Paul Raven

Quinn Redeker and Joe La Due returned to set to celebrate Jeanne's 30th anni as Katherine

Re Guiding Light They were exploring TJ being Ann Jeffers son. That didn't happen, so maybe it was just a plot point. Re GH Now the Hollands are in charge, they have married Leslie and Cam, written off Joel and introduced the Laura story along with the Chandlers.

I hate those ' man arranges fashion show for his lady ' scenes- or any of those scenarios where the male takes control and organizes stuff and the woman is supposed to be enthralled and grateful. But I guess its what they thought the women in the audience wanted to see and I suppose they were right.

Judging by those shots you would have thought that Jack, Carla and Viki were getting married. The bride and groom did not get any close up/intimate shots that you would expect to see in a soap wedding. I wonder if Ellen Holly's dislike of Arthur Burghart came into play with this?

Marland dropped Frank and Maggie almost immediately (breaking his own rules) I think Frank Runyeon had signed a 1 yr contract to continue as Steve and P&G were clamping down on this, so I think Marland was pretty sure that Runyeon would be gone when the year was up and wrote towards this.

#3 Not having James Reynolds and Debbi Morgan there from the beginning

Generations made so many mistakes getting off the ground. #1 Making an ice cream company the family business,

I'm pretty sure that today's show's aren't given 12 hours to tape an episode.

Jed Allan/Don was regarded as too old and probably too expensive... And 80's Days didn't care much for 70's Days. Tom/Alice, Mickey/Maggie and Neil only survived the decade and when Mike returned he was totally different character.

Yes don't know what happened there.

Days spent years building up Don and Marlena then they had the child that died, Marlena was raped, Don cheated with Liz etc Normally obstacles that would lead to them being re-united but Roman came along and the writing changed to push them that pairing. I'm sure a lot of Don/Marlena fans felt annoyed. And then years later the same thing happened when Roman was sacrificed to John/Marlena...

Hamilton/Halton/Niagara, ON Mon, Apr 27, 1999 from Hamilton Spectator and St. Catherines Standard 2 WGRZ-NBC Buffalo 3 CKVR-NewNet Barrie 4 WIVB-CBS Buffalo 5 CBLT-CBC Toronto 6 CIII-Global Paris 7 WKBW-ABC Buffalo 9 CFTO-CTV Toronto 10 CFPL-NewNet London (10) Cogeco Community 10-Niagara Falls 11 CHCH-ONtv Hamilton 12 WICU-NBC Erie 13 CKCO-CTV Kitchener 14 Cable 14-Hamilton 17 WNED-PBS Buffalo 23 CableNet 23-Burlington/Oakville (23) WNEQ-PBS Buffalo 24 WJET-ABC Erie 25 CBLFT-SRC Toronto 29 WUTV-Fox Buffalo 35 WSEE-CBS Erie 47 CFMT-Ethnic Toronto 49 WNYO-WB Buffalo 54 WQLN-PBS Erie 57 CITY-Ind Toronto TFO CHLF-TFO Toronto TVO CICA-TVO Toronto Morning 5:00 2 NBC News at Sunrise 4 News 6 Creflo A. 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Whatever happened to Wisner Washam. When did he depart? Did he fall or was he pushed?

Further to discussion of NBCs problem with affiliate clearance of their soaps SPW published an article about the debut of Sunset Beach and affiliates. Houston (10th largest market) UPN affiliate KTXH will air SB at 10am b/w repeats of 90210 and Dr Quinn. The NBC affiliate KPRC airs Days @1 and AW @ 2. Dallas/Fort Worth (8th largest market) NBC affiliate KXAS moved AW to its sister station KXTX/39 to make room for SB. Detroit (9th largest) NBC affiliate WDIO opted not to pick up SB. A subsequent deal with the FOX affiliate WJBK fell through.

Similar to Rauch at AW - Rauch /Lemay was feted but the minute Lemay left Rauch floundered and ratings plunged. A good exec producer is vital to delivering the writers vision in an attractive package but 'if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage'

It seems to be a budget thing dropping all those supporting characters but surely an occasional appearance by a recurring character would be doable. Just drop Kevin again and use that money. Same with servants. Someone at the Newmans and Abbotts - they don't even have to be speaking parts...

Re GL Interesting to see what the Dobsons do upon arrival. It seems that Ken and Janet were already on the way out under Cenedella. That left room for the Dobsons to bring in (so far) Andy Norris, Hope Bauer, Chad Richards and Ann Jeffers. 2 newbies and 2 characters tied to established families. At this point Seems that Chad will provide story for Leslie and Hope. Andy will be a troublemaker, too soon to see what their plans for Ann were.

