Does anyone know how Natalie Schafer's character Augusta Roulland fit into the canvas? Did she have a storyline of her own, or was she more of a talk to character?

I just read the entire thread like a book about LOL.

Both Meg actressses are fascinating and have a Joan Crawford vibe.

The 70s fascinate me, I wish I could watch everything from 1974 to 1980.

From what I understand the show didn't follow the late 70s trend of introducing a very wealthy family.

The last intro/music theme should be enough for the show to last several more years. It is the best soap opening I have ever seen. Classy and timeless. It could still be around today.

How were Meg and Vanessa's relationship in the 70s? Did they share a lot of scenes?

Where was Rosehill supposed to be located? I read some comments about skiing.

What was Meg and Rick's business? Ridge something?


PS: SON has the best posters. Your knowledge and opinions are fascinating, especially about the classic soaps.

Edited Tuesday at 02:38 PM3 days by Sapounopera

1 hour ago, Sapounopera said:

From what I understand the show didn't follow the late 70s trend of introducing a very wealthy family.

I'll try to answer a few of your questions:

Meg was very wealthy when she returned in 1974-ish. She had married a Spanish millionaire (Eduard Aleata, played by John Aniston) and got a big divorce settlement leaving her independently wealthy. So Meg, Eddie, and Meg's spawn sort of filled the archetype of the soap opera wealthy family. But LOL never introduced a completely new, large wealthy clan.

Rose Hill was in New York, and often referred to in the scripts as Rosehill, NY.

And the business Meg and Rick partnered in was Beaver Ridge, which was a restaurant/night club.

Edited Tuesday at 04:22 PM3 days by Tisy-Lish

5 hours ago, slick jones said:

Does anyone know how Natalie Schafer's character Augusta Roulland fit into the canvas? Did she have a storyline of her own, or was she more of a talk to character?

I haven't been able to find anything on that character apart from a brief mention of Schafer joinng LOL in Feb 71.

My feeling is that it was a short term role, based on the fact that there is no mention of the chaarcter in any synopses.

I'm wondering if it might have been something to do with the ESP story around that time that also involved Geraldine Brooks? I could see Shaffer as a daffy rich older woman taken in by a phony doctor claiming to have ESP. Just speculating.

Maybe a few weeks onscreen. You have her till 73 in the LOL listing but I don't think so.

@Sapounopera The Winsor shows always seemed to have quieter, old money characters rather than the larger dysfunctional wealthy clans that soaps became known for in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Even on The Secret Storm, where a majority of the characters belonged to the country club set and were very polished, there wasn't any of the obstentatious decadence that we would see in the later decades. Or so we can gather from the fan accounts online. On Search for Tomorrow, the Tourneur / Sentell crew sets themselves apart as super wealthy, but a lot of their colorful behavior seems more grounded in their New Orleans roots than in overindulgence and elitism.

Rosehill was a community that evolved. In the late 50s into the 1960s, the Carlsons, Bruce Sterling's in-laws, dominated their town with the paper mill. Vivian Carlson was known as a snobbish society matron with rigid rules on social class. This continued well into the 1970s with Nancy Marchand's Vinnie Phillips' briefly usurping Vivian's role before Labine and Mayer brought Vivian back onto the scene. In addition to the mill, there was Wingfield Prep, the boarding school, which was the home of many sons of great wealth and power. The character descriptions @slick jones has provided us show us how these operated in the community. By the late 1970s, there was a shift with the Tess Kraukeur and Bill Prentiss romance where both young people were more working class, though Bill was the son of one of Bruce's neighbors Charles Lamont. Tess did marry into money, older John Randolph, but I don't think the social order was as important than, but I may be wrong.

In the 1970s, you have Kate Swanson, a lounge singer, who was invovled with Dr. Dan Phillips. His mother is the aforementioned Vinnie. Lloyd Phillips, Vinnie's husband and Dan's father, was also a doctor. Vinnie meddled in Dan and Kate's romance with Kate having Dan's baby, but believing Rick Latimer was the father (due to nurse Candy Lowe changing the baby's blood type). I think the Phillips represented the type of money that was typical in Rosehill.

And by those rules, the Marriotts were probably the show's wealthy family towards the end of the show's run. Arriving in January, 1977, Dr. Andrew Marriott was on staff at Rosehill Hospital and was married to his much younger second wife, Mia Marriott. Mia was in publishing and had been the object of affection of JIm Marriott, Andrew's son. When Jim confronted Mia, Mia rejected him leading Jim to storm off and get into an accident with the newly paroled Ben Harper. Jim died with both Mia and Ben harboring guilt. Andrew began to see Ben as a surrogate son and Mia and Ben became romantically linked, which coincided with Elizabeth Kemp's contract being up in June, 1977. I believe most of the Jim / Mia story was told as exposition or in flashbacks, but it is a certain level of seedy which seemed to work.

Later, another son of Andrew's was introduced, Andy Marriott, Jr. Andy was a Ben Harper type, a wealthy young playboy who got himself in a heap of trouble. His father was tired of his antics and wanted to no longer support him. Andy was flirting with a bunch of the younger ladies, and, of course, had a past in California he was running from. He was involved with a married woman, Cathy Smith, who's husband had died. Andy was suspected of being invovled, but there was a change in production (Cathi Abbi and Jean Holloway arrived) and Andy was quickly shuffled of canvas and sent out of town. ` .

The last multigenerational family Love of Life introduced was the Gasperos, Ray Slater's working class Italian relations. There were his parents and his brother Guido and sister Gina. The Gasperos were around at the time of Jean Holloway's run with the Bambi Brewster tale. The parents were written out fairly quickly after Ann Marcus arrived. Under Marcus, Gina was paired with Mia's younger brother Wes Osbourne III, another potential wealthy bad boy in the Ben Harper mold, who she slept with after consuming a pot brownie at a house party and was convinced she was pregnant; she wasn't. The story may have been truncated because Woody Brown (Wes) left the show for several weeks, presumably to film the pilot for Flamingo Road. Ray was the only Gaspero left when the show closed out.

If the show had continued into the 1980s, I imagine they might have introduced someone to replace Tudi Wiggins' Meg, who was set to leave the series. That character might have had a family built around them. Though, there was also talk about bringing on recasts of Barbara and Alan so maybe Barbara would have filled that role.