danfling

On As the World Turns, I loved the original Hughes living room and kitchen and also Wade's bookstore. i also remember the set that was the home (an apartment) where Penny and Jeff lived. It, just as the Evans house of Dark Shadows and the Karr house of The Edge of Night, had a set of steps which were near the front door. I cannot remember if the Evans cottage was ever used after Sam was killed off the show and Maggie moved into Collinwood as the new governess. Does anyone remember if the set was ever refurbished and used again? I did like the Evans cottage as well as the home of Nicholas Blair. For some reason, i thought for many years that Nicholas Blair's house was the same one that Victoria and Burke had wanted to move into prior to Burke's death.

There was a proposed spin-off show of The Doctors. I do not remember the show's name.

I only saw The Best of Everthing once when I was on vacation in a town that had an ABC affiliate. (My market did not carry The Best of Everything or - initially - A World Apart or All My Children). I had not remembered (or had possibly forgotten) that Mr. Birney was listed as having joined the cast of this show after he departed from Love Is a Many Splendored Thing as the second Mark. It seemed VERY odd to me that he would have departed a highly rated show at the time and not go to California to appear on nighttime network shows or in movies. (I know that he appeared on the CBS comedy with Bibi Osterwald from Where the Heart Is Bridget Loves Bernie, and that show began in the fall of 1972,) That is about all that I know of his association with The Best of Everything and the ABC nework. It was my thought over the years that this show was owned by ABC (which, I think, it was along with A World Apart). However, I have heard that there was some connecton to Twentieth-Century Fox (which had probably owned the original motion picture of the same name). The show's executive producer (Don Wallace) and headwriter (James Lipton) worked on Twentieth-Century Fox show after the cancellation of The Best of Everything (Return to Peyton Place). ABC had aired the primetime Peyton Place (which had been produced by Twentieth Century-Fox). It seems to me that ABC was trying to publicize that The Best of Everything was to feature three stars from Hollywood (Gale Sondergard, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Patty McCormick) and two stars from the popular CBS soap opera schedule (Robert Gentry from The Guiding Light and David Birney from The Best of Everything). Harold J. Stone had played the lead on The Nurses, and Geraldine Fitzherald had appeared as a star (along with Eileen Fulton) of Our Private World, both shows having been aired by CBS. A World Apart also seemed to hire a lot of soap opera veterans (some, such as James Noble, Elizabeth Lawrence, Anna Mignot and Jane White, all of whom had appeared on CBS shows) plus a lot of new comers such as Matthew Cowles, Dorothy Lyman, Susan Sarandon, Heather McRae, and Clifton Davis. (Also, after Don Wallace and James Lipton began working on Twentieth-Century Fox's Return to Peyton Place on NBC, Katherine Glass from The Best of Everything was cast as Alison McKenzie.) Plus, I can imagine that the show's executive story editor, Irna Phillips (also the mother of the show's creator/headwriter) would have loved having a former star of Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (the last show on which she had created for CBS) on this new show. According to Wikipedia, the show's production company was Twentieth-Century Fox. However, new upon reading of Wikipedia's enty on A World Apart, David Birney is listed as having played Oliver Harrell on that show. I am probably wrong about which of the shows Mr. Birney appeared on. I do remember that, by the time I was able to watch A World Apart on the new ABC affiliate in my market, Mr. Birney was no longer on the show.

I agree with AMCOLTLLover. I loved the sets on Dark Shadows. My favorite was the caretaker's cottage. I especially loved it during the show's early weeks when Matthew Morgan lived there. It was a bigger set than when (later) it was occupied by Laura Collins, Chris Jennings, and Dirk Wilkens. (The show changed studios, and the sets - including this one- were shrunk.)

David Birney, who appeared on The Best of Everything (I do not know that name of his character.) has passed away. He is a victim of Alzheimer's Disease and died on Sunday.

David Birney, the second actor to play Mark Elliott, has passed away. I think that this was on this past Sunday.

Jerry von Dorn (Clint #2) passed away yesterday. He had battled cancer.

Do you have a favorite soap opera set or several of them? Do you have a favorite set designer?

If only the production company had kept Mr. Slesar on Edge of Night (as ABC had wanted) and had moved Mr. Nicholson to another show!

