CT_Helena_Fan

CT, wouldn't you agree that the first Thomas was a more traditionally handsome soap leading man? The second, better known Thomas (seen in the clip above with Lizbeth, Tonja Walker) was more gawkward. And do you know how long the original Sam, Robert Sampson lasted? I've only seen him in the premiere movie. I know that Egan shared scenes with Carolyn Jones, so he must have joined during the first year, but I wonder if it had been months or even weeks before Sampson was replaced. I think Egan was a better fit for the role if I'm judging solely on looks/demeanor.

Yes, the original Thomas was the more traditionally handsome, "hunky" one, as was the original Tyler. However, their replacements were the better actors.

I think Robert Sampson was only in the pilot, but I could be wrong. Egan still counts as a recast, although, for all intents and purposes, he created the role.

As for Paula, Julie Adams first appeared in '83, I believe. She was the only person to play Paula, so she could count as an original cast member, as could Ed Nelson, although he left a few months before the show ended.

@Shadow: Yes, Todd Curtis was an original cast member, although he had a few temporary replacements (Grant Goodeve and Russell Todd) And speaking of age, I wonder how old some of the characters are supposed to be. Here are my guesses:

Judson Tyler: Has to at least be in his 70s, though Rory Calhoun was actually only about 10 years older than Constance Towers, who played his daughter.

Clarissa: Late 40s to early 50s

Baxter: Early 50s

Thomas: Late 20s, possibly 30, as he was a practicing doctor and not a med student or resident.

Tyler: Mid to late 20s

Matt: He said he was 27 during a scene when Baxter and Jeffrey (the older Baracquan guy who was Baxter's friend) tracked him down and told him he was Prince Marim. This was during the last month of the show.

Wally: Late teens to early 20s

Sam Clegg: Late 50s to early 60s

Myrna: Same as Clarissa

Trey: Early 30s

Julie: Mid to late 20s

Jordy: Same as Julie, since they were twins

Brenda: Late teens

Mark Denning: Mid to late 50s

Paula Denning: Around the same as Myrna and Clarissa

Sloane Denning: Mid to late 20s

Kelly Harper: Mid to late 30s

Zed Diamond: Mid to late 30s

A couple of the younger actors were replaced early on, like the original Julie, the original Matt and the original Thomas. The original Tyler was eventually replaced also, but he stayed on a little longer. Wally/Bill Beyers was the only McCandless son who was there from beginning to end. Now that I think of it, the only actors to have lasted the whole run of the show (were not killed off or replaced, even temporarily, recasts, or joined the show later) are Rory Calhoun, Constance Towers, Bill Beyers, Nicholas Walker, and Debrah Farentino. Let me know if I left anyone out, but I think it was just those five.

Thanks for reading. I wonder how he felt about Trey becoming more of the straightforward leading man.

It's too bad he didn't find a better role after this than the short run as Max (which he seemed to be really invested in, along with Fiona, but it was wrong role/wrong place/wrong time). He is and was a very handsome and dominant presence.

BTW, let me know if you ever want me to post the black and white Constance scans from the article you posted - it turns out I have the same issue.

If you have them, please do post them. Thanks!

Very interesting article, Carl. Thanks for posting. It looks like Nick Walker's upbringing prepared him well for playing Trey Clegg.

"Capitol" had a very good-looking cast, both the younger members and the veterans. The veterans were not pushed aside like in some of today's soaps (like, say, GH); they had a good balance of in terms of cast interaction and storylines for characters in all age groups. The veteran actors were respected, as they should be.

BTW, I found the mention of CT's Mexican art interesting given her next husband's occupation.

I thought so too. I wonder if she was dating him at the time, seeing that they got married only a few years after that article was written.

Thanks. What do you use to put your pictures up?

I really liked the article. I never knew she had polio. She really seems to have fought a long time for both conventional and unconventional ways. I also never knew that she lived in the same house as Joan Collins (at different times). I wonder who has it now.

