Jump to content

Beverlee McKinsey Has Passed Away


Recommended Posts

  • Replies 32
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Members

Damn. A true legend has been extinguished. If you never saw Beverlee act, click on YouTube and watch clips of her on GL if there are any -- a lot of her AW work isn't on YouTube or seen anywhere. She took every scene and attacked it as if it were a Tennessee Williams play.

RIP. :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

It always sort of bugged me the way Bev left GL; I totally understand her need to rest, but I felt like it was a slap in the face to her fans. Still, that never stopped me from wishing she'd come back. Regardless, she left us with decades of soap goodness. A true legacy. It's just a shame that the vast majority of her work as Iris will never be seen again.

BUt for me, she will always be the one and only Alexandra Spaulding. Her work transcended daytime, and she took a stock character and infused it with energy, life and charisma. The character of Alexandra has never been the same since McKinsey left the role.

It's not hyperbole when she is called the greatest soap opera actress of all time. If there's any justice, she'll get a tribute worthy of her in Soap Opera Digest.

Best wishes to her family.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I see where you're coming from, though I was shocked when she left GL and I've never accepted anyone else as Alexandra, I'm glad Bev did what she did. I have no sympathy for someone like Jill Farren Phelps, who can be a nasty woman in her own right at times. As far as I'm concerned, Bev gave Jill exactly what she should've been given - a good kick in her egotistical ass.

Since Beverlee's son Scott is a director for GH (where Beverlee appeared briefly in 1994), I often wonder if he and Jill ever talk about Bev. :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

This woman is the whole reason I'm a soap fan, I'll never forget the first moment I tuned into GL and saw Alex and Roger Thorpe (the equally missed Michael Zaslow) going at it. Even as an 8 year old, I was impressed. They were the reason I watched day after day, and the sad thing is, both are now gone. I know Beverlee And Michael didn't get along too well in real life, but boy did they bring it while they were on screen together.

To add to what I said earlier, this is one soap legend death that has effected me. My earliest soap watching experiences are with Ms. McKinsey. They are times I will cherish forever, I still hold early 90's GL as some of my favourite soap opera viewing experiences, and she was a big part of that. Thank you, Bev!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Wow..how terribly sad.

Sometimes, you can measure the importance and greatness of an actress or actor not only by the work they do on screen, but the void thats left when they are gone.

I remember watching as McKinsey made her exit from GL and thinking "First Zimmer and now this, How will GL make it?" I thought of McKinsey as the bigger loss, and I think GL's performance since that point proves that Mckinsey, in just a few years time, became the heart and soul of GL, the reason many of us watched this great drama.

She left an equally big (if not bigger) hole when she left AW. Everytime she left the canvas, the show she starred on never seemed the same again. That truly is a sign of greatness. Not just a great talent, but a great prescence.

She will be greatly missed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

My mom was a huge AM fan in the 70s and as a young kid I'd sit by her side every day during summer vacation and watch it with her. The scene where she learns that Mac isn't her biological father remains permanently etched in my mind. It's right after Rachel gives birth to Amanda, and Iris overhears Mac confiding to someone in the hospital (possibly Ada or Pat??) that Amanda is his first biological child and that Iris was adopted. The look on Iris's face is priceless as she learns the man she loves more than life, the man who is essentially the motivation for all her many schemes, is not her real father and that she had been lied to all these years. I don't recall any dialogue from McKinsey, just incredible facial expressions that conveyed what she was feeling. She was absolutely fantastic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I can only echo these words. I was also young when I watched her on GL, and Alexandra Spaulding, as played by her only, was my favorite character even then. I rooted for her character even when she was being horrible because she was such a full-blooded human being - and we ALWAYS knew her motivations. She made it look so easy.

It was a dream of mine for her to make a triumphant return to daytime. For me, a daytime with Bev McKinsey was a daytime worth preserving. I would watch anything with her in it. I remember what an event it was when she did that guest spot on GH as Myrna Slaughter! Thank God she retired from daytime before it crumbled to its horrible current state. But there was always that childish hope that we'd see her on soaps again, and she'd magically restore it to its former glory, simply by her presence.

