The Doctors Discussion Thread

[amybrickwallace]

Congratulations to Valerie Mahaffey (Ashley Bennett, 1979-1981):

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[DRW50]

I loved Valerie in The Powers That Be and on Northern Exposure. Never have seen her on The Doctors.

[amybrickwallace]

She was also hilarious as the English teacher on Young Sheldon. 

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[Soaplovers]

She made her debut in one of the last episodes rerun before covid shutdown.

 

She was understated and not at all like she played on the other shows she starred in.  

[amybrickwallace]

 

I forget what her exact first airdate was, but it was at the end of December 1979. She was only in three episodes before COVID-19 and the inability to get the 1980 episodes out of storage forced Retro TV to go back to the beginning of its rerun cycle.

[Paul Raven]

July 1966 newspaper summary.

Theodora Rostand was fighting mad. She is suing Dr. Powers over "considerable money" due Tia Van Allen, a simple, innocent girl from Samoa. J. Albert Gorsey, a shrewd looking lawyer, takes Theodora's case. She likes his assessment of the situation. "With the right pressure, this can be settled out of court." 

[Paul Raven]

July 1980 Newspaper report

 NBC'S PLANS

"The Doctors" has the most to lose if its plot-boilers don't work. The show is moving to a new time period next week to make way for the "Texas" series. "TD" has been losing ground steadily for the last half year, but hyped-up plot situations are being introduced in the hope of maintaining the existing audience and gaining new viewers in the show's new time period. As a first step, producer Doris Quinlan has signed Glen Corbett for a "return engagement" to "The Doctors." Corbett originated the role of Jason Aldrich three years ago, then he left the series when his contract expired. He eturned briefly last fall but the character soon was lost and presumably he was killed in a South Amercan aircraft accident. Now that Jason has been found and returned to the town of Madison, he'll be involved with a group of crazies who take over the hospital and hold hostages for ransom. The ringleader will be played by David Canary, also making a return to the show. Last summer he played cult leader Far Wind, who is now known as Warner. Sam MacMurray portrays head machine-gunner Norm, while Shelley Simmons, a "mob doll," is played by Harriet Hall, who last appeared on soaps as Andrea Moore on "Somerset."

[slick jones]

Susan Blake, that "fell off the mountain" in 1966 has been located in the guise of actress  Gail Oliver....

 

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Her parents were Roy

 

Ralph Waite

 

and Connie

 

 

Scottie MacGregor

 

Valerie __ Powers

was

 

Ken Kercheval's first wife, Judy Kercheval

 

though she was in her 30s

 

 

when she was on TD

 

[Paul Raven]

That Judy Kercheval find is amazing! now we just have to find the story that went with Mike marrying Valerie,

 

A 1973 article on Meg Mundy

Meg Mundy plays meddling mother-in-law Mona in 'The Doctors' seen locally on Channels 5 and 7 at 2:30 p.m. If you're middle aged you might recognize the face of Meg Mundy, During the 1940s she was a top fashion model. Now she's in a soap opera playing ... One of the nastiest ladies that' s ever been

By ANGELA TAYLOR The New York Tlmes News Service

To the soap opera fans who settle down to NBC TV's "The Doctors" every afternoon, there seems to be something familiar about the .face of 'Mona Aldrich, the proper Bostonian who is trying to break up her doctor son's marriage with all the skill of a female Machiavelli. And at least to those viewers who have attained middle age there certainly is. Mona Aldrich is played by Meg Mundy. In the 1940s, one couldn't open a fashion magazine without seeing Miss Mundy's elegantly-slim body doing wonders for the small-waisted, full-skirted fashions of the day. Her hair is blond now and doesn't quite set off her ivory skin as did the dark brown locks she had at 19, when John Robert Powers told her she was ho beauty, "but I bet you photograph." She did photograph and still does. Even the middle-age lines around her generous mouth are interesting, and very proper to the character Miss Mundy describes as "one of the nastiest ladies that's ever been, but supposedly with a great deal of charm." Meg Mundy is back to her first love, acting.

