LoyaltoAMC

Does anyone know why Carolee Campbell left the show around 1975? Jada Rowland was a fine actress and memorable as Carolee Aldrich, but after now getting a chance to see Carolee Campbell in all her warm and endearingly idiosyncratic, quirky glory, I think I would've had a difficult time with the transition had I been watching back then. She was just all kinds of amazing.

This was around 91/92. I think ABC was still trying to salvage Loving at this point, since it was when they were doing those AMC/Loving crossovers with the John Wesley Shipp/Carter Jones story. I don't think they'd quite given up on the show yet, not until the Loving murders story was greenlit a little later on and the decision was made to transition the show to The City. OLTL and GH's ratings weren't particularly vibrant during the early 90s, so I wonder how potentially losing the then higher-rated AMC as a lead-in would've impacted these shows numbers. This was when, in FMB's words, AMC was the crown jewel of ABC.

There were rumors in the early 90s that AMC would move to 12:30, and sandwich Loving in the 1:30 time slot between AMC and OLTL. I remember Susan Keith (Shana, Loving; aka Mrs. James Kiberd) commenting on that in a SOD interview. This is when AMC as on fire and on Y&R's tail. I think in many markets, many weeks AMC was winning the overlapping half hour when they went head to head. She said that some focus group research showed that AMC would take the time slot over Y&R. Not sure if Y&R would ever have been knocked off #1, but it would've been interesting to see how a time slot shakeup would've affected AMC and what consequences it would've had for the rest of the ABC lineup. Would AMC's numbers risen or dropped? Would Loving have held on to AMC's lead? If not, how would have trickled down to OLTL's and GH's viewership.

Watched a couple of eps from 80 and 81 this morning on YT. The 1980 ep was especially good. Tom King was HW, but it still had the Lemay-ish theatrical feel and the dialogue was excellent. The vets were front and center. With the 81 episode, L. Virginia Browne was now HW. The show seemed more melodramatic and plot-driven in tone than the 80 episode, and the dialogue wasn't as crisp. I think what surprised me most was how much I actually liked Vana Tribbey as Alice. I was a kid when these eps first aired, and I remember Tribbey's Alice as cold and remote. Although she seems a bit more remote than, say, Susan Harney, she was quite good. Again, Browne was writing at the time. Is it her stint or Corinne Jacker's stint that is universally loathed. Did Jacker come before or after Browne?

It must've been such a blast to be a working actor on a soap in NYC in the 1970s.

I liked Patsy Bruder a lot. She was always terrific. There are some early scenes of her trying to get her baby Danny back from the Stewarts. She wasn't beautiful by typical TV standards, but she just radiated this inner beauty and warmth that compelled you to root for Ellen. But why oh why did they feel the need to age her into a whole other generation? She was supposed to be of the Bob/Penny/Don generation, but if you hadn't watched the show or known anything about its early days, you'd have thought she was a peer of Nancy and Chris. I guess this plays into why they aged Dan Stewart so rapidly. And then to just suddenly drop her was heinous. Did she disappear under Behr/Broderick or earlier?

Tad and Dixie would always be the end game. Even if Tad and Gloria had worked as a couple, she would've been nothing more than a plot device/stumbling block to an inevitable Tad/Dixie reunion. Before his pairing with Dixie, I thought they were going to head in the Tad/Barbara direction. Knight and Susan Pratt had terrific chemistry and all that great banter. It was all very adult and more sophisticated than the Tad/Dixie pairing would ever be.

Did Rauch contact him about reprising Steve Frame when they brought him back from the dead in the '80s, or did they figure it was not worth the trouble and go with Canary? I know he could be extremely difficult to work with, but his return might've just been the shot in the arm the show needed.

I recall Mart Crowley saying (not sure if it's in the Making of the BITB documentary or another interview I saw with him) that he and maybe Dominic Dunne, while searching for an actor to play the cowboy hustler in the original production, saw Robert LaTourneaux on the Fire Island docks as their ferry docked, Crowley was taken with his beauty and thought he'd be perfect looks-wise. When Crowley suggested him, Dunne or whomever he was with, said something to the effect, rather disdainfully, "oh him...he's on a soap opera." Not sure what the big deal would've been, since so many daytime actors went back went back and forth between soaps and theater. Larry Luckenbill did soaps (I believe The Secret Storm) before making it big with "Boys".

If Gorney was looking to get back into soaps, why EON? Sure, it was a great show, but you'd think after her SNL success and earlier soap recognition, she would've gone for a higher profile, higher rated show. Wonder if she tried to get back onto AMC? The show was shifting focus at that point and Tara just wasn't needed, and I'm pretty sure Mary Lynn Blanks was gone and the Tara character totally retired by the time EON was replacing Bentzen.

Yeah, Maeve and Jayne's characters seem like two different characters. They should've just killed off Nicole when Maeve left and cast an entirely new love interest for Miles. Maybe they wanted to leave the door open for Maeve to return, though by the time Jayne was integrated into storylines, the show was writing Draper and April and Raven as her peers, which I think would've been thoroughly awkward with Maeve in the role.