I've had those pictures on my computer for awhile. I think I might have scanned them for someone several years ago. I post my pictures to photobucket and link to them from there.

It was a very interesting article and I love the color pictures. She is so beautiful and very photogenic.

There were some black and white pictures with the article as well, but somehow I can't find them on my computer and my scanner's not working, so when I get the scanner fixed, I'll post them.

Text of article:

"After polio and divorce, Constance Towers discovers, through her children: Life is Really A Many Splendored Thing.

Constance Towers avoids people who are negative and antagonistic. "They come in and immediately look at the glass that's half empty, instead of seeing it as half full."

A divorcee the past few years, she has been struggling to be both mother and father to her son Michael, 11, and daughter Maureen, 10. And she says, happily, "My children are so flexible. They make every adjustment, and with such good cheer! And they remind me that the glass is haf filled rather than half empty."

Life has been bittersweet for Constance, who recently became Marian Hiller, wife of Dr. Sanford Hiller (played by Stephen Joyce) on Love is a Many Splendored Thing.

Born Cosntance Mary Towers on a May 20 in the town of Whitefish, Mont., she was part of a closely-knit, happy Irish-Catholic family. Her dad, Harry J. Towers, was in the drug business and moved often. Constance remembers living in Missoula, Mont.; Moscow, Idaho; Spokane, and then Seattle, Wash. By 10, she was singing on radio, and by 12, she was singing operatic arias. After studying at the Julliard School of Music in New York, she went into show business.

Then, suddenly, in 1956, she was felled by polio and was warned she'd never walk again. "I recovered, although I was unable to walk for eight months." Fortunately, only her right leg was affected and therapy cured that. It was a disaster, but Constance looks back on the illness as giving her "time out to think." She saw the glass as half filled."

Three years after the polio attack, she married handsome millionaire Eugene McGrath, who didn't object to her career. In time, they separated and divorced, ("a problem, because I'm Catholic") and she concentrated on her career.

Six years ago, she gave up her Hollywood home and moved to New York to do a show, Anya. She was separated from her husband at the time, and had guilt feelings about working, but she told herself, "I'm a woman, and I don't have a husband, and it's not how much time I spend with my children that counts, but how I spend the time."

She has tried, diligently, to improve the quality of the time she spends with her youngsters Michael and Maureen.

"I wake them up, and they have breakfast, and they go off to school. And I'm home when they come home for dinner."

The first thing Michael does when he comes home is to ask, "Mom here?" and when he sees her, he's satisfied, and goes off to play with his friends.

Michael spent the summer in Athens, Greece, with the Cannon family, which lives next door in the Towers' midtown apartment house in New York. And Maureen had a marvelous summer singing in "The Sound of Music" which starred her mother, at the Jones Beach, Long Island, amphitheatre.

"Maureen, who had never sung before, auditioned for the role, and won it," explains Constance, proudly. "I've never pushed my children into show business."

Constance, a ravishingly beautiful blue-eyed blonde, has tried very hard to make the children feel comfortable about her career. "When I'm in a play, I take them to my dressing room, and show them around so they know where I go when I leave them every evening. I want them to have a mental picture of where I am, so they don't feel abandoned."

As a result, Michael and Maureen have a great sense of participation in her life and career. When they know she doesn't have to get up early certain mornings, they let her sleep late. "Some day," she smiles, "my children will be explaining how they raised their mother so beautifully."

Their New York apartment is crowded with fine paintings and religious statues from Mexico, but the kids have plenty of space for casual fun. They play basketball with the kids next door, in their room and the terraces, and Constance often takes them into the nearby park for ballplaying, hiking, and bicycle riding. They often go to the many museums. "The city has so much to offer," says Constance, who lived for many years in Hollywood and once occupied the Beverly Hills mansion that Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh built. "I sold that house to Tony Newley and Joan Collins, and they in turn sold it to Sammy Davis."

New York is good for Constance and her children. "My father, now president of the Associated Chain Drug Stores, and my mother live here, and my sister Lucille, who has three sons, just moved back to New York."