First off Congrats to Jaida - some stunning looks throughout the season and a funny likeable queen. Ru's serial killer masks were just plain weird. Going in it was b/w Jaida and Gigi. Crystal was great but too quirky and not as polished up against those two. OK Face lipsync Gigi was clear winner , even using her eyelashes as Michelle stated. Crystal's makeup was messy and made it hard to make out her expressions and those yellow teeth !! Jaida did a fine job. Home made video. Crystal was madness with the bird theme but she should have moved to a full reveal in some bird costume than just the puppets all the way through. Gigi's was incredible with the costumes. filming and tribute to the original clip. Jaida just pushed the sofa to one side of the room and the Ciara song was pretty ordinary. Final lipsync Again Crystal's look was cluttered and distracted from the lipsync .The song didn't suit her . Gigi slayed it with the costume change Jaida to me was up to her usual standard but nothing we hadn;t seen before. So I was a little surprised to have Ru announce Jaida as the winner. Methinks that Gigi didn't represent what Ru (and the producers) want the show to represent. The narrative constantly pushed is that the show is some sort of touchstone that changes lives and provides inspiration for the vulnerable and marginalized. Gigi was a confident, talented , priveleged queen with supportive mom. Not the struggle that Ru wants to present.

re Kay Campbell Her role on Romance of Helen Trent was Alice Nolan Some more radio roles for these Hoppers Esther Ralston - Big Sister 1940 Ethel Everett Remey - I day replacement for Esther Ralston Woman of Courage 1942 - Hearts in Harmony 1942 Les Tremayne had 2 stints on Helen Trent as 2 separate characters in 1933 and 1942 Ed Prentiss - also announcer for The Guiding Light (at least 1943) - Right to Happiness - Backstage Wife Leon Janney - Stella Dallas 1943 Mary Patton - Lone Journey 1943 Elspeth Eric - Second Husband Eric Dressler - Stella Dallas Joan Wetmore - This Life is Mine Irna Phillips - Road of Life

No that was Winifred Wolfe I believe with Penny played by Pheobe Dorin. When Amy came in, under Irna ,it was without Penny,

Sandy Dennis was on GL and I read she was fired after her first ep!

Have you seen her in Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice ? with Miss Ruth Gordon? Often grouped into the hagsploitation genre but based on a good little thriller by Ursula Curtiss (one of my favorites in domestic suspense) La Page is fantastic in this.

