Sedrick

I believe Alec Baldwin had kicked the habit by the time he went out to Hollywood (thank goodness)...a few years ago he ran into the clerk who used to run that arcade and the man told him he was for sure Alec was going to end up dead because he was so far out at the time.

I wonder, though, if those were not the actors who were more interested in what The Doctors could do for them rather than what they could do for The Doctors. The most vocal ones seem to be the ambitious actors such as Zimmer, Baldwin, and Storm. The vets that I had an opportunity to meet enjoyed the series, and it was not just the vets. Others have told me the same thing. I know John Pankow, who played Danny Martin, and he talks about The Doctors fondly: it was a good training ground, and he said that most of the cast was very enjoyable to work with. He mentions playing competitive Scrabble between takes with Jada Rowland and Lydia Bruce! I think they all knew that money was tight and the production values much lower than other shows, but the acting ensemble was terrific, and those who were really there to act may have gotten more out of it than those wanting to use it solely as a stepping stone to other things.

THE DOCTORS was just like other shows before cancellation. With most long-running soaps that were victims of the ax,those who had been with the production and developed strong ties and allegiances and fought until the day it went down to keep it going loved the show. Those who were new kids on the block, mostly younger actors who didn't quite grasp what was being lost, just looked at it as another gig and were just as content to move onto the next one...and if the dark cloud has been hanging over a show, it is easy for those with no real investment to later look back and claim that the production was"Toxic" "Like a noose hanging around our heads" "Unpleasant" "Had the smell of death".

In regards to TD specifically, the morale on any show on NBC at the time had to be piss poor, day or night, as the network itself was in such a free-fall (SUPERTRAIN or HELLO, LARRY anyone) plus the embarrassment and misfortune resulting from the 1980 Moscow Olympics. In addition, Alec Baldwin has admitted that he was in the depths of cocaine addiction at the time, staying up all night high and playing pinball games in a seedy arcade in Times Square, and Kim Zimmer is the type of woman born to complain about anything!

I LOVED the first theme....it was so thrilling to hear and see the stark images of DC. I was a little kid who watched the soaps with my nanny, and Mrs. Rice was a huge ATWT fan. When it went off at 1:30CST she usually was cleaning up after lunch and would be out of the room, so I would get to see the opening act of CAPITOL and the thunderous credits before she came back into the room and switch over for the last half of ONE LIFE...but the images of CAPITOL have stuck in my head forever, and it to this day is one of my favorites.

Just finished the second half of Season 5, which I hadn't seen since I was six years old...and I must say that it was a pretty crisply written season! Will review more later, but I was impressed, as was much of the country, with the buildup to Moldavia...

I'd have to check the ratings for April-December 1982, Sedrick, but I recall Texas' ratings actually got worse. Some NBC executives were against Texas going to the morning slot because of Price is Right (which was drawing blockbuster numbers back then).

Everyone's right about NBC daytime at that time, though. Clueless. And this was with Brandon Tartikoff at the helm.

Okay...I had read sources that claimed the ratings for TEXAS inched higher following the move to mornings, but you know how sources can be...Anyway, a solid block of soaps would have been more effective with the audience than a soap here, a game show there, a rerun over there...and yanking soaps after short periods and multiple slot changes.

NBC just never had real affirmative leadership in daytime. It would have made more sense to pair SEARCH and THE DOCTORS in the 3EST/2CST hour and drop CHIPS. I understand that TEXAS was moved from that slot due to the heat from GENERAL HOSPITAL, but its move to the early morning was met with better ratings. Perhaps the two half-hours, coupled with a stronger block of soaps (which would have called for improved writing and consistency in cast and production) from DAYS and AW, with patience, would have resulted in better returns.

Audrey on ONE LIFE was also the character who introduced Mari Lynn to her favorites bar that was in Philadelphia near the FRATERNITY ROW studios (the show as taped in Philly until the studios burned down, at which point the show moved to the studios of WVLE in Llanview)). The bar was called Speakeasy, and was the newly=acquired set from the cancelled RYAN'S HOPE..Ryan's Bar! Subsequently, Max bought the bar and turned it into Max's Place.

From what I've gathered, despite some issues, the show was improving and could have succeeded, but when Lin Bolen took over as head of daytime, she wanted her pet project on the air PRONTO, so she swung the ax at RTTPP to give the timeslot to her concept drama.

