watson71

Potter was a very capable producer. When he was at The Doctors, the show had high ratings and won a Best Show Emmy, same goes for Guiding Light. P&G transferred him back to Another World in the Spring of 1983 and he took the mess that Paul Rauch left him with and whipped the show into shape pretty quickly. His AW from mid 83-1984, like his version of The Doctors and GL was engaging and entertaining. He retired at the end of 1984. I wish he would have stayed longer at AW- the show would become a convoluted mess under the next producer, Stephen Schenkel.

A variation on the same publicity photo. Other than the hospital scene, did Rachel and Liz ever come to blows and exchange punches?

I agree- from what I've seen of Marlowe on YouTube, he always looked like he was struggling to get his lines out and trying to find his place on the cue cards 🤣

Had AW kept the character of Mary alive and active on the show's canvas, Dwyer could have been on the show for its entire 35 year run. Dwyer passed away in 2012. The show really could have used a mother figure in its later years after Ada passed away in 1993.

Charita Bauer (Bert) passed away in February 1985. Does anyone remember why TPTB waited an entire year before they acknowledged her passing onscreen? They gave excuse after excuse why she was absent from Springfield- visiting Meta, etc. Since they did wait an entire year, TPTB should have tried to get as many past characters as they could who had ties to Bert for her memorial. Given her importance to the history of the show, her memorial wasnt't what it should have been.

Happy 56th Anniversary Another World. Another World debuted today on May 4, 1964!

P&G constantly did that with producers. In 1984, Edge of Night is cancelled, so P&G hires Erwin Nicholson as executive producer of Search for Tomorrow. In 1999, Another World is cancelled, so P&G hires Christopher Goutman as executive producer of As the World Turns and leaves him in the job for 11 years. He has the distinction of being the executive producer of two of daytime's longest running soaps at the time of their cancellation.

According to this newspaper article dated January 15, 1983 Millette Alexander decided to leave the show of her own accord. Interesting that Giancarlo Esposito (currently Moff Gideon on The Mandalorian) was cast on the show at the time as Clay Tynan and that Micki Grant who played John Randolph's secretary Peggy Nolan for much of the 60s and early 70s on Another World was playing his mother Ms. Tynan. Was GL planning on making the Tynans a new African-American family on GL and they got lost in the shuffle in the change of headwriters?

I have binge watched Netflix's On My Block and Outer Banks. On My Block is the perfect mix of comedy and drama. All three seasons were excellent and full of surprises. The Season 3, Episode 8 (Chapter 28) cliffhanger has one of the most brilliant flash forwards I have seen in a series as it jumps two years in the future and leaves you shocked. The entire ensemble cast is good, but the two standouts are Diego Tinoco (Cesar) and Jessica Marie Garcia (Jasmin). Below is a fanmade tribute of all three seasons of the show that does not give too many spoilers away, but gives you a good preview of the show. Outer Banks is the story of 4 friends who are trying to solve the disappearance of one of the four's dad. The story has a lot of plot twists and turns. If you like mystery and action/adventure stories, you will like Outer Banks.

Interesting that Rauch would even entertain talking to Reinholt in 1981. His dislike of Courtney continued well into the 90s- remember when he made a disparaging comment about her in the soap press and she responded in a letter to the editor to tell her version of the story to set the record straight.

AW would use this theme from time to time when the show was running short and utilized a longer closing credit sequence, sometimes running 3+ minutes. A portion of this version of the theme was used in 1986-87 when Bill Wolff introduced that day's sponsor at the beginning of the second commercial break rather than being incorporated into the opening credits. An example of this starts at 9:27 in the video below:

This is so true- this triangle was doomed from the start because you had two recasts instead of Reinholt and Courtney. Paul Rauch's ego was probably too big to even contact them to see if they were interested in returning. If the show had waited until 1984 to do this triangle once Courtney had already returned and rehired Reinholt, I believe would have been successful. Rauch was long gone by then, so his dislike of both of them would have not have an issue. I wonder if they ever considered rehiring Reinholt in 1989 after he appeared in the 25th anniversary episodes after Douglass Watson died. You could have even incorporated it into the red swan mystery storyline- Mac really left town because he discovered the real Steve Frame was alive with amnesia and that Edward Black (David Canary) was an imposter who assumed his identity. Mac placed this information into the red swan and sent it to Rachel before he passed away.

The last I remember Cory Publishing was in Summer-Fall 1997 when Amanda was impersonating Hadley Prescott. There was even a location sequence on the Cory Publishing parking lot involving Carl, Felicia, and Alexander Nikos where Alexander "accidentally" almost ran over Carl with his sports car.

AW did have good production values under Rauch. This is basically remains intact through 1983-85, even though the show needed to be "freshened up." In the middle of 1987, you can tell that P&G reduced AW's budget. Sets and costumes didn't look as nice. After 22 years, AW longtime announcer Bill Wolff was gone, as were the P&G sponsor tags at the beginning and end of the show. The familiar Score Production musical cues are gone. Michael Laibson takes over as executive producer in 1988, and he did an great job production wise with the budget he had to work with- giving us the Snowflake Balls, the 25th Anniversary episodes, the Cass dream episodes, the remote location sequences on the French Riviera and Canada for Vicky and Grant's wedding. AW received many technical Emmy nominations when Laibson served as EP and won some as well. The AW directing team won the 1992 Emmy. JFP arrives in 1995 and decides the AW should be a mashup of ER and NYPD Blue. Someone at P&G gave her millions of dollars to build this city set with a new hospital, Carlino's restaurant, and a new police station. Did it not occur to anyone that every scene on the show could not take place at the hospital or police station? Every character on the show was either arrested or admitted to the hospital during this time. Then came show killer Charlotte Savitz who dismantled the city set piece by piece, and by the time Chris Goutman got there they were just using the sets that had been on the show for years. Maybe P&G would had given Goutman money for some new sets and production upgrades if the show had been renewed. I am glad that AW never suffered the poor production values that P&G inflicted on Guiding Light in its last years, and ATWT ended its run in AW's old studios, using much of the AW production crew, even using recycled AW sets.

In 1980, did Beverlee McKinsey (Iris) become daytime's highest paid star when she was given star billing on Texas? Ken Roberts intoduced each episode as "Texas, starring Beverlee McKinsey"

Yes, they briefly talked about Anna Stuart being a part of the AW cast that still gets together and how she attended the lunch in memory of Carmen Duncan, Iris. Duncan was another cast member that they all spoke fondly of.

Linda Dano said that the last time she saw or spoke to VW was at Charles Keating's memorial service in 2014. That was 6 years ago. It was obvious that Dano and Stephen Schnetzer still think fondly of Douglass Watson- Dano told the story about how Watson had a big bouquet of flowers sent to her at the studio on her first day of taping as Felicia.

This is around the time that Fred Silverman took over as president of NBC. In primetime, NBC was a disaster ratings wise. There were few primetime hits on NBC. I guess they figured that AW was their highest rated daytime program and turning it into 90 minutes, regardless of the ratings, would still turn a profit. Back when there were only 3 networks, the networks would use their advertising revenue from daytime to fund their nighttime pilots. I agree that AW should have been reduced back to 60 minutes as soon as possible and returned to its 3 PM start time.

And shortly after the P&G executive producer shuffle in 1995- once JFP arrived- AW rehired King.as co-headwriter for the show. From August 95- May 96, King co-wrote the show with Craig Carlson. In May 96 to January 97, King and Carlson served as breakdown writers for Margaret DePriest. From January 97-March 97, King, Carlson, and Elizabeth Page served as headwriters. For March and April 97, King and Carlson were co-headwriters again until Michael Malone became the headwriter. King would remain a writer on the show until its cancellation. For a period during this time, even Harding Lemay returned to the show as a story consultant. I wonder if JFP even asked his opinion of the ER/NYPD Blue mashup that she made of AW.

Kinkead took a year off from GL from 1996-97 when Vanessa faked her death.

Did AW get a ratings bump in March 1980 during the Rachel/Mac/Janice story culmination in St. Croix during the 90 minute episodes? Clearly if the show did get a ratings bump it was not able to sustain it in the long term.

Maeve Kinkead had a bad experience behind the scenes at AW with Paul Rauch- no doubt she was probably a victim of sexual harassment. Paul Rauch probably would have lost his job nowadays with the MeToo Movement. P&G gave her the part of Vanessa on GL probably to avoid any lawsuits. Not long after Rauch took over at GL in the 90s, Kinkead had left GL.

I think Paul Rauch, while being a creative genius had been documented to have problems on every show that he produced, was more of a problem than VW. Rauch was producing a #1 show that was both a critical and commercial success, by winning Emmys and having high ratings, that dropped in the ratings rather quickly due to three stupid moves that he orchestrated- make AW 90 minutes (more is not always better), then when that wasn't working spin-off one of AW's top stars Beverlee McKinsey (Iris) on Texas, and the third move which I believe caused major problems for AW was switching it's time slot twice in 18 months bumping it to 2:30 and then 2:00 PM. This moved AW out of the 3:00 PM time slot where it aired for 16 years. I do think that NBC and Rauch should have left AW in the 3:00 PM time slot when Texas premiered. AW could have held its own better against GH and GL than Texas which was doomed from the start. i imagine that VW could have been a diva, and that being the star of a show that went from #1 to the bottom of the ratings was not easy during 1981-82. Rauch and P&G were trying every and anything to compete with the ABC shows to make AW competitive again with a lot of location shoots and action/adventure sequences- something AW had avoided in the past. So I can see why Burton and Canary would say what they said. There can be a lot of finger pointing when things go wrong as to who is to blame. I think VW stayed out of loyalty to the fans who stuck with the show for all those years. When AW ended, she was at an age where there were not so many parts available. I don't believe she was not hired because of how she acted backstage. I think she retired because she was tired of the backstage politics and game playing that still continues on all the soap that are still airing.

P&G has really missed the boat. Yes, people would watch those films. Plus, if they had already put their soaps on a streaming service, the viewership would probably be high right now with everyone stuck in the house searching for their next show to watch. It's as if P&G doesn't want anyone to know they were producers of decades of soaps.

I agree the Carole Shelley was playing up the ham factor. I do kind of wish that Beverlee McKinsey was In these episodes. I would have like to have seen what she would have done with the material when it's revealed that Janice was trying to kill Mac.