Paul Raven

Just came across a pilot/proposal starring Jerry Hall (most recently Mrs Rupert Murdoch) from 1986 titled 'She's With Me' co starring Dinah Manoff. Jerry plays a super model who befriends a working woman from a totally different social sphere.,

From the Ryan's Hope thread Louise Shaffer was fired, her Emmy hadn't even been engraved yet! Louise didn't get an exit scene like Karen. Joe didn't like Louise as much---someone thought Louise asked too many questions and Joe didn't like being questioned. Joe wanted to put his own stamp on the show. Ellen Barrett was now working at Search For Tomorrow and knew Louise needed a job and hired her to replace Marie Cheatman. Louise was very grateful to Ellen. This to me is an example of personal overriding professional. When Maree Cheatham left after 10 years,Stephanie should have been written out. She didn't really have any ties to the canvas. Sure Wendy was still around, but she could function w/o her mother in town. From what I have read Louise played Stephanie as Rae 2.0 and was killed off anyway. Maybe Louise could have worked as a new character.

Lots of Danny and one glimpse of Paul. Looks like they might be pushing Phyllis/Danny/Christine. But is it really going anywhere? Unless Lauralee commits to regular appearances...

Variety Jan 86 reports that Paul Mayer and Stephanie Braxton were fined $5000 and suspended from active membership for 6 months by Writers Guild for head writing Search for Tomorrow during a guild strike March 85. This must have been a short lived east Coast strike as I don't recall hearing about it before.

Days drop points to a weakness in the storytelling. The supercouple formula saw Days hit #1 with Patch/Kayla wedding hype then drop off because there was little of interest outside of that. Whereas Y&R went to #1 with a variety of stories and ongoing plotlines.

It takes about 10 minutes to flick through an issue. Most of the info is old news by the time the issue comes out. The occasional interview can be of interest but otherwise... I'm surprised they didn't lean in more to the archives and republish old articles/interviews. Maybe have a wrap section each issue eg Lucci through the years with old photos/interviews or Days in the 80's etc And when The Doctors turned up on Retro publish the synopses once the show got to 1975. They needed to provide some point of difference. And some of those photo shopped covers...

RICHARD NILES Love of Life

As The World Turns Tony Bennett Tony Bennett October 25th and 28th 1985 Search for Tomorrow Steve Kendall...Phillip Brown...82-83 model, +Steph,+Helena Martin T-s son ...Steve Lundquist...... Nov 4 85 - ?

3 KCRA (NBC) Sacramento Friday, January 28, 1977 7:00 Today 9:00 Tattletales (pre-empted by KXTV) 9:30 Hollywood Squares - Panel: John Byner, Joan Rivers, Earl Holliman, Karen Valentine, Paul Lynde, Michael Constantine, George Gobel, Isabel Sanford, Paul Williams 10:00 Wheel of Fortune 10:30 Shoot for the Stars - Guests: Debralee Scott, Rick Hurst 11:00 Name That Tune 11:30 Lovers and Friends 11:55 NBC News Update NOON Channel 3 Reports 12:30 Donahue (info unavailable) 1:30 Mary Hartman 2:00 Antoher World 3:00 Days of Our Lives 4:00 Sanford and Son Doctors not shownat 1.30 Days moved to 3pm instead of 12.30 Sanford and Son at 4 not 10am and Gong Show not shown at 3pm.

13 KOVR (ABC) Sacramento Friday, January 28, 1977 6:30 Guten Tag 7:00 Good Morning America 9:00 Morning Scene 10:00 I Dream of Jeannie 10:30 Happy Days 11:00 Don Ho 11:30 Family Feud NOON $20,000 Pyramid 12:30 To Tell the Truth 1:00 Ryan's Hope 1:30 One Life to Live 2:15 General Hospital 3:00 Edge of Night 3:30 All My Children 4:00 My Three Sons AMC at 3.30!