I remember distinctly that the tenure of Fran Sears was greeted with positive praise from both the soap press and many fans. Sears helped to bring a tighter focus and personality to the show. It was under under Sears that the show suddenly blossomed into a highly entertaining and downright hilarious daily must-see. The antics of Gwyn and Norma as partners in crime were LOL funny, as well as Ava's battle with Shana for the affections of Leo Burnell had me falling out laughing every day. It seemed as if finally LOVING was about to gain real momentum as buzz began to build, but just as soon as it did, Sears was dismissed. Haidee Granger took over and instantly gutted the structure Sears had set up, and the crackling humor that had set the show apart and gained positive raves was gone overnight.

I'm a HUGE Marcy Walker fan (clearly! ) and never have been a big GL fan, save for Leonard Stabb's run as Hart. Can someone tell me why she didn't click on the show? Was it the writing, the character, Walker's performance? I tuned in some back then just for her but couldn't get into it because they kept pairing her with men who were, IMO, too old for her. I didn't care for her with Robert Newman's Josh (except for my own delicious revenge factor since we got stuck with Zimmer at SB in an almost-pairing with A Martinez) and I HATED her with Alan.

I vividly remember the details surrounding Walker's casting, which ultimately resulted in several backstage developments across the whole soap scene that rippled throughout the industry and remain present that to this very day.

Heading into fall of 1993, the soap community was abuzz with excitement and anticipation on all three networks...the Daytime Emmys had just moved their ceremony to prime-time and the telecast was achieving excellent ratings. There was growing momentum of competition among the daytime depts. at all three networks, and FOX at this time was making noise about starting their own daytime lineup with soaps (what we didn't know was what was really behind FOX's daytime plans: they were secretly plotting their historic hijacking of the NFL's NFC football contract from CBS, which resulted in dozens of major CBS affiliates switching their affiliation to the fledgling FOX, and those stations would be expecting a strong daytime lineup of network-provided programming).

Audience levels, although slipping, were still good and in some cases inching upwards...the daytime leader crown was up for grabs, and the network heads of daytime had figured the neck-to neck race amongst them would be ultimately by the 3-way soap showdown in the 3pm EST/2PM CST , with NBC's plan to see SANTA BARBARA finally succeed in the ratings by settling the years-old series of lawsuits with the Dobsons and bringing them back to the show having failed and NBC dropping out of the 3PM race with the January cancellation of SB, and soon the fight would into all-out warfare in November of 1993.

GUIDING LIGHT had been on a creative upswing for couple of years, and Farren Phelps had put together what at the time was being heralded in the press as the soap to possibly be the show to set the standard for excellence in the 90's. The show had surprised many when it suddenly shot up from the middle of the ratings pack to the #3 spot briefly as GH's numbers collasped at the time. But there was trouble ahead: the departures of the headwriting trio that had pulled GUIDING LIGHT together and made it a contender, key cast departures, the biggest being the totally unexpected Beverly McKinsey scandal, and the resulting stalling of storyline momentum.

Then ABC pulled a shocker that they thought would blow GL out off the water...at the 1993 Daytime Emmys, the network announced the news that the iconic Luke & Laura would be returning to GH in November! CBS had placed great faith in Farren Phelps and demanded that she show her true worth by coming up with an answer to keep GL competitive against GH...and Farren Phelps responded by wooing her former superstar from her days as EP at SB: Marcy Walker. Walker would debut the same week that Luke & Laura returned to GH, and Farren Phelps plan was to pair Walker with Robert Newman's Josh and create GL's own news "instant" supercouple to knock GH out of the water. The event was heavily publicized and hyped in the media, the industry on the edge of their seats in anticipation of what was billed as an epic showdown.

However, the GL plan was an instant flop. First was endless ridicule in the soap press over the name "Tangie" (Marelna De Lacroix hilariously declared "I don't care what Jill Farren Phelps says: I still think we're talking citrus here!") before Walker even debuted. Then there was the utter lack of chemistry between Walker and Newman. Then there was the fact that the storyline, along with the general writing of the entire show at the time, was unimaginative, confusing, and dull.

The "showdown" was a knockout from the first week. L&L not only returned to GH with their smae spark and energy, but also with Claire Labine and her children, who took over that show's writing and quickly took the prize as critical darling of daytime, a title that GL had been holding.

