EricMontreal22

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

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.

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.

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

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. 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

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). 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.

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.

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.

Ta! Nice to be back

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

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...)

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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. 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...

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?

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

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.

Oh, I believe that!

I think because Y&R is seen as such a classic, traditional soap now, people forget that, according to the soap books and press, when it started some complained it was too youth focused. Both Schemering and LaGuardia write about the fact that Nixon's soaps, especially AMC, did focus on youth and bring in a youth audience but would routinely balance it out with only one youth related storyline--Y&R in its early days was criticized by some soap fans as having nearly all youth based storylines (of course, hence the title).