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Does anyone know the name of the actress playing Beatrice? I know I know her from another show (maybe TCS?), I just can't place her at the moment.

 

This is around the time I first say Patricia Barry as Isabelle (my mother: "They done changed that picture for the thousandth time..."). I missed the chemical burn stuff when the face cream turned Celeste Holm into Patricia Barry. I'm guessing that was late '92?

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@SFK   That's Beatrice  "Bea" Winde

BEATRICE (BEA) WINDE

 

THE DOCTORS     Lillian __ Foster     1980-81

ALL MY CHILDREN     Mrs. Allison     Unknown Year 

LOVING                     Town Clerk       Unknown Year

GUIDING LIGHT       Ruth __   Price     1990

LOVING   Beatrice     1993

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I don't know who wrote that script but it has some real howlers ("everything I did I did for you," "I thought our hearts beat as one"), although Isabelle talking about Cooper "going to the wrong part of town and getting a girl from Railroad Street in trouble" was a hoot. Patricia Barry is good at playing this more deceitful and hot-blooded version of Isabelle, but it's such a far cry from Augusta Dabney. 

 

Gwyn was an absolute blast in this episode. The writers must have loved giving her lines as she has some fun moments here - love when she advises Dinah Lee to try Epsom salts for her bad back. 

 

Dinah Lee continues to be written as a dope, but Jessica Collins makes it work. 

 

The whole Isabelle's secret man and hiding the baby as Clay's doesn't really feel real to me, but the actors do their best. 

 

Dennis Parlato always has chemistry with his leading ladies, and looks pretty hot with that longer hair. I guess they changed him up after this to suit a more imperious version of the character. 

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That's a trip with Phoebe visiting...  I remember Myrtle showing up to I think Dinah Lee's wedding (this was after hannah and her had stayed with Myrtle on AMC), but not Phoebe.  I love details like this that reinforce the shared universe (even if it's odd that Loving and later The City characters watch AMC...) especially since I can't imagine it was done in this case to try to bring over AMC viewers...

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I've been catching up with the January 1993 episode of Loving for the past week or so now, and I must say I enjoy them all to varying degrees. 

 

So far, I don't see any romantic chemistry from Stacey and Jeremy. However, I do like their friendship and him helping her out. It seems this is in character for Jeremy from what I know of his history on All My Children. He always had to come to the aid of a woman and always interfered with police investigations. I do like that Stacey has some agency and isn't still going out of her mind about Jack.

 

I really wish I could see Louie's prostate cancer storyline. Not too many soaps would feature a story of a male character who was Bernard Barrow's age suffering from a disease let alone being discussed in such a frank manner. (I'm looking at you Chuck Pratt with that terrible Michael Baldwin prostate cancer story on Y&R) I liked Dinah Lee calling him out on the real reason why he doesn't go home. Also, we get Kate and Ava at the Rescott/Slavisnky household talking about how Kate and Louie had a prominent sex life, which Ava is both surprised and elated to hear about her mother and stepfather intimacy secrets. Lisa Peluso and Nada Rowland had great chemistry as mother/daughter.

 

Dennis Parlato is my favorite Clay even though I didn't mind James Horan. But Dennis as Clay fits in the role of the son who wants to take over and will do anything to get him to do so. Besides, he and Christine Tudor had great chemistry together. And I prefer Vamp Gwyn over Frumpy Gwyn any day of the week. 

 

@dc11786 is right about how Hannah comes off so sickly sweet and so naïve. Every time she is in a scene I'm like "How old is she supposed to be again? I wish the episodes leading up to Cooper and Ally sleeping together would surface one day. I did like Casey laying into both Ally and Cooper for sleeping with each other in New York City. Paul Anthony Stewart was such a talented young actor. It seems from what I read the other actresses playing Isabelle would've handled her nephew getting a girl from the working-class area of town pregnant differently. 

