Paul Raven

Variety July 19th 1972 While the character she played on "Where the Heart Is" goes to Rochester to visit a sick aunt, Bibl Osterwald will be in Hollywood to play the male lead's mother in "Bridget Loves Bernie," a CBS-TV primetime newcomer in the fall

Variety April 23rd 1970 Anthony George is joining cast of "Search for Tomorrow," CB8-TV daytime drama soaper, beginning tomorrow, in role of a surgeon.

Variety Feb 17th 1971 Tony Geary into cast of soaper "Bright Promise"

Variety 28th April 1971 Constance Towers signed for a regular role in the CBS soaper "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.

Variety 11th Feb 76 Kathryn Hays returned to the cast of CBS-TV's "As TheWorld Turns" after a three-month absence, during which Patty McCormack filled her role.

Variety 10th April 74 C. David Colson has joined the cast of CBS-TV's "As the World Turns". (As Tom Hughes)

I wonder who Hazel was? Variety 11th July 73 William Prince and Augusta Dabney, married in real life, will play husband and wife on "As the World Turns."

Variety 12th May 1971 Geraldine Brooks joins the cast.She had been a young star at Warner Bros in the late 1940's. As Carl reported upthread,she was out by September.Does anyone know how her role as Arden fitted into the story at the time?

Both Larry Gates and William Roerick,who became beloved characters in later years until their deaths had appeared previously on GL as Ira and Bruce Banning respectively.

Just saw Mary Stuart as a nurse in the 1948 Warners movie 'Embraceable You'. She had 2 scenes.

Nice article,but they needed to brush up on their research. Amy was never killed off,Peter was not married to Myra at the debut and the show didn't start in 52!

Off on another tangent ,Found this in the March 30 82 synopsis in SOD Tony shows his father a film he took at his party in Salem...When the camera focuses on Marlena.Stefano comments on her beauty and says she'll fit into their plans!Tony mentions that Marlena is able to bear children.That's important if she's to become Stefano's daughter-in-law.A wife to one of Tony's brothers! Stefano becomes excited when he spots Julie.He rises from his chair and shouts,"That's her!"Tony explains Julie is married,but that doesn't deter Stefano.'IF i want her,she's mine!"he declares. We can only guess how things would have gone with Pat Falken Smith at the helm for longer.

The more things change....Days was in crisis mode 23 years ago as this SOD article from Dec 89 demonstrates. Fix-It Fever Hits Day Actors,producer and head writer get the axe as Days struggles to bounce back from disaster. Trouble...turmoil...a chaotic situation.”Is that the backstage atmosphere at Days?According to people in high places,yes. Still,one network exec insists the soap isn't floundering. arguing that”All shows have their good days and bad days”. By any yardstick ,though,this soap has been having some awful days .The show recently dropped to 8th place in the ratings. In the summer of 88,the show shot to #1 when Steve and Kayla were married. but it's been losing viewers ever since. According to insiders,Days is running scared and fix-it fever has set in. In November,Shelley Curtis was demoted from supervising executive producer to supervising producer,Anne Howard Bailey was axed as headwriter,and Sherri Stringer was removed as one of the show's producers. Meanwhile. former Supervising Executive Producer Al Rabin was lured out of semi retirement to take over the show's reins. NBC claims the changes were made because “we wanted to put the original team back in place that had made the show #1”. However,Anne Howard Bailey maintains,:The ratings reflect the chaotic situation since the introduction of the new regime at NBC”(Bailey is referring to Jackie Smith,new VP of daytime) “I have not been able to do the things I wanted to do”.Bailey admits.”Let's just say,the stars were not in the right orbit,and I'm very tired. Frankly.I'm looking forward to a long rest and then going back to prime time.” Bailey feels basically she wasn't the right writer for Days.”I was not walking uphill here. I was climbing a mountain. Days deserves somebody who is more wired to their particular kind of story.”(The new headwriters will be Anne Schoettle and Richard Allen,two of the show's current scriptwriters,who are both thirty years old.) Shortly before the production shakeup,there was another commotion,when several actors were taken off-contract,including James Reynolds(Abe)Peggy McCay(Caroline)Frank Parker(Shawn)Christie Clark(Carrie)Michael Bays(Julio)and Joy Garret(Jo). For Peggy McCay,the change has been hard,because her work schedule has been drastically reduced.”I used to work a few times a week”,she explains,”Now I'm on once or twice a month,and then I have three or four lines to say. I feel I could phone it in.” The whole situation mystifies her.”I threw away opportunities because of the show. I had a chance to audition for Generations and I had to turn it down.(Peggy was even in the process of buying a new house,but had to nix the deal once she lost her contract status.) Frank Parker is particularly disturbed by the show's ultrafascination with youth.”Any time Peggy and I had something substantial in the script,and the show was running long,it would be cut. That's so wasteful. I wish they could realise the value of older characters on soaps. Family oriented storylines like ours have a value beyond trivial sex and cops and robbers stuff” However,his candor may have gotten him in hot water. After he spoke in another publication,a Days producer reportedly called his agent and said,”He'll never work on this show again” Meanwhile,the firings continue. John Lavachielli ,who began playing Hank Tobin in November,was let go after a few performances. His replacement Ron Kuhlman lasted one day. Now there's a third actor in the role-Rick Porter(ex Larry AW) Still most stars are guardedly positive about the future.”This show has to be about family values”,stresses Matthew Ashford(Jack)”Al Rabin is going to strengthen that again. He's a family man in terms of what he envisions

When the show moved to the morning timeslot,they tried to attract gameshow fans,as that was the usual programming at that time.The result was Tall Texas Tales.

