The Doctors

[robbwolff]

Mike is working my nerves lately. Grow up, junior!

[DanMan869]

Some good episodes since the beginning of July! I feel so bad for Edna Hamilton. She was sort of ignored about needing to see Althea and then when she finally did, Althea didn't show nary a glimmer of recognition! Then Nick tells her that she should go back to Greenville. Awww...

A few things I noticed:

1) Nick has never stopped calling his mother-in-law "Mrs. Hamilton"! Not "Mom" or "Mother" or even Edna! After all this drama with Althea and then Edna's sadness and resigning herself to going home, it would've been a perfect time for the character to say, "oh, Nick--please...after all we've been through...you needn't keep calling me 'Mrs. Hamilton'! Call me ______."

2) Dr. Geller started to come across as...interested in Edna Hamilton! Until Nick sent her home, I thought maybe we were going to see something slowly develop with him and Althea's mother. The show did kind of need that older female guidance figure. Dr. Geller with his academically smarts and Edna with her common sense. She may have seemed a bit delicate, but Edna has always been written as quite logical when she stops being delicate! Not sure how much longer Florence Williams is utilized as Althea's mother, but I've enjoyed her work.

3) LOVED that Dr. Geller suggested Carolee befriend Althea--and that Althea wound up welcoming it! The whole discussion of "why are the doctors on a first name basis but the rest of the staff are Mr. and Miss." (Apparently they forgot about MRS. Bennett!) I wonder if this was HW Rick Edelstein's way of contemporizing the hospital environment a bit going forward? I wouldn't mind if they still referred to each other as Dr, Miss or Mr--such as when giving patients or visitors instruction ("If you'll follow Miss Simpson, she'll take you to the physical therapy room..." or "Dr. Bellini, I have your messages..." But when they interact one-on-one or in less formal situations, calling each other by first names seems logical--no matter their position. (Well, maybe Matt should always be Dr. Powers to the general staff!)

[DanMan869]

OH! I almost forgot one!

4) is it just me or is James Shannon ("Paul Bennet") overacting a bit? He's been acting on level 11 pretty much since appearing on the show and it only gets *cringingly worse. I liken his work so far to "bad soap opera acting." (Admittedly not Charity Rahmer-on-DOOL-bad...but, bad.)

Edited July 8, 2015 by DanMan869

[robbwolff]

No, it's not just you. I'm still catching up but cringed during some of his performances the other day. He seems so out of place in juxtaposition to the other actors' styles. I hope Nancy runs off with Shana and leaves bellowing Paul and petulant Mike in the dust.

[jam6242]

I thought the same thing about James Shannon. He was especially OTT in yesterday's episode. I thought he was going to yell, "Stella," at one point. He's very good-looking though.

[DanMan869]

I also had to smirk a bit with James Shannon because it seemed that a few times during his blustery moments, he's nearly gone up on his lines. It happens to most in the cast once in a while, but usually they gracefully recover and it seems almost like naturally mis-speaking. Mr. Shannon should have tried harder to get the lines right and focused less on the over-the-top bluster. I hope his performance improves because being eye candy doesn't entertain for very long!

I might have asked (or someone probably mentioned), but I'm assuming that TD was done "live-to-tape" where they tape and time everything out to the "30" minute mark--and you don't stop tape and do any retakes unless there was a technical problem OR one of the actors horribly screwed up. Video tape was expensive back in the 60s (and into the 70s), so waste was frowned upon. I get this knowledge from Y&R, which was produced live-to-tape for much of the '70s (possibly during the entire time it was 30 minutes). I'm sure that put a lot of pressure on the actors to "get it right the first time--or save it if you can," or else you were likely fired and the role recast. I'm sure this was why NY theater actors often got cast in soaps in the 50s, 60s and 70s--their trained ability to "keep going until the curtain comes down."

[SoapDope]

I remember an interview with Kate Jackson about her time on Dark Shadows and she talked about live to tape. She said if they had to reshoot which was rare if ever, they had to wait so many hours to get the live tape feed again.

Jeanne Cooper talked about live to tape on Y&R and she said it had to a Major screw up for them to reshoot and they rarely did. In the 1974 episode where Jill phones the Chancellor home, she flubs and say's Mrs. Foster before recovering and then say's Chancellor. Also when Kay goes upstairs with the maid, you can hear the music fade out and a faint click and another background track starts playing as she's looking at the living room.

In a 1973 clip of Another World of Steve and Alice, you can hear faint clicking of someone off stage adjusting a light or something.

I wonder if anyone ever got sick with diarrhea or vomited live on the air on a soap ?

[danfling]

I read that on From These Roots, an actress got sick during the episode and someone who worked on the show (the assistant director?) finished the episode as that character.