The fallout was far-reaching. The inability of Farren Phelps to come up with an answer to how to compete with GH damaged her standing with CBS, who demanded that Proctor & Gamble replace her. The result was the great P&G producer switch which saw all three P&G soaps new EPs, a move that many say was the first and or most fatal mistake by the company that ended up destroying all three shows permanently.

The blame game for the faltering of GL and the failure of the show to compete with GH got personal and ugly. Initially many pointed at Walker, with some dismissing her star power and questioning whether or not she really was among the industry's top performers. Following her departure from GL and her triumphant return to ALL MY CHILDREN, Walker revealed in several interviews her take on the situation. Most vividly, Walker said that certain people had advanced behind the scenes over the years by using their relationships with other people.."you have people who are average or good line producers, and that's (as far as they should go)..at GL, someone had snagged a high ranking position by promising the network that they could bring it the popular performers this person had once worked with, such as myself. " Walker said that she felt used and that things that had been promised to her had not been delivered, the main thing being good writing. Walker never mentioned Farren Walker specifically by name, but those who know anything at all about daytime knew who the "average line producer" was...Subsequently, when Phelps hired as a consultant at ABC and rumors circulated that she might take over as EP at AMC, rumors ran rampant that Walker was instrumental in using her clout to make sure Phelps stayed away from the show, instead going to ONE LIFE TO LIVE.

I wonder if The View also came into their mind -- didn't they use some of the show's sets for The View?

I think The City needed an overhaul (I would have kept Carla, Tracy, Lorraine, Angie, Jacob, and seriously considered writing many others out), but it was in decent shape and had potential for more. They replaced it with PC, which was always too unstable to ever find footing, in spite of 6 years on the air. I remember at the time they said they were bringing PC in because GH was such a success. They didn't realize what happens when the successful mother show gets a time-consuming spinoff -- ask AW/Texas.

THE VIEW took over THE CITY's studio. When the talk show launched, to save money they used loft penthouse set from THE CITY (which actually was the Alden mansion from LOVING, a set that dated back to the debut in 1983)

I'm a big fan of the late Pat Falken Smith, but her tenure on RYAN'S HOPE helped to kill the show. Her talents were simply not suited for the show...she would have been a better fit for ONE LIFE at the time, or perhaps she could have been the one to put some real spark into LOVING to make it a contender.

No doubt she was under a mandate from ABC to GH the show, but her efforts were taken too far to the extreme. There was simply no heart to the show under her...the blowing up of Ryan's Bar has to be one of the most unforgivable acts ever in daytime drama.

I personally could never stand Max Dubujak...in fact, I never have cared for Daniel Pilon in any of the roles I've seen him in, from DALLAS to RYAN'S to his take as Alan Spaulding on GUIDING LIGHT. When Marg Helgenberger left and was replaced by the dull Carell Meyers (one of the worst recasts in history), the whole Dubujak saga became even more unbearable.

I was pissed when Max made his final return in the show's final days to blow himself and Joe up, robbing viewers of seeing Joe and Soibhan have a happy ending...although we know a little thing like dying never really kept Joe from staying alive!

A Mark Harmon fan started posting some season one episodes!

ETA: I watched a part of MH's episode of Biography just to see what they say about FR, but wow, they completely skipped over it. Apparently, his career was "still struggling" in the early 80s, but he "could have had a break" on some Steven Bochco [!@#$%^&*] show about baseball. Absolutely no mention of what paid his bills for nearly two years. Ugh.

That Bochco series was the infamous "Bay City Blues", one of the most notorious flops of the 1980's...basically Bochco attempted to give the Hill Street Blues/St. Elsewhere treatment to a minor league baseball team with dreadful results...if Harmon thought that was a break, I wonder how in the world he has lasted so long in the business!

Love of Life never had an opportunity to go into syndication. This idea is one of a myriad of mistakes in Christopher Schemring's book. The truth is Love of Life was canceled so quickly, syndication was out of the question. When CBS announced the cancellation, the series literally had a couple of weeks to tape the final episodes. There simply wasn't time to work out a syndication deal, and considering the low viewing figures, I doubt it would have been successful. The Edge of Night and The Secret Storm were the two daytime soaps with the best likelihood of going in first-run syndication, though sadly, those deals also never reached fruition.

Schemering didn't day a deal was actually being worked on at any time for LOVE OF LIFE. His book states that the producers and writers simply played out the scripts as already written before the cancellation notice was given just in case that perhaps the show could perhaps find another home, as had happened with EDGE.