Lovely story. Thanks for sharing. Bob and Miranda 's wedding. She was wife #4.

From SOD Feb 87. Michael Storm,who's played Larry on OLTL for 18 years,got so bummed out by his lack of story (and never having the ear of execs)that he took his peeve to the press - in fact a very blatant, no-bones-about-it SOD article. "I had tried everything to get my view listened to at ABC",recalls Storm. "I was at my wit's end and decided to go through the press,never realizing the disaster that would befall me ". As it happened,shortly after the actor gave the interview,his story started sizzling again, and stayed that way until the article hit the newsstands.That's when producer Paul Rauch,who'd read it and was plenty steamed,called Storm on the carpet. Says Michael,"I thought the matter got resolved during that one little encounter. He told me that he understood that the things i said were said at a time whenI was down and frustrated. but since the day the SOD article came out, I have not really been working on the show.Now, whether or not that's co-incidental, and I hope to God it is, I don't know. There could be another reason that I've been back-burnered. I don't know. I'm just giving the chronological facts as they occurred. if given the chance to speak out again,I most certainly wouldn't."

Yale Summers,who played Rodney Harrington, has died aged 78.

THEY SPIN THE TALES FOR SOAP OPERAS by Kathy Henderson 'It's hard to surprise a daytime audience today,'' says Douglas Marland, head writer of the CBS soap opera ''As the World Turns.'' ''They know all the formulas and are usually six feet ahead of you, but if the surprise is well thought out and justified, they love it.'' Since joining the 30-year-old series last September, Mr. Marland has created a ''boy-next-door-type'' psychotic murderer, turned a heroine into a villain and introduced a new family filled with good-looking teen-agers, one of whom is now flirting with a girl who may actually be his niece. ''You've got to be very devious to write a soap opera,'' Mr. Marland says, only half jokingly. In addition to guile, head writers in daytime television must have enough imagination and enough discipline to fill five hours of programming every week, with no summertime reruns or hiatuses. They are a breed of writer who seem to thrive under pressure, keeping track of production requirements and supervising a staff of outline writers and dialogue writers even as they lay out plot lines six months in advance in book-length story projections. Some, like William Bell of ''The Young and the Restless'' and Wisner Washam of ''All My Children,'' stay with the same show for years; others, like Mr. Marland, who has worked on six daytime serials in 12 years, happily jump from show to show. Recently, Mr. Marland allowed a visitor to sit in on a weekly meeting with ''As the World Turns'' executives in the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street, as well as a story conference with the show's two outline writers. Before scripts are written, the week's story outlines (called ''breakdowns'') are critiqued each Wednesday by executive producer Robert Calhoun, two production officials from the network and one from Procter & Gamble, which owns ''As the World Turns'' and three other soaps. Each day's outline runs 15 pages long and is detailed enough to list the time of day of every scene. Discussing the episodes to be shown this week, the group praised Mr. Marland's handling of confrontations between two strong-willed women characters and his development of a romantic triangle. ''I like the way we spend a lot of time on a few stories,'' said Laurence Caso, CBS director of daytime programming. Mr. Calhoun passed around photographs of a picturesque Connecticut pond selected for location shooting of various innocent and illicit romantic scenes, including an affair that will begin on tomorrow's episode. In typical soap-opera fashion, the lovers will be caught in the act by another character. ''We don't want him voyeuring,'' Mr. Marland said. ''He stumbles upon them, turns and goes.'' ''Is there a story purpose to his seeing them?'' asked Mr. Caso. ''Oh, yes,'' Mr. Marland replied, without specifying what it might be. Technical questions abounded: What breed would be best for an attack-dog sequence? Could a young actor whose character has run away to the rodeo be taught to use a lariat? Would there be enough room on a small porch set for four actors to play a scene? The group reached a consensus quickly on casting a major new teen-age character named Emily Stewart, who, in tomorrow's episode, has already moved to town and begun flirting with one of the show's young heartthrobs. A 22-year-old actress from California, Colleen McDermott, was chosen from six screen-tested finalists. ''She's young and green, but she's going to grow into someone special,'' said Mr. Calhoun. ''I want to get her into acting school right away.'' Later, as he and Mr. Marland watched that day's installment of ''As the World Turns,'' Mr. Marland talked about the craft of plotting a soap. ''I try to gear younger stories for summer,'' he said, to attract the college-age viewers advertisers covet. ''But I don't think young stories work unless they're contrasted to the older generations.'' Interestingly, Mr. Marland, a courtly man of 51, has developed a reputation for writing believable stories about teen-agers and was hired to give ''As the World Turns'' a younger, more exciting image. He admits accepting advice from his 20-year-old niece, Tracy, whose fantasy of falling in love with