Contessa Donatella

The only reason they "rested" Marley was because Jensen refused to play her. Now, they could have recast both times when JB went out on maternity leave. Ellen was available & went to the studio both times! To me it was nuts that they insisted on staying with Jensen!! And, she wasn't long on GH because she was still employed by P&G and acting on ATWT at the same time as she began working at GH. P&G sued her, sued her agent & were suing GH too till they fired Jensen & recast that part. Basically JB wanted to quit & stay home & play house & the show - stupidly I believe - wouldn't let her & kept making her offers she couldn't refuse including awful perks that the show really could not afford!

He was sorely lacking in any kind of acting physicality. He stood or sat, ramrod stiff & showed no body language. He had no vocal variety. Some of the time his line delivery was even a monotone. Most of the time it was just conversational speech. He had no use of his face with facial expressions. He could smile. He could not smile. Every single one of those things is tradecraft & things that he could have been working on. Someone said he posted recently that he was glad to be back on the other side of the camera. If that is true & I am even close to the mark, I am happy for him. Not everyone has to be an actor.

@carolineg I can't argue against the idea that they could have & should have fleshed out the parental unit story! I can't argue with how absurd it is to give him a meaningful character backstory on the day they're going to kill him off! THAT IS ABSURD! Who writes crap like that? Ooh, our special people do! That's who! But I am unwilling to relent on his being worst actor of DAYS 2022 & 2023. I realize we all have our own special anti-faves! He is mine.

I have no sympathy for Li. But, it's because I'm just so pleased that we are losing Remington who I have long thought was the least capable actor, even though he actually improved some recently. Now I will have to apply myself to who is the least capable actor! I'm used to doing shout outs to Richard Bloore because I think he dresses so many people so well. And, Sloan, like Gabi is usually looking great, clothes just drape on her in what I am sure is the perfect way they're supposed to look. Now, I am totally nonplussed. To marry Eric she appeared in a deep pink nightie? Slip dress? What the hell was that? I'm very glad that Ken's 3 piano concerts are benefits for SAG-AFTRA but I am offended that he let that monster run ragged over the people at the show & now all he can think to do is play piano. Does he not know where the buck stops?! I also can't stand Stabi! I'm worried about getting through the next 7 weeks much less months.

And of course it also had problems with clearances which would also have been helped by its being tucked in tight.

@JoeCool & @GLATWT88 Thank you both for replying. I have a sorta fascination with ABC not tucking half hour soaps in between AMC & OLTL. I specifically wish that they had done so with PC. And that one oddball time PC's ratings jump amazes me. I know when Wendy Riche conceived of it, her thought was to begin & end the day with the hospital. But I always thought it should have had AMC as its lead-in.

Do you think RH would have really thrived if given that almost magical bookending?

But, Anne Heche didn't even consider a new contract with the show. In her mind acting was a job she did for 4 years & now she was going to Parsons School of Design to start a career & the rest of her life. Someone at the studio gave her a copy of O PIONEERS to read. She was reading it the day her agent called saying that they wanted her immediately for a role with Jessica Lange in ... O PIONEERS. If Anne wasn't someone who could take something like that as a sign, it would have been a close call that she didn't have an acting career. Once she made it to the new set & Jessica Lange was apoplectic over having 8 pages of dialog for the first day ... well, then, the acting bug had her ... finally! She even asked her agent, "Does this mean that I'm an actress?" Can you imagine if Anne Heche had considered another contract to play the twins again? And, then, what if she'd settled in to make Another World her career? She would've joined the ranks of the multi-year Emmy winners. And, the show, well, it would have had to be richer for her being a part.

We do know from some BTS info that by that time NBC really wanted the show, not moved, but off the air & NBC and P&G fought over it. In 1993 P&G and the Dobsons were all set for them to HW the show but NBC blocked it. So there was maneuvering going on all the time.

I don't think that networks made decisions to cancel based solely on another network's sudden success. Nor should they have. Especially if the shows were still money-makers. I know in the case of AW and later in the case of GL that those two shows in particular still made enough money that it counted.

I've seen them called sitcoms that parody soaps but I've also seen them in lists of soaps. Cliffhangers, other soap characteristics & the day-to-day narrative is serial story-telling, so, ... Grand is another with those issues. But, I hear ya & I get where you're coming from.

I have a list of primetime soaps that is quite liberal by intent. Of course SAVANNAH was a soap! I also include SISTERS & TWIN PEAKS, which some might want to argue about & I get that. But, one thing I love about it is that it has at least 11 parodies of soaps. And, of course, they are serials, too. All That Glitters Behind the Screen Dirty Sexy Money Executive Suite Filthy Rich Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman Soap Good & Evil Grand Hail to the Chief If anyone knows of any that I'm missing, please holla!

