Santa Barbara Discussion Thread

[Ryan Mason]

I remember they also mentioned a daughter named Olivia. Years later when they had a character named Olivia around late 1987-early 1988 I briefly wondered if it would turn out to be her.

On a random note, speaking of names, I wonder what the fascination was with the name Lisa? They had three different characters (sort of) with that name--Lisa DiNapoli, Eden's split personality Lisa, and Lisa Fenimore.

[1974mdp]

MW and LD have great chemistry as siblings right from the get go.

I'd totally forgotten about the Lionel/Eden stuff.

[Carlos Abad]

Didn't like Lionel and Eden stuff. So weird. 

Edited January 30 by Carlos Abad

[Contessa Donatella]

I posted this YT clip as something Patrick Mulcahey wrote & Pierpaolo Dongiovanni was kind enough to clarify that PM had left but the Dobsons called him & asked him to return to write this & so he was back for 2 episodes. 

I know that he has said that the dinner party scenes he was allowed to write are those scenes he is most proud of. 

 

[DRW50]

That is gorgeous dialogue and even better work from Judith McConnell. In moments like that I truly believe she was one of daytime's best, even if SB was the only soap that truly seemed to see her.

Maybe her GH work was also this strong - if any old school GH fans who saw more of her run could give their thoughts that would be great.

With that said, I can understand why some fans felt this, and Eden's DID, was just digging up old ground rather than working with what the show was by the time the Dobsons returned. 

I do wish the Dobsons had worked something out with NBC to end the show together, rather than limping on to what it was in its last year.

Edited January 30 by DRW50

[Carlos Abad]

After 40 years, there are many Santa Barbara actors who have disappeared from our screens. But there’s still a few left who are still doing movies or TV shows.

I love to watch them now in different roles than the ones they were doing on SB.

Here’s is the trailer of the last movie with our dear Cruz (A Martinez) that was released on September 2023. It’s a movie with Bailey Chase and Amanda Righetti.

 

 

And also there’s a trailer of the upcoming movie DAMSEL with our dear Kelly Robin Wright playing an evil character with Millie Bobby Brown and Angela Basset on the cast.

 

 

I know this is not Santa Barbara. They are not Cruz Castillo and Kelly Capwell. But I love to watch them still working after these 40 years.

[Contessa Donatella]

I wish NBC had lived up to their promise to the Dobsons & fired Anne Howard Bailey for them & there would never have been any lock-out or lawsuits! NBC had one chance to do the right thing & they blew it. 

[DRW50]

September 1990 Soap Opera Weekly Marlena de Lacroix column.

What's Wrong With Santa Barbara?

Got your attention, didn't I? Before you bombard me with cards and letters, let me say that I am not here to slice and dice Santa Barbara. Yes, the six year old soap won its third Best Show Emmy this June. Yes, it has its own cult audience. Yes, the press loves SB. SB may be the most acclaimed show on daytime, but the bottom line is that this is the television business. Just ask Brandon Tartikoff, or NBC daytime vice president Jackie Smith. Santa Barbara's ratings stink. 

But I know how to fix them.

No, this isn't going to be another I, me, moi, Marlena column. But I watched SB from the first time it aired, in July 1984, and for a great while I adored it. It was so funny, so sophisticated, so wry, so, well...so Marlena. Then around the fall of 1987 - remember that date, it's key here - I stopped watching. This February, though, I turned a critical eye on SB once more because of the arrival of senior executive producer John Conboy, the first-rate producer of The Young and the Restless and the late, mostly great Capitol. 

Sending in Conboy to "fix" the show was indeed a master stroke. You can always tell when you're watching a Conboy soap. The sets and costumes are elegant, the talent is new, young, promising - and beautiful. But Conboy's mark is more than cosmetic. He's a smart, ultraprofessional producer. He acknowledged up front that his real job at SB was to get an alienated audience - like moi - to "sample" the soap again.

So, since the spring I've been "sampling" SB and I've found that it indeed has been Conboy-ized. Everyone's hair - especially Marcy Walker's (Eden Castillo) and Robin Mattson's (Gina Timmons) is now shorter and more stylish. The luxe new Capwell mansion and Polo Club sets are spectacular. 

Conboy quickly seized on the face that SB has the best looking male cast (Healy! Callahan! O'Hurley! McCloskey!) in daytime and rounded them up into the Four Boys from the orphanage plot. Thankfully, Roscoe "the divine" Born came back, and was cannily cloned into twins (Robert/Quinn). Conboy's only error since coming aboard SB was recycling the silly Arab plot front the last days of Capitol. 

In short, Conboy has fired all his guns with relish and skill. But as I began watching again I realized that something was still missing from the show, although I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then one day I saw a scene between the newly returned Lionel and his ex-wife Augusta Lockridge (original cast members Nicolas Coster and Louise Sorel) and I knew instantly what - or more accurately who - it was. Bring back Bridget and Jerome Dobson!

For those of you who have just tuned in, Bridget and Jerry Dobson are the excellent head writer (General Hospital, Guiding Light, As the World Turns) who gave birth to SB in 1984. They set the show in their own California home town and set out to capture what they described as the quirky charm, the artsy oddness of the real people who live in that scenic West Coast community. 

