Contessa Donatella

I don't follow. Sorry. What is a two-hander?

Maybe this is a Minority Rapport but I enjoyed Mary/Marissa, Scott, Vince, Cheryl & even the first HIV/AIDS storyline.

Victoria Margaret, very nice. I don't see anything wrong with Sarah right now. And, of course, it is way soapy to have this secret paternity issue planted. If the show goes on & on, there can be plenty of opportunities for it to be winked at as well as even an ultimate opportunity for it to come out as a reveal. I'm almost always for that kind of soapiness in the writing. Completely agree. Also agree but it doesn't look like Maggie, Justin, Bonnie & anyone else being thrown out of the K Mansion will have any relief any time soon. On the plus side, we must be gonna have Louise Sorel for a while & that to me is a big plus.

I have never understood Stefano's obsession with Marlena but I didn't think I was meant to.

I'm still up to my ears in this petition to get NATAS to award Beverlee McKinsey a Posthumous Lifetime Achievement Emmy. They have awarded Posthumous ones so there is a precedent for it. Plus an author is working on a bio as we speak so there's a sense of a lot going on. I'm asking everyone to sign it & I'm asking many people to post supporting & to share it. In my YouTube channel is her "City Lights" interview and 3 video clips from early TEXAS & those are in the petition as well as one of the classic Alexandra episodes from GL. We now have 412 signatures & we've had 14 people donate & I'm thanking Kim Wells AW group on FB, Greg Meng, Thaoo Penghliss, Kin Shriner, Kimberly Simms, Kim Zimmer, Jill Lorie Hurst, Nancy Williams Watt, Judi Evans, Mark Derwin & Alan Locher. The text is a nice read even if I say so myself. https://chng.it/JBsh8Y9tkk Thank you for your time & for your consideration.

I'm still up to my ears in this petition to get NATAS to award Beverlee McKinsey a Posthumous Lifetime Achievement Emmy. They have awarded Posthmous ones so there is a precedent for it. Plus an author is working on a bio as we speak so there's a sense of a lot going on. I'm asking everyone to sign it & I'm asking many people to post supporting & to share it. In my YouTube channel is her "City Lights" interview and 3 video clips from early TEXAS & those are in the petition as well as one of the classic Alexandra episodes from GL. We now have 412 signatures & we've had 14 people donate & I'm thanking Kim Wells AW group on FB, Greg Meng, Thaoo Penghliss, Kin Shriner, Kimberly Simms, Kim Zimmer, Jill Lorie Hurst, Nancy Williams Watt, Judi Evans, Mark Derwin & Alan Locher. The text is a nice read even if I say so myself. https://chng.it/JBsh8Y9tkk Thank you for your time & for your consideration.

I'm still up to my ears in this petition to get NATAS to award Beverlee McKinsey a Posthumous Lifetime Achievement Emmy. They have awarded Posthumous ones so there is a precedent for it. Plus an author is working on a bio as we speak so there's a sense of a lot going on. I'm asking everyone to sign it & I'm asking many people to post supporting & to share it. In my YouTube channel is her "City Lights" interview and 3 video clips from early TEXAS & those are in the petition as well as one of the classic Alexandra episodes from GL. We now have 412 signatures & we've had 14 people donate & I'm thanking Kim Wells AW group on FB, Greg Meng, Thaoo Penghliss, Kin Shriner, Kimberly Simms, Kim Zimmer, Jill Lorie Hurst, Nancy Williams Watt, Judi Evans, Mark Derwin & Alan Locher. The text is a nice read even if I say so myself. https://chng.it/JBsh8Y9tkk Thank you for your time & for your consideration.

Okay. I guess I just thought it was ... more than a truthiness question. That's what I should have said, as opposed to NOT ONE.