She shops in the supermarket, and she cooks. Although she has a lady who helps run the household, she insists on doing "everything a mother does...I find there's no way to stay within my budget if I didn't do my own shopping."

Working on her first daytime serial has been another joy in her life. "I'm crippled on the show, and in a wheelchair, and married to Stephen Joyce, who's having an affair with Betsy Chernak (Andrea Marcovicci). Stephen Joyce has been wonderful to work with."

She was pleasantly surprised when she sang at a recent club date. "I was introduced as having been in many movies and Broadway shows, and supper clubs, and having made records...but when they mentioned my being on Love is a Many Splendored Thing, the audience got up and screamed!"

More than 15 years of big-time movie-stage-music work apparently didn't have the impact of one daytime serial!

For Constance Towers, life really is a many splendored thing"

I'll type up the text in a separate post

I thought the wonderful Constance fans here would want to know I'm posting a 1971 interview with her in the Love is A Many Splendored Thing thread. I will type up the text in a bit.

Thanks, Carl I have the magazine that interview came from. In fact, I have another one from a different mag (Daytime TV, I think it was November 1971) I can post on that thread if you don't have it.

Yeah, it would be great if John Conboy started a website like Agnes Nixon and uploaded episodes. Even if he licensed his own dvds I would buy them in a heart beat!

Like you said, most of the Carolyn stuff I've seen has been in Italian (provided by Claudio at his Capitol Megasite when he was still uploading... they were so lucky to get several runs of the show over there, and they even did a reunion with interviews of the cast and the voice over actors who did the Italian dubbing).

In one episode, Myrna mentioned that she and Paula used to babysit together when they were teens, I thought that was a cute piece of history. So I assume Clarissa knew nutty Paula back then too. I'm assuming Baxter was declared legally dead. So, was he disfigured and his face reconstructed, or did they simply not recognize him after all those years?

I would buy them too! Claudio gave me the Italian episodes and, while I can pick out a few words, I would sure like to know what they're saying. Some of those scenes, especially when Paula is all hysterical, are a riot in Italian.

Baxter was disfigured in the crash and he went facial and vocal reconstruction surgeries, so they couldn't recognize his voice either. Ah, the wonders of soap opera plastic surgery!

I never knew that about Paula having a brain tumor! And didn't she accidentally kill her maid too?? What a loon. Julie Adams was good, she would have been fun on another soap. As nutty as Paula was, she would have been another good choice for Pamela Capwell on SB. Her softly devious delivery is similar to that of Shirley Ann Field as Pamela, and of course Marj is Marj.

Julie Adams did a great job as Paula. Yes, I think Paula had something to do with the maid's death also. Myrna and Paula had an interesting relationship on the show. They were kind of like "frenemies" lol. Their scene in the courtroom in Mark and Paula's divorce hearing, after Myrna had found out about Paula's "novel" about the Cleggs, was hilarious.

One thing that confused me on Capitol was Baxter and Clarissa getting remarried. Weren't they already married, or was their marriage null and void when Baxter was declared legally dead? They had to sign a marriage license, so it wasn't just a renewal of vows. Had Jarrett/Baxter left for Columbe the night before Mark's wedding, and had Mark not been shot and the wedding between him and Clarissa taken place, things could have gotten very interesting if Clarissa had found out (say, from Thomas) that Jarrett was Baxter after she was married to Mark.

CT, have you been able to acquire early episodes with Carolyn Jones as Myrna? I've only seen a handful and I'd love to see more. She had a harder, colder energy than Marj. I'm sure you've seen this already, but in case you haven't:

Yes, I did see the Biography on Carolyn Jones. Constance had some wonderful things to say about her. I have the premiere episode in English, but pretty much every other episode I have with Carolyn in it is in Italian. I wish I could have seen more of the early episodes in English, but since people were just starting to get VCRs at the time, those are much harder to find on the trading circuit than the later ones. That's why I'm hoping against hope that someday the series will be released on DVD. It's not too likely, given the relatively small fanbase, but you never know...

