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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.

On Pluto TV on the Bob Barker Price is Right channel they are airing the promo during every commercial break. CBS definitely wants people to know that premiere date! 😉

Today’s episode had me thinking about a soap history question- today’s episode featured two characters named Steven- Steve Johnson and Steven Olson. How many times has a soap featured two characters with the same first name? I can’t imagine it has happened too frequently.

Old school soap opera- excellent episode.

The P&G soaps occupy the top 5 spots in the ratings and the 3 ABC soaps are in the bottom 5. In a decade it would definitely change.

The mess that Paul Rauch made out of Another World once Harding Lemay left as head writer. In 1980, the 90-minute AW was airing from 2:30-4:00. When that wasn’t working, Texas was created, taking Beverlee McKinsey to Texas. There were two problems- The 2:30, then 2:00, start time for AW was the first time in 15 years that AW did not air in the 3:00 time slot. Removing McKinsey from AW did not help either. When Texas debuted, it should have aired at 2:00, then AW at 3:00. Once McKinsey left Texas, P&G should have moved heaven and earth to bring her back to AW. It also did not help AW that the storylines were all over the place in 1981-82.

Anderson was there from February to April 1988. Her biggest contribution to AW was Wallingford’s memorial service. The writers’ strike occurred, and it was announced that Harding Lemay would return as headwriter.

For weeks on Another World, a mystery man was stalking Felicia. Jason Frame had given her a gun for protection. At Felicia’s 40th birthday party, the mystery man disguised himself as a strongman from the circus. He followed Felicia into a hall of mirrors, and when she fired the gun- a dead Jason Frame came crashing through the mirrors. The mystery man turned out to be Derek Dane- he was a young boy that lived in Felicia (Fannie Grady’s) house as a foster child. He killed Felicia’s abusive father, Noah Grady.

Christine Jones played Janice Frame on AW for 18 months from November 1978 to March 1980, but her presence on the show and how she and Mitch plotted to kill Mac would play well into the 1990s with her son Evan Bates on the show.

From January to June 1989 AW is pretty much on fire with the umbrella story of Who Killed Jason Frame- it pretty much involves every character on the show. While not bad, thing start to fall apart after Mac’s death and the Red Swan mystery begins.

She could have been cast as Iris on AW as well.