LeClerc

Thought this was interesting: AMC composer John Wineglass has his own site: johnwineglass.net There is a "score player" at the bottom of the mainpage, and it includes A LOT of scores from AMC. Some of these are my favorites; he does a lot of good suspense pieces as well as piano pieces.

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.

Rumor has it that former GL writers nancy Curlee,Stephen Demorest and Patrick Mulcahy,And former AW head writer Donna Swajeski,are potential replacements.

That would have been interesting.

I actually really liked the Brooke/Eliot stuff though I know I'm in the HUGE minority. Although it was a big bomb, it did really feel like Agnes writing to me (maybe not an example of her at her best, but...)

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 also heard that in the late 90s or so DePriest was a consultant for ABC daytime at least for a while--again which strikes me as slightly odd.

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.

LeClerc, maybe I can help. No, she didn't write the Silver Kane/Cobbler Island story. Lorraine Broderick was HW for that, back in 1987, I guess with Agnes heavily involved. That was a stinker. It started off promising and was very intriguing but then soon degenerated into a convoluted mess. I think AMC was #1 in the ratings the week that story culminated. Probably their last time in that spot. DePriest wouldn't come aboard as HW until the spring of 1989. Felicia Behr brought her on right after she came aboard as EP in March 1989. Broderick, I believe, was demoted to co-HW at this point. DePriest was good in that she decreased the number of storylines. Under previous EP Steve Schenkel and Broderick, there were at least 10 ongoing front burner stories, and it was killing the show. When she took over as EP, Behr said that one of the first things we wanted to do was cut back on the number of stories, and DePriest definitely accomplished that. Floating characters like Ross, Stuart, Julie, Cliff, Angie, Jeremy, and Sean Cudahy suffered as a result of that decision. Some of her stories left a lot to be desired, though. On the down side, she wrote Eric Kane the clown story, Travis's brain tumor, and the sickeningly sweet David/Melanie romance. On the plus side, she had some fun with the Chandler/Cortlandt/Martin orbit. She wrote the beginnings of the Tad/Dixie romance, Adam's committing Dix to the mental hospital. She wrote the subsequent interesting Junior kidnapping story, in which Ellen Wheeler's Karen turned out to be the culprit. She put an abrupt stop to the burgeoning Tad/Barbara romance, and put her back in Tom and Travis's orbit. She also wrote the incredibly entertaining Nico/Cecily stuff, which heavily involved the long neglected Phoebe and Langley. She and Behr also put James Kiberd on contract and winningly paired him with Kate Collins. She also aged Emily Ann Sago, giving long backburnered Candace Earley's Donna something to do that to sit around and listen to Natalie's sorrows.

It was an interesting time for the show and contrary to a lot of opinions, I kind of enjoyed this era. It felt more like AMC again in terms of having a community feel to it, something I rarely got from Broderick's 87-89 solo stint. Broderick had some very memorable stories, but the show was all over the map and totally not cohesive. She was much better in her mid/late 90s stint and IMO best when paired with Washam and McTavish, with Agnes as HW from 1990-1992. Agnes would take the reins from DePriest in January 1990, just in time for the show's 20th anniversary. That writing team was a dream and was responsible for one of my favorite eras on the show.

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?