I understand how you feel as I enjoyed the generally reviled era of the Kirkland family.

Please, no one misunderstand. I enjoyed Pat Falken Smith (hereafter PFS) very much. Her work for Where the Heart Is I describe as marvelous, and she was second only to Bill Bell as the best headwriter of Days of our Lives. However, in my opinion PFS excelled at sarcastic, bitchy dialogue and strong psychosexual situations, neither of which lent themselves to the style and tone of Ryan's Hope. I think she failed at Guiding Light for the same reason. It is not that she was a bad writer, but rather, her inherent talents were not well suited for those soaps.

I agree that PFS had some very good moments at RH, if not truly memorable ones. I loved the very early part of her work, in the autumn of 1983, when Maggie and Roger schemed to make Jill believe that her wayward mother Elizabeth Hillyer was a wealthy, cultured woman sailing off to exotic climes. Bess came to Manhattan, and in order to keep an eye on Maggie, was hired as the Coleridge housekeeper with the in-joke name Betsy Traylor. Bess accidentally killed Maggie's blackmailing boyfriend, leaving Jill to defend her against a murder charge, all with no idea she was representing her mother. The fallout from that situation, particularly with a furious Faith packing her bags and leaving, was fraught with conflict and tension. The bombing of the bar was well-executed, as was a lengthy sequence in which Roger's sexual obsession for Maggie reached a boiling point. He trapped Frank and Maggie in Dave Greenburg's loft and attempting to harm them shoved a heavy scaffolding on top of them. The tense sequence reached a shocking finale when Roger fell down an out of service elevator shaft during a fistfight with Frank. I found the story highly original, exciting, and perfectly within character.

So, no, not all of PFS' tenure was bad. What bothered me the most was shifting the action away from Ryan's Bar to Dave Greenburg's deli. Many of the problems of that era were poor decisions made by Joseph Hardy, whom I did not care for as an EP. I recall him stating that the bar was blown up and would not be shown for a year because it seemed too old-fashioned and slow. So, what? He merely replaces the bar, a logical place for characters to converge, with a small Jewish delicatessen? Had he instructed the writers to blend the newer elements desired by the network with the veteran cast and familiar tone the core audience liked, they might have been more successful.

You pretty much summarized all of 1984 on RH in a nutshell!! 1983 was a pivotal year for RH, in my opinion. It had a transition of four headwriters (Mary Munistieri, Claire Labine/Paul Avila Mayer and Pat Falken Smith and saw shifting towards (Labine/Mayer) and away from (Munistieri/Smith) the Ryan's twice.

Maggie's boyfriend back home at the trailer park was Dusty. He reminded me of a character on RH the year before, Ox Knowles (Will Patton), in terms of his voice and appearance. From what I recall, he didn't die but spilled the beans to Jill about Bess/Betsy being her mother. The deterioration of Roger was brilliant. Roger rebuffed Maggie's romantic advances while at the same time scheming with her to prevent Jill from knowing where her mother was. I didn't like what Maggie did to Faith, though (setting up a trap that Faith accidentally got caught in, making her wear a cast on her ankle or leg or something). Then came Roger's obsession with Maggie that gradually developed into total paranoia and rage. That, along with the fantasy scenes of Frank and Maggie kissing each other, just made it all more juicy.

I agree with you about Smith being a master of bitchy dialogue; she did that very well with Jacqueline Dubujak and especially when Maggie and Jill had their showdown after Jill returned from France with Max. This all occured in the first half of 1984. The one big blemish on Smith's writing with RH was the recasting of Robin Mattson as Delia. I'll be honest in saying that even though Mattson gave the character her own style and apporach, what she did to her new husband, Matthew Crane, was deplorable--accidentally forgetting to give him his heart medicine while sneaking off to a rendezvous with her "other man"; Matthew then goes into cardiac arrest or something. I didn't like her "other man", who was played by Frank Luz (can't remember the character's name he played). Thankfully both were written out at the end of 1984.

Then there was the cringe-inducing Katie Thompson (when it was played by its originator, Lauren O'Bryan). When she was recasted in late 1984 by Julia Campbell, it was one of the best recasting jobs I had ever seen. Campbell was great in the role and her feud with Maggie throughout 1985, culminating in her falling down the stairwell in the Greenberg's loft, was great. I was never that crazy about Dave Greenberg or his deli, and yes, the focus throughout 1984 was on the deli and Maggie as a heroine just didn't work. Maggie was best when being devious, scheming and just plain bad!!

Yes, you are correct. Dusty did not die, but rather languished in a coma for a while. Bess was being charged with attempted murder, but I thought it was a wonderful situation. PFS did not drag it out either. I believe the story initiated and wrapped within six weeks, which created just the right tension for the audience. All of those scenes of domestic drama in the Coleridge household were terrific.