 

I did have to cringe at Ron Turner Jr. and his singing group singing blues songs at the NYE party. I was like why do the black characters performing songs that sounded like they were from Gershwin? I'm glad in the upcoming years the black characters get adequate screen time and actual decent writing,

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Thank you! Yes, upon her resumé, I now recognize her.

I mistakenly remembered Louie having Dementia rather than cancer. At any rate, even then I appreciated his presence on the show for filling out that age group and giving Kate something to do. They'd do a little more with that with another soap alum of a certain age, Stu from SFT as Gwyn's dad.

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Isabelle was mostly the kindly grandmother type. Originally, Meg Mundy was hired to play the role, but she balked at the salary they were offering and refused to sign the contract. As you know, Mundy had played devious Mona Aldrich for many years. I know the original material described Isabelle as a “Eleanor Roosevelt type” so I imagine the plan was for Mundy’s Isabelle to be more like her role in “Ordinary People” as Mary Tyler Moore’s mother than her scheming role on “The Doctors.” I do think that had Meg Mundy stayed someone would have made her more calculating.

 

Augusta Dabney ends up playing the role on and off until March 1991 when she is let go by Jacqueline Babbin and Tom King / Millee Taggart. This was during a rather large cast purge. When the character returns in the fall of 1991, Fran Sears and Mary Ryan Munisteri are the production team. They really invested some money in Holms bringing in an expensive piano to put in the Alden living room as they hoped the could get her to play on occasion. It is Celeste Holms’ Isabelle who is the first iteration of a stronger Isabelle. Upon her return to Corinth in November, Isabelle, hardened by Cabot’s death earlier in the year, is determined to maintain her husband’s legacy through her own brand of business savvy. Holms’ Isabelle used her knowledge of people to get information from them. It’s a very different interpretation, but it is very much meant to be. As you say, they were looking to replace that Cabot Alden role, the wealthy domineering family head who meddled too much and, in Isabelle’s case, loved too much.

 

In January 1992, Mary Ryan Munisteri leaves and Addie Walsh takes over. Isabelle’s story shifts dramatically. During the crossover between Munisteri and Walsh, Sears had lured Wesley Addy back to appear in sequences as Cabot’s ghost with Celeste Holms’ Isabelle. They were purposely hoping that having husband and wife playing opposite each other would be a draw. In the initial set of scenes, Isabelle and Cabot are loving and affectionate. In the final sequence, Cabot accuses Isabelle of having a secret which she has kept from the family. This is a complete 180. Walsh has Holms’ Isabelle as less business savvy and more meddlesome. Her intention is no longer to preserve Cabot’s legacy but rather ensure that Clay gets the company. Everything is about Clay. Even when Isabelle starts to groom Gwyn to takeover, it is only because she is trying to incite a fire in Clay in order to get him to leave Dinahlee and Pins and return to AE.

 

The bulk of Holms’ Isabelle during the Walsh / Sears period (January – May 1992) is Isabelle trying to keep her secret: she slept with Tim Sullivan, a stablehand, and he, not Cabot, was Clay’s father.

 

When Haidee Granger becomes EP, Holms is fired and stops appearing in June 1992 with Barry immediately picking up the role. Barry’s Isabelle has always come off as cartoonish to me. Too big, too gaudy, too much. I don’t necessarily blame Barry, but the writing leads Barry to some choices in characterization I don’t care for. I don’t remember any version of Isabelle being as classist as Barry’s, which is what made her intent to see low rent Ally Rescott marry her darling nephew Cooper. One of the writers in SOD made the point that Barry saw Ally as a way of rectifying her own past by ensuring that Ally marry her baby’s father, but also ensuring that the child received everything entitled to an Alden. I see Barry’s Isabelle Alden as a sort of poor man’s Phoebe Wallingford.

 

Isabelle appears a lot in the these two sets of episodes (January and May) but I don’t think she appears much in between or afterwards. She is certainly an element to the Cooper / Ally / Casey situation, but more often than not they are talking about Isabelle not to Isabelle.