CBS Saturday night schedule had been a disaster for several years after they failed to find sitcoms to replace Mary Tyler Moore/Bob Newhart and ABC swooped in with Love Boat/Fantasy Island and dominated the night. Flops like American Girls,Big Shamus/Little Shamus and fading sitcoms (Rhoda/Good Times) didn't help. Dallas was rescued by being moved to Sundays. Secrets had Freebie and the Bean as a lead in so it was 2 new shows up against Love Boat/Fantasy on ABC and an NBC movie. SOMH ratings history Ep 1 Dec 6 Founders Day 11.8/21 # 57th of 65 shows Ep 2 Dec 13 The Searchers 15.1/27 53rd of 66 Ep 3 Dec 20 Decisions 9.1/18 70th of 71 Ep 4 Dec 26 Hooverville Special Friday episode after Dukes of Hazzard, pre empting Dallas 22.2/41 6th of 63 Ep 5 Jan 3 Letting Go 11.2/18 62nd of 66 Ep 6 Jan 10 The Race 10.4/18 67th of 68 Ep 7 Jan 17 The Birthday Party 9.7/17 65th of 67 Ep 8 Jan 24 Facing Facts 10.7/19 66th of 67 I don't know why CBS didn't put the first episode on after Dukes of Hazzard in the Dallas timeslot. It would have got a great sampling which could only have helped its chances on Sat night. Maybe they didn't want to interrupt Dallas at that point (it was up to its 5th episode of the season). And when they did show it on Frday and got great numbers they didn't show it the next night to capitalize on that, instead making viewers wait a week by which time interest would have wained.

Requests Jane Kean Theodore Bikel

Stacy Harris Days of Our Lives Drake 1967

Don't know that I associate hunky with Adam but Ok... CH stated in this week's SOD that she acknowledges Sally has lost her edge in this story and she's right.Adam and Sally would have made a good pair of schemers at one point. I would have preferred to see Audra getting her hooks into Nick rather than yet another Adam/Nick involvement with the same woman. The long term characters need to go in the new directions rather than rehashing past stories.

The Register Danville Sunday Dec 3 1978 Soap-Opera Writing Big Crossword Puzzle MONTECITO Calif (AP) - Forget the image of 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' where frantic writers run around the set and throw out pages” says Jerome Dobson sitting beside his swimming pool "We'll start plotting and say 'Pass the suntan lotion’" Jerome Dobson and his wife Bridget lead a quiet secluded life on a wooded estate between the mountains and the Pacific in this affluent community south of Santa Barbara. But they aren't cut off from the world of Bertha Bauer. her sons Ed and Mike and everyone in Springfield USA. They don't make a move or utter a word that doesn't spring from the minds of the Dobsons. Every day they turn out a 65page script for the CBS soap opera “The Guiding Light” longest running drama in broadcasting and are on the telephone constantly with the producers in New York. Since becoming head writers three and a half years ago they've given the soap opera which had been suffering from hardening of the arteries a decidedly contemporary look and a faster pace "The wonderful thing is that as writers we can live anywhere" says Dobson "We looked all over the country before deciding to move here” Bill and Joyce Corrington head writers for “Search or Tomorrow" live in New Orleans. The Dobsons plot the series a year in advance dictate the day-by-day outlines to a battery of secretaries and send the outlines to four assistant writers to flesh out with dialogue.They use graphs and charts to keep track of all 30 characters and to be sure every actor works the number of days required by his contract. "It's a giant crossword puzzle” says Dobson "You have to keep story flowing and at the same time use your actors the proper amount of time. We can only use seven sets a day so that has to be coordinated too" Bridget says "We may work from sunup to moonup.It depends on the arguments. If Jerry’s being good we’ll get through it fast. “We’re working on so many different time levels If someone asks me what's happening on 'Guiding Light' I have to stop and think. We plot the stories up to a year in advance The scene breakdowns are seven weeks in advance of airin. The scripts are four weeks in advance. Then there's taping and finally the air date” The Dobsons sit in the sun by their Olympic-size pool behind a huge house built in 1916 Nearby on the four-acre estate are a croquet court putting green and tennis court They moved in years ago with their children Mary 16 and Andy 13 and their two dogs Both are early risers and jog through the hills. Dobson runs until he spots 30 different species of birds “My record is 12 and a half miles” he says. They write wherever the mood strikes them — by the pool in the pergola or in their private offices. Jerry and Bridget met at Stanford University. His family owned walnut ranches that he managed after graduation. He still oversees two ranches that raise walnuts and wine grapes. Bridget is the daughter of Frank and Doris Hursley who wrote for "Search or Tomorrow” and created “General Hospital” "When I was a child I used to pass hors d'oeuvres to the same people I now work with on ‘The Guiding Light ’ she says.“I had no faith in my writing ability and taught school for three years "she says. Then she spent seven years as an associate writer with her parents on "General Hospital” until she says "I felt had to sell my writing to someone else.My ego needed it. So I wrote the people I used to pass the hors d'oeuvres to and they gave me a trial writing scripts which I apparently passed.Jerry had been running the ranches and he joined me in the writing At one time they were head writers of "General Hospital" They were asked to take over that show when Bridget's mother became ill. “The Guiding Light” was created in 1937 by Irna Phillips and ran on radio until 1952 The television version began then. It was originally centered on a minister named Dr Rutledge which accounts for the religious overtones of the title. He and his family lived in the city of Five Points and sometimes a daily episode consisted of his sermon. His traditional Good Friday message "Seven Last Words" was replayed year after year. But in the late 1940s the Rutledges were replaced by the Bauers ‘“ As head writers they turn out a page script every day plot the series a year in advance and try to see the actual broadcast of every episode. Guiding Light’ is a vastly different show from what it was say five years ago” says Bridget "We were with the show a year and a half before I can really say we were proud of it. You can’t change it overnight. The pace is faster, the characters are more contemporary, it's sexier, it has more humor. The characters are more multidimensional. "We push the limits on sex but it’s a matter of taste We like to use sub-rosa sex. Covert sex as opposed to overt sex. Delicious wholesome sex Every now and then the CBS censors will miss a line and we'll nudge each other” The Dobsons record all the shows on their videotape cassette machine which they also use to view auditions of new actors. It allows them to vote on new performers without going to New York. They try to catch every show. At times they’ve rushed into bars and attempted to persuade the bartender to switch to the soap opera. Once they had to rent a motel room just to watch the one-hour show. The Dobsons say there’s no formula for writing soap opera "You can't fill in the blanks” said Dobson “You can't just punch up the characters. You have to write from the gut. You have to be true to your characters at all times or the audience will jump on you”