an older man became a popular plot line during Mr. Marland's tenure as head writer on ''Guiding Light'' several years ago. His ideas for ''As the World Turns'' are fleshed out with the help of breakdown writers Garin Wolf and Caroline Franz and a team of five dialogue writers, each of whom turns out one script a week. Mr. Marland himself writes two breakdowns a week and edits every script to ensure consistency in language and tone. (Many head writers delegate the latter chore to an editor.) ''It's like you're living in three time zones,'' he says of the writing process, ''because you're watching a show at 1:30 that you wrote the outline for eight weeks earlier and edited six weeks earlier.'' Every Tuesday, Mr. Wolf and Mrs. Franz discuss a week's worth of outlines with their boss, either in an all-day telephone conference or at Mr. Marland's Federal-style home in New Canaan, Conn. The house, built in 1801 and featured in the current issue of Antiques magazine, attests to the financial rewards of reaching the top in daytime television. A recent session began with plans for handling the death at age 79 of actor Don MacLaughlin, who had portrayed the Hughes family patriarch since the first episode of ''As the World Turns'' on April 2, 1956. ''Although there will be a six-week delay [ in the audience's learning of the death ] , we felt we must play it out, not simply stick something into existing episodes,'' Mr. Marland said. The writers discussed how each character might react to the news that ''Chris Hughes'' had died in his sleep, and Mrs. Franz suggested weaving in flashbacks from earlier installments. The three writers then moved on to a scene-by-scene summary of the first show of the week, with special emphasis on the three opening teasers designed to grab the viewers' attention. ''An audience responds to continuity and a clear sense of direction, and I just don't think you get that without one head writer,'' Mr. Marland had said earlier. ''To me, writing by committee is horrendous.'' Mr. Marland downplays the pressure of the job, even as he methodically chain-smokes his way through a pack of cigarettes. ''Doug is an amazingly creative and energetic writer,'' says Mrs. Franz, who spent six months as co-head writer of ''As the World Turns'' in 1983. She returned to dialogue and breakdown writing after developing stress-related digestive problems. ''You have to be a workaholic to survive in this business,'' she adds. ''With 258 hours a year to fill, you gobble up stories so fast, and then they're after you to produce more and more. For me, it was not worth the agony.'' ''A lot of people think that any idiot can write this stuff, but I've seen wonderful playwrights who can't do it,'' says Kathy Talbert, the manager of writer development for Procter & Gamble productions. Miss Talbert receives submissions from a thousand would-be soap writers a year and conducts twice-a-year seminars for a handful of promising candidates on one of the genre's three ''branches'': scriptwriting, breakdown writing and head writing. ''Dialogue writers have to have a terrific ear,'' Miss Talbert says. ''They've got to absorb all the characters and be able to delineate those different voices. Breakdown writers must be good at dramatic structure and pay close attention to character motivation and conflict within each scene. Head writing is a different gift - someone who can spin a story that goes on and on for months. Sometimes we think of it as the novelist of the show.'' Mr. Marland learned the craft in P.& G.'s first scriptwriting seminar in 1974, after having spent the initial half of his career as an actor. Nowadays, he insists, ''you can make a soap as realistic as you want it to be. But when you pull things out of left field, it sours the audience.'' With some pride, Mr. Marland admits to having been fired from ''General Hospital,'' which went from 12th to first in the ratings during his tenure in 1979, because he refused to break up a popular couple two months after they'd been married. ''As the World Turns'' hasn't shown a similarly dramatic ratings rise (it's currently sixth among 13 shows), but wins its second half-hour and, according to Mr. Calhoun, has been steadily increasing its share of teen-age and college viewers this year. The relative ease of writing for a once-a-week prime-time serial holds no allure for Mr. Marland. ''I love the freedom we get in daytime, based on the fact that we have to produce it so quickly. We don't have people breathing down our backs to rewrite or tearing our work apart - because there simply isn't time.'' Mr. Marland hopes to stay with ''As the World Turns'' for another year or two, then launch a new soap. ''If you really want to tell stories that lead you to other stories, this is the only place you can do that,'' he says. ''Daytime gives you that sweeping, never-ending canvas. The people who really love it stay with it.'' <p class="rep_bar clearfix right" id="rep_post_696668" style="margin-top: 6px; margin-right: 4px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-left: 4px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: right; white-space: nowrap; "> 0 Edit

Phil MacGregor was the first Rick.He later played Linc on Loving.French Fan's thread 30 years ago details what stories were happening under Smith,Brown and then Pam Long.

I associate Priscilla Pointer with Dallas where she played Rebecca Wentworth,Pam & Katherine's mother.She is also the mother of actress Amy Irving,ho was married to Steven Spielberg.

Variety Feb 68 Joan Copeland joins as Andrea.