I wondered about that, also, but I guessed he was picking that year because it's the 90 min. year. Which also makes it the end of the Lemay tenure.

Jason, this great, an expanded ILM. I love it! I had no idea he'd temp'd as Bill Horton. He was on 2 other daytime soaps, LIAMST as Dr. Sanford Hiller and unknown on Secret Storm. I also believe he is one of only two people to hit the primetime soap "trifecta" of appearing on certain ones: Dallas, Dynasty, KL, FC & the Colbys.

I would've said Y&R and DAYS for most single show covers. Even after most covers were several shows, they'd do a single show every once in awhile. I wonder if the covers for the quarterly editions will be similar or something completely different.

A person named Janet Di Lauro also writes for SoapHub. I'm sure it's the same person doubling up.

No, I realize that's there. What I was talking about was searching the domain with the Hunter email finder Chrome extension. Here is the yield from right now. Two days ago the bottom two were 78% verified & now they're zero. But two others are still in use (100% verified). Plus the names of real people are also verified, of course. But, they're listed elsewhere so you wouldn't be interested in them in your search. When we ran the fan campaign to get Alarr fired, this is how I found the pertinent email addresses for Peacock! Anyway, this is just FYI. If it's of interest, great, if not, no big deal.

And, don't forget! This is when Felicia had "long hair"! 🤣🤣 More seriously, Anna Stuart had finally come home! It makes me laugh to think she went out to try her hand in Hollywood & a strike started that very day. And, someone from the show called her weekly to tell her things that they hoped would entice her to return!

Last SOD cover Stella's been there since before 2000. Wait a minute. Okay, just checked a 1986 issue where Meredith is Ed. & Stella was there then! And, yes, Bednarz. Mara & Steph have Digest email addresses. What I can see of email addresses the rest are sodsound & sodask & others like that as opposed to people's names. Hinsey does not have a Digest email address.

I read two items this morning which said that the studios hope to put something in front of the union this afternoon that will end the strike. But, both were just that vague, that's all they said.

Okay, settle in, I'm going to tell a tale. You may not know this about me but I love doing research, asking questions, finding things out, etc. I especially LOVE debunking. Today's topic is Wes Ramsey, NOT a nepotism hire. I've said that he is an excellent actor who I've seen in GL, Charmed, Venicetheseries & GH. He went through the audition & screen test process with others competing for the role & he was the best choice. Emmy-winning Casting Director Mark Teschner conducted the audition & screen test. Also, he picked Wes. When he auditioned these guys for the role of Peter, he did not know Wes was dating Laura Wright. Wes was NOT hired in a chance meeting in a parking lot because of LW. I make no defense of the character Peter who was a horrible person but actors can only play what is written.

Yeah, DAYS has worked its way down to 5.0 & AW & SB & GEN are all under it 3.8, 3.7 & 2.3 respectively. I taped this lineup every day & to me it simply was not as bad as the numbers suggest. So I must remind myself that there's never been any proof that ratings = quality.

What is it that we know about soaps in Nov. of 1965? Easy. We know that's when DAYS OF OUR LIVES debuted! But before Nov. 8, 1965 there was another soap in the DAYS timeslot, MOMENT OF TRUTH on NBC 2-2:30 Eastern from Jan. 4, 1965 to Nov. 5, 1965, so for 10 months. An oddity, it was taped in Toronto. A dozen in the cast, this is where Doug Watson was before ANOTHER WORLD. Here he starred as Dr. Robert Wallace, a professor & psychologist in a small Canadian town with many social & romantic conflicts. It aired opposite ABC FLAME IN THE WIND. Both soaps were considered losers.

Another thing happened on this day in soap opera history. A big, lavish, large cast, expensive prime-time soap came to an end. BEACON HILL ran for only 11 episodes from Aug. 25, 1975 to Nov. 4, 1975 on CBS. There were 2 unaired episodes. Award winner Marvin Hamlisch wrote the music. The whole show was patterned after the British hit UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS. The premiere episode cost $900,000 to mount. The producer was Jacqueline Babbin, known for AMC. The setting was Boston right after WWI. It was much touted & had great expectations. It opened with a whopping 43 share but it did not at all hold onto audience. The household was the wealthy upper crust Irish family, the Lassiters. Their servants were poor Irish immigrants with no name noted. That was the contrast, the people "of the manor" & the people who worked for them. Apparently it appears in a book which lists famous TV flops! It said they tried to tell too many stories at one time.