Happy birthday to the former Penny Hughes of Oakdale. Her birthday has been celebrated every year since 1956. Each year, she would be sent flowers by her attorney father (Chris Hughes) and, later, her physician brother (Dr. Bob Hughes).

I think that your theory that Mr. Trask never appeared onscreen is very possible, plausible.

No, I intended to say "later date." NBC was going to cancel the show, but the network did not want the show to end at the end of 1986. They wanted it to continue for a few more cycles.

Daisy owned a store called The Serving Spoon in the Mall. After she left Pine Valley, Chuck purchased it for Carrie.

I have just learned that television writer Larry Brody was a writer of the NBC serial Bright Promise. Other writers for this show were Doris and Frank Hursley (creators), Rick Edelstein, and headwriter John Hess (who had written for Love of Life, The Young Marrieds, and The Secret Storm). Below is a biography of Mr. Brody (copied from IMDb): As a student at Northwestern University, Larry Brody majored in English and practiced his craft writing dozens of short stories, poetry and essays. Being an avid science fiction fan, he started writing in the genre, and by the time he graduated he was selling stories to The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction and various men's magazines on a fairly regular basis. After graduation he took a major career diversion by going to Law School but quit after one year and enrolled at the University of Iowa, which was well-known for its Writers Workshop. During that first school year Larry sold his first novel. Armed with confidence from the book sale, LB and his first wife pulled up stakes and moved to L.A. in 1968. It was a tough adjustment for the young couple, both emotionally and financially. Larry's wife got a full-time teaching job while he struggled to finish his next novel, and take meetings with various showbiz power-brokers, hoping, like thousands of other Hollywood denizens, for his first big break. That big break came several months later through a chance meeting with a fellow resident of his apartment building, Sammy Jackson, star of the just cancelled series "No Time for Sergeants". Painfully shy at the time, Larry avoided Jackson and sat quietly by the pool, reading scripts and working on his novel. But one fateful day, Sammy spotted a script lying in LB's lap and walked over to introduce himself. The two struck up a friendship that would ultimately launch Larry's career. Encouraged by Sammy, LB worked day and night on a twenty-page short story that was to be the basis for Jackson's comeback show. Entitled 'Cornpone & Honey', it was a comedy about a cynical cartoonist who gets saddled with his neighbor's five-year old daughter, Honey, after her parents die in a car crash. Jerry Katzman, one of the producers that Jackson had shown the story to, liked it enough to set up a meeting with Larry. Katzman had a new project in development, a film entitled 'The Rise And Fall Of A Rock And Roll Singer', with Jim Morrison expected to star. To make sure the film appealed to youthful viewers, he wanted the 23-year-old Larry to co-write the script with Arthur Dreifuss, an old-time B movie maven who was also slated to direct. Larry worked feverishly with Dreifuss to bring the Rock And Roll script in on a deadline. But before production could begin, the studio had to have a sit-down with Jim Morrison to discuss the project. All went well until twenty minutes into the meeting when the rock and roll icon abruptly nixed the entire deal. Why? Because he had a beard and was adamant about not shaving it for the role. And at this time, never in the history of motion pictures had there been a romantic hero with a full, flowing face, neck, and chest-full of hair! Although the project was cancelled, word around town regarding the script was positive, and Larry's agent, Sylvia Hirsch, one of the grand dames of the William Morris Agency, used it as a sample to get Larry into the television writing business. Starting out slowly, as a freelancer on the show Here Come the Brides, by the early '70s Larry was one of the most in-demand writers in the medium. Soon he was Producer of the NBC series Police Story, the first of a series of such gigs that went on for over twenty years. A strong believer in the social responsibility of not only the artist, but of the media as a whole, Larry has for years crusaded to raise standards so that productions will be meaningful as well as entertaining. To that end, he has established TV Writer.Com (www.tvwriter.com), the most highly regarded and visited television writing site on the web, where he shares his experience and insight into the business and artistry of TV writing today. In the summer of 2002 Larry moved with his third wife, Gwen, and teenage daughter, Amber, to St. Joe, Arkansas, to establish the Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts (www.cloudcreek.org). A non-profit charitable corporation dedicated to the advancement of the arts. The mission of CCIA is to foster and advance creativity and interest in all the arts by helping new artists develop their talents and skills, and to create an environment of respect, appreciation, and support for the arts in the community at large. Larry is the winner of the Humanitas Certificate and the Population Institute Award for his outstanding work on Medical Story, and was nominated for both an Emmy and a Writers Guild Award for Best Dramatic Writing on that groundbreaking series. Larry also won the Women in TV & Film Award for the NBC television movie, Farrell for the People (1982) (TV), as well as the Nosotros Award for his work on the critically acclaimed, multi-award winning drama, "Police Story" (1973). He has written two e-books, nine novels, and six books of poetry. Nonfiction books include 'Television Writing From The Inside Out: Your Channel To Success' and 'Turning Points in Television. Currently (as of July 2007), Larry is a regular columnist for 'Movie Scope' magazine, and writes 'Live! From Paradise!' a syndicated newspaper column and blog about the life of a city writer who moves to the country.

