soapfan770

I wasn’t sure where to post this or if this but thought I’d share this somewhere haha. This is a late 1996 interview that Bell gave regarding the show at that point. @YRfan23 @DRW50 BILL BELL KEEPS `Y&R' ON TOP By Associated Press on November 30, 1996 In the world of daytime soap operas, "The Young and the Restless" has the competition conquered. The Emmy-winning CBS show has been the No. 1 ranked soap for eight straight years, quite a feat in television, daytime or otherwise.For those of you who are soap-challenged "Y&R," as it's called, is the one that begins each hour-long episode with the sweeping "Nadia's Theme" and once featured David Hasselhoff and Tom Selleck. And while "Y&R" sports the usual cast of cheating, conniving titans, beefcake and vixens who live in Genoa City, there is a real-life dynasty behind the scenes: the Bell family. At the throne is William J. Bell, a charming 69-year-old who created "Y&R" back in 1973 and remains its head writer; his wife, Lee Phillip Bell, helped create the soap and is a story consultant. For more than a dozen years, their daughter, Lauralee Bell, has played Christine Williams, a model-turned-lawyer. Their son, Bradley Bell, is the executive producer of "Y&R's" sister soap, "The Bold and the Beautiful." And finally there's Bill Bell Jr., the financial whiz behind Bell-Phillip Productions, Inc. Anyone sensing a touch of nepotism here? "They all started at the bottom," Bell insists. It blossomed into a family affair, Bell says, because "it's an exciting field to be in. It's challenging. It's an experience that's difficult to describe." At a celebration to mark the taping of "Y&R's" 6,000th episode in October at CBS Television City, many of the actors credited Bell's longevity for the show's success. “In other soaps you see new producers and writers every four years. Not with this one," says Peter Bergman, who plays Jack Abbott. "We have one decisive voice," chimes in Jeanne Cooper, who has played the wealthy Katherine Chancellor since 1974. Bell began writing daytime in 1956 when he began working with soap legend Irna Phillips, the aunt of Bell's wife, on "Guiding Light," then a 15-minute live show. The following year, Bell joined Phillips as a writer on "As the World Turns" and remained with the series until 1966. In 1964, Bell and Phillips created "Another World," and the following year the pair created "A Private World," prime-time's first continuing serial drama. In 1966, Bell became head writer for "Days of Our Lives," remaining there until 1977. In the meantime, he and his wife created "The Young and the Restless" in 1973, and another soap, "The Bold and the Beautiful," in 1987. "It's exciting to create something from nothing," Bell says, "and then creating the characters and the relationships and casting it and seeing all these pieces come to life. "I can't tell you how euphoric it is! These are your children, these are your people, and you have such a responsibility to them because you love them and are involved with them." When writing sudsy lines for his characters, Bell, who still uses an electric typewriter, says: "You have to get inside the moment. "I tell you, it's fascinating. When you're doing something long enough, strange things happen. I was in a crunch and had decided to have this new character Kurt (recently cast with Leigh McCloskey), but didn't know what I wanted to do with him. "I just sat down and I start writing and got deep inside. In 20 minutes, I had the whole thing worked out. When you've been doing it for 40 years you have a little head start. Is it harder for Bell to write lines for a female character? “It doesn't make any difference, I'm bisexual," he says with a laugh. Bell often gives his characters contemporary, social story lines. His daughter's character, for instance, has been date-raped, sexually harassed and married to a rock star. She also saw her mother die of AIDS. "We have a duty to deal with social issues because it makes us part of the real world," Bell says. "Our viewers can learn from them and benefit from them." The soap recently featured an incendiary tale about a married couple, in which the adulterous husband slept with an HIV-infected woman. The question remains whether the wife and child have been infected. "AIDS had been portrayed as a gay and promiscuous disease and this took it to a different level," says actress Tonya Lee Williams, who plays the wife, Olivia. "It opened eyes about what this disease is about. This let people know this could be them." Bell is so committed to reflecting as much of real life as possible that he has a psychiatrist read every script to make suggestions "in terms of accuracy or depth or something that we may have omitted." And an attorney looks over any legal story lines. While his shows may go on indefinitely, so may Bell, who is showing no signs of slowing down. "I have another soap opera in the works," he says slyly. As expected, he refuses to say more.

Derek Thurston just doesn’t seem worth the time that Katherine & Jill would fight over and the story eventually delved into the more gothic side of things between Katherine paying Derek off to leave Jill to come live with & marry her and then the arrival of crazy Suzanne and all that madness. I get confused by the timeline but Jill had the time snag & marry Stuart away from Liz before her and Derek married right as Katherine came back from the dead. In addition to the Felipe story Derek cheated on Katherine with his secretary Judy. Given Derek had done both wrong, it was probably for the best to make him a foot note in their history.