I discovered a EON montage on YouTube today, and it left me wondering, why wasn't this show such a hit? I mean it's premise seems to be mystery and adventure, which was all the rage in the 80s. It really puzzles me.

It should also be noted that even after the show moved to ABC, right up to it's demise in late 1984, EDGE was still a popular draw...in the markets in which it could be seen. In the cities where the show was shown at it's proper time, EDGE consistently placed second and even first in the timeslot, particularly in big cities. However, those wins simply were not enough to make up for the large number of affiliates not airing the program.

In fact, ABC did not cancel EDGE. The network very much wanted to keep the show on the air, but in the fall of 1984 came news that come January 1985 a huge chunk of the stations that were showing EDGE would be dropping it, most of them choosing to replace it with more lucrative syndicated fare. At that point the economics simply didn't work for P&G, and they pulled the plug.

Isn't this the one where someone's cancer was cured by a holy light? :S

Yes, that was the story of Bob Cummings, a cheating, hard-drinking louse of a husband who was stricken with what doctors told him was terminal cancer. Bob then turned his life over to the Lord and became a Born-Again Christian, and just as he was about to kick the bucket, a beam of light entered his hospital room and cured him. That plot twist led to the angry resignation of series co-creator/producer Bob Aaron (formerly a NBC Daytime exec), who quit in disgust.

The Cummings tale happened during the show's rocky first year or so. At that time it was obvious that TPTB didn't quite have a handle on how to incorporate the religious/spiritual aspects of the program's theme into the actual drama, and the results were...uneven, weird, and basically very dull. The storylines moved at a snail's pace and were often silly and boring (innocent young heroine Lori Davidson and her family spend WEEKS ringing their hands about nasty gossip being spread around town that Lori was sleeping with a married man).

However, in its second season, the show brought in more seasoned actors and backstage personnel from the NYC soap scene (ANOTHER LIFE was taped in the CBN studios in Virginia Beach, VA) and eventually the series began to jell. While the show was never the best soap ever, it was quite entertaining, and the drama flowed from well defined, memorable characters like Babs Farley, a wacky reformed hooker who was the show's answer to AMC's Opal; Nancy Lawson, an unapologetic venomous bitch; handsome Dr. Ben Martin, a good man who struggled to do the right thing and maintain patience with his fragile, whining wife Lori; sisters Amber and Stacey Phillips, one a bitchy glamorous model and the other a mousy bookworm who ended up stealing her sister's sexy hunk of a boyfriend; and Miriam Carpenter Mason, the town's rich bitch villain who was kidnapped and held for ransom, and when she was rescued she too became a Born-Again...but then discovered that she wasn't quite up to being good all the time.

The show often was very good, especially during the extended Kate Phillips Carothers murder mystery, a tale with so much suspense, red herrings, and surprising twists that it seemed to have been lifted right out of EDGE OF NIGHT. The show also featured one of the most diverse casts in soaps during the 80's, and the African-American characters weren't just window-dressing...they had substantial storylines of their own and were fully integrated into the program.

ANOTHER LIFE was arguably the most successful non-broadcast network soap opera in American television. It ran from 1981-1984 on cable's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), which today is ABC Family Channel, as well as being syndicated on about two dozen or so broadcast stations. The show was billed by CBN as "the soap with hope", with the religion and spirituality of the characters being an integral theme running throughout all the storylines.

I got hooked on the show back in the early 90's when it was rerun on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) weekdays at 3:00PM CST.

Any other fans out there? Here's the excellent opening credits...

ANOTHER LIFE opening

It's the Hilton (yes, as in Paris and co.) estate.

Just web searched for more info. and learned that it was designed by a prominent black architect, Paul Williams.

From Wikipedia:

One notable home he designed was later used for exterior scenes of the Colby mansion on television's "The Colbys" (1060 Brooklawn Dr. Bel Air, Los Angeles, California|Bel Air) This is currently the home of Barron Hilton.

Thanks for the answer! I do remember years ago watching the very first episode of FOX's THE SIMPLE LIFE AND in it Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie were given a going away party, and I immediately realized the function was being held on the grounds of the Colby mansion...I never knew the place actually belonged to the Hiltons!

Can anyone answer the following question for me?

