Contessa Donatella

Oh, really? I always thought that Jamie & Dennis were older than the twins. And, I thought Lisa was older than Vicky but not as old as Dennis & Jamie. I cannot imagine Jamie being the same age as, for one example, Ben McKinnon. And his being a doctor argues for his being older. Of course he'd also been a novelist but that was another lifetime.

Oh, sorry. Paul Rauch, once a network executive, when Harding Lemay was HW at AW he jumped the fence to become EP at AW. Later he was EP at OLTL & at SB & here in this instance he was at his last show, EP at GL.

At GL before things were that dire Claire Labine was HW but whatever she pitched to write Paul said NO. And, so, after just a few months, Paul fired her & her team. Then, he set about to get a HW. Couldn't find anyone to come & work for him. IDK if it was the rep & state of P&G at the time or that PLUS not paying well enough, or him. Paul called Claire & asked her if she would consider coming back. There was no reason to think it was going to be a happy thing all of a sudden, but she did. As we know, she was a class act all around. Me, I would've loved some of the stuff she pitched! So there.

I was just listening to a YT interview with Justin Deas, who seems to be feeling good, and did you know that he rarely auditioned for roles?!! Betty Rae called him & cast him & she had seen him in something. And, at one show he once did a 90 page monologue?!! It was a stunt! Before his soap career, which he accidentally fell into basically, he mostly did theatre, especially lots & lots of Shakespeare. He was at Juilliard. His family moved a lot when he was growing up. He went to 11 different public schools. I think I went to 12. Made a joke that Deas was Margaret's "alternate" name & told how she hated him when she first met him when they put them together at ATWT. He seemed to think that she thought he was pretty much an idiot. Said he wasn't good at anything & his mother was worried about him & began taking him to plays. He became fascinated at the idea that you could "be somebody else, not yourself." At one point his life goal was to appear onstage at the Guthrie. He managed that a long time ago! He was in one show & the Lead told him he was doomed to always be just a Supporting Actor, so he quit. ATWT was just happenstance & completely because of Betty Rea. She told him he was an amazing actor & she spoiled him terribly. You could tell he loved that. Margaret, though, in the same time period, said, Great? No, you're average. That cracks me up! He talked complimentary about Larry Bryggman, Scott Bryce, JFP who he thought brought him on SB and was behind the 90 page thing which started out to have an episode where he as Keith did all of the lines for the whole show. They wouldn't let them do it, though. Fiona Hutchison, Marj Dusay, Ron Raines. Apparently near the end of Marj's life her 4 leading men from GL took turns going to see her. I love that! She was pretty sick for a pretty long time. He said each of his GL leading ladies was fabulous! Marj got onto him because he wouldn't watch the show because he didn't want to see himself. She asked him how he was ever going to improve if he didn't watch himself. That made sense to him & she scored a point! He said he wasn't surprised that GL came to an end because he knew how expensive it was to produce a soap every day compared to, for example, reality programming. He said he always felt like they made a movie every day. (Tony Geary said that about GH!) I did not know that Betty Rea did casting for ATWT. I thought she was just GL. Did she do both?