That's interesting they would have named him Russell as that is the name of one Lee Phillip Bell's brothers.

Any idea who remastered the early 70’s themes for the early 90’s? It’s amazing that the soundtrack originally intended for the Brooks and Foster families in a sleepy Genoa City would later get used used for such a long time. The music used in the very first episode when Barbara Anderson identified Brad Elliot’s watch? Used fourteen years later in Jess Walton’s first episode and as late as 1993 when Jill called Katherine an old bloodhound LMAO. Liz Foster’s theme. This has got to the most iconic theme. I mean Neil & Dru first met as this theme played usually by the late 80’s and early 90’s it was played when someone was scheming. Genoa City Theme-used as late 1993 as far as I know. Chris & Snapper’s Theme-Used as late as June 2011 when Adam & MW’s Diane were served subpoenas while Victor personally served Jack a subpoena over a very ridiculous business/securities fraud story.

Technically speaking the position was called “Senior EP” and he held it till the day he passed away.

Wow! I recognize the names but I had no idea they were related! Years ago I remember someone was interviewed in SPW I can’t remember who for the life of me it was but said they enjoyed working on family soaps like Days/Y&R/B&B a whole lot more compared to corporate or network soaps. I want to say the name but won’t because I’m not sure if it’s the person I’m thinking of.

Thanks for starting this @mikelyons! Hopefully we can get some information. In the meantime I looked up that guy Mark Waxman’s biography and this is what it said: “After graduating UCLA with a BA and MFA in Cinema (and being captain of the varsity fencing team), I joined CBS, becoming the youngest network programming executive in the history of broadcasting. After several years of developing prime time comedy and drama series for CBS, I rose to the rank of Vice President of Children’s Programming. During that time, I also wrote scripts for the daytime drama, The Young and the Restless.“ No dates are included, however it seems Mr. Waxman enjoyed children’s programming more than soaps and went on to create Beakman’s World. I do believe his tenure may have been more accurately in the early 80’s actually looking at the below:

Thank you so much!!! I knew Harrower was involved yet but couldn’t find exact dates except knowing she left to be HW at Days for a full year in 1979 and then promptly came back to write for Y&R at least through the mid-80’s.

Did you know that was one of the last Genoa City crimes that was investigated by Selena Wiley? After watching the Cassandra Rawlins story I had wondered why the show never fully invested in her character. After that we had Hank Weber always showing up with his smug self all the time when he really should have been romancing Olivia lol. We might need to!

Very interesting thank for you sharing that info, it’s sometimes hard to piece just what goes onscreen and off screen on Y&R during it’s early years. Given Bell himself was burned out from Days too makes sense his dialogue writers were as well. The intern writer I joked about was Mark Waxman although when he wrote scripts for Y&R in the 70’s wasn’t actually clear from an old list of Y&R facts compiled back in the ‘90’s I have unless IMDB’s dates of 1973-1981 is to be believed to be accurate. Who knows.

I wonder “who” he was talking about given I think Bell wrote most the first year himself, unless he’s talking about that intern writer who went on life to create Beakman’s World LOL.

That’s interesting and I am not sure if Regina was in fact Mark’s mother but I assume she was. And I’m not entirely sure what happened to the Hendersons in the end either. I think Bruce dies later on but not about sure Mark. I know he leaves town but I’ve seen one website in the past cited he passed away from an undisclosed illness after leaving. No clue if that is fact or fiction/error. Did Gwen Sherman have any connection to Mitchell Sherman? I can’t remember if she did not, I do know she was played by Jennifer Leak, best know as crazy Olive on AW after leaving Y&R. It seemed to me a lot of early Y&R actors did AW as well.

Haha it’s interesting by this point I think we had reached who was going to long lasting daytime shows although we’re just a few months away from ABC launching Ryan’s Hope. Both ABC and NBC had by this point been down the road and trying make headway against CBS in both Daytime and Primetime. ABC at least tried to give soaps like A Time For Us and A World Apart a chance before canceling them. NBC always seemed hellbent to cancel on their first instinct, hence why NBC only had 3 shows to make it past a decade. Haha don’t hate now I love Gina Tognoni but yeah it’s odd they didn’t think of such a scene the previous year for Y&R’s 40th or at very least just have Hallick play Brad again returning the favor to someone else while summarizing why he won’t go back to GC LOL.

