LeClerc

Are you doing an interview with Frederick Johnson!?

Would Jeff Branson have worked as a Leo recast?

This Erica/Greenlee scene in the aftermath of Leo's death is one of my favorite scenes ever. The show had some really beautiful musical scores under Jean Dadario Burke.

Were Brooke & Jim ever given a serious chance or was he portrayed to the audience as a porno creep we weren't supposed to like right off the bat? I didn't really get to watch AMC much in the fall of '97 and any shows I did catch Brooke and Jim weren't on. When I did start watching again I was really confused about what I was supposed to think about that pairing.

Thank you so much for posting this! I didn't get to see this scene at the time and have always wanted to.

I have an old issue of Soap Opera Magazine where James Harmon Brown talked about the plan to bring back at least one of Alex's kids: This same sentiment was expressed by Brown and Jean Dadario Burke in an interview they did at the show's one-year mark It seems like bringing some of the kids back was done in direct response to Harding Lemay's criticism of the show when ABC asked him to consult: In the same SOM interview Brown says, in regards to bringing back Ava, that they "haven't ruled out that possibility". Which to me says there were no plans.

I was reading an article a little while ago where David Kreizman basically put killing off Richard in the same category as killing off Maureen. He seems to think they were equally big mistakes

Okay so everyone else probably knew this but I didn't know that ABC let Lisa Peluso go with the transformation to The City. I only just learned that from reading Branco's recent interview with Peluso. I didn't keep up with the behind-the-scenes goings-on back then and I always just assumed that she had left of her own choice. It never crossed my mind that TPTB would be dumb enough to have ditched Peluso.

Thank you for mentioning this. I just went through them and #70 (Solitude Water), #73 (Sad Revelation), and #81 (Suspense Tag) are my favorites. Lots of good "scary" scores from the the Proteus era in there.

Does anyone know what went down between Roscoe Born and Morgan Fairchild when they were on The City? I found an old Soap Opera Magazine from 1996 and it had the following blind item that I'm sure is about them: This big-name East Coast actor had no intention of returning to daytime until his good friend,a big-name actress, convinced him to join her show. Now, many month later, these two refuse to be paired as a couple- or even be in the same storyline. They are both counting the days until she leaves the show In the beginning it seemed like Nick and Sydney were supposed to be the big pairing on the show, but it promptly ended and they went with Sydney & Danny (until Morgan left) and Nick & Lorraine. I had always suspected that something happened between the actors, and when I saw that blind item it confirmed it. Once the Nick/Sydney thing fizzled Roscoe was really wasted on the show. Esensten & Brown said that they tried to play 2.5 stories per episode, and usually that extra .5 was irrelevant banter between Nick and Jacob at the bar.

That would have been interesting.

I'm in that minority too. I think the idea of bringing Josh back was great, but I don't think they should have even hinted at a romance between Brooke & Eliot for a long time. I think the audience would actually have gone for the pairing had it gradually evolved and felt like it was their choice and not TPTB's. Either that or they could have done the Brooke/Eliot pairing off the bat but not hinted at Eliot being Josh until quite some time later when the couple had a solid fan base and support.

I believe Jill Farren Phelps (who obviously liked DePriest since she hired her at AW) was a consultant for ABC Daytime for about a year before she was given OLTL, and at the time it came out that she was just one of many consultants ABC had lined up that could easily take over as EP or HW at one of the shows at a moment's notice. Since ABC was apparently bringing on anyone and everyone they could I guess DePriest seemed valuable to them since she had worked on all 3 shows.

Oh wow, that's extremely helpful! Thank you thank you. I never had a good handle on who wrote what in the late 80s. I never would have guessed Broderick (and Victor Miller was co-head with her I think?) was behind the Cobbler Island story. (and the other bad stories going on at the same time...which I don't recall, but I remember at the time being so frustrated with AMC). I knew in the back of my mind DePriest wrote the Melanie/David romance so I should have been able to place her. That pairing was awful. But from what you listed she wrote alot of good stuff, and some of the best stuff like early Tad/Dixie. I've always brushed off DePriest as completely useless as a HW based mostly on her 2nd stint at AW, the fact that she headwrote for Sunset Beach, and what I thought she had written for AMC. My opinion has definitely shifted.

Wow I was just thinking about starting a thread last week to discuss the work of Margaret DePriest since she certainly made the rounds in daytime but is hardly ever mentioned here! When I think of her I immediately think of the brutal death of Frankie Frame on AW (and that whole serial killer story in general which sucked....did anyone not know it was peripheral Fax Newman!?) and Sunset Beach, but I guess she wasn't all bad. Eric do you know what stuff she wrote during her stint at AMC? Was she there for the awful Cobbler Island/Silver Kane/Dr. Damon Lazzare story? That was probably one of the first times I thought about tuning out of AMC.

During it's last couple of months The City was the best ABC soap at the time IMO. The show had finally found it's identity and become much more structured. They were bringing in more older characters and bringing back some of the kids. And Tracy's arrival really rejuvinated the show. Loved Tracy/Gino, Tracy/Carla, Tracy/Jacob, Tracy/Alex and especially Tracy and Zoey's relationship. Question: Is there any story behind why they never paired up Sydney and Nick? That was the plan wasn't it? Instead Roscoe Born got wasted in that Nick/Lorraine pairing that never really had any story. And what the heck ever happened to the fabulous Amy Van Horne?