 

When Nixon takes over in September 1993, there is no story for Isabelle. Pat Barry’s big moment under Nixon is Isabelle blowing up Cooper’s spot to Ally by revealing that the two of them had concocted the claim that Cooper had been disinherited to keep Ally and Casey apart. This was after Isabelle paid off an Alden employee, Ned Delaney, who was threatening Cooper over his involvement in the car burglary that Frankie Hubbard had been involved in. Barry is one of the first, if not the first, actor fired during Nixon’s run. She departs in January 1994 when Isabelle departs to some warmer climate. The only time Pat Barry and Wesley Addy ever appear together is in the portrait hanging over the mantle in the Alden living room. Nixon actually replaces Isabelle with Nancy Addison Altman’s Deborah Brewster who is Steffi’s class conscious bitch mother who is trying to pimp Steffi out to Clay in order for her to secure a financial future through her daughter’s marriage. Altman arrives in December and Barry’s gone within the month.

 

Nixon brings back Dabney in July 1994 while Jozie Emmerich is producing. I haven’t watched much of the return. I’ve seen a bunch of September 1994 and Cabot and Isabelle are rarely used. There is a rather intense scene at the end of the month where Cabot and Isabelle visit Deborah and Clay at the Bistro, which was where Cabot worked during his days as Buddy. Clay goes off on Cabot for icing him out of the company and giving him some lousy restaurant to manage. Cabot claims he thought it would make Clay happy, but Clay goes in on Cabot. Clay goes after Cabot saying that he knows the true reason; Cabot isn’t Clay’s father. Deborah is present for all of this and Isabelle is mortified. After the men leave, Isabelle writes Deborah a check to keep her quiet, not wanting Clay’s paternity to be revealed. My guess is this is the closest we’d ever get to a manipulative Augusta Dabney.

 

Regarding Gottlieb, anything is possible. I would say this is unlikely, but I’ve also been floating the idea that Michael Malone could have consulted. Clay’s gaslighting reminds me of elements of Malone’s second run at “One Life to Live.” Anyway, the show was using popular musical cues since the 1980s. Someone posted a clip from 1987 with Jim Vochek and Ned Bates with the score from a miniseries and the show used the Rocky theme in a rather well remembered catfight between Ann Alden and Gwyn. In 1993, Haidee Granger, a former ABC daytime executive, was EP so its entirely possible she was influenced by Gottlieb and increased the popular music cues.

 

Armand peters out. Michael Gagliardi was hired by Haidee Granger as the lawyer in Trisha’s custody storyline. She simply kept Rosario on and gave him a contract when the trial was over. Rosario and Gwyn get very little story. I think they break up in February or March 1993 when Rosario overhears Gwyn telling Clay that she will always love him. Every new writer comes in during the 1990s and kills whatever romance Gwyn has going at the moment often without having any other story in place. It’s quite unfortunate. Rosario is listed in the credits through the summer (at least early August), but is more often than not talked about rather than seen. When Cooper goes for custody in August, another Alden lawyer is used. I don’t think Armand gets an actual exit, but he might.

 

The show burns through story, but also everything is impacted by the constant change in production. When Jeremy arrives in October 1992, you have Addie Walsh credited as headwriter. Who knows who was actually writing. Paul Anthony Stewart claims the show was without a head writer in the summer of 1992, but Walsh is credited through January 1993. My guess is Granger, who had previously worked for British television, took on a more English approach to the producer role and was dictating story while using pieces of Addie Walsh’s long story. Anyway, it is Granger/Walsh? who pursue Jeremy / Stacey, but Taggart and Guza don’t dump it immediately in 1993 when they arrive. Instead, they let it play out for a bit, but rarely having any big story other than Hannah’s accusation in those May episodes. I think Stacey and Jeremy just realize things aren’t going to work out. Taggart and Guza definitely have Jeremy view Ava as his Corinthian Erica Kane including flashbacks clips from AMC with Erica and Jeremy. Guza and Taggart are committed to the Jeremy / Ava / Leo / Shana story through the summer of 1993 and into the fall. Even when both couples were paired off (Jeremy / Ava and Shana / Leo) there were hints that Ava and Leo would be drawn together because Ava’s insecurity over her intelligence and Leo’s frustration over Shana’s ownership of Burnell’s. Nixon comes on and send everyone in different directions in September 1993 just after Alex Masters returns to town. So the biggest problem is every writer had a different vision.

