Contessa Donatella

@antmunoz You mentioned people being bitter, recently I got to pick someone's brain about them spending time with Pete Lemay near the end of his life & found out that there was one thing he was still bitter about & that was his planned story for Michael Randolph to come out to his twin as gay & P&G being a cheat about it. Now this is off-topic, so, the end.

It's not about Zimmer's job. Anytime one character takes over their show it is to the detriment of that show & of the genre. This is true of many characters on many shows. And it's neither news nor brain surgery. Everyone who knows soaps, knows it. But of course, it is certainly not just the actor responsible when it happens. There are exec & creative types running shows who let things like that happen. Pam Long created the monster. Paul Rauch grew it into a bigger monster. Ellen Wheeler didn't get rid of it when she could have. Common opinion was that KZ would quit before taking a pay cut. CBS and P&G let her become too important to them. Hey, if Carla Borelli had taken the part in the first place as Pam Long wanted, who is to say what would have happened differently. As far as Noelle Beck goes, I very much enjoyed her on a primetime show, THE CASHMERE MAFIA, so AW is not needed although you have a great idea there as a 4th Nicole Love might have rehabbed the character after #3. Even though it was a failure in that it did not save the show, the GL "new production model" is noteworthy in soap history. It may be the last attempt to reinvent a soap. Lynn Liccardo's book is mostly about ATWT at the end but has some about GL. Patrick Erwin, Sara Bibel & Roger Newcomb were invited to a set visit & were given a lot of info abut it. Patrick wrote an essay for the book THE SURVIVAL OF SOAP OPERA: TRANSFORMATIONS FOR A NEW MEDIA ERA. & with permission I did a blog about it. (shallotpeelblog on WordPress.net) Sara's would be on deepsoap & Roger's would be on WeLoveSoaps.net One thing of interest is all criticism of it: Maureen Garrett returned to the show and was overwhelmingly negative: "You do not see the other actors. There are no rehearsals, no monitors on which to watch the action, Actors are led from hair to make up to a kind of holding pen. Then they're guided through the maze of pieces of sets to their spot (…) There's no director, no time, no spontaneity. If this is what has to be done to save the form, I think there's room for debate about trying to preserve the process, too. You can't really create connections or foster " 'chemistry' without the work." (Torchin 2009) I suspect that much of that is just like what happens today on DAYS & on GH. So, I theorize that the worst of it, if you will, got adopted into today's production methods which are 1. faster and 2. Cheaper. As a general rule I simply do not discuss GL. I made an exception here & did. Now I'll just put it back in the shelf in my mind. Enjoyed it, folks. And, as the acknowledged #1 EW apologist, I hope you all noticed how many times I said she was wrong!

I just went to Linda Dano's podcast where she interviewed Deidre Hall. Dee grew up mostly in Florida & was in college there when she really didn't know what she wanted to do & she didn't have the luxury of just "fooling around" trying to find herself. So she went to CA & stayed with friends & did some modeling which led to acting. At about this point Dee began interviewing Linda. When Linda was at OLTL she'd pee her pants & so wardrobe put her in diapers. She doesn't pee her pants anymore. Dee has a female retriever named Riley. Yesterday she put up some peach jam. When she & Judi & Susan went to see BARBIE, they dressed up some of her dolls first & took them with them. Linda asked her what she'd do if all of a sudden DAYS was no more. She was speechless. She doesn't know. Finally she said she would continue doing what she does, take a walk with a friend, ... trailed off.

I've just caught up on the show & can start reading & posting again My first post is unusual. Talked to someone abt being at the studio. Up tempo. Optimistic. Seeing everyone again. Smiling faces. They'd been worried before & I'd shared some words, a pep talk. Their worry had been needless. Boo Yah!

#ClassicDAYS Roman & Marlena Country Inn #3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqzCKsI9hag&list=PLKmA2lMn5BKs-vZ9yFwJjD4qyfHAcAb1v&index=9

was a crazy thing that they did. All along in development they were squirrelly about both the nun s/l & about the interracial s/l and then when Irna began to write it they told her she couldn't write those two stories & she fought but lost & so quit.

MADD set it up that two directors shadowed Chris Goutman to learn how to be a P&G EP. Besides training it was a competition & the winner got to be EP of GL. If Scott McKinsey had won instead of Ellen Wheeler, Vee would say I was partial because his mother was on AW. Just thought this & laughed.