I was just listening to a YT interview with Justin Deas, who seems to be feeling good, and did you know that he rarely auditioned for roles?!! Betty Rae called him & cast him & she had seen him in something. And, at one show he once did a 90 page monologue?!! It was a stunt! Before his soap career, which he accidentally fell into basically, he mostly did theatre, especially lots & lots of Shakespeare. He was at Juilliard. His family moved a lot when he was growing up. He went to 11 different public schools. I think I went to 12. Made a joke that Deas was Margaret's "alternate" name & told how she hated him when she first met him when they put them together at ATWT. He seemed to think that she thought he was pretty much an idiot. Said he wasn't good at anything & his mother was worried about him & began taking him to plays. He became fascinated at the idea that you could "be somebody else, not yourself." At one point his life goal was to appear onstage at the Guthrie. He managed that a long time ago! He was in one show & the Lead told him he was doomed to always be just a Supporting Actor, so he quit. ATWT was just happenstance & completely because of Betty Rea. She told him he was an amazing actor & she spoiled him terribly. You could tell he loved that. Margaret, though, in the same time period, said, Great? No, you're average. That cracks me up! He talked complimentary about Larry Bryggman, Scott Bryce, JFP who he thought brought him on SB and was behind the 90 page thing which started out to have an episode where he as Keith did all of the lines for the whole show. They wouldn't let them do it, though. Fiona Hutchison, Marj Dusay, Ron Raines. Apparently near the end of Marj's life her 4 leading men from GL took turns going to see her. I love that! She was pretty sick for a pretty long time. He said each of his GL leading ladies was fabulous! Marj got onto him because he wouldn't watch the show because he didn't want to see himself. She asked him how he was ever going to improve if he didn't watch himself. That made sense to him & she scored a point! He said he wasn't surprised that GL came to an end because he knew how expensive it was to produce a soap every day compared to, for example, reality programming. He said he always felt like they made a movie every day. (Tony Geary said that about GH!) I did not know that Betty Rea did Casting for ATWT. I thought she ws GL. Was she maybe the Casting Director for P&G? At GL who did Buzz romance? Olivia, yes. Lillian for EndGame. ?? Anne Heche regularly had 70 pages per day but that was 2 characters! Imagine 90!

Just saw a picture of Vanessa Marcil on Michelle ValJean's IG. Boy, VM looks fabulous, first I've seen of her in years. I hope that's okay to post here.

You're right about P&G and exclusivity. In late June 1999 when AW went off the air Jensen Buchanan was one of four AW actors to go directly to ATWT & begin work there. Jensen had been hired by JFP to begin work at GH. She ended up scheduled to appear on both soaps on the same day. P&G sued her for breach of contract. They included GH in the suit but released them when they promptly fired JB. They included someone else in the suit, which I thought should have been JFP but apparently it was JB's agent, Sam Somebody. JB said she hadn't known anything about being exclusive. Amazing to me, the suit played out Feb. 2001.

My Halloween thought ...

Just as long as you're not looking for Susan Batten, who actually was on GH on that Home & Hearth show where Sasha went ballistic. Susan Batten was an unfortunate part of the ABC-ification of ATWT when Allyson Rice-Taylor got fired & "replaced" as Connor BITD. I still have nightmares. She was a typical Oakdale high profile business woman. Batten didn't know what to do so she dusted her mini-blinds in her office.

Thnx!

I hope this hasn't already been posted. If I'm duplicating, I'm sorry. There's this guy on twitter, who also has a soap channel on YT, who is soon going to start showing THE CITY from beginning to end. I'm going to watch it again! In case anyone here wants to check it out, here's his deets: Rad Rockefeller (he/him) @Rad_Rockefeller Follows you Documenting Soap Operas, one juicy story at a time! Check out my YouTube channel below for all my Soap Opera Documentaries, Catfights, & Top 10 countdowns! youtube.com/c/CarToob

Where? I have always wanted to see Spyder Games! Just a sec. Okay, here he is: Rad Rockefeller (he/him) @Rad_Rockefeller Follows you Documenting Soap Operas, one juicy story at a time! Check out my YouTube channel below for all my Soap Opera Documentaries, Catfights, & Top 10 countdowns! youtube.com/c/CarToob

There's a guy on twitter who also runs a soap YT channel who is soon going to start showing The CITY from scratch through to the end. I'm subscribed to his channel but have never been because he has no AW, tons of OLTL, some AMC, etc. But I'm going to go once he begins with THE CITY. I will watch it over! Do you want his info? Oh, yeah, I complete agree about One Tree Hill & 90210.