I liked Julia Campbell, too. Katie's fall, which Maggie engineered for herself with good old Rog's assistance, occurred on the 10th anniversary episode. A nice bit of synchronicity as the series opened a decade earlier with Frank tumbling down the stairs.

Robin Mattson was stunt casting to boost the ratings and failed epically. Ilene's return was so welcomed. I recall the ABC promos booming "She's baaaaaack!". Watching Maggie and Dee attempting to out-scheme one another for Roger's affections as they developed a rivalry was deliciously fun, and for me, one of the few times that I did not completely side with one character. I loved Dee and Maggie and found my loyalties continually divided amongst them.

Some of Pat Falken Smith's better work at Ryan's Hope.

Roger confesses to Jill (December 1983)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhF6PkLNNAs

Roger's obsession for Maggie takes a dark turn. (May 1984)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tVEMtDqD1I

Edited April 14, 201312 yr by saynotoursoap

I'd never seen this before. Who is this woman?

I do not know, CarlD. I remember the promos. This actress did the same promo on the same set for game shows Showoffs and Rhyme and Reason, which premiered in the same two week period on ABC in the summer of 1975. At the time I thought it strange that actual clips of the new RH were not televised as had been the practice in the past.

Tichina Arnold briefly talks about her time on the show. Skip to the 13 minute mark:

Thanks. I'm glad she has happy memories of the show.

Thank you for posting the clips of RH when Pat Falken Smith was headwriting, saynotoursoap. I've always felt that Smith got a bum rap during her tenure as headwriter; granted, her writing style was very different than Claire Labine/Paul Avila Mayer, but I thought her espionage/adventure storylines worked well with a show whose setting is in a place ripe for such activity (New York City). The one period of RH I found very difficult to watch, or accept, was in the summer of 1986 when Millee Taggart/Tom King were headwriting. The only storyline that saved me from completely tuning out was the Vinnie Vincent storyline with Rick. Every other storyline was lackluster; what really sticks out for me was the recasting of Siobhan (Carrell Myers replacing Marg Helgenberger)--one of the worst recasting jobs I've ever seen. I don't think it was Myers' fault so much; the writers made her look like she had never set foot in Riverside before, as if she was some stranger who just happened to be related to the Ryans. The writers also made her an annoying, obnoxious bitch, completely lacking the balance of strength/passivity Helgenberger brought to the role. The writers at that time also didn't know how to write male characters with any shred of resilience or substance; they were all depicted as callous, uncaring, milquetoasty, pigheaded or just plain into outer space. This writing team did have a streak of brilliance when they transformed Jillian into Sara Jane and gave her a side we never saw before, but by the summer of 1986 she had no storyline; her relationship with Dakota was in the air and she was just "there"...

Recent photo of Randall Edwards (Delia #3) with her daughter Madison DeRonde at Conejo Creek Park in Thousand Oaks, California in April 2013.

http://www.thelighthousenews.com/photos/2013/apr/14/271982/?enlarge=0

She looks a little like Lynn Herring, but there's still some Randall too.

Is that her daughter?

She looks a little like Lynn Herring, but there's still some Randall too.

Is that her daughter?

Yes, her daughter Madison. She was born in December of 1993. I found this in Variety.

http://variety.com/1994/scene/people-news/births-120-117259/

* * *

Randall Edwards and Randy DeRonde, a girl, Madison Edwards DeRonde, Dec. 23, St. John’s Hospital, Santa Monica. Mother’s an actress; father is non-pro.

Randall also has a son, Jake De Ronde, who was born a few years later.

1988 promo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-msb6902f4

Another promo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgQM5kOHXjo

A new Ana Alicia interview. She talks some about Ryan's Hope.

http://hillplace.blogspot.com/2013/07/universal-appeal-ana-alicia.html

I never knew anything about Megan McCraken's (Nancy #2) family -- it turns out that her parents -- Ellen Humphrey (now Siewers) and Richard McCracken-- were actors and writers. Her mother wrote for one of the first television soap operas, A Woman to Remember.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2013/jun/20/super-seniors-recall-fascinating-adventures/?print=1

AFTER THE WAR

After the war and USO tour, she returned stateside, marrying fellow actor/playwright Richard McCracken and starting a family. Touring with children (Megan and Steven) was just too difficult, so Ellen threw herself into her next love – research and writing.

Television was just starting, and we were in the first soap opera, "A Woman to Remember."

“Those were such fun days,” she said. “We did a lot of historical dramas for Hallmark Hall of Fame. Winston Churchill’s daughter was emcee, so here we were ... assigned to do historical things but bounded by the fact that Hallmark cards were sold in the South so we couldn’t write anything about the Civil War; and Churchill’s’ daughter being who she was, we couldn’t write anything about the Revolutionary War.

“You have to realize that we were a pretty young country back then and so we ended up writing about pretty obscure people like Mother Bickerdike,” she laughed, sharing the memory.