I met the Dobsons at a pre-premiere breakfast. They were professionally distant, but I still found them to be charmingly odd, witty and smart. They promised a show that would be sophisticated and intelligent, full of wit not to be found elsewhere on daytime. Cynical moi chuckled silently, but damned if the Dobsons didn't deliver on their promise (once the show got past its rocky first year).

Remember how funny and delightfully bizarre the Dobsons' SB was circa 1985-87? Mason, of course, became famous for his snide asides and Shakespeareanisms. (Oh how I miss Lane "the divine" Davies, thought [sic] I do like Terry Lester.) Geriatric Minx Lockridge (Dame Judith Anderson) was eccentric a go-go. Sophia (Judith McConnell) spent her first few months on the show in drag. Gina wreaked comic havoc every single day. And that wonderful couple, Lionel and Augusta, bickered endlessly, and occasionally played a bizarre "truth circle" game - they drew a chalk circle in their bedroom and told each other only the truth while standing in that circle. It didn't take moi long to figure out that glib, kooky Lionel and Augusta were the Dobsons in disguise. 

Now the Lockridges are back, but their real words are not. Sadly, the Dobsons were deposed from their own show a few years ago in a convoluted ownership battle that's still in litigation. When exactly? I just checked. It was fall 1987, which corresponds exactly to the time I grew bored and stopped watching! SB had stopped being funny, stopped being sophisticated and smart. And despite the efforts of all those presently involved, it still isn't either. 

No matter how good a producer is, it's the head writers who make - or break - a soap. In soaps, the writers are the shows. There are so few good ones in daytime (you know the litany...Marland...Bell...Nixon...Long...). It's a shame that the Dobsons are sitting out there in legal limboland. With Conboy back, all SB lacks is good writing.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how to surmount all the legal hassles involved. But if GH could resurrect Duke Lavery and GL could resurrect Beth Raines and Roger Thorpe, NBC and New World Productions can find a way to resurrect the people who made SB so great. 

Edited February 23 by DRW50

[Marissa Gallant]

Because CC was the one who put the real bullets into the gun. 

[Jdee43]

I just saw the 1984 Christmas show. It was pretty much a regular episode, continuing the same boring storylines, and wasn't very interesting. The most special thing was the Lockridge family celebrating Christmas in jail. Also special was that one of the cons was an elderly Rudy Vallee, in his last credited appearance as an actor. He was totally wasted, exchanging a few lines with Dame Judith Anderson about how he used to watch her from afar and admired her back in the 1940s. It's amazing how many old time Hollywood actors, as well as old primetime TV stars, they got for small, meaningless cameo appearances in 1984: Philip Abbott, Alejandro Rey, Virginia Mayo, Ray Walston, Zelda Rubinstein, John Ireland, Charlie Brill. Was someone in the casting office a fan and just having some fun with the audience?

 

Edited March 11 by Jdee43

[John]

What was the reasoning for replacing Dane Witherspoon with Mark Arnold?

[1974mdp]

I just rewatched those episodes after many years. I think on paper it probably sounded good with Lionel obsessed with Sophia's daughter that looks like her, but ITA it came off very creepy!

[1974mdp]

Those Capwell dinner party episodes are still some of my favorite of all time TV. The way the writers really got into the characters and their backstories was magical.

I also thought Margarita Cordova did some amazing work in those episodes where Rosa acknowledges how her own children lacked the mother they needed because she was busy also raising the Capwell kids after Sophia "died." It struck me as how many childcare workers for the wealthy must feel when tasked for doing the parenting for rich, absent parents.

[Ryan Mason]

From what I understand, TPTB felt like Dane's acting wasn't up to snuff. Mark Arnold was coming off a 3-year run at The Edge of Night, so I can see where they felt he brought more acting experience and possibly a following to the table. But to me, it's an example of this paradox I've noticed in soaps where you can sense that the recast is a more experienced actor than the person they replaced, yet at the same time, the choices they make with the character make it less likable. Like I feel like Mark Arnold was frequently overanimated and yapping in people's faces about something or other, so to me the character became more obnoxious and Shouty McYellerson. And the fact that they killed Joe off less than six months later when in the beginning he was one of THE major characters would indicate they felt this new take wasn't working either.

It's other soaps too. Another example that comes to mind is when Chrystee Pharris took over Simone on Passions. She was clearly a more experienced actress than Lena Cardwell, but Simone went from being sympathetic to a self-righteous harpy. I have similar thoughts about Gina Gallego as Santana on here. Definitely a more experienced actress than Ava Lazar and Margaret Michaels, but whether it was the writing or her choices or both, her Santana to me frequently came across as annoying and an argument waiting to happen. And even though she was probably the greenest as an actress, to me the character never popped off the screen again as a major character the way she did when Ava Lazar played her.

In hindsight, maybe they'd have best been served to get a strong acting coach for Dane and Ava first before jumping to recasting!

[Keri]

It's interesting, I always used to prefer Mark Arnold bc I agree Dane's acting wasn't great.

But this recent rewatch I did - I found I preferred Dane. MA is fine, just not particularly memorable or unique. Dane at least did infuse the character with some uniqueness, whereas MA could've been any of dozens of guys answering a casting call for - male, 30s, attractive, dark hair.