From September 1948. Grace Matthews roles courtesy of Slick Jones RADIO BIG SISTER Ruth Evans Brewster Wayne between 1936 and 1952 THE BRIGHTER DAY Liz Dennis between 1948 and 1956 HILLTOP HOUSE Julie Erickson Nixon Paterno between 1935 and 1955 ROAD OF LIFE Dr. Carson McVicker Fowler between 1937 and 1955 TELEVISION ROAD OF LIFE Unknown Role (probably Carson McVicker) Unknown Year AS THE WORLD TURNS Grace Baker Unknown Year THE GUIDING LIGHT Claudia Dillman 1968-69; 1972 Actress Grace Matthews left Canadian radio to reign over the weepy world of the daytime serials. Maybe it isn’t art but it sure pays HUGH KEMP SEPTEMBER 1 1948 Queen of the Soap Operas MISS GRACE MATTHEWS, a bachelor of arts from the University of Toronto, alumna of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England, and recently a star of Andrew Allan’s “Stage” series on the CBC, has a new title. She is now being hailed by the radio trade of America as the “Queen of the Soap Operas.” Since Jan. 10, 1937, the talented Canadian has been Ruth Wayne, the star of “Big Sister,” one of the most profitable and interminable of the soap operas (known also as cliff hangers, strip shows, washboard weepe:rs and defined by James Thurber as “an endless sequence of narratives whose only cohesive element is the eternal presence of its bedeviled and beleaguered principal characters”. Miss Matthews is Big Sister on the Columbia network at. one o’clock each weekday except Saturday. Then, at three-fifteen on the same days, she is Julie Ericksen, female lead of Columbia’s sustaining serial “Hilltop House.” And every Sunday night she becomes Margot, girl Friday to the Shadow in Mutual’s thriller of the same name. She does other odd jobs of radio acting, too, but by the soaps she is known. Sometimes in the late night silence Grace Matthews admits to some surprise at her present position. For it is something that, she never meant to Income. But, she says, “You decide to forget about art and call it business.” As business it provides Miss Matthews with a .$25,U00-a-year existence in Manhattan. Miss Matthews looks more like the $25,000 a year girl than the fictional characters she represents. She is a svelte woman with a Fifth-Avenue look and a big-boned handsome face that would suggest a fashion editor to Hollywood. She has what Andrew Allan, drama director of the CBC, describes as “a personalized glamour which is more than the sum total of her physical attributes. It is a rare kind of magic.” Strangest of all, these very qualities come through in her voice. Her cultivated contralto reflects a social-university background in every well-formed note. Miss Matthews, a contemplative person by nature, often puzzles over how the millions of her soap audience can accept her unquestioningly as the small-town middle-class woman known as Big Sister. This doubt certainly never enters the thinking of the producers of the show. They know only too well that there is no relationship between realism and the soap operas and that in the dream world of the kitchen sink the most banal problems can be solved most satisfyingly by a voice which is a cross between Cleopatra and Marlene Dietrich. The only thing finally demanded of Grace Matthews by the producers is that she be personally liked by the audience. In her present roles it is not difficult, but even if she were the vixen of the piece she would still have to be liked—or, at worst, not disliked. Once on “Big Sister” an actress used a raw, guttural voice to play the part of a nasty woman. Immediately a batch of protests came in from women of the audience. The producers didn’t change the nasty woman; just gave her nicer vocal tones. Everybody was happy. It’s that kind of a world. It’s also this kind of a world. Miss Matthews lives with her husband, Court Benson, a Canadian announcer and radio actor, in a swank apartment in New York’s east 70’s. That’s the district where four-room apartments start at about $250 a month. And she has a wardrobe that starts at about the same price. And a maid who comes in every day at noon to do what the press releases describe as “Grace loves to to do her own cooking in spite of an exhausting daily schedule.” By Miss Matthews’ own admission the daily schedule is not in the least exhausting. She rises slowly about nine o’clock, nibbles through breakfast., selects the suit with which to face the day and then saunters down Madison Avenue. Just before eleven-thirty she presents herself in the grey-blue soundproofed air-conditioned vault in the Columbia Broadcasting System Building from which “Big Sister” is sent forth to North America. There is no noise, no confusion, no inspiration, no temperament in evidence. There is no studio audience, nor is there any feeling of the audience out there in Canadian and U. S. homes. The actors involved in the day’s episode sit on tables, slump in chairs and lean against walls. They do a “first read-through,” get to know what the script is about, mark up tricky spots in their lines. On most soap operas this first run-through is the occasion for actors to make wisecracks about the characters they are playing and to moan and groan about the more fatuous of their lines. Miss Matthews never kids the lines; she thinks it’s naïve. Her attitude is that she’s doing a job and she’ll do it well. This approach is much appreciated by the businessmen who are responsible for the shows. In their view “Big Sister” is not a story but a property. It runs through $18,000 a week; represents an investment of some $8 millions in its 12-year history. At those prices the wisecracks from the hired help have to be good to make a sponsor laugh. After the run-through the actors gather around the microphone and the director slips in behind the glass window of the control room. Then they do it again on mike and take a timing. As a rule there is very little rehearsal of detail. The actors are all skilled craftsmen who do this stuff hundreds of times in the course of a year. Besides, soap opera acting is very mannered and easy to do for anyone who has the basic equipment. In the words of one normally cynical director, it is “a composite of very sad readings, very long pauses.” Grace Matthews follows the turtlepaced developments of the plot with mild interest, though this is in no