The Doctors

[amybrickwallace]

Today we get our first glimpse of Dr. Simon Harris.

[amybrickwallace]

In today's second episode, we get the moment that Carolee (and fans of Carolee and Steve) have been waiting for - after dancing to Sly & The Family Stone's "Dance to the Music"!!!

[Paul Raven]

Part of a 1967 article.

[slick jones]

Maureen Mooney(GL's Ann Jeffers), (AMC's Stacy Coles), (LIAMST's Jill Gordon) and (AW's Diane Flannery) appeared as a student nurse gossiping about young Dr. Mike Powers with a second student nurse, Nancy Fox, who appeared on GH as Maggie. I also remember Ms. Fox from Charlie's Angels in an episode with Madelyn Rhue(Daphne DiMera on DOOL).

[amybrickwallace]

Since we are rapidly approaching the Virginia Vestoff episodes, here she is singing "Yours, Yours, Yours" from 1776 with William Daniels at the Tonys:

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I wonder if with the recast of Althea, they are going to do anything to alter Penny's hair, since Jami Fields had to wear a blond wig to look more like Liz Hubbard. Jami's real hair color is reddish, similar to Virginia's.

[amybrickwallace]

Maureen Mooney, who appeared in today's first episode as a candy striper, years later was in a Brim Coffee commercial with Liz Hubbard. Here's the aforementioned Hart to Hart episode guest-starring Gerald Gordon. He shows up around the 17:00 mark:

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[Paul Raven]

Being able to watch these episodes shows how incomplete and sometimes inaccurate summaries of that time were.

I have never seen mention of Althea's amnesia, Nick's engagement to Liz or Penny's behaviour in mentions of the Nick/Althea story.

Soap World by Robert LaGuardia has summaries about Mike and Liz involved with psychedelic drugs which leads her to climbing out onto a highrise ledge.Did anything like this occur in 67 before the Retro reruns? We saw Liz on the ledge,but that was in totally different circumstances.

Makes me wonder about other shows and story points that have been neglected or forgotten. We see character names in cast lists that are never mentioned in summaries.

[slick jones]

Yeah, finding out about characters by research or watching these reruns seems to be the only way to find the real stories, I have a copy of Soap World, and LaGuardia's early book I found at a tag sale for 50cents.. I wonder if we'll ever know who some characters were!

[DRW50]

I wonder if they were mixing that up with Liz taking the drug that led her to be comatose and Nick proposing to her.

I agree about the stories we never would have known of...interviews mentioned things like Althea's amnesia, but still, so vague, and I don't remember hearing much about characters like Ed Stark, or John Rice.

[DRW50]

Finally found it for you Monika.

Oh Virginia. So beautiful and too young to leave us

TV Dawn to Dusk February 1971

They also had an interview with James Pritchett.

[DRW50]

I'm still months behind, watching with my mother, and we just got to the ones with Ed and Anna and the accident. I'd misread something posted here months ago and thought he'd gotten shot, so I was surprised he wasn't, but it wasn't something I wanted to see anyway...

I was so impressed with the show for having two episodes devoted wholly to the story, no cutting away to any other sideplots, no segues to Melisande or Nancy/Mike or Penny pouting. I guess that's the beauty of half-hour episodes.

Anna's wailing and her shock were especially difficult to watch...the worst was when she kept saying she'd seen him bleeding. Zaida Coles was phenomenal.

The Carolee and Nick argument in Anna's room made me realize that's the first time I remember them in any major scene together. I guess it's another example of Carolee slowly moving up and up in terms of importance.

[amybrickwallace]

The Melisande story ran about 8 weeks (from about mid-December 1968 to mid-February 1969) but it dragged on for what seemed like forever. This is with two episodes a day with the reruns, which cut it in half for us - it would have been a lot worse when the episodes originally aired and there was only one episode a day. LOL

Ralph Purdum really did do a phenomenal job playing a very sick and disturbed man - and even after this story wraps, the good folks of Hope Memorial haven't seen the last of him. That's about all I'll say because that encounter will lead into the major story we're seeing now.

[amybrickwallace]

Marta Heflin was in the end credits of today's second episode, and she will be a pivotal character in the doomed "romance" of Mike Powers and Nancy Bennett. Marta was the niece of movie star Van Heflin and AMC's Mona Kane, Frances Heflin. Sadly, she's another TD cast member no longer with us - she passed in 2013 at age 68.

In any case, I'm looking forward to her entrance - to be followed by actor James Shannon - because they will be the much needed spoilers in this story. It will bring Mike "22 Going on 12" Powers down a few notches, which will be a mighty good thing.

[amybrickwallace]

Marta Heflin makes her debut as Shana in today's first episode. Meanwhile, Maureen Mooney temps for Pam Toll as Liz Wilson. (Of course, MM would appear years later in a Brim Coffee commercial with Liz Hubbard.)

Carl, would you happen to have Liz Hubbard's "return" interview from 1981? It was in the SOD issue dated May 12, 1981, and Denise Alexander and Chris Robinson of GH were on the cover. If you do have it, would you please post it here? Thanks.

[DanMan869]

Do we know why Pamela Toll wasn't on the show? Was it illness or her honeymoon? (Didn't she marry her first husband in 1969?) since Maureen Mooney has recently appeared as a nurse's aide gossiping about Mike and Nancy, I'm kind of thinking it must have been a last-minute substitution. Sometimes it stinks to remember that this all happened 40+ years ago and we may never get answers that we might get about soaps today.