I've read up on the history of Roy Winsor's "Love of Life" (1951-1980) via Wikipedia and ols WoST. The premise of the two sisters -- Vanessa and Meg -- and the people around them really appealed. Especially since one was "the good one" and the other, the scheming manipulator!

I am most interested in 1970s LoL, in particular when Paul Avila Mayer and Claire Labine reinvigorated the show. They brought back manipulative Meg (played by the stunningly intense and queen-like Tudi Wiggins) along with her emotionally fragile daughter Cal and son Ben (played by a young Christopher Reeve).

I've only ever seen one episode of the show (on YouTube) from this period, but I have fallen in love with its stunning opening credits (featuring roses -- referring to the fictional town of Rosehill, NY, where it was set) and theme tune. And the show seemed imbued with sweetness and tension and suspense and longing. It was only a half-hour program!

I also read up some SOD recaps which recreated the atmosphere of the show alongside recounting "what happened."

Anyhoo... thoughts, commentary, information. I'd be grateful to hear any of your stories with regards to Love of Life.

If you happened to see Julia Duffy as Gerry Braylee on LOL (c. 1972), you would have expected a different kind of career for her. For several months one storyline concerned four teenagers: innocent Stacy Corby, played by Cindy Grover (was Stacy the daughter of one of Van's former husbands? Van once described Stacy as her ward); nice boyfriend Josh (Brian Brownlee); bad boy Todd (Rod Gibbons); and bad girl Gerry.

Gerry was the tough, streetwise, old for her years daughter of a trailer trash mother (Rue McClanahan, as a day player) who watched roller derby as Van told her she was concerned about her ward. Mom, yelling things like "Stop her, Donna Jean!", thought Van was talking about a boy named Ward and advised Van to tell Ward to stay away from Gerry.

All four young actors were competent. Brian Brownlee was rather like the young Kevin Bacon on GL; oddly, this was his only credit. He would have been good for any lost, sensitive young man roles. Julia Duffy was a predatory young vixen in training, seemingly ready to follow in the footsteps of Robin Strasser's Rachel and Susan Lucci's Erica.

Two rather disturbing scenes in this story: the four youngsters got high on drugs and trashed a house. In another scene, Todd and Gerry blackmailed Josh into doing something (don't recall what) with the threat of Gerry saying that Josh had raped her. I don't know if she had let him have sex with her or if this was a complete fabrication.

So it was unexpected when Julia next surfaced on TD, as Penny, the bratty, whiny, spoiled daughter of Althea (Ellizabeth Hubbard). Essentially she would play some comic variation of this role for years. Penny did eventually mature some on TD, with a marriage to the oldest Dancy brother (Jonathan Hogan) in a relationship rather like Kelly and Morgan on GL would have in a few years to come.

 

Thanks for sharing those details. So much of past storylines and characters have not been recorded so your contributions are most valued. Please keep them coming!

@Nicholas Blair  Please share more anytime.  There are many "Lost stories" and characters I try to add to the character guide (most recently updated version is in Soap Opera Cast Lists and Character Guides, page 108. I hope you don't mind if I add a bit about the four teens from your post, as I've found little to no story about the four.

Thanks for these great anecdotes!

11 hours ago, Nicholas Blair said:

If you happened to see Julia Duffy as Gerry Braylee on LOL (c. 1972), you would have expected a different kind of career for her. For several months one storyline concerned four teenagers: innocent Stacy Corby, played by Cindy Grover (was Stacy the daughter of one of Van's former husbands? Van once described Stacy as her ward); nice boyfriend Josh (Brian Brownlee); bad boy Todd (Rod Gibbons); and bad girl Gerry.

Gerry was the tough, streetwise, old for her years daughter of a trailer trash mother (Rue McClanahan, as a day player) who watched roller derby as Van told her she was concerned about her ward. Mom, yelling things like "Stop her, Donna Jean!", thought Van was talking about a boy named Ward and advised Van to tell Ward to stay away from Gerry.

All four young actors were competent. Brian Brownlee was rather like the young Kevin Bacon on GL; oddly, this was his only credit. He would have been good for any lost, sensitive young man roles. Julia Duffy was a predatory young vixen in training, seemingly ready to follow in the footsteps of Robin Strasser's Rachel and Susan Lucci's Erica.