Fort Lauderdale News Thurs Dec 4 1980 'Midland Heights': Not a true high school picture "To get on the air and be a hit, you have to do what you have to do." Listen to that man when he speaks. He's David Jacobs, the producer at Lorimar Studios who created Dallas, now honored as the most-watched TV show of all time. He also created Knots Landing, the official Dallas spinoff and is the man behind Secrets of Midland Heights, CBS's newest entry in the soap opera arena. Secrets, which premieres Saturday on WTVJ-Ch. 4, is to Dallas what Gary Ewing is to J R. an incomparably inferior version of the original. Secrets also has an identity crisis, having been moved from a restrictive 8 p.m. slot to a more permissive 10 p.m. slot, opposite Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters and Fantasy Island. Secrets of Midland Heights was created with an emphasis on the town's high school students, and was scheduled accordingly to grab the youthful Saturday night TV viewing audience. CBS noticed,however, that all the other prime time soaps (all the ones mentioned above, plus NBC's upcoming Flamingo Road) were ensconsed in the latest prime time slot possible, and doing quite nicely. So Secrets is giving equal time to its adult community while simultaneously introducing a cast that in sheer size makes Peyton Place look like a ghost town. What kind of place is Midland Heights? If you limit your, input to the pilot episode, as most discerning viewers will (if they watch at all), the bottom line is that Midland Heights is a boring place. The program is boring, true. But so are the inhabitants, the teachers, the hay-rides and even the TV stations of Midland Heights. Elements of the script sound like one-liners written for Henny Youngman. Secrets of Midland Heights would have us believe that this town is so small (how...small... is... it?) that it broadcasts a high school football game on the radio and on television. This town is so small that two generations of the same family coincidentally rendezvous at adjoining rooms of the town motel to engage in the throes of sexual passion. This town is so small that the high school kids go on hayrides, which are big deals in Midland Heights even if one dejected young lady manages to put the whole thing in perspective. ' "I think I'm mature enough to miss one Founders' Day hayride . without going to pieces," she says bravely. It's easy to see why CBS wanted this series out of the reach of children. The actors and actresses are attractive enough to be immortalized on posters, but they're also eerily dissimilar to high school students of the current generation. High school seniors are no longer innocent and stupid (if, indeed, they ever were), but Secrets of Midland Heights has its young characters frozen in the anachronistic amber of the Dobie Gillis era. On the notorious hayride, for example, the students of modern-day Midland Heights break into a rousing chorus of Tom Dooley. Now I don't mean to split hays, but Tom Dooley was a hit song for The Kingston Trio in 1959... three years before a modern-day 18-year-old would have breathed his first breath, much less hummed his first folk song. I doubt that you could find one high school senior in 100 who could identify Tom Dooley, let alone sing it. (Their follow-up number, incidentally, was Bottle o' Wine, a newer but much more obscure song that even Cameron Cohick, rock critic for The Fort Lauderdale News Sun-Sentinel, admitted was "before my time." If Cohick is incapable of dredging up more than the chorus, how can a Midland Heights teenybopper break into three-part harmony without so much as a moment's hesitation?) It's worth discussing such picayune details at length because these very details can make or break a show of this type. To reach a young audience, Secrets has to be believable to a young audience - and this one hasn't got a prayer. In the later time slot, CBS might be able to get away with more because parents won't know how outdated the show's portrayal of young people really is. It might, in fact, be a source of great comfort. In the soap opera sweepstakes, Secrets of Midland Heights comes in dead last. Dallas has the ultimate villain and a handful of delectable men and women: Knots Landing has good directorial style, and both it and Flamingo Road have female, versions of J.R.Ewing. Secrets, conversely, has little to offer. The cast members aren't worth mentioning, so they won't be mentioned. The acting is minimal to somnambulistic, and the script is straight from the "One plot twist from Column A, two from Column B" school of building-block TV writing. The only thing Secrets has actually, is the best double entrendre line among the season's new pilot shows. One howlingly funny line, though, is no reason to watch Secrets of Midland Heights. Nor, when you think about it. to make it. When the question "What function does Secrets of Midland Heights fill?" was put to David Jacobs, the producer responded with the only acceptable answer. "What function?" he repeated: Then he smiled, obviously deciding to 'fess up. "Saturday at 10 o'clock.,.".