[SoapDope]

I would like to see that. I wonder if he just stood there reading from the page or tried to act it out ?

I remember Mary Stuart of SFT said they were live when an actress had a mental breakdown and stopped speaking. She read the other woman's lines and hers.

On Y&R Jeanne Cooper said when they did the scene where Jill was telling Kay about her being pregnant by Phillip, Brenda forgot her lines and Jeanne tried to subtly feed it to her and she still didn't get it, Jeanne then said " Let me guess, your pregnant with my husbands child" I don't know if that was something they re-shot or if it was left in. One viewer said they remember Jamie Lyn Bauer(Lorie Brooks) kissing a man on the show and a big string of spit came out when they parted and it remained there for several minutes before she wiped it away. Supposedly William Gray Espy (Snapper) blurted out live on the air while climbing the Brooks staircase " God, what ugly wallpaper"

On AW Joe Gallison (Bill) fell asleep in his dressing room and they tried to page him on the intercom. He then woke up and rushed to the set groggy while live.

On ATWT Helen Wagner (Nancy) said a stove went haywire and the timer kept buzzing and someone had to sneak and unplug it.

[amybrickwallace]

Besides Richard Niles, just today I got an email from Mimi Cozzens, one of the silent people nurses. I'm also trying to find out exactly when Jami Fields left TD for good. I hope she'll be back in the reruns at some point (Julia Duffy didn't start playing Penny until 1973.)

[Paul Raven]

I have a couple of questions for you faithful watchers?

Has the Mike/Liz relationship been alluded to?

How long has Laryssa Lauret been off the show as of eps currently screening?

Has Steve mentioned his family at all? eg to Karen telling his parents about their marriage.

[DanMan869]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll take a stab at answering these:

1. Yes, but in rather vague terms if I recall. If you weren't really paying attention, you'd think they were just longtime pals. There was a recent reference within the last month or so, IIRC, where the implication was made that Mike and Liz (and their families) had known one another "since they were kids." Not having seen Liz's actual introduction to town along with her parents, I can't say for sure whether or not that was part of how the Wilsons were introduced to the town of (not-yet-)Madison. Perhaps they meant that Liz and Mike had come a long way since they first met in 1966?

2. If I am recalling correctly, Laryssa Lauret's Karen Werner left town for Germany in January 1969. Now we are "currently" in mid-July 1969. From a few articles I've read, I think LL returns some time in 1970--about a year or so after she left.

3. I think there was mention made of Steve Aldrich's parents and how he was raised, but no mention has been made of their possible reaction to his marrying Karen. I think he or Karen talked briefly about contacting them, but nothing came of it. There is also no mention of his brother at this time. In fact, I think Steve sort of implied he was an only child, but soaps always had a way of changing things like that when different writers took over or the story seemed to suit the addition of family. Was Mona Aldrich Croft eventually introduced as a divorcee, a widow, or...?

[robbwolff]

Actually, Steve did talk about his brother, but it wasn't Jason. There was a scene in 1968 where Steve and Karen began talking about war. Steve mentioned then that he had an older brother who was killed during the bombing of Berlin if I recall correctly.

[DRW50]

Monika, did you get my PM?

Julie Bovasso argued with the director over character motivation. She stormed out right before taping and they had to have someone in the crew replace her.

[amybrickwallace]

I was randomly looking up some information about the show and found out something new - a connection between Liz Hubbard's shows - TD and ATWT. It turns out that her TD daughter, Jami Fields, attended Columbia University in the mid-70s and was involved with the theatre group and also wrote for the student paper, The Spectator. A fellow student and up-and-coming actor named Tom Wiggin was in the cast with Jami in a production of "Twelfth Night". Of course, he would go on to work very closely with Liz on ATWT as Kirk Anderson over a decade later. I wonder if Liz knows about that connection. Isn't that something?

Anyway, here is a write-up on the 1975 production of "Twelfth Night". Both Jami and Tom got nice reviews. There is also a photo of everyone in character, and Jami and Tom are both in it as well:

http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/columbia?a=d&d=cs19751030-01.2.17&srpos=&dliv=none&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------

That same year, Jami herself wrote a review of another play that Tom was in:

http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/columbia?a=d&d=cs19751009-01.2.12&srpos=&dliv=none&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------

Getting back to the show, what did everyone think of the elaborate fantasy sequences the amnesiac Althea had about her and Nick? One was in the style of an Old Hollywood flick along the lines of Astaire/Rogers, Cary Grant and Bogie combined. The second was like a Honeymooners/Streetcar Named Desire hybrid. They were both fun to watch because it was out of the norm of what we've seen on TD up to this point and because Liz Hubbard and Gerald Gordon both looked like they were having the time of their lives.