watson71

On YouTube is the 1981-87 opening and closing theme presented in Stereo Sound. This is crisp and clean. The first time I’ve heard the opening theme with no voiceover or sponsor tag.

Don’t forget Joanne Gardner Barron Tate Vincente Tourneur- she’s smiling down on BTG too 😉

Definitely something is up with the plane crash since it keeps getting mentioned. Could his parents not died in the plane crash and received plastic surgery from Uncle Ted as part of some witness protection program? There’s definitely more to the plane crash…

So many old school soap touches Waiting for Vernon to break the fourth wall later this year and give one of those Mac Cory holiday speeches to the show’s audience 🥂

Could not figure it out- what did he hand that guy when he got out of the car?

I think she might have a drinking problem.

It’s almost foreshadowing that Haley will either get shot or get murdered and all of the Dupree family will be suspects the way they lined up and looked at her.

Christopher Rich (Sandy, AW) reunites with Reba on Happy’s Place. He talks about his recovery after having a stroke. Glad he is doing well. 🙏🏼

There are several X (Twitter) posts with the opening. It is similar to the Y&R opening. Wonder if Beyond the Gate will go “old school” P&G and have a sponsor tag at the beginning and end of the show? “This part of Beyond the Gates is brought to you today by Bounty. Bounty is the quicker, picker, upper for cleaning up spills and messes.”

TPTB should get Petronia Paley (Quinn AW and Vivian GL) to play a member of Anita’s girl group. She is the right age and a great actress!

Hirson also had a recurring part on Dallas as Miss Ellie’s best friend Mavis Anderson in the early seasons of the show.

Hopefully TPTB will hire Petronia Paley for a role on Beyond the Gates 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

And once NBC moved AW out of its traditional 3 PM start time in 1979 after 15 years, the show never regained its footing at the top of the daytime ratings. It spent 20 years in the lower half of the daytime ratings when it deserved better ratings. At some point, NBC should have tried to move it back to 3 PM. By the mid-80s Guiding Light was experiencing ratings trouble too. It would have been interesting to see what AW could have done back at 3 PM.

The Beverlee McKinsey / Carole Shelley replacement would repeat itself a few years later when Constance Ford was ill with pneumonia and was replaced early in 1983 by Peg Murray. This replacement happens right at the time when Rachel and Steve are going to Florida to be married, and Steve is killed in a snowstorm in a car accident, while Rachel is blinded. Murray just wasn’t Ada….

Carole Shelley took the temp recast of Iris in early 1980 after Beverlee McKinsey had a fall at her home and was injured. Shelley was an accomplished actress with Broadway and Hollywood credits. The timing of her playing Iris was awkward because it occurred at the conclusion and aftermath of Janice Frame trying to kill Mac in St. Croix. I’m sure that McKinsey would have played the scenes differently. Shelley was a little over the top when Brian recaps what happened in St. Croix to her Iris and Willis Frame.

The SCAD TV Fest will have a preview and panel discussion of Beyond the Gates on Wednesday, February 5th at 4:30 PM in Atlanta, GA. https://www.scadtvfest.com/2025/screening/beyond-gates

Haha- it will be fine. Swajeski ties the Red Swan to an “umbrella” February 1990 storyline that features Broadway star Terrance Mann and the entire cast at a night at the Bay City Ballet. That was the best part of the Red Swan storyline.

Barcroft left AW in 1971 on her own- no one showed her the door. Then, Agnes Nixon wrote her a part on All My Children. No one made her take the dayplayer part of the pharmacist on AW in the late 80s. She “degraded” herself, no one at AW was to blame for that.

The Red Swan was probably the first time that Donna Swajeski strayed from Harding Lemay’s bible. Rachel receives the Red Swan as a gift shortly after Mac’s death. The Red Swan was totally her storyline.

Two Another World cliffhangers in the pre-Internet spoiler days that stood out were: March 14, 1980- Rachel kills Janice Frame while trying to save Mac February 10, 1984- In late January, 1984, Carl Hutchins tampered with the Cory jet causing it to crash in the Canadian tundra. Everyone presumed Mac Cory to be dead, only for him to be shown wandering in the snow in the last minute of this Friday cliffhanger. The show even gave Mac a funeral during this time.

And don’t forget that 42 years ago today, January 6, 1983, Linda Dano made her debut as Felicia Gallant driven by her chauffeur, Gil Fenton, to Bay City to meet with Mac Cory.

With a 10.8 rating and 35 share of the audience for the AW 10th Anniversary special, I can see why P&G and NBC thought the move to hour episodes was a good idea. From 1973-75, CBS moved The Price is Right from the morning to compete against AW at 3:00 PM and paired it with Match Game at 3:30. CBS would eventually move The Price is Right back to the morning time slot and place reruns of All in the Family (the #1 nighttime show) at 3:00 PM to compete with AW.

In 1974, the timeslot for Y&R on the East Coast by CBS was 12:00 PM, in between Love of Life at 11:30 and Search for Tomorrow at 12:30. CBS gave the affiliates the 1:00-1:30 timeslot for local programming. Maybe all the affiliates did not carry the show at 12:00 PM?

Wonder if Robin Strasser ever saved any of her AW work as Rachel?

I would like to know what Lemay had planned to reunite Mac and Iris after it was revealed that Iris was The Chief. Clearly, Mac featured heavily in Lemay’s bible since no one accounted for Douglass Watson’s death. That Red Swan story was all Swajeski.