 

Jack Forbes was killed in July 1992. Jacqueline Babbin fired Perry Stephens in early 1991 and replaced him with Christopher Cass. Stacey and Jack’s last big story as a couple was Dinahlee’s seduction plot in the fall of 1991 which dovetailed into the Dinahlee / Trucker affair. Mary Ryan Munisteri started some tension with Isabelle’s return, but she didn’t stay around long enough to do anything. Jack and Stacey go in separate directions in 1992 (Jack focusing on AE and Stacey on the mystery of the Tides). Haidee Granger dumps Christopher Cass/Jack in the summer of 1992, but brings him back in November during the gaslighting storyline even though they had started using Perry Stephens image as Jack again. Jack wasn’t dead. No body was ever found.

 

Stacey and Clay marry in November. In October, Trucker suffers a head injury after falling from the belfry saving Trisha from Giff Bowman. When he awakes, Trucker thinks he loves Stacey. When that is quickly resolved, we go straight into Stacey and Clay. Clay wants Stacey’s AE assets and Stacey wants someone to protect her. Initially, they do not consummate the marriage, but eventually they do sleep together. Shortly after, Clay locks her away in the hospital.

 

There are credits in the January 1991 episodes. Addie Walsh is credited at the start of the month and Taggart and Guza at the end of the month. Taggart and Guza introduce Steffi, but the prototype to Steffi was introduced by Addie Walsh. Mia appeared in December 1992 and was a dark haired girl who was hanging around Cooper. I don’t know how far those January 1993 episodes go but she can be seen breaking up the fight between Cooper and Casey in Jeremy’s classroom after Casey learns Coop has knocked Ally up. Steffi also appears before the end of January.

 

The Curtis list…

Chris Marcantel was OG Curtis from June 1983-June 1985

Then Linden Ashby from August 1985-86

Burke Moses from 1986 until fall 1987 [I think]

Chip Albers from March 1989 until March 1991

Patrick T Johnson from February 1993 until May 1993

Michael Lord aired May until September 1993

Then CM returned in November 1993

 

Augusta Dabney played the chemical burn story when James Horan was there so that was either 1990 or 1991. There is an article on the makeup used for it somewhere in this thread.

 

Beatrice in 1993 is the clerk for the Alden archives. My guess is “town clerk” was just a mistake and that the roles are the same.

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Didnt Curtis (Burke Moses) Marry Lottie in 1988. Then when CA took over in 1989, Lottie had died

 

I liked Patrick T Johnson better than Michael Lord But Chris Marcantel was the best Curtis

Was Celeste fired to save $$$$$$

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Thank you for this detail

 

But, it still doesn't fit with the character of Alex that we saw within the plotline of the show.  Alex was an upstanding citizen, he fought crime, and younger men, like Tony and Trucker, looked to him for moral guidance.  So, what made him become a con artist for those few years?

 

Also, I know the Forbes disappeared after the first years of show, but was the mansion always the Alden's?  Or did Roger and Ann live in a different mansion than Cabot and Isabelle?  Weren't the Forbes also rich on their own, given the facts of the pilot?

Edited by j swift
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I'd forgotten that in #8 in the LM playlist - the great episode with Clay's twisted Leave it to Beaver VR(!!) interlude and the wonderful scenes with Gwyneth and Jeremy - that the biggest clue is right there from the very start. 

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Edited by Vee
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