Two rather disturbing scenes in this story: the four youngsters got high on drugs and trashed a house. In another scene, Todd and Gerry blackmailed Josh into doing something (don't recall what) with the threat of Gerry saying that Josh had raped her. I don't know if she had let him have sex with her or if this was a complete fabrication.

So it was unexpected when Julia next surfaced on TD, as Penny, the bratty, whiny, spoiled daughter of Althea (Ellizabeth Hubbard). Essentially she would play some comic variation of this role for years. Penny did eventually mature some on TD, with a marriage to the oldest Dancy brother (Jonathan Hogan) in a relationship rather like Kelly and Morgan on GL would have in a few years to come.

 

Based on this characterization of LOL, the trajectory of Julia Duffy's career could have been entirely different. Of course, she met her husband at LOL.

17 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Thanks for sharing those details. So much of past storylines and characters have not been recorded so your contributions are most valued. Please keep them coming!

 

17 hours ago, slick jones said:

@Nicholas Blair  Please share more anytime.  There are many "Lost stories" and characters I try to add to the character guide (most recently updated version is in Soap Opera Cast Lists and Character Guides, page 108. I hope you don't mind if I add a bit about the four teens from your post, as I've found little to no story about the four.

Thanks for these great anecdotes!

You're most welcome. I love the work you're doing with the character and actor lists, the ratings, etc.

An added note about Julia Duffy: She used her own voice for Gerry (or perhaps lowered it a tad), a very nice alto, not the higher-pitched tone she adopted to make herself sound young enough to play Penny. She also had convincing sex appeal as Gerry, although in a slightly trashy way, as appropriate for the character.

A side note: would you believe that some soap actors had listed numbers in the phone book? A friend of mine called Jonathan Moore (Charles Lamont), and even more incredibly, William Gray Espy in the first year or so of Y&R. I'm not sure what they talked about, though I vaguely recall that this friend (a straight man, by the way) talked with Espy about how it could be demanding to work with Trish Stewart.

 

2 hours ago, Nicholas Blair said:

A side note: would you believe that some soap actors had listed numbers in the phone book? A friend of mine called Jonathan Moore (Charles Lamont), and even more incredibly, William Gray Espy in the first year or so of Y&R. I'm not sure what they talked about, though I vaguely recall that this friend (a straight man, by the way) talked with Espy about how it could be demanding to work with Trish Stewart.

Wow.

Happy Birthday 70th Love of Life!  So many wonderful memories!  I wish more episodes of this show were available to view on Youtube.   I could only watch when I was home sick from school and summer holidays but I loved what I saw!  

Happy Birthday To Christopher Reeve!!! He Would be 69 years old today

This Soap Opera turned 70 yesterday, today Christopher Reeve would be 69 I think it was meant to be, by the way can you lucky fans who are more familiar with LOL indicate me where to watch some episodes??? I saw very little of it through YouTube apparently there's not much of it around

Found those by accident, were they known?

 

@Nicholas Blair  Thanks for sharing your memories of the Stacey / Josh / Gerry / Tod story. I am always interested to hear about this show because it seems to make so many shifts in direction over the years. The only Stacey stories I had heard about previously involved her initial arrival to reunite with her father Matt Corby (Paul Raven, back from the dead) with her Southern belle mama Evelyn, who was disturbed by Stacey's friendship with African American Daisy Allen as well as some plot involving ESP around the time Bill Prentiss was written off. 

The scene of the teens getting high and trashing the house sounds very interesting. I know I've heard someone describe a very similar scene on "The Young Marrieds" several years before that one. 

It's a shame more shows didn't embrace the idea of the show's mature leads taking on wards rather than rapidly aging the next generation. I think something has been lost in the soap opera genre now that characters no longer have an older adult to turn to talk about their problems. The lack of that intimacy makes the shows so hollow and is one of the reasons the genre has been dying for the last two and half decades. 

Look what I found on Amazon:

@amybrickwallace WOW!!!!

2 minutes ago, victoria foxton said:

@amybrickwallace WOW!!!!

You can get it fairly cheap for an old soap book. The listing on Amazon has it at $21.50!

I think Mary Hartman Mary Hartman took several elements of this show.  The opening was a windowsill, it featured a female heroine (not at all like Vanessa), and she had a sister with issues