soapfan770

This appeared in the 6/16/99 issue of Soap Opera News about Goutman's impending arrival. Though I don't necessarily agree with the writer's perceptions of ATWT at the time, I can somewhat relate as who had mixed feelings at the time--one being sorrow over AW's cancellation, the other being the rumored uproar of "AW taking over ATWT" with the crossovers of Jake and Vicky as well as (very briefly) Cass and Lila in addition to ATWT moving into AW's old studios, not to mention Goutman and Laiman going from AW to ATWT as well.

All those old SOD articles from the 90s make me sad. Thanks for posting those! One of my favorite forgotten ATWT stories from the '90s was the Janice Maxwell story. Deliciously psycho! Connie Wilson if I recall right was James Stenbeck's mistress who then ended up being murdered. Other than that fact I don't know. Was she related to Sandy Wilson? I really wish Betsy Stewart had been brought back in the 90s permanently.

I thought there was quite the viewer turnout with Kathy Roberts' death. I've heard they had to up Kathy's age a little bit once the actress started appearing on TV because she was supposed to quite younger on the radio. Sort of like the William Conrad situation. I would have liked to see the Internet's reaction to 1984 GL and 80s Reva...probably not a single fat joke then. I always wish Bert and Bill would have had a daughter. That wedding list is interesting. I know through old episodes I've seen Phillip and Blake's infamous wedding in 1989 and later seen Ric Hearst and Sherry Stingfield having mad sex but how exactly did Blake go from Phillip to A-M within months? I think Harley left A-M for Dylan, I remember seeing clips of Carl Tye Evans' A-M getting into a brawl with Dylan at a swimming pool.

I love Eva LaRue but trying to picture her as Rosanna is kind of out there. I wonder how Allison Sweeney would have worked as Victoria on Y&R. A few that I know of I hadn't seen listed yet: --Ashley Bashioum auditioned for the role of Marina after Aubrey Dollar left, only to lose out to Kit Paquin(!) --Nicholas Coster and Quinn Reddeker were both tapped to play the role of Alistair Crane on Passions before David Bailey got it. --Linda Dano was in talks for a role(Gloria?) on Y&R but didn't get it. --Maree Chatham was considered for the role of Rachel on Passions before Sharon Wyatt got it.

Although that scenario sounds great it would have been as likely as Alan-Michael reconnecting to his Bauer roots. I didn't like the way though Phillip was written from 2001-2004 though. I know Phillip one of the good guys but sheesh he did become too self-righteous. Even though Rick&Harley sucked royally, I didn't understand why Phillip was so angry or why he accused Rick of getting back at him for Meredith. Nor did I understand why Phillip suddenly became so dismissive of Olivia so far as to refusing to believe her about anything like Emma being his or Lizzie staging her accidents. His return at least restored to Phillip something I could recognize from what I saw in the late 90s.

GL's ratings actually did go up, not a lot but they did recover from its losses under Conboy/Weston in 2005. I know as Reva's cancer story reached its climax in the fall of '06 GL managed to score big surpassing both AMC and OLTL in the ratings for a few weeks there. Phillip's breakdown didn't make much sense to me either. I could understand an angry Phillip coming back to town with a plan of revenge for Olivia and Alan but instead in those final months and weeks leading up to the shooting we got a way OOC Phillip who was trying to be a psychotic Alan Jr. Thank god they finally managed to save the character by show's end.

Discovered this gem covering the early Kriezman/Wheeler period for GL, a time when I still held out a little hope for the show. It's a lengthy read, goes in depth about subjects we've discussed much already but still none the less great for its time period. Smith didn't wonder long either--in his 2005 Best and Worst column he named GL as worst show.

Thanks for the info, I remember Roger seeing Vanessa off wherever she was hiding and the funeral but didn't recall Roger's reaction to seeing Billy. I think a Roger recast could have worked with a stronger actor but once the truth came out about Zaslow's exit even Parlato himself said he felt sickened by being deceived. I actually remember Joan Collins herself hinting a Roger recast was in the works for her as a love interest but of course that never happened. At the time I imagined someone lile David Bailey, Quinn Redeker or even Randolph Mantooth(by appearance alone) in the role of Roger. Never understood those who wanted Charles Keating or Anthony Herrera to play Roger in the early 00s before Roger died. Both are great actors and I could see the temptation with Keating but both actors had played their respective villains in their own way fit.

So I have two questions... #1: I noticed the average rating of GL for the '88-'89 year was a 6.2 but the average rating for '89-'90 was a 5.4, nearly a drop in a million viewers. I know 1989 was a banner year for GL especially the first half up to Josh and Reva's Cross Creek wedding, but we don't hear much about the second half. Did weak storylines like Blake and Gary Swanson, Dana Jones' murder, and exits of characters like Alan, Sonni/Solita, Will and later Reva cause viewers to drop GL over time? #2: Did Billy and Roger ever interact after Billy was released from jail? Or was Zaslow gone by this point so they didn't even bother for a scene with Parlanto's Roger?

In addition to Schemering, here's what Matt P. Smith wrote in Soap Opera History

Yep they only lasted a couple before folding without any fanfare. Their editorials could be quite good, but they were buried under the fourth-rate recycled content. Probably why its long forgotten now. The clone story got better when it started poking fun at itself. Oddly enough, it was mentioned in 2004 by Reva when she was telling Josh how she didn't want her psyhic powers to dominate her life anymore(a story not to be retold ever ) I liked Melina and the first couple seasons of Providence but after that, eh. I loathe the CSI franchise so I really have't seen her work much on CSI NY.