April 19, 2009 In 1941, in the midst of World World II, the Citizen Kane premiere and Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak, Guiding Light was canceled for the first time. Around 75,000 angry letters convinced Procter & Gamble, the show's sponsor, to return the serial to the airways. Decades later, GL became broadcast history's longest running drama, enjoying a 72-year run that produced over 15,000 episodes and launched the careers of acting luminaries such as Cicely Tyson, Kevin Bacon and Allison Janney. On April 1, 2009, Guiding Light endured its second and final cancellation, one that cannot be overturned by viewer outrage. When the show airs its final episode in September, a vital and integral part of American history will cease. It's easy to dismiss that claim as grandiose. After all, it's only a television show, or worse it's only a soap opera. Yet it is its very identity as a soap opera that makes its loss so acute. America can embrace very few inventions as her own. While baseball and jazz are sources of pride, soap operas, a genre created in the 1930s by former school teacher Irna Phillips, are stigmatized in the United States. Given this ostracism, many people miss what soaps actually are: a treasure trove of our culture's shifting attitudes and ideas, desires and ambitions. Soap operas offer an ongoing record of our collective memory where no single person or group can claim authorship. On the rare occasion that a U.S. daytime soap leaves the airways, talk focuses on the missteps made by the show themselves. Guiding Light is not simply a casualty of its own mistakes but is emblematic of a moribund television industry. Television thrived in eras when daytime earned windfall profits for networks and production companies; primetime banked on the occasional blockbuster and syndication deals. That model has been dead for years yet networks operate as if that paradigm can be revived. They convince themselves that the Internet, cable channels and fickle viewers are simply blocking their pathways to success. The thing is, networks don't really know who watches television, how they watch and incorporate the programming (or not) into their daily lives and why people watch in the first place. Answers to these questions would not matter as much if big decisions and big money didn't ride on them. The ratings are broken and Guiding Light is one victim. At this stage people talk about the inevitable. Of course, Guiding Light would be canceled. Soaps are dying, after all. What is not said is that soaps are dying, not out of disinterest, but neglect. A genre that has nurtured countless innovations can only survive so long when our culture treats them as back alley laboratories. It was not inevitable that Guiding Light stay on the air for 72 years, just as it was not inevitable that the show leave now. Since it will depart, let us take a moment to acknowledge that these decades of narratives have stretched over and connected generations. Let us acknowledge that anyone who sits down to enjoy *any* television show owes a debt to Guiding Light. - Melissa Scardaville (Melissa was previously the "Guiding Light" Editor at "Soap Opera Digest". She had the pleasure of working with colleagues at Digest especially including Jen Lenhart who was the Editor for "As the World Turns" since those two PGP soaps worked closely together and actors & press & leadership, etc. Nothing pleased her as much any Wednesday --when the magazine went to bed -- but to hear that the tear sheet of an interview she'd done or that week's 'Editor's Choice' was up on the bulletin board at the studio -- like the one she wrote that had a headline 'The King Is Back!' ---Yes, when Grant was back at the show!)

Miss Susan, B&W, NBC, 3/12/1951-12/28/1951 This was about a wheelchair bound heroine named Susan & played by an actual paraplegic, Susan Peters, was out of Philadelphia. I did not know about any soap originating anywhere but Chicago, NY & California. Were there any other oddballs?

Thanks. @danfling Thanks. I told you someone would come along.

I just can't think of this notable. Who he? And I feel fine about this guy as Nik. I just have all my fingers & all my toes crossed that he will save Liz!

This past week Sarah Lancashire won Britain's highest TV honor the NTA's "Special Recognition". She gave a remarkable shout out to Corrie & to the value of soaps: This is the transcript. At the first she is referring to Sir Ian McKellan who is standing beside her. Question: “Obviously a lot of people remember you on Coronation Street where it all began. A lot of people dismiss soaps sometimes. Do you feel like your career is proof almost of just how powerful soaps can be to someone’s career and how you can go on to such amazing things?” Sarah: “[Well I’m not the only one who has been in a soap! The same one!] When I was in Coronation Street we had a phenomenal writing team in the Nineties and every soap evolves, every decade and my decade was blessed with Paul Abbott, Sally Wainwright, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Julian Roach, John Stevenson, Ken Blakeson. The directors I worked with: Julian Jarrold, Julian Farino. It’s one of the best training schools in the world, it really is, but the calibre of people you are working with and in such an immediate fashion, is extraordinary and so truly, I am very proud of my four years in Coronation Street. I’m very proud of them. I was terribly lucky to work with extraordinary people.”

