producers, or both.

 

Some actors, however, seem immune to this self-destructiveness that the directors impose upon the rest of the cast. Ray McDonnell and Mary Fickett, as Dr. Joe and Ruth Martin, always handle themselves with good taste. They know how to do "re-cap," have their pacing honed down to a fine art, and are wonderful to watch. Occasionally Miss Fickett is thrown off by some of the other "declaimers" in the cast, but Mr. McDonnell is never. It also seems to me that Frances Heflin, who plays Mona Kane, manages to cope well with the same declaimers - allowing her voice level to rise unnaturally (for television), in order to keep her pacing on a par with theirs so as not to destroy scenes, but also somehow managing to temper all of the distracting shouting with a real urgency that she conjurs. Eileen Letchworth, as Margo Flax, also does a fine job in the face of poor direction.

 

Among the other shouters, announcers, and silent-movie declaimers on this show are Francesca James (Kitty Shea Davis), Hugh Franklin (Dr. Charles Tyler), and, unfortunately, the new arrival, Nicholas Benedict (Phillip Brent), who is perhaps too young and inexperienced to resist the general repulsive and hysterical mood that the management of this show wishes to encourage. It may be superfluous, but I'll point out that such unsubtle acting may be suited for certain kinds of grade-B crime and horror movies, opera, and legitimate theater (musical pastiches for example), but certainly not for television. Any first year student majoring in radio and television learns that the least little bat of an eye-lid or breath of a performer is magnified ten times in its effect on the audience by the cameo effect of the video camera.

 

Occasionally, switching from nicely-paced shows like Another World and As the World Turns, to All My Children, is a little like going from a quiet Virgin Island beach to the wilds of Siberia. I must admit, however, that the Nick Davis and Ann Martin story is strong enough to make me endure some of that cold weather now and then.

I came here looking for this review as I wanted to pull quotes from it for a Masters thesis I'm doing about Nixon and AMC and soaps and critics (to put it in general terms), and remembered this being posted.  Re-reading it now is kinda hysterical. 

She REALLY doesn't hold back in the second half. It's funny this was in 1974 and the excellent (my fave as everyone here might remember) book All Her Children by Dan Wakefield was written between 1974-75 and all about his immense love for the show and how new and different it feels--they sound like they're talking about completely different shows. I am biased towards AMC and AGnes Nixon but I admit that AMC in some ways felt like a throwback--it used the classic structure ATWT introduced of a rich but troubled family vs a middle class but "good" family which was very old fashioned compared to what Nixon did when she started One Life to Live with its four urban fractured families (as well as the Lords but they were different than traditional soap rich families)--though of course that became lost by the 1980s, and even more to the point Nixon of course wrote the bible for AMC back in 63-65, so first.

However, I think the reviewer fails to realize that characters like Pheobe were *meant* to be somewhat caricatures in the classic Dickens sense--or that Nixon did use soap cliches but in a knowing sometimes even self referential way (although most people generally feel AMC didn't really come into its own--and gain better production values until the second half of the 1970s). As others have suggested this magazine also seemed to have an agenda against all the attention AMC was getting in the press compared to "their" shows. Anyway, thanks for posting this all those years back!

Fascinating--thanks so much for linking these.

I am shocked she didn't get a Globe nom.  This was my fave network show of the past year (I was much more mixed--though I still "enjoyed" if that term can be used--season 1) and I am glad it got some recognition.  I am sorry that American Crime Story seems to have overshadowed it, but not surprised. 

Oh, I believe that!