What she said was that when her date came up she would consider it, not that she would take it. But, her point was that she would not even consider it in between dates, which was her right. I don't think she took one because if she had I think she'd have said so in her book.

Oh, that's absurd. If I am biased in favor of certain shows, it is a long list of them, yes including AW but also GL & SB & PC & GEN & DAYS & GH & AMC! The fact that I know a lot about GL behind the scenes then also has zero to do with AW. That's a silly notion. I count Jill Lorie Hurst among my personal friends & she never even watched AW.

Yes but the show lost. She put some of the nails in that coffin all by herself. Guiding Light before it was The Reva Show was stronger & more resilient. Could not stand her.

Oh, that habit of hers was so ridiculous. If she was not front burner for ONE DAY she'd sic her sycophants on the show calling to bitch. And Robert, was held captive, couldn't play any story with anyone else just "ALWAYS." We were stuck with Rauch-view including overlit sets & his choice of colors. Skirts & blouses, practically a uniform. ALL OF ME, great book!

Hey, thst is okay. Your gag was funny!

Cady McClain most recently played the part & she is famous as Dixie on AMC. Bomb. A joke is never funny if you have to explain it.

And now she's whistling Dixie.

Definitely think FF was being humorous, Oh snap!, and that is sure not Dee's rep snapping at people. I think most soap queens have perks galore but they all seem to be great towards fans ... as they should be.

It's not so much a question of it being the actor's "responsibility" as much as it is that they're in a position to help out if they choose to just like pilots when airlines get in trouble. But, it is true that at one point when soap were cheap to produce, that the talent was cheap & by this time actor salaries had grown unbelievably. But, yes, I also understand how expensive it was & is to live where they had to live. I don't agree with you that the only morale issue was taat EW didn't cut KZ loose but I do agree with you that she should have done so. I also don't agree that it was Wheeler's decisions that led to the show cutting people but it also wasn't Zimmer's. Some people seem to think that Wheeler had this great amount of agency about what to do & what not to do when so much was dictated either by CBS or by her less than sufficient budget. @titan1978 I like to think that victim-blaming like Calhoun did wouldn't be said today but then maybe that's naive. I like Calhoun's work generally. That statement is just what an insensitive clod would say. I figure in that meeting about what was going to be coming up with Roger & Holly that the top of Maureen's head blew off.

@Errol Great! I expected nothing to come of it. @AbcNbc247 Good line. I think I understand & appreciate why Bell Sr. said no but I wonder if CBS had asked Claire Labine if she wouldn't have done it.

Monty was never on SFT and the lost tape was after Tootsie. This seemed more like a publicity ratings grabbing stunt Wow. Okay, not the scene from TOOTSIE. Seems perfect but too bad. No, of course Monty wasn't at SFT. No one said she was. The producer in TOOTSIE is widely believed to be based on Gloria Monty,

That whole "speak easy" set & time spent there, etc. was so awful. What was it an after hours' club that Danny let Tony run? One funny thing, well bittersweet, Mae the cigarette girl is the only thing Claire got to write at GL that she liked! I hated her. But I feel so sorry for Claire Labine. Megan McTavish wrote it.

Could you mean Mae the cigarette girl?

I'm sorry. You've misunderstood me. There is absolutely no reason you shouldn't have posted it. Very sorry for the misunderstanding. That is not what I meant. Not challenging you at all.

I thought she said she left because she was pregnant. Of course I guess being pregnant she might have had a lowered threshold for tolerating JFP & her stuff & the company's stuffs. So, what is anyone's opinion of Robert Calhoun saying to Maureen that Holly was partially to blame for the rape?

Hilarious. I had to get a Y&R fan to get it for me. The tweeter is someone who many people have blocked & they themselves have many people blocked. (It's a thing with *certain* John & Marlena fans.) Some of us consider blocking & being blocked by that individual a badge of honor. I'm sure that's TMI.

And, together, he & MADD were called this amazing power couple (Mary Alice Dwyer Dobbin) & the only good thing said about them was that they fought tooth & nail for their shows.

Oh. I see. I thought it was a mutual decision. I would bet that they didn't want to work for Rauch & P&G didn't pay well enough to overcome that. I mean who would want to work for someone when everyone agreed that he would argue with someone who agreed with him. Patrick Mulcahey told me that he still doesn't understand why Pete LeMay didn't kill him.