watson71

Also add that Carmen Duncan deserved an Emmy nomination as Iris in 1989 when Mac confronted Iris about being The Chief and when Rachel told her that Mac had died. Other AW actresses that also deserved Emmy nominations in the 1980s were Constance Ford (Ada) as supporting actress and Anna Stuart (Donna) and Nancy Frangione (Cecile) gave just as good, if not better performances, than the often nominated Susan Lucci.

@JAS0N47 How did the NBC shows do the week of August 1-5, 1983? Bo and Hope were on fire on DAYS, AW had the expensive remote with the double wedding of Mac and Rachel and Sandy and Blaine, and SEARCH aired their live episode after the “infamous” and well publicized missing tape. I would imagine the shows saw a bump in the ratings during this week.

Regarding the Emmys- I’ve always believed that VW and BM canceled out each other’s nomination at voting time and that’s how a co-star beat them twice. I do believe that VW should have at least received an Emmy nomination for her work in 1989 after Mac died, her courtship with Carl in 93-94, and if she would have put herself in the supporting actress category for 92-93 she would have won for her scenes during Felicia’s intervention.

In May 1984, Peter collapsed at the altar before marrying Cecile on Another World. It is revealed that Donna and Cecile were in cahoots to split up Peter and Sally, and that Cecile was after the Love fortune. Donna and Cecile even get into a fistfight after the revelation. The episode ends with Cecile’s Scarlet O’Hara’s moment - “As God is my witness, I will never tell the truth again” as the Gone with the Wind theme plays in the background.

The Henderson Flood happened in February and by the end of March John Whitesell was the EP of Another World. Was his time at SFT just to give him EP experience with the intention of moving him to AW? P&G always like to shuffle behind the scenes players from show to show.

This seems to be what happened. Once NBC took ownership of the show, this is where the missing episodes begin. NBC simply reused the tapes, and Colgate probably never requested copies of the episodes since they no longer owned the show. We know almost the episodes of Texas during this same time exist because many have already been digitized when P&G used to have its online channel.

Here is an interesting behind the scenes video on how Retro TV had to transfer all the tapes of The Doctors to the digital platform and the discovery that NBC reused the tapes for the final 2 years of the series. Makes you wonder what is going on with all the tapes of the P&G shows…

The episodes look like they stop at the end of September 1980. The entire month of August 1980 is Far Wind and his cult holding the hospital hostage. Some of the dates of the episodes are not accurate. The day Far Wind takes over the hospital is labeled August 2, 1980. This is a Saturday. This episode probably aired on Friday, August 1 as The Doctors would air in a new time slot starting Monday, August 4th. Also, there are some location sequences filmed at the beach regarding Ashley’s storyline.

During July 1980, AW was introducing all the characters and the setting kept jumping between Bay City and Houston. So if a new viewer tuned in to the debut of Texas on August 4th, it was like following a show already in progress since the Texas storylines were introduced on AW in July. Would be difficult for a new viewer to follow.

In April 1982, Another World has 57 characters in the closing credits that were 3 minutes and 34 seconds long. Credits would never be that long nowadays. The credits were so long that they even use a different variation of the theme song.

Felicia shot Kyle with a gun, but Kyle had a fist fight with Ian, causing Kyle to have a brain hemorrhage that killed him.

Back in 1984, Carl Hutchins had his henchmen tamper with the Cory jet. The jet crashed in the Canadian tundra, and for weeks everyone assumed that Mac was dead. The episode below heavily features this storyline only to find out that Mac is very much alive in the Friday cliffhanger.

Not that I know of… Definitely would like to know what she had planned for 1989 had Douglass Watson not passed away. There definitely would not had been any Red Swan lol 🤣

I wonder what the writers had planned for the summer and fall of 1989 had Douglass Watson not passed away so suddenly. Clearly there had to be some sort of storyline where Mac and Iris would eventually reconcile that we never saw.

1988 there were a lot of changes behind the scenes at AW. Margaret De Priest left as headwriter in January to be replaced by Sheri Anderson. Michael Laibson replaced John Whitesell as executive producer. Right before the writer’s strike it was announced that Harding Lemay was returning as headwriter. His work would not air until after the writer’s strike. During the strike, Donna Swajeski, who then worked at NBC was writing the episodes. Lemay would stay about 10 weeks as headwriter, before Swajeski would take over. From Lemay’s return until mid-1989, AW is excellent. It has always been said that Swajeski was using Lemay’s bible for the show. The Who Killed Jason Frame story was a big umbrella story that involves the entire cast, and the 25th Anniversary and Mac’s death are well done. A lot of what was planned for the show probably had to be scrapped when Douglass Watson died in real life.

Another World & Texas’ Vivien Gorrow as the Cory and Iris’ maid. Not too many people could steal a scene from Beverlee McKinsey, but Gretchen Oehler’s Vivien could.

The episode where Rachel and Janice fought in the swimming pool 3/14/80 just aired a black background with the theme as the credits that day. There were no scenes from the episode aired in the background as the credits rolled.

Two new 1983 episodes…

Two other notes regarding NBC Daytime- it had success with game shows like Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Hollywood Squares, Sale of the Century, etc. But NBC was notorious for putting on game shows for a brief time and canceling them- Go, Hot Potato, Match Game Hollywood Squares Hour, Blockbusters, many versions of Password, and Just Men (for which Betty White received a Daytime Emmy) and was still canceled. Also, when AW and DAYS were challenging ATWT ratings in the early and mid 70s don’t forget that CBS counterprogrammed reruns of primetime hits All in the Family and MASH against AW. For a time, they even moved the Price is Right to the afternoon as well.

When Jensen Buchanan was playing Vicky on Another World and got a helicopter written into her contract to take her to/from the studio, the character of Vicky from 1996-99 was in a bubble only interacting with certain characters- Jake, Donna, Shane, Marley etc. She rarely interacted with the rest of the cast in any storylines. Rachel was Steven’s grandmother and Vicky and Rachel never had any scenes together for those last couple of years of the show.

A lot of mistakes were made with AW in a 3 year span from 1979-82. AW expanded to 90 minutes when it was starting to lose viewers to General Hospital and Guiding Light. AW was in the 3:00 PM time slot since its debut in 1964 where it was successful . The 90 minute broadcast moved its start time to 2:30. Once NBC/P&G realized the 90 minute episodes were not working, they decided to spin off Texas. In 1980, AW changed time slots again with a 2:00 PM start time where it would remain until 1999. A lot of NBC stations moved the daytime lineup around and aired programs in different time slots. With Texas debuting in 1980, it removed Iris (Beverlee McKinsey) from AW. She was one of AW’s most popular characters. The character would not return to AW for 8 years. In addition, Texas was doomed from the start in the 3 PM time slot against GH and GL. NBC should have left AW in that time slot and put Texas on at 2 PM in between DAYS and AW. The writing on AW was not the best in 1981-82. A bright spot was the Blaine/ Sandy/ Cecile story, but that worked because of the talented actors, not because of the writing. The biggest mistake during this time was reviving the Rachel/ Steve/ Alice triangle- which on paper was a good idea- but Steve and Alice were recasts, not the original actors. Once Paul Rauch left in 1983, and Allan Potter returned to AW as executive producer the show turned itself around creatively until 1985. The ratings went up, but AW would never move out of the middle rated soaps. The only real problem with Potter’s AW was that the show brought back Jacqueline Courtney’s Alice but then never gave her a big storyline. While she was featured prominently, she remained a supporting character.

When Douglass Watson passed away suddenly, it must have been hard for the cast to play out the scenes of Mac’s death on Another World. The song that played during the tribute to him ends with “the show must go one,” but after his passing AW was never quite the same.

Season 1 Episode 21 of The Golden Girls entitled “The Flu” has a sequence where Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose catch the flu, and argue about what to watch on TV. Blanche wants to watch “the continuing story of Another World” while Dorothy doesn’t. I wonder if they did that as a nod to when Rue McClanahan was on AW! Clearly someone at The Golden Girls was a fan of AW! 🤣

Carmen Duncan (Iris, Another World) also subbed for Eileen Fulton in 2004 when she was sick.

Janice Frame, played by Christine Jones, was only on Another World from November 1978 to March 1980. Her breaking up of Mac and Rachel’s marriage, her lover Mitch Blake, her marriage and poisoning of Mac, Rachel killing her, and Rachel sleeping with Mitch that resulted in her giving birth to Matthew would continue to have storyline ramifications into the early 1990s.