watson71

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.

Anyone looking for a new series to check out while at home, check out On My Block on Netflix, about four high school friends living in South Central Los Angeles. There are 28 half hour episodes of the series available for streaming. The show is engaging and really knows how to do a season cliffhanger. Hope everyone is safe and doing well.

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.

40 years ago this week- March 14, 1980- one of Another World's most popular storylines culminated with Rachel killing Janice Frame in a swimming pool in St. Croix after Janice confronted Rachel as she was trying to save Mac.

The same goes for Constance Ford is she was alive, well, and still on AW. Given Ford's reputation for not suffering fools, I imagine that she and JFP would not have seen eye to eye, especially if she tried to remove Ford's Ada from the show.

1985 was a weird year for AW. Allen Potter retired as executive producer at the end of 1984. He was replaced the first week of 1985 with Stephen Schenkel. Potter "righted the ship" and kept AW on track for the majority of 1983-84. While he did raise the ratings, Potter could not move AW from the middle of the pack, nor did he win an Emmy like he did at The Doctors and Guiding Light. I suspect that if AW moved to the top of the ratings or won an Emmy, that Potter would have stuck around longer at AW. Published reports at the time had ATWT executive producer Mary Ellis Bunim was to be the new executive producer at AW, but she went to Santa Barbara instead. I'm not sure where P&G and NBC found Stephen Schenkel. After he left AW he was hired at All My Children. Richard Culliton and Gary Tomlin started off the year as headwriters. Then, there was a writer's strike in the Spring, and Sam Hall and Gillian Spencer were hired as headwriters in the summer. They were terrible headwriters, perhaps penning the absolute worst storyline in AW history- the Egyptian urn with the poisonous dust that Carl Hutchins hoped would kill Mac and Rachel. NBC even put full page ads in TV Guide hoping this garbage storyline would attract viewers to AW.

In my YouTube feed, a 1951 episode of Suspense, an anthology series that ran on CBS, appeared this morning. The episode features 30 year old Douglass Watson (Mac Cory) as a killer who follows a woman home on a stormy night.

Was the character of Rachel rehabilitated and did the audience by into her living happily ever after with Mac? Cass may have matured but marrying Lila who was a cheap imitation of Cecile- both spoiled and self-centered- was a quick way to wrap up the show. At least having Cecile on the canvas from 96-99 would have made more sense to long term viewers.

First, TPTB never put Nancy Frangione on a contract when she returned in Fall 1995. In the closing credits she was always listed with the recurring characters. They also did not place Cecile in the opening credits that debuted in March 1996 because she was a recurring character- and not on contract. Then, the writers gave Cecile two poorly written story arc. First, they tried to rewrite history and say that Cass, not Sandy, was Maggie's father. Long time viewers who were watching the show in 1982-83 knew that Cass wasn't even in Bay City at the time and Cecile went back and forth on whether Sandy or Jamie was Maggie's dad. Next, Cecile hired Rafael to "kidnap" Maggie so that she could get ransom money from the Corys to help her with her money troubles. Again, another poorly written story. In early Summer 1996, Cecile left Bay City never to be heard from again. Frangione deserved better than this. TPTB should have kept Cecile on the canvas. She- not Lila- should have been the one to marry Cass in the AW finale.

They should have had Iris and Cecile in the scene with Grant in Tanquir in the last episode plotting their revenge against all the people in Bay City who wronged them. Definitely would have been fun to briefly see them together.

I belive there were papers located inside the Red Swan that stated that Paulina was Mac's long lost daughter.

If DW/Mac had lived, I wonder how they would have reunited Mac and Iris? I suspect that something would have happened where Iris helped save either Rachel or Amanda from some kind of peril and Mac would have been greatful.

Lemay's last episode was in mid-November, however I don't think Swajeski's episodes started airing until late-November or early-December. Maybe the writers worked from an outline that had already been written by Lemay. It has always been stated, but never proven, that Swajeski borrowed heavily from a long term bible that Lemay had written for the show. If this is the case, it would be interesting to read it to see how much Swajeski borrowed from it. The Red Swan mystery was clearly a Swajeski storyline since no one could have predicted the sudden passing of Douglass Watson.