Contessa Donatella

LOL, now that's a good one.

Well, okay. I just quickly looked through 4 old soap books & it was not there. So, also not having ever heard of it, I climbed onto the web: https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=adk&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt&type=A1&param2=344c09af-5bd1-40bf-9aed-0b1b832f4651&param3=ancestry_~US~appfocus553&param4=google_v1-bb8~Firefox~Highway+to+the+Stars~D41D8CD98F00B204E9800998ECF8427E&param1=20190906&p=Highway+to+the+Stars And, there it was. So, you say you want info. I passed along this info to you. Hope you have a good night.

I have a list that calls itself a comprehensive list of all before & all 4 left now. That title is not on that "supposedly" comprehensive list. FYI.

While we're eyeballing the lovely and talented Susan Sullivan, I have a question, from way back. Does anyone know if the author Rita Mae Brown "outed" Susan Sullivan? I think she did. And, I know she outed Fanny Flagg who wrote Fried Green Tomatoes and another book. And, I know that Rita Mae Brown "outed" another blonde-blonde woman but I don't know who that is. I can guess. LOL

@EddieAWHP Hi, Eddie! Donna B shallotpeel here, good to see you! I believe that my dear old friend Chase4ever captured all of the SOAPnet broadcasts. And, I know he has uploaded everything he got to youtube. I know you have done so as well. Thanks for dropping by. Remember to tell people about the AW Fan Bench in Central Park & the videos we put up from there in Sept. 2018. Love your page, love you, love Mike, keep up the good work! I've always been so proud of the fact that ANOTHER WORLD had the best resources on the web!

It was Wheeler & Kreizman who came up with those special epis.

OMG, I love me some Joanna Johnson and now she's doing so well as an Executive Producer.

Oh wow, yes, that is an old post. I didn't notice. And, Kelly Rutherford, of course, I know her from GEN and from MP and then I guess later from Gossip Girl, too. Always liked her. Thanks for digging me out of that old hole.

I can't think who Megan Rutherford is and what was Vicky/Marley vacant for? Maternity leave? Ellen Wheeler was just about perpetually available to return, which is why I ask.

I set out here to do a search on & for AW: Anne Heche. Turns out AH is not specific enough. I've seen Anne Heche in just about everything she's done including in PROOF from the 4th row on Broadway. Then, like a doofus I stood across the street too shy to go ask for an autograph! As an AW fan I was lucky in that I got to see all of the Love/Hudsons - Donna even when Anna Stuart went to Hollywood for five years & we were left with Philece Sampler who I did not care for. She just reminded me of the role she had played at DOOL. And, Ellen Wheeler as Marley & Vicky who I loved. And, Anne Heche as Marley & Vicky who I loved. And, Rhonda Llewin who was okay. And, Cynthia Watros who was filling in temporarily. And, then, at long last Jensen Buchanan as Marley & Vicky & then as just Vicky. I really resented Jensen because she was intent on playing the role when she came back from maternity leave but she told them she would only play Vicky & not Marley, too. Then, she only worked part of each week. And, then, she had them transport her by helicopter from the studio to her house and back. While she was at it she tried to get them to make her the star appearing above Victoria Wyndham's name. Meanwhile Ellen Wheeler had been ready to come back in & play both parts for just ages! At the very end of the show she played a Marley who was taller than Vicky! Now, of course, Jensen has really screwed things up by having a serious accident & a DUI, etc.

Okay. Thanks.

No, Rhonda didn't get much to do. I remember Kim Morgan Greene and Anne Howard vividly. But, ya know, I just don't remember Lauri Landry. Who was with her? Adam shouldn't have done that.

Ah! I can see how he might somehow come off as smug. I am blank on who had the trouble with Kelsey. And, yes, I just plain forgot about Stephen Yates. Peter Love was a pain. I loved all of the Loves (get it? Loved the Loves, LOL) except Peter.

Largely there's Gordon Thomson, Robin Wright, memories of Paul Rauch, A Martinez, Marcy Walker, Dane Witherspoon, Jane Sibbett, Kimberly McArthur, ...

Currently, Facebook has a SB Reunion folder which includes just a ton of stuff including many interviews. One of the largest is a 6 part interview with Bridget. https://pierin26santabarbara.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-exclusive-unusual-interview-with.html There's lot about the upcoming cruise.