CBS’s schedule had been historically unchanged since the 50’s at this point. SFT at 12:30 since 1951, no programming in the 1:00 hour, ATWT at 1:30 etc. It made sense that ABC would air their shows at different times to allow them to achieve their own success, especially given how all NBC’s failed soaps in the 50’s served a lesson to be learned. Not to mention P&G forced CBS to moved Edge because it didn’t allow its soaps to compete against each other, a rule that would be quickly disposed of by the end of 1975 and long forgotten by 1980.

Be interesting to know. I’ve read that DePriest pretty much used and coasted off of Labine’s success and material for the year that she was there, after that it was a very slippery slope downward. I find it fascinating at least that both the heroine soaps LOL and SFT had some nice revivals in the mid-70’s with LOL bringing in Tudi Wiggins as Meg and SFT bringing in Maree Cheatham as Stephanie.

You got that right! Haha I almost feel as if if someone like Katherine, Jill, or later Victor were to meet Vanessa they possibly could have steamrolled over her. We saw this later on when Katherine fought with that nasty old hag Alison Bancroft. 1975 was such a banner year for Love of Life it seems they actually did quite well in the ratings too. A shame the following writers were so weak after Labine left. Chris Hughes getting used by Joyce Colman? LOL. Thanks for that schedule @FrenchFan! Interesting to note that even though Y&R at 12PM Eastern Time I’ve seen a lot of schedules from the late 70’s where stations would bump the show to that empty 1PM slot so they could air news at noontime.

ATWT-What was Lisa’s relationships with her daughter-in-laws Carol and Natalie like? Thanks again for sharing! Reading these Y&R recaps are exciting and so fascinating to read the actual details, especially Lorie being thrown in the mix with Phillip.

Thanks so much @FrenchFan for sharing these, much appreciated!!!! The child actor T.J. Hargrave who played TJ Werner on GL later passed away as victim in the 9/11 attacks. I never realized just how long Mary Ellis Bunim was EP at SFT. In spite of the number of HW’s the show went through I suppose she was the stabilizing factor and why the show still managed to flourish. Lorie Brooks saw Phillip kissing Jill and was writing her latest book based on Phillip Chancellor? 🙊 @YRfan23 Bell sure did love writing those scandalous publication stories from the start! I have to wonder if the all the furor that the original Peyton Place novel caused back in the author’s home town was the inspiration for him. Reading those details for Katherine/Phillip/Jill it must have been insane and thrilling watching that play out, with Jill even doing Katherine’s hair and both of them feeling guilty afterwards.

Raul was going to be Nina’s son she had given up for adoption but with Tricia Cast’s departure they dropped it.

From what recall reading from way back is Hall tried having a Princess Di style hairdo/look/makeover in 1982, it doesn’t age well at all.

Been looking for Annie’s fantasy starting at 22:30 for the longest as all I remembered was a pregnant Reva LOL Watros is on fire here:

Actually I almost doubt Leanna was ever going to be a serious psycho. Reading old recaps from early Leanna always sounds so ominous but then when I watched a 1987 episode with her in it coming to Jabot posing as “Kelly Carpenter” even though it had a creepy stalker vibe the whole tone was silly, and even got sillier when Jack recognized her from the bar! Then there was this:

Y&R has done some awkward montages in the past, but this one struck me as bizarre. @7:36 Malcolm starts taking pictures of a pair of models as Blade watches on with some knock off of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game playing in the background. It’s a scene that feels like it should have been on AW at the time or something like Baywatch. Maybe it would have worked better if there was a subplot like Dru, Sharon or Victoria being one of the models, it comes off as so random and awkward:

🙊I think I remember that, and didn’t Kriezman want to pair them up on-screen lol? What a mess the last four years of GL was, I’m glad the majority of the prominent actors from that era survived and have found some continued success in either daytime or elsewhere.

In the late ‘90’s an anecdote from an ex-AW viewer on a popular TV discussion website at the time revealed they had a bad encounter with VW. Apparently in the summer of 1994 Wyndham went to an ice cream shop in Rhode Island and created a scene, being quite nasty and arrogant to the poster’s mother, a big AW fan too who owned the shop over the service and who she(VW) was. The poster and their mother vowed to never watch AW again. An interesting anecdote considering I've always thought VW to be a gracious woman off-screen with perhaps a few diva quirks here and there. I doubt VW's losing sleep (or money) over this, but it goes to show how an alleged incident of bad behaviour from a celeb can just live on and on just like Ehlers.