Thank you so much for coloring in the rest of the picture for me! Yeah, I liked Mark and what they did to him was one of daytime's most glaring examples of character assassination.

It's amazing how Paula (as far as I know) managed to avoid jail time. Those scenes of her with Mark in the fake hospital are really a trip, the lengths to which this woman would go. Do you remember if Mark took an apartment somewhere because I'm pretty sure he wasn't living with Clarissa. In the beginning, I believe they still shared the house, just maintaining separate quarters.

I'm so glad I could help. Fortunately, I've seen a lot of Capitol recently, so the storylines are fresh in my mind. It's so much fun to have people to discuss Capitol with.

Paula avoided jail time for Clarissa's shooting because she had some brain tumor (common soap opera plot device) that made her emotionally unstable. Of course, Paula was unstable even without the brain tumor. lol Then there was her killing of her psychiatrist, Dr. Parker. She ran the poor guy down with her car, but nobody suspected her because of her "agoraphobia" There was a scene shortly after Mark was shot where the cops were going over Paula's rap sheet, thinking maybe she could have shot Mark in a jealous rage.

Mark was looking for an apartment with Clarissa at one time (sometime in 1984), but I don't know exactly what happened with that. Then, when they were planning their wedding the first time around, before Mark got shot, they had found a house and, had the wedding happened, they would have moved so they could start a new life together in their own home.

So CT, help me to put the pieces together, didn't Paula kidnap Mark when Jenny shot him, or was that another injury? I have an ep where Paula recreated a hospital set in her basement and kept Mark there unawares of the fact that he was in a fake hospital (she wouldn't let him see a newspaper and he wondered why Sloane wasn't visiting).

Yes, she did. After she overheard Clarissa mentioning to Baxter that she was planning on Mark recovering at her house, Paula had him drugged, then snuck him out of the hospital. She hired a male nurse to hypnotize him into staying put in his "hospital" bed, write a letter to Clarissa, and even into believing that Paula was Clarissa. In his more lucid moments, he started to get suspicious when he kept hearing the same announcements over the "hospital P.A. system" and he could predict when he would hear those announcements. Also, the nurse and Paula kept mentioning this "Dr. Greenspan" and Mark began wondering why he never saw this doctor in person. Paula's plan ultimately came apart when Mark managed to get out of bed and into the basement hallway. Sloane heard him and demanded to know what was going on. Mark was taken back to University Hospital. When Clarissa visited him back at the real hospital, she mentioned the letter that Mark had written while under hypnosis. Mark was confused, not having remembered writing that letter. Clarissa showed it to him and he recognized his handwriting and said that the sentiments in the letter match his own feelings exactly: He wanted Clarissa to take the time to get to know Baxter and decide who it was she really loved.

Paula was so desperate to win Mark back that she stopped at nothing--she even tried to kill Clarissa. She believed she was still in love with Mark and that if she could just get rid of the woman that was coming between them, she would get him back. For Mark, it was too late. Her years of faked agoraphobia put a strain on their marriage and he found himself falling in love with Clarissa. Mark had been friends with the McCandless family for decades. Tyler saw him as a mentor who could guide him as he builds a career for himself in politics. Baxter and Mark were once very good friends. Mark was there for Clarissa after Baxter's plane went down. While Baxter stayed away from the family after he regained his memory, fearing that he would be a burden, Mark became a father figure to Clarissa and Baxter's boys and he and Clarissa fell in love. I really felt badly for Mark when Clarissa chose Baxter. While I liked the idea of the family being together again, I felt Baxter kept too many secrets from Clarissa and Mark, maybe, was a little more deserving of her love. The traitor thing was completely out of character for Mark. I have a hard time believing that he was a traitor all along.

Thanks. That sounds interesting. So they advertised a wedding and never had one. I wonder how that went down.

Do you think Cat Hickland was good in the dual role? Did she ever have scenes where both characters interacted?

