soapfan770

Haha I’m lucky my mom still watches to this day, we also had a discussion during those Traci hospital scenes with Mamie on why does Abby comes off as being older than Colleen and Mariah 😁 Love that interview! I love that Corbett and Walton are still close friends in real life.

That’s okay my mom said “oh there’s Diane Jenkins!” when she heard the name Diane LOL.

She did an amazing job and was fun to have around for a few years there. Unfortunately she became of victim of CBS/Columbia’s pressure to rid getting rid of older characters in the mid-90’s. As fas as Abbott week next week please CBS do not show anything from the Latham or MAB eras at all please!

Thanks for that extensive synopsis of the Derek Thurston story @will81!!!

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.

I’d say Kevin’s ownership for it probably ran it into the ground. I mean didn’t Jana always have machine troubles lol?

Other than Deacon saying he thought she was dead back in Genoa City nope!

It was an odd time for Y&R, mainly because the EP and Co-HW at the time had became dictatorial but was also emotionally unmoored due to crises in his own personal life that some pretty reckless story decisions were made. There wasn’t much else going outside of Terrible Tom and Sheila running the show except for the Phick affair, a very critically panned JT & Mac relationship, and Bobby Marsino being killed off and Brittany leaving town. Haha after Eric & Quinn concocted a trap she fell right into she became a busybody waitressing at a restaurant, eavesdropping on everyone and passing along secrets until she stopped appearing shortly after Bill was shot due to Brown’s run for political office. As far as we know she’s still there.

At least they started it off with the shock and brought back James although the whole story was utterly pointless-Sheila’s portrait, threatening Charlie, all the characters kept going to the same restaurant where she worked etc I’m not sure why the 2005 story went off the rails, probably because they didn’t want to fully address the whole B&B story aside from Michael calling Eric for information and using the Sugar tomfoolery. Not to mention they completely devolved Sheila———Sheila talking to herself in the mirror? Sheila was crazy but not batshit crazy. Sheila lecturing Terrible Tom on how smoking a doobie is morally wrong? GMAFB!

Hahaha read my signature, I’ve had it there since the whole Pheila [!@#$%^&*] LOL.

Haha it’s funny ratings went down during that double doppelgänger story. Go figure. But given the story, it’s no wonder Brown turned down the chance to return.

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!

That would awesome. Haha I do hope the also have some surprise god send up their sleeve like either early Victor or Vanessa again. That 1981 episode was the first rerun people on Y&R’s official Facebook page people actually were interested in and still beat out a brand new Days episode lol.

Hmm, villains week? I predict the following 😁 Monday: Maybe something from the 80’s, ranging from Eve Howard to Rose DeVile to Lisa Mansfield. Maybe. Hopefully lol. Tuesday: Sheila from 1992 Wednesday: Michael from 1993. Thursday: Isabella 2003 Friday: Either something to do with either Terrible Tom or Ian Ward.

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.

Actually they got entire date this originally aired wrong. Today’s episode actually aired May 9th. Malcolm first appeared on May 5th when Dru called him up to come to Genoa City. Malcolm & Neil’s office scenes aired at the end of the May 6 They were then replayed at the beginning of the May 9 episode that we saw today. 🙂

Haha I never took those SOD awards ever seriously, especially since there was always excessive ballot stuffing from Days and GH employees and fans at the mag itself. Didn’t they have some silly controversy over actual reader ballots getting thrown away while a GH employee tried to skew the results?