Manya Starr Obit Variety Aug 8 2000 Manya Starr, president of the Writers Guild of America East from 1965 to 1976, died July 26 at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York, from complications after surgery. She was 79. Starr, a longtime veteran of radio shows, began her career writing ad libs for the “Dorothy and Dick” radio show after graduating from Bryn Mawr College. During WWII, she was an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy. After the war, Starr continued writing for radio, most notably as principal writer of “Claudia,” a long-running soap based on a Rose Franken play. Starr worked briefly with the production staff of the original “Today” with Arlene Frances. Soon afterward, she served as a writer for several TV soaps including “The Doctor’s Wife,” “First Love,” “Paradise Bay” and the comedy series “The Egg and I.” Starr also jumped into the producer role for such shows as “Love of Life” and “Clear Horizon,” and served as a scribe for “Passport to Prague” and NBC’s “Experiments in Television.” In 1981, Starr married documentary filmmaker Amram Nowak, which marked the start of a 20-year collaboration on dozens of documentary and dramatic films. These included the drama “The Cafeteria” and Academy Award- nominated “Isaac in America,” a documentary on Polish-born writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. Starr is survived by her husband, two sons and three step-children. Baltimore Evening Sun Jan 2 1955 Writer's Happy In Her Work Manya Starr, writer of the daytime TV serial. First Love, is one of those happy persons who is thoroughly pleased with what she is doing and is delighted with the' response that the show has received. A graduate of Bryn Mawr, Manya began her career while still in college. The estate of George Gershwin granted her rights to "Porgy and Bess," which he rewrote, directed and produced at school. George Gershwin was her godfather. When she graduated, she was hired by the Theater Guild as a production assistant. Following this, she was a script reader for Producer John Golden and later a publicity writer for the Theater Wing. Married Business Man During World War II. While serving as a WAVE public-relations officer in Washington, she became interested in script writing, and immediately after leaving the service,sold her first script "to the Columbia Workshop. In 1945, she married Roger Starr, a New York business man and returned to her native Manhattan, where she wrote scripts for a number of radio and television shows. Mr. and Mrs. Starr now have two children, Adam, 3, and Alexandra, 1. Born January 21, 1921, she is the daughter of Doctor and Mrs.Abraham L. Garbat. From her upbringing she received plenty of authentic background for her NBC radio series "Doctor's Wife."

Wouldn't be at all surprised if there was some retcon introduced that contradicts what we saw onscreen. This is Josh, remember? Or maybe there was another Reed sister that Nikki never knew about?

I can't see 2 rival networks and 2 different production companies working together to arrange a crossover. Had anything like that ever happened before or since? Just Enquirer hype I think.

Granny was off the show a month into its run (June 64) I don't believe there was any explanation at the time. Maybe they were thinking of recasting? I think a bit later there was a mention that Granny had gone to care for another relative out of town. It's always stated that the role wasn't needed but after only a few weeks it would be hard to roll. Maybe it was a budget thing or they just realised the cast was too big.

Why mention at all if it is a contentious issue? There are many past plots that could be mentioned in relation to current stories but are not so why bother with glossing over the Bill/Laura rape?

So Lesley had 2 dead children? Did the scab writers come up with the husband suicide/dead child scenario? And then there was the Laura back story?

The idea behind Sue Ellen and a toy boy was good but the execution was off. Unless you are into twinks, Peter had zero appeal. Compare it to DH and Jesse Metcalfe. Chris Atkins had moved full speed into his twank era.

Who is the blonde b/w Linda and Sheree? Linda always looks great.

How long can Elena stay around? Maybe Britni is already recurring?