The Doctors

[SoapDope]

After Althea gave him a tongue lashing, I believe he is seeing the light. He asked for Carolee's forgiveness and wants to save their marriage. It will be funny if Mona is trapped in that marriage to Winston Croft for nothing. I also hope he lets it slip that Mona thinks Carolee is appalling and Steve flies into the old bag. 

[amybrickwallace]

 

Me, too!! I wonder what Meg Mundy's fan mail and in-person fan encounters were like at that time.

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[SoapDope]

I say she got a lot of hate mail. Some people can't separate between fact and fiction. Jami Lyn Bauer who played Lorie Brooks on Y&R talked about being screamed at in traffic while her children were with her in the car and them being traumatized by the incident. 

[amybrickwallace]

Yes, I would assume that Meg Mundy would have been deluged with hate mail and probably accosted in public as well. After all, Carolee was the heroine of the show and of the show's leading three female characters, the one the people in the audience could relate the most to. On the FB fan page, Marie Thomas-Foster (Lauri James) and Thor Fields (Erich Aldrich, from the late 70s into the early 80s) have said that once the cameras stopped rolling, Ms. Mundy was an absolute sweetheart - the complete opposite of Mona.

 

I imagine that it must be great fun to play a villain because you can say and do things you would never get away with in real life. On the flip side, the fans who can't tell fact from fiction must be a pain to have to deal with. You mentioned Jaime Lyn Bauer - and other actresses who dealt with encounters like that were Eileen Fulton, Jacklyn Zeman, Robin Strasser, and the list goes on.

[~bl~]

Marcy Walker did too, during her first run on All My Children. 

 

I would hope TD protected Meg Mundy from the worst of the hate mail. The you are a good actress, though I hate your character for being a lying manipulator are fine, but the burn in a fire ones are not. Glad to hear off screen, she wasn't like her character except that she looked the same (natch).

 

 

[amybrickwallace]

 

Wow, I didn't know that. I'm sure the mail must have changed quite a lot once she became Eden, the heroine of Santa Barbara.

[Soaplovers]

 

She was beloved so I figured once people realized she was playing Eden and not Liza that changed.

 

I didn't like when she came back as Liza...she had too many Eden traits...and I thought Jamie Lunar (while too young) restored Liza and even mimicked MW's mannerisms in some ways

 

 

On the subject of the Doctors... I do wonder if the current Mike's departure affected the penny/toni/Mike story...or if that was generated by the strike writers

Edited April 7, 2017 by Soaplovers

[amybrickwallace]

 

I think it was probably a combination of both things. In the reruns, we will be seeing the name of Joseph Stuart in the credits as EP any day now (if we haven't already; I haven't seen all the episodes that aired this week yet). Allen Potter was chosen to helm NBC's new soap, How to Survive a Marriage (which debuted very early in 1974).

[amybrickwallace]

@TimWil, I don't know where you are in the reruns, but this week has seen the return of Angela Thornton as Lisa Kincaid. Since Althea is refusing to fulfill John's "needs", you can basically guess where things are going to go. I can definitely see a resemblance between Ms. Thornton and her son, Adam Storke. Did Ms. Thornton appear in any other soaps?

[TimWil]

I don't believe she ever did, Amy! I just watched yesterday's episode and so many memories have come flooding back. I met Angela in the mid 1980s through a mutual friend when she was understudying the lead in a Broadway play. She recruited me to help her learn her lines and paid me $10 an hour, I think! She had a beautiful (and huge) apartment on West End Avenue. I'd see her son Adam pop in and out. She had a gorgeous daughter Victoria who married an Italian and moved to Italy with him. Angela was so much fun to be around. In her scenes you definitely get a sense of her potential for mischief-there was that wonderful twinkle in her eye. Ah. And...since they're both gone now I think it might be OK to reveal that...she had an "ongoing" relationship with Richard Burton. I think they were hot and heavy in the 1950s and then after they both moved on would occasionally meet up "for old times sake," even when he was married to Elizabeth Taylor, believe it or not. I never asked her about details but I did think it was very sweet that she was good friends with his first wife Sybil. In fact she did several plays at a theatre Sybil ran out on Long Island-a production of Hedda Gabler starring their daughter Kate even ended up on Broadway. As I noted a while back she became very close friends with Elizabeth Hubbard. They'd go on trips together, I think their sons were around the same age.

 

Watching the most recent episodes and seeing my friend Geri in scenes with Gerald Gordon really brought it back to me how much she apparently disliked him. She told me she thought he was a blowhard and downright humorless, unlike David O'Brien who was always joking around. And I think she didn't at all appreciate his behavior during kissing scenes, especially when he'd thrust his tongue down her throat and then look surprised that she hadn't enjoyed it. She joked that those scenes might have been key to her being a lesbian! She told me she did date William Shatner when they were on tour in Barefoot in the Park but uhhh...it didn't go anywhere.

 

Angela and Geri-those were two great dames, let me tell you.

Edited April 9, 2017 by TimWil

[amybrickwallace]

Thank you for sharing your memories of these two ladies, TimWil. I hope they would enjoy knowing that a new generation is enjoying their work. I also got to see Geri guest on the NYC-based sitcom Kate & Allie. Her long red hair was by then short and blond, and she was trying to hail a taxi to get away from Jane Curtin!! Was Adam on SFT when you worked with his mom or was that afterwards?

 

From everything I've heard and read, the cast of TD were for the most part a tight-knit bunch (and many put in significant tenure) - but as in every case, there are exceptions. Even without reading your posts, I can tell by watching that Gerald and Geraldine didn't click. There was NO chemistry there, and in fact Gerald Gordon only seemed to have romantic chemistry with one woman on the show - Liz Hubbard. (Holly Peters, the final Cathy Ryker, is a member of the show's FB fan page and said that she had no problems whatsoever with him - but she was also in a serious relationship with the man who would become her husband at that time.) The on-screen pairing just seemed so forced, and knowing that they didn't get along in real life just makes it even more painful to watch.

 

After his first marriage broke up, the fan magazine articles always mentioned the various women who were in GG's life at that time and he admitted how much he liked to go out and party. Reading between the lines, it was pretty clear that he was a womanizer. The fact that the character of Nick had become pretty insufferable by then couldn't have helped any. Liz Hubbard has admitted that she was good friends with him, though, and stayed in touch with him until he passed on.

 

It's no surprise that Geri liked David O'Brien so much - I have never, ever heard a negative word spoken about him from any of the cast and crew members who post on the FB fan page...Carolee Campbell, Holly Peters, Marie Thomas-Foster (Lauri James), Eileen Kearney (Greta Powers), Thor Fields (Erich Aldrich), Mimi Cozzens (Nurse Mimi), Barbara Pitcher (Nurse Barbara), director Stan Zabka have all sung his praises. Even Alec Baldwin (the final Billy) wrote lovingly about him in his recently-published memoir.

 

What did Geri say about Jim Pritchett? It seemed that he was the patriarch of the show, whether or not the cameras were rolling. By all accounts, he was a happily married family man, so I don't think he would have tried any funny business with anyone.

[jam6242]

I've long suspected that Gerald Gordon was basically playing himself on TD. 

[amybrickwallace]

 

I don't doubt that, especially starting in 1969. That was the year his first marriage broke up. Coincidence? We'll never know for sure, but it does make sense.

[SoapDope]

I don't care for GG or his character Nick all that much. Now when watching the reruns, I tend to fast forward his scenes.

[amybrickwallace]

^ I really only find Nick tolerable in small doses, and when he's in scenes with people like Maggie, Martha, Toni or Hank.