way essential to her acting of the part of Ruth Wayne. The acting she can do with the front of her head while she compiles her income tax at the rear. Just before one o’clock the actors break off and go out into the corridors for a smoke. At one o’clock they stand up to the mike again in the silent studio and 15 minutes later another episode of “Big Sister” has gone out to housewives of Canada and the U. S. Ruth, Then Julie The plot of this serial has gone through many convolutions during the past 12 years. In its early days Ruth Evans Wayne, a nurse, was a big sister who tried passionately to become mother and father to her orphaned sister Sue and her crippled brother Neddie. Today she is married to Dr. John Wayne and is symbolically a big sister to husband, friends and strangers, too. Like all good soap operas, “Big Sister” went to war after Pearl Harbor, suffered through rehabilitation maladjustments after VJ-Day, and is just now getting back to being thoroughly self-centred. At one-fifteen each day, after the “Big Sister” broadcast, Grace Matthews goes downstairs at CBS for a quick lunch, generally at Colbee’s, a popular hangout for the radio-acting crowd. Her lunch is frequently interrupted by a call from PLAZA, a radio actors’ telephone agency which undertakes to find its clients anywhere in New York at any time of the day or night to tell them that they are wanted by a director for another show. At two o’clock Grace is back upstairs in the studios where the mood is the same, the people are roughly the same, the pacing is the same and the wisecracks are the same. Only the words are different, because this time the serial is “Hilltop House.” Miss Matthews plays the part of Julie Ericksen, the attractive young matron of an orphanage whose sympathy and understanding develop confidence, respect and love in the often unruly and unhappy youngsters assigned to her care. By three-thirty Miss Matthews is usually through for the day and the days are roughly the same Monday through Friday. Saturday is clear and then on Sunday afternoon she spends four hours preparing to be and being Margot, female helper to the Shadow at MBS. This routine goes on through 50 weeks of the year. By the terms of her American Federation of Radio Artists contract, Grace Matthews must have two weeks’ holiday from each show. To accomplish this the writer of the serial has to write her out—send her to the mountains, or the hospital, or on a mysterious errand where the microphone discreetly does not follow. So far this day in the life of the Sarah Siddons of the soaps sounds fairly easy. And it is—so long as everything remains normal in the studio and sickness stays away from the door. Trouble with being a leading lady of the strips is that when everything goes wrong in the studio and you are personally suffering from an attack of influenza, you still have to go on and sound like the brave cultured woman you are. Miss Matthews has been before the microphone with a temperature of 102 and with a violently throbbing tooth and with a racking cough. If you would like an idea of what radio actors must sometimes go through, try this one: next time your throat is really tickling and you are dying to burst out in a series of racking coughs, don’t. Instead, talk for 15 minutes in a natural pleasant voice. Fortunately, Miss Matthews is rarely ill. Only once has her voice disappeared completely. A doctor was rushed to the mike side, where, to the fascination of all, he pronounced the ailment, “globus hystericus.” He succeeded in getting the lump out of her throat in time for Big Sister to become her fascinating self. Some Hate Soapers As Queen of the Soaps, Miss Matthews plays to an audience estimated at close to three million people a day, a figure determined by telephone surveys made while the program is on the air. The popularity of “Big Sister” has varied this year between first and 13th place, in competition with 45 other soaps heard on the American networks. The fan mail for “Big Sister” is fairly large. The letters of high praise are generally passed along to Miss Matthews, but critical letters are kept from her on the grounds that they might dampen her enthusiasm. There is probably no one in all of North America without a definite attitude toward the soap serials. These attitudes range from a pathetic dependence and love through bitter and undying hatred to a kind of academic puzzlement. Psychologists can t stay away from them. In the Columbia Broadcasting System’s Reference Library there are more than 40 serious studies of the strip show, varying in length from 10 pages to entire books and bearing such titles as “Daytime Serials and Iowa Women,” “The Day-time Serial Drama—Its Psychological Background and Its Current Popularity Trend” and “What We Really Know About Daytime Serials.” The most determined opponent of soap operadom is a New York psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Berg. He has issued a number of studies which set out to prove that soap operas: “foster anxiety conditions in the listeners; induce mental fatigue; induce all those physiological changes in the listener which are concomitants of anxiety states—rapid pulse and respiration, high blood pressure, etc.” Through all of the studies the soap operas go on their way unchanged and unaffected. And Grace Matthews continues to draw her fat cheques and go on her very urban way. Because she is comparatively new to the business, she is now making about $25,000 a year. Ina couple of years this income should go up considerably. The union pay scale for each of her soaps is only $152.50 a week, but as a personality she gets considerably more from “Big Sister” and may soon get boosts all around. Bess Johnson, the actress who played the lead in “Hilltop House” before Grace Matthews, and read the commercials as well, got a walloping $1,600 a week for the job. Big money like this is not for everyone; over half of the 2,600 radio actors in New York make less than two thousand dollars a year. Training of a Queen Miss Matthews was born in Toronto ¡ in 1913 to a prominent family of normal business traditions. There was no theatre blood anywhere in the lineage. She attended a private school for girls, Bishop Strachan in Toronto. It was presumed that she would make her