We almost had two, no three. Ted Turner floated/pitched a package of 4 channels including a Classic Soap Channel & The History Channel & 2 others. Only the History channel got made. Then, Sony's SOAPCity website was almost a channel, too, but it fell through. Disney did mount SOAPnet & at first they ran it well. RH from the beginning, AW from I think 1987. Later on it really was mismanaged. ABC/Disney Daytime Head Brian Frons, who hated soaps, a real #SoapKiller, turned it into *another* Disney Jr. channel. Yes, what we need more of - teen, pre-teen, sports and above all NEWS!

I think this is the perfect time for some streaming service to find a way to access classic episodes! DOOL has all but Season 2 (lost to a fire). AMC I believe starts with 1976! RH & OLTL & DS of course are full or nearly full libraries, as is THE DOCTORS which is on Retro TV. Five 5 P&G soaps begin with 79/80. I want to watch Bill Bell's DOOL again! I can't get enough classic AW. Early AMC would be like eating dessert! It's getting those tapes, having them digitized & curating them. But, getting them is the rub right now. Dammittohell. So, I strongly agree with you about wanting it and it being a tough nut to crack.

Earlier this year, in the twitterverse, Patrick Mulcahey told me about some writing he did at AW before they started writing TEXAS, and that it shows up exactly nowhere in any credits online! Further he spoke about working with either IMDb or Wikipedia to try to get his credits right on their pages. On one he finally just asked them to take the page down. On the other he just gave up trying to deal with them. The takeaway from this is that these easy online sources we have are fatally flawed! We are so lucky that we have all of the Internet at our disposal. No more learning the card catalog, the Dewey Decimal system, the periodicals index, etc. But we have to keep it in our minds that there are errors throughout.

Watching on Hulu earlier tonight I had a strange "reception" - Sound cut out several times. Show went to dead air several times. Commercial breaks were awful, all political claptrap & very sensational ads against Walker & the violence against his family by him, etc. followed by periods of dead air. Was there something off about the show today or was this just backwash from campaigns having equal access to advertising time? And, @victoria foxtontoday's stuff was good with Chase in the buff but anyone who missed the love scenes yesterday really missed out! Chase & Brooklyn YUM YUM ...Sonny & Nina OH CRAP ... Felicia & Mac, oohlala leave it to the vets to strut some stuff. Oh, and, finally Joss & Cam got back on the bicycle after they were so rudely messed with their first time with the sex tape. With Val & Anna's arty hot stuff last week GH has finally found love in the afternoon again. Just saw that the actor who plays Chase is all excited that he & his wife are pregnant again!

Jean Arley came up in a conversation, briefly, just today. I can find out more but what was said today ... Definitely considered to be a "Save the soap" person who was called in when a show was in trouble. Person was speaking of her today in terms of wishing she'd been called in at the end of, specific example we were discussing, ATWT. It was mentioned that she had "worked wonders at two soaps & I only recall that OLTL was one of them & not what the other one was. Hope this helps a bit. Editing In: The other, second soap in yesterday's discussion of her as a soap saver was Love of Life.

Okay. I was getting a bit confused there for a minute! 🤣🤣 Thnx for the save.

Oh, okay, so Reva knew Joanna? Did she die?

I don't know anything about Joanna. Who is she? I do know that Reva & Reena were somewhat alike as characters and of course, they sound alike. When Kim revealed that she had not been first choice, it was quite a surprise!

LQwA: GL: Pam Long had someone specific in mind for Reva Shayne, not KZ, a redhead, who was it? LQwA: A: I believe we have a winner, I mean, an answer: Carla Borelli played Reena on TEXAS & she turned Reva down because she was too much like Reena. Pam played Ashley & then wrote on the show.

Yabbut, they've got 7 months of tape! What has been their salvation under NBC license fee deprivation is now a huge problem ... I'm afraid. However, more basic, or traditional story-telling with modern people & modern relationships. That could be a new Salem...

I'm in danger of sounding like a broken record but I really believe we have an epidemic of some Writers' Disease! As far as I can tell it's all the soaps, so it's contagious. It's balance & pacing & pay-off & use of personnel & I'm not sure what else! Not being able to finish, now, that always sounds serious. 🤣🤣