Was the one hour CAPITOL premiere episode, broadcast on a Friday night in primetime following the-then #1 DALLAS, shot on videotape or film?

Truthfully, no matter how good Texas got under Long/Kobe, the show was doomed once NBC moved it from 3pm to 11am. I can't think of a single soap that's ever had any ratings success when aired before noon. The closest example I can think of would be 'Love of Life' in the 1970s, but they're ratings were so iffy most of the time and the best the could ever do was middle of the pack with Labine/Mayer writing.

Actually, the show's ratings improved when the timeslot was switched from what I understand.

I didn't see a thread for Capitol so I decided to start one.

CBS premiered Capitol as a prime time special on Friday March 26, 1982, and the daytime premiere was three days later in the timeslot previously occupied by CBS's then-longest running daytime drama Search for Tomorrow.

Capitol was best described as Dallas meets the Reagan administration, with its Washington DC political backdrop combined with the glitz and glamour that characterized CBS's biggest primetime drama.

Despite being middle of the pack ratings-wise during it's run, Capitol ended a little less than 5 years later on Friday March 20, 1987, and three days later CBS premiered Bill Bell's 2nd show The Bold and the Beautiful.

I feel Capitol went on the air so CBS could draw a younger audience to compete with ABC (who pretty much owned daytime in the early 1980s with the action/adventure plots on General Hospital and the young love plots on All My Children). I also feel Capitol was used as a placeholder as CBS was probably waiting for Y&R (which became CBS's highest-rated daytime drama in the 1982/1983 season) to be established among the top 3 daytime dramas (which it was from the 1983/1984 season onward) before they were ready to give Bill Bell a 2nd show.

I fondly remember CAPITOL from my early childhood for only one reason: the dramatic opening sequence and theme! Back in the day before I started school, I would watch TV during the day with my nanny, and she was a faithful lifelong viewer of WORLD TURNS, which back then aired from 12:30PM-1:30PM CST. When ATWT finished, she was usually cleaning up after our lunch in the kitchen, so the TV stayed tuned to CBS long enough for me to be seduced daily by CAPITOL's powerful sweeping opening with the thundering theme song and visually stunning scenes of Washington, DC. However, that was pretty much all I ever saw of the show, because my nanny soon settled back in and switched the dial to catch the last half of ONE LIFE on ABC and then GH.

What I find ironic about CAPITOL is although it had its fans and most who saw it regard it as an okay show, I've yet to run into anyone who say it was "their favorite" or that "they loved it" or had any particular devotion to it...I remember that Marj Dusay did an interview with SOD back when she was on SANTA BARBARA and she commented that when she was on CAPITOL as Myrna Clegg, her parents watched the show "because they HAD to," while in the case of SB, "they watch(ed) it because they LIKE it".

Does anyone out there know what became of Lin Bolen? She was the trailblazing NBC vice-president in charge of daytime during the early and mid 1970's who was heavily involved in the development of the much ballyhooed women's liberation soap HOW TO SURVIVE A MARRIAGE, which aired from 1974-75. For years I've wondered about her, but I have never been able to find too much info on her in spite of the fact that she was one of the first women to acieve such a powerful position in broadcast television.

In fact, it was always rumored in Hollywood that Diana Christensen, the role played by Faye Dunaway in the legendary fil satire NETWORK was in fact based on Miss Bolen. If you have never seen the film, in it Dunaway's power-hungry network exec steamrolls her way to the top of running a broadcast network like a savage monster...and in one hilarious scene, she announces that she's launching a groundbreaking new daytime soap on the network called THE DYKES! I always took that scene to be a satirical swipe at Bolen's obsession with HOW TO SURVIVE A MARRIAGE!

Although Miss Tilton was no Glenn Close, I thought she was good as Lucy. She had the spoiled rich Texas girl thing down to a T, and she was more than able to hold her own in her scenes with Larry Hagman (who could eat anyone in a scene with him without bothering to chew) and the superb Barbara Bel Geddes.

On a related note, Charlene Tilton is playing the late Tammy Faye (Baker) Messner in a biopic based on Tammy Faye's autobiography. Tilton was good friends with Tammy Faye...I saw a photo of Tilton in full costume as Tammy Faye, and the resemblance is uncanny!

Recently while going down memory lane regarding what was arguably the best primetime soap of the 80's (KNOTS) this thought came to my mind...

Why in the world was Lucy Ewing never shipped out to Southern California?