debut in her 18th year, but she surprised her former associates, and her family to some degree, by repudiating the social season and going on to the University of Toronto. There she took her B.A. and a series of summer courses in acting at Hart House. Among her fellow students were several who have since become well-known on the English stage; notably Florence McGee,David Manners, Kirbey Hawkes and Judith Evelyn. Following graduation from the U. of T. she did a casual tour of Italy and France for educational purposes only and then settled down for two more years of study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she was taught by Sir Kenneth Barnes,Charles Laughton and Sarah Algood. From there she returned to Canada and easy admission to the John Holden Players in Winnipeg. In 1938 she went down to New York, auditioned for and was signed by the New York Theatre Guild for “Dame Nature.” From there she went to summer stock at Marblehead, Mass., where she appeared in “Spring Meeting” and “Burlesque.” She was playing “Spring Meeting” at Saratoga Springs on the day war began. The following day the show closed and she returned to Canada. Back in Toronto she turned to radio and shortly became accepted as the leading lady for almost every major show. At the same time she got her introduction to the soap operas. She was “Soldier’s Wife,” and “Dr. Susan,” and Judy in “John and Judy.” She slipped into these without knowing quite how it happened. When Andrew Allan started his “Stage” series in 1944 she took leads there, too, and developed new power in the better-than-average radio vehides that were available. In that year she won three national awards as Canada’s leading radio actress. On a broadcast in 1940 she met Court Benson, an announcer who was on the hockey broadcasts from Toronto on Saturday night, and they were married shortly after. Court went overseas almost immediately with the 48th Highlanders and the romance continued by air mail. Their particular postwar dream was of a joint return to New York, where they would spend their lives acting together. Part of the dream, at least, came true. In the spring of 1946 the Bensons put up the shutters on their pleasant way of life in Toronto and took off for that very tough town to the south. Storming the Citadel Now, it would be nice to record their dramatic struggle to break into the closed circle of New York radio. But it didn’t happen that way.Two hours after their first audition, at Columbia Broadcasting System, they both had leads on a show called “American Portraits.” The Bensons continued to take general auditions; turned down jobs individually in many cases in order to be able to act together. All of the good New York things happened to them and none of the bad. Then, one day late in 1946, the radio world trembled. It was reported that Mercedes McCambridge, the actress who was then playing Big Sister, was preparing to leave the show. The Queen of the Soap Operas was abdicating her throne and across New York hundreds of young radio actresses spent sleepless nights visioning themselves as wearers of the crown. Miss Matthews gave it little thought, but when the preliminary tryouts for 20 actresses were announced she was among the chosen. Radio Butters the Bread Miss Matthews auditioned four times; was heard each time by an earnest panel of experts including the producer, the associate producer, the director of the show, the audition director, the account representative of the advertising agency, the publicity man of the agency and, finally, the client, Procter and Gamble. These people chose Grace Matthews straight across the board and without ever knowing what she looked like. The Bensons set out for New York originally with the determination to go into the legitimate threatre, but it took them no time at all to learn that the money figures of stage just don’t add up to a living. The sad fact is that a month is a long run for the average play that opens on Broadway and $300 a week is a high wage for an actor. And if an actor gets two plays a season it’s considered pretty good going. That’s why actors turn to the soaps without any feeling of shame. Some very, very good actors have made their bread and butter and cakes and wine in that medium. Don Ameche used to play four soaps a day. Van Heflin was in the cast of a serial called “The Goldbergs.” In anybody’s language the thing that the Bensons have built up is nice work if you can get it. Their combined income is over $40,000 a year and that buys comfort even in Gotham. In the view of husband Court and of the world at large, Grace is a success. In her own late-night reflections she is not so certain. In Canadian radio, she recalls, she played Shakespeare and Greek tragedy as well as modern tragedy and sophisticated comedy. She growled her love scenes, ordered a mean cocktail and uttered the occasional emphatic “damn” and “hell.” In American radio her range has been much more limited. The classic parts are simply not in existence and the modern tiger women of American broadcasting are really just painted kittens. In the soaps—where self-censorship is extreme—women do not smoke and they go faint at the mention of sherry. Once every six months the Bensons decide that New York is not really for them, that its values and its tempo are essentially false. “Then,” says Grace, “we talk of London all the time.” This past spring they almost packed their bags and took off; only the fact that Mrs. Benson was shortly to become a mother deterred them. Two months later they were again in love with “great warm stimulating New York.” The future in radio seems somewhat uncertain to Grace, as it now does to all American actors, for television seems to threaten the other media. Certainly television will make obsolete some of radio’s more extravagant practices and will make it impossible for Grace Matthews to be Big Sister at one o’clock each day and the head of an orphanage two hours later. Or will it? Will the great American housewife fall in love even more deeply with Miss Matthews’ image than with her voice and be only too happy to see her pretending that she is six or seven different things during the course of a day? After the experience of the soap operas, daring is he who would be a prophet in this field.