Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

Sorry about that second page. I'll put it up again later.

I couldn't believe she'd actually auditioned for Tina - it's just too much of a fit, like one of those fanfic fantasies you have in your head. It's a shame OLTL never hired her after she left Loving. She could have been Blair, or a recast Blair.

[DRW50]

Closing credits at about 1:18.

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

[DRW50]

Promo at about 2:30. I'm not sure about running an ad on "a different kind of soap" and running a promo for the oldest soap story ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54m_aA5Gwsc

[Khan]

RM would have been perfect on OLTL as Cord's half-sister and Maria's daughter w/ Al Roberts. (No, Cord never had a sister...that we know of. Still..., lol.) Watching her go head-to-head with Tina while simultaneously outdoing her (and Gabrielle) in skulduggery would have been awesome.

[Thibaut1971]

Soap Opera's Greatest Stories & Stars Vol.8 #3 april 1984

Soap Opera Weekly Vol.1 #24 05-07-1990

[EricMontreal22]

Very late to this thread (as I always am--forget to check out this folder).

Yes, Frankie was shooting documentaries and had one about the homeless and drugs in NYC. He filmed a junkie shooting up who then ODed and for the sake of his art he didn't do anything about it (hard to imagine someone raised by Angie would put ambition over humanity...) and then when it was clear he had died he regretted it. Somehow it came out that that was Simone's brother. It was Mia who had a kid with him who had been adopted (he'd been a busy busy guy between Loving and coming back to AMC. What I don't get is if he was in NYC film school why he wasn't on The City, except--I think--for a brief period when it started).

[DRW50]

That's an odd Marlena column. I don't quite agree with some of her one word descriptions, but beyond that, Roya Megnot had been off Loving for a year or so before Savage arrived.

I didn't know Pamela Blair was in A Chorus Line. Does anyone know what was so unhappy about her time there?

She and Tom Ligon seem so out of step with the tone of Loving, even in the early days. I really wonder what they were like.

[EricMontreal22]

Thius ia a great review--where was it published? It makes it sound that creatively, Loving was still on very strong feet nearly a year into its run. Wasn't this around when Nixon (who apparently did have a lot of overall story say already) replaced Marland as HW? Nixon's Loving seemed to try to make it a more traditional "big business" soap from the get go--a rare case of her really seeming to doubt the direction she started in due to ratings and maybe network pressure--and the fact that so many fo these characters that this critic anyway makes sound so compelling were written off.

It's a good point, and not often raised, that the Lily incest story correctly showed that DID personality is almost always caused by sexual abuse usually from a parental figure--years before Malone and Griffith re-wrote Vicki's DID on OLTL. I'd kill to somehow be able to see the first season of Loving. I do really feel from the little I've seen that it was a victim of its times--Agnes and Douglas seemed to really want to return to a low key, 1970s AMC feeling soap, when AMC and all the other soaps (AMC less than many) were starting to go all big city, and maybe that just wasn't enough to quickly catch the audience's attention. Or maybe even in the early 80s things had changed--OLTL and AMC needed a number of years before they made any real impact on ratings. Loving seemed to, within its first year alone, suddenly be under a number of endless re-toolings and changes in direction when maybe it shoudl have gone steady for 3-4 years...

[DRW50]

This is from SOD. I have a review from 1986 where Genovese isn't exactly as enthusiastic. I will try to type it up tonight or tomorrow.

I've wondered sometimes if the early ideas for Loving were good stories, short-term, to make a statement, but if there was little long-term story plan.

[EricMontreal22]

Pamela Blair was one of the breakout stars of Chorus Line. The problem was the original cast were the toast of New York when it premiered, it was such a phenomenon. And then it never really elad to HUGE careers for any of them (Bishop was a successful character actrerss--Gilmore Girls etc--Wayne Cilento became a well paid choreographer, etc). A lot of the cast was very disillusioned by that--I think they all but thought--and they were largely quite young--that it would lead to them being movie stars. They also were mad that they didn't get more than their small royalties--since the musical was based on long recorded sessions of the dancers having drunk discussions with michael Bennett about their experiences which were then crafted into a musical. No one thought it would go beyond off-Broadway, so when it started raking in billions, they were understanably hurt.

Pamela Blair was in the 80s outspoken about htat but more recently she has basically come to terms about it and calls Chorus Line the best experience of her life. Either that was after Marlena's column, or (i suspect--all due respect to Marlena) it was earlier but Marlena was basing it on Pamela's famous 80s interviews.

WOuld LOVE to be able to compare a review by the same author over the years.

I dunno, it does sound liek they were trying to make a statement in a way--but it also sounds liek stories could have gone longer--certainly the original family setups, which were so quickly decimated, had potential for long term story, and we know that some like Lily's were apparently rushed/cut short due to network pressure.

[EricMontreal22]

Max, sorry it took me so long to find this. I do agree with you, but I stand by the fact that P&G were relatively late to the game with their progressive storytelling (with both major CBS shows--particularly ATWT, it took Marland to do that--which he did VERY well, and Lemay's AW as admirable and theatrical as it was didn't particularly make a point of dealing with social issues--nor should it have--but for all its sophisticated drama and psychology it was still very much white--in fact I've heard it suggested both GL and AW regressed from Agnes Nixon's slight efforts to integrate them in the 60s after she left). AMC, was kinda disliked by the soap press especially for a while partly due to its social stories which seemed to get it--and OLTL to a lesser degree--an audience of younger viewers who didn't watch soaps before.

While an illegal abortion is in some ways more shocking it also was a trait of melodrama, going back to Tennessee Williams in the 40s if not more. Many say Irna Phillips (with Bill Bell--who later did melodrama to perfection on his own at DAYS) spent her first year creating AW on high melodrama in an attempt to get instant ratings but her heart never felt into it and it was a poor fit for her, and it sounds like people thought the abortion story was very poorly handled and just a plot driven excuse. Regardless, illegal abortions had been handled, probably not well, on various primetime hospital shows, etc, before--so Erica having the first legal one when the very fact that it WAS legal to have an abortion was still seen by a huge percentage of the population as shocking if not downright wrong IS why AMC got so much attention.

But I definitely agree that much of the progress these shows did was forgotten and I think you raise a valid point.

Edited December 3, 2011 by EricMontreal22

[DRW50]

Blair's interview was from 1984 - the Marlena column was something else from the late 80's.

I guess reading up on Loving's early stories I wonder where they would have gone. Some of them do seem to have potential, but stories like the affair/romance between Merrill and Roger is the type of thing which is likely to just tick soap fans off. Perhaps they were trying for something like Jill/Frank on Ryan's Hope. I also wonder what plans they had for Lily if the story hadn't been truncated.

[EricMontreal22]

She really does seem like an Erica/Tina hybrid--and I admit she seems more like Erica in some ways--at least vintage Erica--than Lisa Peluso did. Was RM introduced when Agnes came to Loving as full time HW?

[EricMontreal22]

I think Lily could have slowly been turned into a successful ingenue--it seems so wrong headed, as entertaining as some scenes were, to bring her back as the man stealing vixen when she came back as a recast, but I *think* that was after Agnes Nixon left again. Merrill and Roger would tick off soap fans--i get your point--at the same time, it seems like a brave, different type of story, still very much int he soap mode for the show.

I wish Marland were still alive (for many reasons, but) so we could hear his thoughts about his time at Loving, why he asked to have his name removed as co creator, or that Agnes Nixon was more forthcoming (I still hope she has some sort of tell all book waiting in a vault to be published when she leaves us).

I've read various things about some of the initial setup being still the work of Dan Wakefield when he was meant to be co-creator--I've read one of his novels and it was very strong (Going All the Way from the 70s which was made into a decent movie in the late 90s and shows strong character writing), and of course I think All Her Children is one of the best books on soaps, but I don't know his tv work at all--he did the much beloved, lightly serialized teen drama James at 15/16 which was a critical hit but never did well with ratings. A few decent looking clips are online, and I know Kevin Williamson claims that it was his top influence on Dawson's Creek (not sure if that's an endorsement or not), but it would be interesting to hear from Wakefield himself about why he decided writing a soap was too much for him.

[EricMontreal22]

Those are terrific clips. Probably mainly because of Debbi, but Angie was written so consistently well throughout her different eras and shows. While the age difference is hard to get past, Frankie here (unlike when olive was in the role) also jives well with Cornelius in the role. Whille I'm starting to wonder if Brown/Esensten's writing was only so strong on Loving and--mostly--City because Agnes Nixon was "creative consultant" they also always did well with those characters, Angie's role on Loving only really starting to fit during Agnes Nixon's brief return and then when they took over. On AMC too, Jessie and Angie's story was one of the few standouts during their year (and I don't buy the belief that Agnes must have written all their scenes LOL). It's probably only because they were at AMC that we got any mention of how random it was that Angie had an ex husband who was Cassie's father who looked just like him... (though we'll forget that Jacob did briefly meet Jesse's ghost on Loving...)

Edited December 3, 2011 by EricMontreal22