Claire Labine & Paul Avila Mayer were in the pack, the writing team on Love of Life & people discovered they could write very effectively together & they became co-HWs there. So that was their first time. Then I believe they began on Where the Heart Is together, as a package deal. That was their second outing. And, RH was next. If I'm wrong I'm sure someone will tell us, but I think this is accurate.

In daytime nepotism is practically a revered trope!

I thought of that example & I bet they were thinking of him but I also felt like they were thinking of multiple examples!! Anna said her husband did a soap one day & found it horrible.

Then Margaret DePriest was second in command under Pat Falken Smith at DAYS where she created Calliope Jones after the performance image of Cyndi Lauper's #2 hit "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"! When PFS left to return to GH, MDP was HW briefly alone & then together co-HW with Shari Anderson. That was 1984-1985-1986. In 1996 MDP was still HWing & with JFP & Susan D. Lee at AW she infamously killed Frankie Frame in the most brutal gruesome onscreen death ever seen. Dan you can use Grammarly or what I use is LT Grammar Checker & it will recommend things to you! It fairly often tells me how many words I have just put into one sentence & maybe do I want to rewrite?

I just learned that Paul jumped the fence from the network sometime in the past 6 months. I do not think Paul ever lacked a feeling of power. And he & MADD together were an amazingly powerful couple. One thing about them both though is that they would go to the absolute ends of the earth to fight for their show or their people. When Paul died he was putting parties together to talk about a venue for GL to go to. And he was retired. He had no official standing. Did not stand in his way!

I know Aniston was cast in 1985 & of course he was more of a power villain not much like Stefano but I thought he was brought on to tell the story of Victor & Caroline's romance & Bo's paternity not being Brady. But he did function as a villain, yes. Joe was on 1982-1985 & then gone till 1988. On again I think longer 1992-2001. Ernesto Toscano was another villain 1989-1990.

I know Genie has talked about basically all of the "not Laura" roles were cases where they wanted her for her name value but wouldn't actually write story for her. That must have been a royal pain in the toucas. I really liked Diana Colville, cub reporter.

I would suggest that it's not per se a truthiness question. I believe he almost always or even always has some agenda behind whatever he's saying & we of course have no way of knowing what those many agendas might be. So his point of view dances around like a point of light. The only time I think "That's it. That is his core." is when he tweets about Irna or how he writes or Bill Bell, etc. The rest of the time, to me at least, he is working the room. I've been sporting this amazing picture her husband took of her. His tribute, so nice. It's lovely seeing someone so in love with someone so lovable.

And it being MS it made me wonder if she really was a Lyme Disease sufferer or if it was just hard to diagnose MS. With Nancy Frangione I had to read Stephen Schnetzer's tribute & with Arleen it was amazement from Dana Delany! Oh, yeah, I am in love with this pic that her husband took!

OUCH!!!! Scorched earth in words! @carolineg You are probably right about Tyler. I am so concerned about him because it is both substances & bipolar & of course, he hurt himself so badly when he hit his head. He's been 'self-medicating" for so along now that it is an entrenched behavior. I truly have high hopes that someone who has been working since she was a child & got into a bad fix at 24, well, she is young enough to really turn things around & have the whole rest of her life in front of her. And it can't hurt to have NLG in your corner.

I didn't really intend to stir up the whole shebang "Haley Pullos irresponsible at 24" debate. All I really meant to do was introduce the fact that NLG is still advocating for them to let her come back. The only other thing I will note is that Tyler Christopher has not been given a second chance, at least not so far.

@janea4old Thank you for that thorough "soapsplainin"!! I found it a good reminder & clarity from it. So here & there people are talking about and/or polling should John or will John change his last name. My first thought was uh-oh, "Robicheaux Patch is on the case." just does not scan! Most people seem to be saying stay John Black!