I think Cat Hickland did a great job in the dual role. There were a couple of scenes where Julie and Jenny interacted. I don't believe it was ever explained why Julie and Jenny looked so much alike for two people who were supposedly not related.

Julie, to me, always seemed more like Clarissa's daughter than Myrna's. She and Clarissa were close and I think maybe Julie saw Clarissa as a second mother. Brenda also felt like she could confide in Clarissa. Sloane and Clarissa were not as close, since Sloane's loyalties were divided between her mother and her father. During the early years of the show, Sloane saw Clarissa as the woman who broke up her parents' marriage. She grew more accepting of Clarissa as the show went on, but was very hurt when Clarissa chose Baxter over Mark. This was after Mark had recovered from his gunshot wound and Clarissa found out Jarrett was Baxter. When she couldn't make up her mind about which man she loved, Baxter got tired of waiting and told her he was getting out of her life for good. He was about to move out to California so he wouldn't have to watch his wife marry another man. Clarissa agreed to marry Mark, but as she was telling Baxter goodbye and wishing him luck in California, she had a change of heart. She decided she couldn't let Baxter go, and that she still loved him. Mark was devastated and Sloane was very angry at Clarissa for breaking his heart.

I have a pic of Clarissa and Mark in a church and she's holding a bouquet, but come to think of it, maybe they were attending somebody else's wedding.

I think I've seen that pic. She's wearing a white dress but it's not the same one she wore for the wedding that never took place.

I'm glad that people enjoy them. That was a piece on unforgettable characters in SOD's 10 year history. It's kind of funny seeing the character names first, as it leaves the impression Myrna and Clarissa were building sand castles together.

Who was shot at their wedding?

Mark was shot in his office and never made it to the church for the wedding. At first, the investigation focused on Jarrett Morgan, who turned out to be Baxter McCandless, Clarissa's presumed-dead husband. Mark found out that Jarrett was Baxter on the morning of the wedding and there was a scene where he confronted Jarrett/Baxter and threatened to call off the wedding. However, it was not Baxter who shot Mark. When Mark came out of his coma, he asked "Why did she do it?" The "she" he was referring to was Julie. From where he was standing when he was shot, he could see a woman who looked like Julie with a gun in her hand. It turns out that it wasn't Julie, but Jenny Markham, the daughter of former crime boss Victor Markham. Jenny mistook Mark for another man, Senator Josh Harrington. Harrington was found to be connected with the mob and Jenny believed he was responsible for nearly killing her the night of her wedding to Zed Diamond (a.k.a. Jimmy Desmond) three years before. Jenny and Julie looked like they could be twins, and were both played by Catherine Hickland.

Mark survived the shooting only to be killed a year later when he was discovered to be a traitor, in a bizarre plot twist. Capitol had several characters who were either presumed dead or near death, then found alive or surviving the illness or injury that threatened their life, only to die later on in the series. Both Victor Markham and his daughter Jenny were presumed to be dead, turned up alive, then died not too long after. Victor was killed by the mob and Jenny died when her attempt to poison Sloane backfired. Leanne Foster, who was involved with Jordy Clegg, survived cancer only to die falling down the stairs of the Clegg mansion while arguing with her sister. Baxter seemed to escape this "survivor curse" since he had been presumed dead for 10 years, but was alive at the end of the show.

CarlD2, thanks for posting the promo for Mark and Clarissa's wedding and the pic of Constance and Marj by the sandcastle. That's a great picture of the two of them.

She was a very lovely soap matriarch. Strong, elegant, graceful, cool but not cold. It's funny, I was asking a friend if he remembered Capitol and he was like, "Ohhhh yeahhh, with Carissa, and you know Carissa is Stephanie now on The Bold and the Beautiful." Isn't that funny how our minds work?

There was of course a lot of on-location stuff in the pilot movie, but I also liked the more grainier filmic look of the in studio scenes in the early episodes. I guess you could say Y&R had a similar look at the time, before soaps took on the brighter, sharper soapy look we're most familiar with. WoST had an ep from '82 where Julie was despondent over something involving Tyler and there was a lengthy on-location sequence of her crying in her Porsche driving around the streets surrounding the Capitol. Most soaps would have put her in a car rocked by stage hands in front of a blue screen, but to fly her and a crew out just for that? It isn't hard to imagine how Conboy spent money like water.