Thank you for that information. I was not aware of Dick Trask.

Robert Morse played Harry the Bookie, a friend of Benny Sago during the time that Benny was addicted to gambling, has passed away. He also had originated the role of Jerry on The Secret Storm with that CBS/American Home Products program premiered.

Actor Robert Morse, who originated the role of Jerry Ames on The Secret Storm in 1954, has passed away. He was a wonderful performer, although I never saw any of his work on The Secret Storm.

She was so good in both her serial roles on ABC!

Yes, I remember when Patty McCormick (Young Doctor Malone, The Best of Everything) replaced Ms. Hayes. This was during the time that Ms. Hayes was suffering from Belle's Palsey. She returned after getting better.

I strongly doubt that the set used for Llanfair in the 1960s and 1970s was from the Dark Shadows set. One Life to Live began the summer of 1968, while Dark Shadows did not end until spring of 1971. I am pretty sure that the set for Llanfair was changed at some point. I cannot remember when, but it may have been after the secret room was discovered in the 1980s. I also am not sure who the set designer was for One Life to Live at the time it began. I do know that Dark Shadows was the only ABC soap opera that had a real operating fire place until One Life to Live came on the air. The late Sy Tomashoff was the set designer for Dark Shadows. He later became one of the show's producers. He also was a temporary set designer for The Edge of Night. I do not know when this was, but I have strongly suspected that it may have been in the early 1960s. The set of Mike Karr's living room had a door then steps down to the rest of the room. That also was used on Dark Shadows in the Evans cottage as well as other sets - but not Collinwood or (my favorite Dark Shadows set) the caretaker's cottage.

I need to correct the above post about "Richard Clarke." The correct name of the actor was Richard Dunne. I have also learned that he died in 1996, although the New York Times printed an obituary of someone named Richard Dunne earlier in 1990. I am wondering if this is the same person and if the 1995 death date is incorrect. Also, the play I mentioned (I'm Getting My Act Together and Putting It on the Road) was a musical whose composer was soap opera writer Nancy Ford (As the World Turns, Love of Life, Ryan's Hope). Ms. Ford is the widow of soap opera actor Keith Charles (The Edge of Night, The Secret Storm, As the World Turns, Ryan's Hope, One Life to Live).

I really disliked Leigh Taylor Young when she was on Peyton Place. Was her character Rachel, or was Rachel played by Joyce Jillson?

Here are two former soap opera performers that I would love to know more about what they are now doing. 1. Richard Clarke (Daryl on Another World). I know that he was a musician prior to being an actor on Another World. I have the original cast album of I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road. He played on that record (guitar, I think). I thought that he was engaging, and the show's writer (Harding Lemay) should have used him more. I think that Daryl was originally supposed to be involved somehow with Michael (Lionel Johnston) but the homosexual storyline was dropped. 2. Trisha Pursley (known at one time as Trisha Purlsey Hawkins). She played Devon Shepherd McFadden on All My Children on two different occasions. I understand that she left acting and was working with her father in Florida in the family nursery. I wonder if she still does that type of work.

I have been watching the Locher Room interview with Kin Shriner. He was an EXCELLENT recast as Scotty on the serial General Hospital.

After Ryan's Hope was cancelled, the drawing room set was Max's club on One Life to Live. I cannot remember the name of his club, but it something to do with Serinity Springs. He had opened it after the death of Luna. I thank that I have seen other Dark Shadows sets over the years used on One Life to Live. I can't remember which ones right now. Now you have made me wonder about the Old House set.