But to ask any more of an actress who has given us so much would be criminal. Brava, Ms. Kinsey!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



  • Recent Posts

    • Admittedly, I was a latecomer to ATWT (first becoming a regular viewer in 2000). But I really liked KMH's Emily. I thought she was a very specific kind of neurotic professional character, and I loved her prickly relationship with MM's Susan. I will say I don't think the show did her any favors after Hal died, stranding her in storylines with several of the show's dullest characters: nu-Paul, nu-Meg, and nu-Dusty. I actually quite liked one of her last major storylines, when she discovered she had a grown-up biological son with Larry named Hunter. But then Hunter just sort of disappeared, and the story fizzled out, which was pretty typical of the late Goutman years. 
    • I know the fashions have gotten mixed reviews but I actually like what the new costume designer is putting the cast in. It feels more modern and the more tacky pieces I feel make sense for rich people. They're buying for the brand and the price and we often see celebs in things like this. Especially for a character like Nikki, I feel the more over the top (and tacky), the more realistic it is.
    • Well, her staff pointing out the movie connection never seemed to stop Long from using those plots.  She was right about Vanessa--she needed a man who loved her, which she'd never really had up to then. But as others have pointed out, Long borrowed heavily from Taming of the Shrew to get it done. (which while I kinda disputed that, I get more now, having watched Kiss Me Kate a few times since.)
    • "Holly had her share of the blame..." NO, she did NOT. WOW. That's what you get for trying to be fair and giving these people the benefit of the doubt! The Rita rape episodes do not seem to be available. It sounds like Calhoun thought it was not dramatized, but it was. I saw it when it aired. Yes, it's close to 50 years ago, and memories aren't 100% reliable. I also know that Zaslow reportedly complained that it was written too much like a seduction and that's why the Dobsons portrayed Holly's rape differently. Maybe it started like a seduction and she rejected him and that's when it turned violent. I don't remember that part, if it exists. What I do remember is that Roger threw Rita so violently to the floor that she hit her head. They showed him coming at her from her point of view and he looked all fuzzy. It was an act of violence, not a seduction. Rita kept it a secret until it looked like Roger might be acquited, and then finally admitted it. She didn't make it up, it definitely was not a ploy.
    • I was actually referencing another scene between Roger and Alex, which I think is right after they marry.  But yeah---I'm not really impressed with Calhoun's reasoning. Or the "both recall it wasn't unprovoked" line. Wasn't Holly trying to leave him when he raped her? Oy vey.
    • I know we have discussed the location of Bay City in the Another World thread and the fact that originally Irna conceived of it as being the real Bay City MI, and it was later writers that treated it as a fictional Bay City [probably IL]. This article seems to suggest that that idea was well-established by 1981. I wonder when it started.
    • Desert Sun, 22 December 1983 Guiding Light’ writer looks for fresh ideas By TOM JORY Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) - “Guiding Light” has been a daytime companion for millions since 1937, starting on radio and switching to TV after 15 years. Can anything new, really new, ever happen to the Bauers or the Reardons or any of the other folks in Springfield? “I get really upset,” says Pamela Long Hammer, principal writer for the CBS soap opera since March, “because I’ll come up with this neat scenario and someone will say, ‘That’s like “Strangers on a Train.’” “I think, ‘They keep stealing my material.’ “The way I figure it,” she says, “there are only so many stories in the world. It’s the characters who keep the show new and exciting. All of our stories come from them: I don’t come up with a plot, and then work a character into it.” Continuity is important. Someone out there surely knows all that’s happened, to everyone on the show, in 46 years. How about Miss Long Hammer? "Nope. I care about what our core families have been doing,” she says. “I’m always interested in what happened to Bert Bauer (played since 1950 by Charita Bauer) 20 years ago, but as far as going back and reading scripts, no. “Others on the show keep track,” she says. “I’ll suggest something, and be told, ‘You don’t remember, but five years ago, they had this terrible fight. They would never speak to one another now.”’ Miss Long Hammer, a former Miss Alabama who came to New York as an aspiring actress in 1980, began writing for daytime television while playing Ashley on NBC’s “Texas.” She eventually wrote herself out of the story. Her staff for “Guiding Light” includes nine writers, among them her husband, Charles Jay Hammer, whom she met while both worked on “Texas.” NBC dropped “Texas” after two seasons, and episodes from the serial currently are being rerun on the Turner Broadcasting System’s cable-TV SuperStation, WTBS. Gail Kobe, who was executive producer of “Texas,” now has the same job on “Guiding Light.” And Beverlee McKinsey, who played Iris Carrington in “Another World” on NBC, and later in "Texas,” will join the Light” cast of the CBS soap in February. Miss Long Hammer is reponsible for the long-term story, which can mean looking ahead 18 months or more. Staff writers deal with specifics, including the scripts for individual episodes. She says she draws on “imagination and instinct” for the “Guiding Light” story. Often, that involves inventing new characters. “‘I look at Vanessa (Maeve Kinkead), one of our leading ladies,” Miss Long Hammer says. "What could make the audience care more about her? “Then I think, ‘Why can’t she find a man she can love, who will also love her?’ Voila, here comes Billy Lewis (Jordan Clarke). “Another example,” she says, “is Alan Spaulding (Christopher Bernau). All of a sudden, he’s got a sister no one ever knew about. “They come complete,” says Miss Long Hammer of the serial’s characters, including the new ones. “We know who they are and where they came from long before the viewer gets all that information. That’s one of the most interesting things about daytime, the complexities of the characters.” The writers make a big effort to keep the show contemporary, and four of the leading players are in their late teens or early 20s Judi Evans, who plays Beth Raines, Kristi Tesreau (Mindy Lewis), Grant Aleksander (Philip Spaulding) and Michael O’Leary (Rick Bauer). “Guiding Light,” longevity notwithstanding, is a moderate success by that ultimate yardstick of the industry; ratings. The show is behind only “General Hospital,” “All My Children” and “One Life to Live,” all on ABC, and CBS’ “The Young and the Restless,” among soaps. And Miss Long Hammer says she’s convinced writing is the key to even greater achievement. “When I say I love the characters, it’s not a light thing,” she says. “I think what the audience senses is an enthusiasm and an energy among the people who do the show.”
    • I initially read this as Marilyn Manson and did a double take.  Thanks for the screen grabs. The outfits are horrible. Somehow Victoria's Miss Piggy dress is the best. Ashley looks like a French madam bent on revenge, and Abby looks like she hot glued lace scraps to her garbage bag.
    • LOL...I do have the vaguest of memories of Katherine driving her and Phillip Sr to his death. But I don't recall Katherine being as over-the-top as Reva. Surprisingly, I don't even think Brenda Dickinson's Jill was---although lord knows Brenda probably is a real-life Reva. I have read the recaps of earlier Roger, and it surprised me that he doesn't love Holly. He had an affair with Hillary (SHOCK, I tell you, SHOCK when I read that one) while married to her.  Thanks to the cast turnover, other than Jerry and Maureen Garrett, there wasn't anyone else he had worked with, that I can recall. It would've been interesting if Mart Hulswit had still been in the role of Ed, how much more they might've let Ed/Roger clash. I really do have a soft spot in my heart for Krista's Mindy.
    • San Bernardino Sun, 21 July 1981 Soap gets a new lease on life By TOM JORY Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) NBC's Texas premiered Aug. 4, 1980, in the toughest time slot in daytime TV opposite top rated General Hospital on ABC and CBS' enduring -Guiding Light As recently as the first of this year, " Texas appeared doomed, a victim of barely measurable ratings. All that has changed, and the show approaches its first anniversary with a new executive producer, a new team of writers, a new look and a new slant on life. Even the ratings have improved a bit, from 14 percent to l5 percent of the audience in the time period in November and December to 15 percent to 16 percent today. "We have Houston like Ryan's Hope has New York City," says Gail Kobe who took over Texas as executive supervising producer in March,"and we feel a real tie with that city. We've got to reflect in the show what's happening in that real town, and I think we're doing that." It was a significant step, taking Texas- its roots in the fictional Bay City of NBC's Another World -to a real-life setting. "I don't think it's got to be  the kind of place that people can't can't find on the map," says Ms. Kobe "I think the audience in daytime is more prepared for reality today." It meant giving the show a recognizable Houston backdrop, a more contemporary sound -country and western performers like Ray Price will appear periodically and a lighting system that would clearly represent the hot, bright Texas sunlight. . Texas faced difficult odds from the start, the competition and the inevitable comparison with CBS' prime-time superhit, Dallas, notwithstanding. There was the problem of introducing a multiplicity of characters, many of them imports from Another World, as well as a story line, in an hour-long format. "It was the first show to start at an hour," says Kobe, a former actress who had been supervising producer for Procter & Gamble Productions, which owns Texas and five other daytime shows. "It's very difficult to fill that much time with a large cast, and not leave the viewer confused. "With a daily show, you have to let the audience know who to root for," she says. ''And if you're trying to begin a story, too, no one's going to keep track." The changes began even before Kobe took the show from Paul Rauch, who had faced the seemingly impossible task of producing both Texas and Another World simultaneously. Beverlee McKinsey, whose generally unpleasant character, Iris, had come to Texas from Another World as a young ingenue, was given back her mean streak.  "She had become a sweet woman,"Kobe says, "and the audience was used to seeing her do terrible things. It just didn't work." In addition, she says, time was spent establishing the identities of the characters. Joyce and Bill Corrington, who had created the show with Rauch, were replaced as head writers in February by Dorothy Purser and Samuel Ratcliffe.  
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy