Loving/The City Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

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[amybrickwallace]

I've seen various clips but am unable to exactly piece together the whole story of Susan Keith's Shana. I do know she was a lawyer and one of her husbands was a former priest. I take it that she was off the canvas before the murders began and the show morphed into The City. Did she ever have children? Can anyone fill in the blanks for me? Thanks.

[slick jones]

Shana came to town as Cabot's illegitimate daughter by Lillian Sloane , brought in by Dane Hammond, I believe.. She worked for AE. Shana had been involved with young seminarian Jim Vochek in Italy. The two had a relationship and married. They married and moved away, having a child. Jim and son Jimmy were killed in Italy. Shana came back and eventually married Ava's squeeze, Leo Burnell, owner of Burnell's Department Stores. They had a special needs child, Patty and left town. I'm sure there's more to her story, but it's been a while.

[DRW50]

Shana was also involved with Mike Donovan before Jim - they had a lot of ups and downs before he realized he still wanted to be with his wife, Noreen.

The backstage relationship between Susan Keith and James Kiberd also had a lot of ups and downs, with dislike and tension paving the way for love and marriage.

And at one point in her 1990 return I think she went against Cabot for control of Alden Enterprises, because she blamed him for the plane crash that killed her husband and son.

Edited May 17, 2015 by DRW50

[amybrickwallace]

People did a profile on the Kiberds in 1992:

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20113007,00.html

June 29, 1992
Vol. 37
No. 25

Romance in Sudsville

By Karen S. Schneider

Love Was in the Stars for All My Children's James Kiberd and Loving's Susan Keith—but First It Was in the Script


LATE ONE AUGUST NIGHT 1983 ON THE Manhattan set of ABC's newly created soap opera, Loving, leading man James Kiberd was engaged in a passionate kiss with beautiful blonde No. 17—the last contestant in the day's audition for his character's Ms. Right. "They're all fine except her," Kiberd told the producers after the actress left. "I don't like her."

Sound like a story line for a daytime drama? It soon became one. Despite Kiberd's protestations, Susan Keith was hired as Shana Sloane Vochek, the temperamental lawyer she plays today. (In 1985, though, Kiberd, now 37, left the show, and since 1989 has played cantankerous detective Trevor Dillon on ABC's All My Children.) For months when the camera taped, the couple kissed, but when it stopped, they glared. "I thought he was just like his character—blunt, a chauvinist pig and inarticulate," says Keith, 32. "He was mean to me for the longest time."

"You were mean to me too," shoots back James, nibbling cold cuts in the kitchen of their three-story restored Victorian house in Westchester County, on the Hudson River north of New York City.

But love, like organ music in the afternoon, overwhelmed the dissonance. In less than a year, the sniping had turned to after-hours heart-to-hearts, and before long the couple's on-air smooches were looking suspiciously sincere. "There was one scene at a fashion show," recalls Loving producer Barbara Duggan, "where he just grabbed her and kissed her, and everyone in the studio went, 'Whew!' "

In September 1985, during an emotional Loving goodbye scene, Kiberd ditched the scripted "Shana, I can't marry you." Instead, as the stunned crew looked on, he ad-libbed, "Susan, will you marry me?" As the cameramen prepared to retape the scene, recalls Keith, "I started laughing. I mean, he didn't have a ring. No flowers. No kneepads." Replies Kiberd: "But my shoes were tied...and my zipper was up."

Friends questioned the union. Keith, from rural Crystal Lake, Ill., the daughter of a grocery-chain supervisor and a clerical worker, was a self-described "nice Midwestern girl"; Kiberd, son of an architect and a landscaper from Providence, was "a wild man," says Keith, known for "getting down on all fours in hallways and barking. People would take me aside and say, 'Are you sure about what you're doing?' "

Six years later, the answer, say both, remains an emphatic yes. "It's been heaven ever since," claims Kiberd. Well, OK—not ever since. "He leaves drawers open and runs red lights," complains Keith. "Turning red, honey," corrects her spouse. Playful banter aside, the couple's only source of real concern has been their difficulty having children. "I'm losing hope," says Susan, who last year had two pregnancies end in miscarriages. "Last night I saw an ad for EPT home pregnancy test. I put the blanket over my head." Adds Kiberd softly: "It's been very painful."

Yet between their soap lives and their own lives—curling up to watch Roseanne, touring art galleries and communing with their rottweiler, Omen, and their Siamese cat, Caliban—they have neither the time nor inclination to dwell on sadness. Nor, in Kiberd's case, on the rowdy life that used to be. "I never thought I could be faithful," says Kiberd, glancing tenderly at his wife, "but she's the doll of dolls."

KAREN S. SCHNEIDER
MARIA EFTIMIADES in Westchester


Contributors:
Maria Eftimiades.

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[amybrickwallace]

I was watching a few clips and noticed that at the beginning, Agnes Nixon and Douglas Marland were listed as co-creators in the closing credits. Later on, only Agnes Nixon was listed as creator. Why did Douglas Marland distance himself from Loving?

[robbwolff]

I've wondered that myself. I'm not sure if it was a matter of Marland distancing himself from Loving or the show distancing itself from him after he left as head writer in 1985. Interestingly, I don't think Dan Wakefield ever got a creator credit even though he was involved in creating the series before Marland came on board.

[amybrickwallace]

Hmmmm. Carl, do you know? saynotoursoap?

[DRW50]

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[amybrickwallace]

How long was Rena Sofer on Loving?

[DRW50]

89-92, I think.

[amybrickwallace]

Thanks - did she go straight to GH from there?

[DRW50]

No. There was a year or two gap.

I think she later described her role on Loving as being Trucker's sister and not much else, but the clips I've seen of it suggest she did have a fair amount more to do than that.

[amybrickwallace]

OK, thanks. How did the character get the nickname "Rocky"?