It looks like he got Constance mixed up with Susan Flannery. LOL They don't look all that much alike now, but maybe they did back then.

I did get to see the pilot episode and I remember Clarissa urging Tyler to stay away from politics, and her slapping him when he insisted on running for Congress. She was so afraid that what happened to her father at the hands of the Clegg family would happen to Tyler as well. I also remember in that episode how Sloane was after Tyler and how Julie saw her kiss Tyler when he landed at the air force base.

CarlD2, I like how the reviewer in that article you posted said that Constance played the role with "grace and perfection". I couldn't agree more!

Wow a Constance Towers fan, I haven't seen your posts before. What did you think of Capitol?

I wish we could see Constance's work on Love is a Many Splendored Thing.

I just re-discovered this board since I've been looking at my Capitol tapes again. I love Capitol and wish I could have seen the whole show. I was just a kid when the show originally aired and discovered it after I started watching Constance on General Hospital. I liked her so much on GH that I looked up some of her other work and, through the generosity of fellow Capitol fans, I've gotten copies of a good many episodes, especially from the later part of the show's run (1985-1987). My favorite character, of course, was Clarissa and I preferred the McCandlesses to the Cleggs. I wonder if the series in its entirety still exists on tape somewhere and if it will ever be released on DVD. After seeing what I have of Capitol, I think I prefer Constance as Clarissa rather than Helena. For one, Clarissa was a much larger role. Helena, as entertaining as she can be, is such a peripheral character on GH, where Clarissa played a central role on Capitol. The roles are pretty much polar opposites of one another.

I wish I could see Constance on Love is a Many Splendored Thing as well.

Yeah, I guess that's where Conboy first worked with Constance.

Yes, Trey was early thirties and Clarissa was latest forties/early fifties. Tyler and the other boys would have had a fit had she started dating Trey and Myrna would have flipped her wig (literally).

Myrna would have gone apoplectic! LOL Paula wouldn't have minded, however;)

Wow, yeah, I've never seen or heard anything about Trey and Clarissa, now THAT would have been interesting. Would have drove Myrna crazy and created a lot of drama for Trey's career (older woman) and mixed emotions for Clarissa given the two families' history. In the pilot movie, Trey's limo almost mows Clarissa down while she's out jogging and Trey makes some smart remark about one less McCandless.

I agree, that would have been a really interesting storyline. How old was Trey supposed to have been? Early 30s? It would have been about a 20-year age gap which would have made for a field day for the Washington gossip hounds. I imagine it would have caused some drama between her and her sons, especially Tyler.

I don't have any of that material, but I do have some episodes on tape at my other home. I promise one of these days I'll get them on YouTube!

A man called Claudio has many great eps (in Italian) on tape, I'm sure you've seen them on YouTube. He also runs the Capitol Megasite.

I have many of the Italian eps through trading with Claudio and I've seen his site and what he's posted on YouTube. I don't think he's trading anymore. Thanks for the suggestion, however, and I'm looking forward to seeing your clips on YouTube someday. The eps I'm looking for are really hard to find and that's why I wish they would re-air the show somewhere, whether it be on DVD, online, or on some cable/satellite network. Unfortunately, I don't think there's enough demand for that to happen.

I don't anticipate I'll get much response to this question, but I don't have anything to lose by giving it a try: Does anyone have any taped episodes of Capitol that they would be willing to trade with me? In particular, I'm looking for episodes from Clarissa & Mark's trip to Paris in April 1985 and Clarissa and Baxter's honeymoon in around July 1986. I have a lot of episodes of varying video quality available for trading, should anyone be interested. Since not as many people had VCRs back when Capitol originally aired and it has only aired once in the U.S., taped episodes of the show have been hard to come by. However, it doesn't hurt to ask.