Karen Lynn Gorney? I could see her having chemistry with Joel Crothers. This must've been just before she hit it big with Saturday Night Fever

Does anyone know if any famous or pre-famous soap actresses tried out for Nicole before Jayne Bentzen got it? It was a rather high-profile, popular character played by a departing high-profile actress, so I am guessing they tested a lot of actresses. Jayne Bentzen is the actress I remember most as Nicole, but I always found her rather blah. However, I can see why they de-SORASED her when Maeve left, wanting someone a little closer in age to Joel Crothers. Did Joe and Maeve share many scenes before she left? I've never seen them on screen together, but just visualizing them together, I couldn't imagine there being much chemistry.

Yes, I think Holly confirmed the Loving thing. Holly is a great actress and I do believe some of her claims, especially the one that Agnes used her to garner publicity for her new show and then sort of relegated her to back burner status after mission accomplished. However by 69/70 Agnes was concentrating on the launch of AMC, so who knows how much the producers or network were to blame for her being backburnered. And of course, the way that Rauch and the network treated her and Lillian Haymen years later was beyond appalling. Some of her claims are just incredulous, however, such as Slezak's allegedly "racist" comments at a cast party. If Slezak did make comments, I'm sure that Holly misconstrued them and that Slezak was actually bemoaning the lack of the diversity in the show at that point.

I'm watching old episodes in the states. Are the Carters as awful as the DiMarcos? I found them insufferable and mostly unwatchable. I don't intensely hate the Ferreiras as much as some others have.

Flohe was married to Kim Delaney for a while. I remember reading that it was not a happy marriage. Did Slesar write the video disco thing, or was that Sheldon? Flohe was hot and had tons of charisma, but I thought that that storyline was unwatchable. A lot of the soaps at that point were showcasing Luke Spencer-ish antihero types, like Preacher, GL's Lujack, OLTL's reformed Marco Dane, etc.

She wouldn't have fit in the show in the early years, because those seasons were more character-driven to a point. However, beginning with season 4, and especially with season 5, the show was much more plot-driven and became much more larger than life. It was all pretty much about the plot. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Their much vaunted-realism and character-driven storylines were much more evident the first three seasons or so. So having said that, Charlene would've been an awful shoe-horn those first few years, but would've been a better fit later on when the show went full steam ahead with OTT melodrama. I'm a huge fan of the first three seasons, and part of 4. They really tried to do something meaningful those first few years before it devolved into more typically glitzy trashy melodrama. Well-executed trashy melodrama, but trashy melodrama nonetheless.

I think by 1979/1980, P&G were looking to at the amazing numbers the ABC soaps, especially GH, were doing and looked to leverage some of that formula, with more simplistic and OTT plots, comedic characters, action/adventure, and the focus on young, pretty actors. At that time point, I don't think TPTB were interested on focusing on the more complex characters that the Dobsons had written for and/or introduced.

I think Jorn Winther hired Gillian Spencer as story consultant when he returned as EP in 1986. I remember the during the last year or so of previous EP Jackie Babbin's reign, the show had issues with inconsistency and continuity. Since Washam and Broderick remained as HWs during the EP transition, I can only wonder if Gillian was brought in to shore up those issues. I've seen her work as HW on AW (I think as co-HW with Sam Ratcliffe), and was not really impressed.

I remember Russ's daughter Olivia appearing in the late 80s. I think she was a model or something and she was dating Chris Bruno's Dennis. Who was her mother?

I think Richard Shoberg as Tom was lucky to last as long as he had. Wisner Washam said in an interview that the network was constantly on his back to axe the character.

Mary Page Keller and Thomas Ian Griffith were extremely popular as Sally/Catlin. Her replacement, Taylor Miller, while visually more similar looking to some of the previous actresses who played Sally (Jennifer Runyon, Stacey Green) just didn't work out. With that in mind and the fact that the rest of the Matthews family was pretty much a memory at that point, the decision was made to kill off the character. Brittany was not a popular character. The audience hated her. They scooped up Sharon Gabet after Edge was cancelled but they didn't really know what to do with her. The character wasn't an effective spoiler for Sally/Catlin. Gabet has said that they changed the character so much, nothing worked, so they eventually cut their losses and let her go.

Getting back to Joel Fabiani, I think he also played Paul Stoddard on Dark Shadows in the flashback episodes in 1966 where Liz remembers "killing" Paul. A couple of years later, when Paul returned to Collinsport during the Leviathan storyline, he was played by Dennis Patrick, who had previously played Jason McGuire, who had helped Liz cover up Paul's "killing"!

According to an interview with, I think, Knots Landing Online, Pleshette's wife (and David Jacobs' ex-wife) had represented the Lechowicks as their agent until Lynn and Bernie suddenly decided to sever ties and go with another literary agency, claiming they wanted a better deal. Pleshette wrote for KL for awhile on a freelance basis after his departure, but he just couldn't (or wouldn't) agree with their way of telling stories.

I think in the same interview, he said that he and Constance had a prickly relationship in the beginning, mostly because she'd lobbied for her husband Sam Weisman for the Richard role. Eventually he and Constance developed a good working relationship, but it took some time. He called Constance and Julie Harris the best actors on the show.

I think Millee Taggart and Pam Long were two of the first to transition to writing. Had to have been the early '80s.