Oh, yeah, true. Personally, I have long thought that GL was operating at a fast pace during those years, anyway. Weekly, there was one Wednesday special epi. When they went out into the field to build houses, I loved that, but it chewed up time. Although those were webisodes weren't they? Otalia was racing along except for Jess's pregnancy leave. Jammy was racing along. Etc.

I recently read an interview with Patrick Mulcahey. I think maybe more SB stuff is showing up because they're going to do that SB Reunion Cruise. He was interesting & candid & personable. I've always liked him as a writer, anyway. Right off he said that working at SB was a little bit nutsoid. Funny, huh? He was at SB from 1984-1991. These are my Qs with his As. Q: What's his advice on writing? I think the best, maybe the only way to start a life as a writer is by writing without any thought of a career. Q: What did you write first? I didn't start writing plays till I moved to New Orleans (for love) in my early twenties. I fell in with a group of actors just graduated from Lousiana State University who were looking to do plays together. It was also where I learned to really listen to actors. ... when a good actor is struggling and telling you something is wrong in the material, you the writer must believe him and find it and fix it. Doing that has led to some great breakthroughs for me. Q: What came next? Still, after a half-dozen or so years of the starving-artist thing, I was ready when the call came asking me, "How would you like to write for Search for Tomorrow ?" "Sure," I said, "What is it ?" I didn't have a television myself. Q: And, next after that? After working with Douglas Marland on Guiding Light and then on Loving, which I hated (and where Agnes Nixon was like some psychotic schoolmarm on speed, making copious condescending red-pen "corrections" in the margins of scripts - "You used the same word on page 2 and on page 34 ! Too repetitive !") - after that, I decided I was done with writing for soaps. (Okay, imagine that! Marland is divine but Aggie is a mess. Who knew? Out of all I've ever read or thought even about Agnes Nixon I have never once thought of 'psychotic schoolmarm on speed'!) Q: Then, you got a call from Bridget as they prepared themselves to fo into production with SB, right? ... when the phone rang. The woman on the other end identified herself as Bridget Dobson. Did I want to write for the new show she and her husband had just created called Santa Barbara ? Once again I didn't have a television, and I'd never seen the show. But I knew its name. They were to meet the next day to go over little details like what his salary would be! That night he was walking this nice lady to her stubway stop when someone slowed down their car & leaned out & hollered, "Die, Liza, you bitch!" Turned out she was Marcy Walker, on tap to move to SB. So, there was someone he'd know and someone he'd write for. SB had more comedy than any other show I've been on. That came from Justin Deas, Lane Davies and Heather Mattson. Everyone else just had to keep up. The Dobsons "were great bosses, good people, loyal friends and good writers." "Bridget and Jerry. They always allowed me story input, though the story was theirs." ... on Santa Barbara, which was another way that show was special. All of us talked. Actors, directors, designers, writers. Or anyway, I did, and nobody stopped me. It made a world of difference. Partly because, as I said, I had learned how to listen to actors, and they could tell, so they listened to me. "Then once in a while you get an A Martinez, who can do anything, or a Justin Deas or a Marcy Walker or a Robin Wright or a Nancy Grahn or Louise Sorel or Robin Mattson - and then you can't stop thinking of new things you want to see them do." "My sense is that A Martinez, just by virtue of who he is, set a standard of professionalism, patience and mutual respect that everyone tried to live up to..." For some reason I can't name myself, I really want to stop here and say I loved writing for Roscoe Born. I resisted the Robert Barr story; it was shoved down our throats by Jackie Smith, the network exec, for whom I had no respect. But she was right about casting Roscoe. A wonderful, mysterious actor who works from a very deep, even dark place. Anyone else we threw in with A and Marcy would've faded into insignificance. You left Santa Barbara in 1991. What were the reasons of your departure ? Jackie Smith brought in a new executive producer named John Conboy, who might've been a really nice guy - I didn't stick around long enough to find out - but he played like a caricature of The Dumb New Boss. The one who says, "I know how to fix what's wrong around here - let's remodel !" We had one meeting, he told me his plans, I said, "No, thank you, I'm done." (Yikes! John Conboy!) Q: With the recent show cancellations - GL, ATWT, AMC, OLTL, ... ... what are your feelings about the future of the daytime soap-operas media ? That soaps really don't have a future. We needed to change or die, and the only changes we made were for the worse. I don't know, Brad's still in there pitching anyway. I love that guy.