Found this article appearing in the defunt Soap News regarding the then upcoming Reva clone story. You'd never see something like this in soap mags ever again.

Thanks for posting Carl Same thing with me, I watched the CBS soaps with my mom and only started watching AW after quite some time after I started watching Days. The Taylor Benson tale was front burner at the time, and while I liked it as a kid when but when I saw it on SoapNet years later it wasn't as good as I remembered. Same thing with the silly Christy Carson tale. AW wasn't a show I followed regularly but it was just a nice little show to watch at least in the early 90s, in the late 90s I could never figure what was going on. The whole John/Felicia/Michael/Sharlene/Lucas look-alike thing went over my head that summer it played out. Lemay's comments on Strasser here are interesting. A few years later Lemay was highly critical of Strasser, and his interview last year I seem to recall he was actually borderline disrespectful towards Strasser's tenure. Speaking of winds of change, both the EP and HW interviewed would be ousted later in '94. Oh and Josie was the last Matthews on the show but the show ever really acknowledged that side of her under Amy Carlson and the last Josie.

Ahh Julie, poor Julie. She vied for Dylan and Hart yet failed so epicly. Bridget interrupting her wedding to Dylan announcing Julie's affair with Hart the night before was early 90s GL at its finest. Dylan burning down their house was even better. Did Mallet even mention her at all upon his 2005 return? Although I didn't much care for the whole Frank and Julie thing, it did at give some life to Frank and Eleni. That pairing only seem to have life with Melina Kanakaredes, and after she left and the role was recasted, it was comatose time whenever Frank and Eleni were on-screen. I think that's also why they were back-burned for so many years afterward. That was a nice little story there by Tina Sloan. Even though I pretty much gave up on GL back in '06/'07, it seems so weird that the show has now been off for a year come next Saturday.

Would the Nick story would have worked better(or worse) had Nick been a back from the dead Lujack instead? Then again, Mindy was later played the dreadful Ann Hamilton and then Barbara Compton, while Dusay came in as Alex, so when the show did a semi-repeat of Nick and Mindy's 1992 wedding in 1994, it was pretty bad to watch and hard to care about. I guess I too wish Alex and Mindy fought over men rather than a meddlesome mother tale.

Wow I looked up a few of those actors on IMDB and I was shocked to discover the then 14-year old T.J. Hargrave would later be killed on 9/11, his office being located in the WTC.

Thanks for that GLisNo1. I guess until the hard data from the weekly ratings resurfaces, we'll never know for sure. I do know that while GH was usually the lead soap of the time, it wasn't always a consistent/stable #1 on a week to week basis, especially towards the late 80s when Days hit #1 for Steve and Kayla's wedding. Even in 1983 GH lost out to ATWT with Steve and Betsy's wedding garnering twenty million viewers. Gail Kobe strikes me funny because early she sounds like a strong producer in the same vain as Phelps or Rauch but yeah I think it was Lujack's death that she dropped the ball on. I haven't heard too many good things about her successor Joe Willmore either. Even though GL got back on its feet again under him with Long's return as HW, I've heard he was extremely temperamental and not too many tears shed when Calhoun came over from ATWT.

Edited.

So I have a question about GL's ratings in 1984 when it hit #1. I remember on the old WOST boards there was a great, furious debate on whether or not GL did hit #1 in 1984, the length of time(1 week? 3 weeks?), what caused it(Reva? Summer Olympics pre-empting ABC soaps? Susan Piper and Barbados?) etc. But I do remember SOD doing a profile on GL in 1998 or so mentioning that GL had briefly hit #1 in 1984. So, does anyone when and how/why GL hit #1 in 1984?

This thread is great. Loving was the only ABC soap I seem to watch even if it was only occasionally, I think I was more interested in saying that I watched the lowest rated soap more than anything else. That said I never watched The City, I think I only watched the first episode of it because my ABC station later stopped airing it.

Well I don't know if this one's been mentioned or not but I didn't see it on the list but Mira Sorvino was a temporary replacement for Jocelyn Seagrave back in 1991/1992 as Julie on GL. A clip of Sorvino as Julie was shown during a montage during that terrible fiasco CBS AT 75 back in 2003.

OMG I thought I was the only one who remembered such odd letters like that! I specifically remember that letter because years later I looked up that casting despite it not being a soap I watched. I use to love that section when I was a SOD subscriber in the late 90s. SOD would give some great informative answers with pictures to boot, yet some of those questions could be kooky, especially the ones disclosing dinner bets.

One question I've been wondering about is was there really a scandal that Jo divorced Martin in the early '80s?

The Brighter Day, of course was a radio soap by Irna Phillips first aired in 1948 until it transitioned to TV in 1954 where it lasted until 1962. P&G sold TBD to CBS, and like CBS would do later to TSS and Love of Life, proceeded to destroy it resulting in cancellation. Here is this overview by Matt Smith:

Rod Arrants' character actually had crossed over to AW inbetween L&F and FRFP, and of course went on to become one of daytime's leading men in the 80s in major roles on three soaps(SFT, Days, Y&R). Here is an overview which Matt Smith had written up on his now defunct website: