LoyaltoAMC

What? I'm not kidding. She loved Claire's Where the Heart Is.

Just kidding, of course. LOL! "The Catlins" was a laughable soap. Anyone in their right mind would not look to that as the best soaps have to offer. Kay seemed to like the Labine/Mayer writing in general. In that transcript posted here last year, she said that RH had some of the best writing ever, or something to that effect.

No, wait, I made a mistake: it was Where the Heart Is, another Labine & Mayer.

Actually, I think it was "The Catlins" LOL

Shadows, you're right, her name was Jean Holloway. I kept thinking of the name Jean Rouverol (sp?), a former soap scribe, who wrote a terrific book of soap writing back in the 80s, but I knew it couldn't be her. Maybe you're right...maybe she did come after Labine/Mayer. Now that I think about it, she must have. Labine/Mayer couldn't have written LoL past 1974, as RH began in 1975. LoL would continue for another 5/6 years after that. I LOVE discussing old, cancelled soaps, especially the ones that I never really saw but have read a lot about. I can't praise that youtube episode enough. From the incredible score, the marvelous acting, and the soapy writing, it was just wonderful, wonderful old school soap that producers and writers are embarrassed to do nowadays.

Cat, I saw that youtube episode too, and I was enthralled. Tudi Wiggins was something else. I remember being impressed with her when she was on AMC in the early 80s, but she was a force to be reckoned with on LoL. I've read some stuff about the show, mostly about how unwatchable it was before Labine/Mayer came aboard. They had to pick up the pieces that the former writer left behind, whose name I don't recall. She had been a radio soap writer and essentially applied the same technique she used in radio to TV, but that method did not translate well at all. I've read that during her stint, the show was dull and preposterous, centering around a stripper named Bambi Brewster and her search for her real father. It does sound horrible. Nobody in my house watched the CBS soaps when I was growing up in the 70s, so I never saw any of them in real time back then. AMC and AW, and to a lesser extent RH and OLTL, were the big ones in my house.

I'm in that minority too. I think the idea of bringing Josh back was great, but I don't think they should have even hinted at a romance between Brooke & Eliot for a long time. I think the audience would actually have gone for the pairing had it gradually evolved and felt like it was their choice and not TPTB's.

Either that or they could have done the Brooke/Eliot pairing off the bat but not hinted at Eliot being Josh until quite some time later when the couple had a solid fan base and support.

I don't think a Brooke/Elliot pairing would've worked no matter how they progressed with it. It was just too gimmicky and contrived. Despite the plastic surgery gimmick, David Beecroft, who played Elliot, was taller and older than Stan Albers, who'd originally played Josh/Elliot. Plus, I don't think that Julia Barr and Beecroft had chemistry. Barr commented, after the pairing tanked, that she thinks that the writers got the idea for the romance after looking at all those clips they trotted out a bit earlier in 2000 for the show's 30th anniversary, and that they really didn't think things through. I think one of the problems with Barr throughout the 90s was that she had no chemistry with any guy they tried to pair her with. None of the three actors who played Pierce. Same with Roscoe Born, David Forsyth, Walt Willey, and Michael Nader. Her real chemistry had been with Richard Shoberg, John Callahan, and David Canary, and with Mark LaMura and Michael Knight to a lesser extent. Shoberg was off the show by the mid-90s and Callahan was moved into supercouple territory with LaRue (and was only reunited with Barr during Culliton's HW stint to serve as a plot device to keep Edmund and Maria apart). Canary always seemed viable, but I think a Brooke/Adam redux would've been disastrous for Canary, since the feeling probably is that Canary needs to be paired with a demographically desirable woman to keep him active storywise. Barr's a really good actress. She had chemistry with a lot of the women on the show and with men as friends, but in terms of romantic chem, that factor was lacking with her. I still miss her, though, and her not getting even a one-day exit story to explain her absence was totally insulting to her and the fans.

I have a good tape library of when Agnes returned as headwriter. Becca came on (as did Greens) when it was still written as Agnes Nixon headwriter solely. Soon after it was Nixon and Elizabeth Page. Then soon it was Nixon, Liz Page and Jean Passanante, in that order. And then by September, I think it was just Agnes and Passanante.

I still do fault Agnes for Becca as one of her misfires...--But I agree the actor has to be there too (and I'm not sur--maybe Page, a talented lady, was writing to Agnes' stories too, though, besides Bianca's, some cute sidestories, like Marian being jealous of the Queen's tea and trying to wheedle her way in seemed classic Agnes)

You're right, Eric. The Marian stuff seemed like classic Agnes, as did Opal's re-opening of the Glamorama, complete with Ethel's (from the old Glamorama) niece, the Palmer/Vanessa marriage, and the attempt to create a star-crossed couple with Becca and Scott. The stuff that came a bit later, such as Marian locking Adam in the safe room, the whole Alex/Anna thing (I know Finola was foisted on them by Angela Shapiro), and the way the Dillon family was written out seemed very Passanante-ish, though I could be wrong about that. I think it was at THAT point that Agnes was writing solely for Bianca and Erica, and maybe the Brooke/Elliot (aka Josh) stuff, which tanked badly, leaving Passanante to do the rest. And through all of this, there was the whole Rae Cummings search for her husband Daniel and then for her daughter, and the reveal that Rae was Myrtle's daughter. McTavish has taken credit for all of that. Supposedly the "Linda Dano Does the ABC Soaps" that eventually culminated in Skye being revealed as her daughter was all her idea, or so she has claimed in the press.

Loyal--that was shortly before Monty returned for her not well received new era at GH right?

David MElanie does sound a mess... I guess the next young love story was the much more successful (and where I started watching) Hayley/Brian one? It's interesting, really since the start AMC always seemed to try to have a young star crossed love story startign with Tara/Phil/Chuck--but many haven't been as successful, althoug Nina/Cliff were prob the benchmark. I'm not even sure if lately AMC has *tried* to have any... When Agnes Nixon returned in 1999 as writer she created Scott/Becka/Greenlee, with Greenlee obviously int eh Erica roll. The thing is I think Nixon made a (rare) mistake--heroines like Tara simply don't work on soaps with modern audiences, and Becka was SOOO amazingly boring I don't know anyone who liked her.

E

Yes, Eric. If Monty was ghost-consulting at AMC, and that's a big if, it would've been 89. I doubt she stayed on when Agnes took over in January 1990. Monty returned to GH in 1991, I think. It was just around the time that Emily McLaughlin (Jessie Brewer) passed away. Her second run there is pretty much considered a disaster.

Yep, the next young star-crossed lovers were Hayley and Brian, which began in 1991. I liked them together and thought they had a lot of chemistry. They were certainly a step up from David and Melanie. Becca was very boring, but I never found the actress, Abigail Spencer, very interesting. Also, the writing failed the character, something the actress couldn't overcome. At this time, I'm not sure how much of the show Agnes was really writing besides the Bianca coming out story. I tend to think that Passanante (and Elizabeth Page for a while too) was essentially writing the rest of the show. I think you can still do a successful sweet star-crossed romance with all the great soapy elements like meddling parents. It's just that the writing and the acting have to be there. These types of stories that worked on AMC (Cliff/Nina, Jesse/Angie, Greg/Jenny, etc) were the result of a perfect marriage between the actors and the material. In today's climate, it would be tough for a "marriage" like that to succeed.

Hey Eric. The David/Melanie story was a very lame attempt to recreate the magic of Cliff and Nina. David was Jeremy's son; Melanie was Palmer's niece (Dix's younger sis). Palmer and Jeremy had been adversaries over Natalie at that point, so that fueled the plot. They even lifted elements from the Cliff/Nina story, such as Palmer's ambiguous incestuous interest in Melanie (though that was much more potent with Nina) and his bringing one of David's old lovers to town to try and break them up. I'm a little hazy on this, but I think Palmer was in cahoots with David's unstable mom Marissa (played the late, wonderful Nancy Addison Altman, one of the first "friends of Behr" brought over from the recently cancelled Ryan's Hope, where Behr had been EP) to break them up. I'm a little hazy over this, but I think that Marissa pretended to be kidnapped by soldiers or fortune or something (which I think led to the introduction of Trevor), which somehow propelled David and Melanie to go on the run. None of it made a lick of sense. When Agnes took over, she made them less sacchariny, took away Palmer as a source of conflict, and added conflict through the Ceara and Trask characters. With all of this, they were never terribly interesting. Eventually, in 1991 I think, they married and were rarely heard from again.

Forgot to add too that during the DePriest era at AMC, there were rumors that Gloria Monty was ghost-consulting. Apparently she had been spotted at the AMC studios on several occasions in 89, and the rumor was that she was consulting behind the scenes to whip the show into shape. Not sure how true that was, but I remember SOD running a little blurb about that rumor.

Wow I was just thinking about starting a thread last week to discuss the work of Margaret DePriest since she certainly made the rounds in daytime but is hardly ever mentioned here!

When I think of her I immediately think of the brutal death of Frankie Frame on AW (and that whole serial killer story in general which sucked....did anyone not know it was peripheral Fax Newman!?) and Sunset Beach, but I guess she wasn't all bad.

Eric do you know what stuff she wrote during her stint at AMC? Was she there for the awful Cobbler Island/Silver Kane/Dr. Damon Lazzare story? That was probably one of the first times I thought about tuning out of AMC.

LeClerc, maybe I can help. No, she didn't write the Silver Kane/Cobbler Island story. Lorraine Broderick was HW for that, back in 1987, I guess with Agnes heavily involved. That was a stinker. It started off promising and was very intriguing but then soon degenerated into a convoluted mess. I think AMC was #1 in the ratings the week that story culminated. Probably their last time in that spot. DePriest wouldn't come aboard as HW until the spring of 1989. Felicia Behr brought her on right after she came aboard as EP in March 1989. Broderick, I believe, was demoted to co-HW at this point. DePriest was good in that she decreased the number of storylines. Under previous EP Steve Schenkel and Broderick, there were at least 10 ongoing front burner stories, and it was killing the show. When she took over as EP, Behr said that one of the first things we wanted to do was cut back on the number of stories, and DePriest definitely accomplished that. Floating characters like Ross, Stuart, Julie, Cliff, Angie, Jeremy, and Sean Cudahy suffered as a result of that decision. Some of her stories left a lot to be desired, though. On the down side, she wrote Eric Kane the clown story, Travis's brain tumor, and the sickeningly sweet David/Melanie romance. On the plus side, she had some fun with the Chandler/Cortlandt/Martin orbit. She wrote the beginnings of the Tad/Dixie romance, Adam's committing Dix to the mental hospital. She wrote the subsequent interesting Junior kidnapping story, in which Ellen Wheeler's Karen turned out to be the culprit. She put an abrupt stop to the burgeoning Tad/Barbara romance, and put her back in Tom and Travis's orbit. She also wrote the incredibly entertaining Nico/Cecily stuff, which heavily involved the long neglected Phoebe and Langley. She and Behr also put James Kiberd on contract and winningly paired him with Kate Collins. She also aged Emily Ann Sago, giving long backburnered Candace Earley's Donna something to do that to sit around and listen to Natalie's sorrows.

It was an interesting time for the show and contrary to a lot of opinions, I kind of enjoyed this era. It felt more like AMC again in terms of having a community feel to it, something I rarely got from Broderick's 87-89 solo stint. Broderick had some very memorable stories, but the show was all over the map and totally not cohesive. She was much better in her mid/late 90s stint and IMO best when paired with Washam and McTavish, with Agnes as HW from 1990-1992. Agnes would take the reins from DePriest in January 1990, just in time for the show's 20th anniversary. That writing team was a dream and was responsible for one of my favorite eras on the show.

RH was the last ABC soap I watched growing up since my mom wasn't a regular viewer so I hadn't originally seen the first 5 years until I got Soapnet. I loved how intimately this show delved into the family dynamics. I think Soapnet only has the rights for the first few years and then they rebroadcast it again from the beginning, but I would love to see the story that originally hooked me on RH: Charlotte Greer claiming she was Frank's first wife. Charlotte was played by Judith Chapman and I don't remember the full details, but she was somehow connected to Maeve and was out for revenge.

If I remember correctly, Charlotte married Frank in order to carry out some vendetta that her parents had toward Maeve and Johnny. Her mother was played by ATWT's Kathleen Widdoes (Emma). The storyline was interesting and it played alongside a political storyline they had going at the time (with ATWT EP Chris Goutman playing a political advisor named Doug Waterman. Geez, the things that remain etched in the mind!) Labine and Mayer penned these stories after being rehired by ABC to write the show, but they weren't able to get the ratings up. These stories were dispensed with rather quickly when Pat Falken Smith took over as HW and turned the show into the "Max Dubujak Show."

I think it holds up very well, as least the first 5 years or so. The 1975-1980 period of this show WAS some of the best soap opera ever written. The show during this era was real and gritty. The New York backdrop and the "ethnic" vibe made it extremely atmospheric. When ABC bought the show from Labine and Mayer, the new writers began adding more and more fantasy elements, which really went against the show's grain. The 75-80 episodes would be among my "desert island" collection, along with the Harding LeMay years at AW, and some other select shows.