Isolate a single character & tell a story which sheds light on their journey, etc. That's why some of them were so successful & others were not. Plus, the actors loved them. The writers loved them. What did you think of them? In general, I really enjoyed them. I would like to watch them again! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are stories from here to back again about people having problems getting along with their work colleagues. DOOL's Kristian Alfonso & Peter Reckell; DOOL's Crystall Chappell & Robert Kelker-Kelly; Y&R's Eric Braeden & Peter Bergman and so forth. One of the more egregious coming out of GL back in the day was Beth Raines, Krista Tesrau, Grant Aleksander and Mikey. As the story goes Beth grew up strictly West Coast, really with her family which was the circus. She worked as a clown from her youngest days. She found herself on the upper East Coast & it was cold & there was snow, which was her first experience with, and this new job to boot & she was terribly homesick & cried a lot, a while lot! Well, all that did was tune her up to be teased by the boys! They were unmerciful in how they went at her. Then, there was a second phase to it: she was the total newcomer who won a Daytime Emmy when none of them had done so yet.

This doesn't exactly fit here but I don't know where it would go, so I'm going to squeeze it in here. I'm looking for the death date of a writer about soaps, not a soap opera writer. And, that is Christopher Schemering. He wrote THE SOAP OPERA ENCYCLOPEDIA © 1985 & CHRISTOPHER SCHEMERING'S GL 50TH ANNIVERSARY © 1986 & THE SOAP OPERA ENCYCLOPEDIA © 1987. He also wrote a column & collected articles & memorabilia & struggled with getting complete, accurate info. He even solicited info from fans in the 1985 Encyclopedia & included it in the next, 1987, edition. I have his books. What I can't find anywhere, so far anyway, is his obituary. Anyone know when he died? I have the general sense that it was young.

Looking back at the RATSc archives, Jan. 18th, 2006, ... fans were reacting to the special Wednesday shows. Came down on both sides of the coin, "unwatchable" or loved them! Someone hated Josh & Reva's. Someone else hated Harley's but liked Josh & Reva's. Yet one more person really liked Dinah's. Another fan is for them because of the concept. Personally, I remember liking them & thinking they were one of Wheeler's better ideas. One fan has dubbed Gina Tognoni his favorite Dinah of all! I came to have that opinion of Tognoni, too. One fan: best part was Dinah's voice-over that she's going to concentrate on her high powered career and they showed her spinning around in her office chair. Loved that! But, another: I've already set my DVR to skip next Wednesday. WTH do I care about an hour of Cassie and Jeffrey? Ick. Oh, yeah, I disliked Jeffrey O'Neill quite enough for that!

JFP was frankly infamous for her Day One firings. Seems like someone was surmising that PAS had a special friend who was also in GL. I don't think so. We would run into him, as pedestrian traffic, in Brooklyn, and I think his friend was uber-blonde, very good looking and tended to be in Broadway or off-Broadway shows. Of course, that's what PAS has done a lot of too since GL went off the air.

I loved that pic of everyone at GL! I used it for my Windows 10 desktop for a long time. I agree about "cancelversary" being announced on April Fool's Day. That was hard to take. I heard that it was the last day they could announce & head +honchos were up late the night before literally deciding! Still & all it was hard to forgive them for the April Fool's Day connection. If you ask me they should have announced the day before!

Anne Meacham, who was quite a Broadway and off-Broadway actress and also a good friend to Tennessee Williams and is credited with saving his life once when he had a nervous breakdown! She played a servant in the Cory household, Louise Goddard, and it was her job to keep up with absolutely all of the Cory houseplants! Williams once wrote an editorial in The New York Times praising Meacham, noting "There's nothing she won't say or do onstage without any sign of embarrassment".

I think it's interesting, or odd even, that NBC monetarily penalized Robin Wright to let her go from SB to do THE PRINCESS BRIDE. I love the movie! And, I love the book, AS YOU WISH, which Cary Elwes wrote as an anniversary salutation. All the cast member took their turns in the book. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-adk-adk_sbnt&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt&hspart=adk&p=youtube+as+you+wish+princess+bride#id=1&vid=a887905831ab67b000a067ac238b6f2f&action=click