It was to support herself at acting school that she wandered into the offices of the modeling agencies. "Harry Conover got me my first job," she recalled. "I went to the photographer's studio, but I shook so, he couldn't get a picture." Six months later she was back, without the quivers, and was sent to Vogue for a "go-see." (The term means an interview with a fashion editor to see if the model fits the editor's need.) "I was lucky; Sally Kirkland (then Vogue's fashion editor) liked me and I did my first sitting on the steps of Columbia." Then began the rounds of the top photographers of the times. The late John Rawlings was fatherly and suggested she do something about her "dreadful" hair "I had very long hair then, when all the kids were wearing theirs short." Horst (Horst P. Horst), who was later to do many of her best fashion photographs, turned her down the first time "you're too ugly." And no wonder. "I walked around in any old thing and flat shoes. I never had any exposure to expensive clothes. My parents had been musicians. My mother couldn't have cared less about clothes." But soon the duckling became a proper swan, in high heels, and a hat and gloves. In the black Cavanagh hat box which was the trademark that distinguished the fashion models from their less glamorous sisters around town she carried a bra and a waist-cincher, which were de rigueur for the Dior New Look fashions that had swept the world. Like the other models of the period, she looked considerably older than she was. "It was the thing to look like a chic, elegant woman, mysterious and unreachable. Fashion was a couture rather than a boutique world then. Even though we were girls in our teens and twenties, we looked like grown women." Now the pendulum has swung full way. Today's models look like perpetual teenagers, coltish and "natural." Actually, Miss Mundy points out, they have more artifices to use: false lashes, wigs and complicated makeups to shade their faces. And they can move. "Before the strobe light became a common photographic technique, you had to hold a pose perfectly still. And they were always shooting you with your mouth open." Still, Miss Mundy declares that current models are more beautiful. By today's standards, she and the other popular models of her time Marilynn Ambrose, Muriel Maxwell and Betty McLaughlin might be considered interesting looking, rather than raving beauties. However, their very standoffishness put them on pedestals. Women who recognized them in the street felt the same sort of thrill they might when encountering a movie star. "It was fabulous that people recognized you." They still do but as the dreadful television mother of David O'Brien, one of the "Doctors." Miss Mundy recalls with . a laugh that when her 19-year-old son, Sotos Yannopoulus, worked as a bagger in a Connecticut supermarket last summer, a shopper asked him, "Is that awful woman really your mother?" "I'm glad I modeled," Miss Mundy continued. "The money, $35 to $40 an hour, was good for the times. And the clothes were wonderful. It was truly an esthetic experience to put on a Mainbocher or a Norell or a Galanos." But' she was a child of the stage and the pull was there.

 Born in London some 50 years ago, the daughter of a singer and a father who was first cellist at Covent Garden, Margaret Mundy came to New York at the age of 8. (She still retains a trace of British accent.) She had musical training piano and voice "but I had no real talent for it." She apparently had enough voice to have sung with ' such diverse bodies as the New York Philharmonic and Kay Thompson's Rhythm Singers, but preferred acting. Her big chance came in 1948, when she appeared in Sartre's "The Respectful Prostitute" and got excellent reviews. A year later, she starred with Ralph Bellamy in "Detective Story." Later, when the acting roles dwindled off, she became a fashion editor and a stylist for a fabric house. For a while, she owned a boutique in Connecticut, along with another soap opera actress, Lori March of "The Secret Storm." These days, in between tapings for "The Doctors," she lives in an early 1800s white clapboard house in Bridgewater, Conn., with her fourth husband, Angus Thurrott, who is in real estate. She enjoys playing the meddling mother-in-law and hopes the show's writers will keep her alive. "But I've already had two heart attacks. A third one might kill me."

[amybrickwallace]

 

I love this story!! Glad Meg had a sense of humor about it.

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[Paul Raven]

August 1967

Daytime series role 'Liz' Confuses Pamela Toll

ANY DAY SHE Is not working, she can be seen lunching la a corner of Sardi's. She is such a regular in the restaurant that she has become "engaged to be engaged" to Peter Gina, Vincent Sardi's nephew. "I came here originally because it's interesting and I was in show business, and it was convenient to mv auditions." "She has stayed to make friends, be seen by people wondered about the pretty thing thing in the corner and find her future happiness. She is Pamela Toll, win be 19 this moat, and Is a veteran of 11 years In show business. Currently she is playing the role of Dr. Liz Wilson in the NBC-TV daytime series The Doctors. And she's a bit confused.

"Liz has changed character so many, times, she doesn't know who she is. She started as a kook, then became a manic depressive, then she got normal, then she got a mad crush on her boss. We have been playing It that way for several weeks now, with looks and inflections. Suddenly, the director came to us and said something about a catastrophe. Seems the writer told him we have been all wrong. And now we have to undo those looks. How do you undo two months' work?" 

 

 

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[amybrickwallace]

Thanks for sharing that article. Poor Pam - she was taken from us too soon.

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[applcin]

Got an e-mail today, as a subscriber to the app, that the episodes will soon be moved to another platform called It's Real Good TV. So, basically, The Doctors content won't be its own island soon. I suspected something was afoot as the WTD app seemed neglected on both sides. As cool as it was to be able to have WTD on demand (even with many out-of-sequence episodes), I had my doubts about the sustainability and appeal of a subscriber app devoted to a single series, let alone a soap that many people aren't even aware of. Heck, if GH or DOOL were to put its 1970s episodes on a devoted subscription app, I wouldn't expect a huge customer base there either. I am curious about what the new cost might end up being, since it will include more content. I'm actually about 2 months away from where I started the episodes over (shortly after Carolee and Dan's wedding) so I still haven't seen most of the show. 
 

Edited March 13, 2021 by applcin

[jam6242]

Got the e-mail too and have also been wondering whether the fee will go up.  I believe the on-demand shows for the other networks included are currently free.  I'm not interested in paying to watch anything else on them.  Hoping this will fix the problems the current site has though.

[Chris B]

From what I can find that doesn’t look like good news. I longed for them to get the app together, but from their website, It’s Real Good TV is just a 24/7 digital channel. So you wouldn’t be able to watch the show as you currently do streaming, just based on what it airs on the network.