The Doctors

[amybrickwallace]

We're rapidly approaching the end of Gerald Gordon's 8+ year run as Dr. Nick Bellini, as he left in December 1974. He returned briefly in 1976 before leaving TD for good.

[DRW50]

It's good to see you here again @amybrickwallace. I always have things I want to post or upload that you can see and then I forget by the time you return. I hope you got to see some of the Search uploads a few months ago, like the live episode and backstage footage. 

[amybrickwallace]

 

Thank you, Carl. I'd love to see them. I'm glad to be posting here again; things have been hectic. Keep me posted on the new uploads. Thanks again!!

[DRW50]

 

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[amybrickwallace]

 

Carl, would you please repost this article? It was about Maggie. Thanks!

[amybrickwallace]

Marie Thomas (Nurse Lauri James Iverson) was in a November 1998 episode of ATWT, as Emily's gynecologist. She comes in around the 29:40 mark:

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RxNzUkTywlU

 

Edited November 3, 2017 by amybrickwallace

[Paul Raven]

New York Times Oct 11 1972

A Chic Model of the 40's Now Plays ‘One of the Nastiest Ladies That's Ever Been’

To the soap opera fans who settle down to N.B.C.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 1940's, 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 no 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 shook so, be 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.”

More Artifices Now

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 teen‐agers, 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.”

Child of the Stage

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 1800's 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]

That's a great interview. It sounds like there was a lot of Meg in Mona (minus the evilness), from the cosmopolitan lifestyle and multiple marriages. We've seen her first run on the show on Retro TV, and she was indeed very convincing as the evil mother-in-law. 

[Soaplovers]

Now that the reruns are into November 1974, I noticed that the filming is different then it previously was.  It seems clearer and the colors are more vivid, and it shows how colorless the sets kind of were so I can imagine that changes to the sets will be coming soon to show more color/personality.

 

With that said, I don't get the appeal of the Alan character. and what either Margo or Toni see in him.  Both women can do so much better then him.  I wish Toni had stuck to her guns in regards to Alan instead of just accepting his proposal.

 

And Nick is leaving soon?  I hope so because he is an example of a character that worked back in the 60s/early 70s.. but would so not work in the modern day world.. he wouldn't be allowed to practice medicine with his attitude and general sexual harassment interaction between him and any of the female characters.  Why Althea is in love with him, I'll never understand.  Ann/Nick don't work as a couple, but I hope the reruns continue to see the transformation of Ann's character in late 1975/early 1976.

[amybrickwallace]

I couldn't have said all that better myself. I too am looking forward to TD without Nick...I read that his last airdate is December 31, 1974 (not counting his short-term return in 1976). Alan is so self-righteous...but the joke will be on him once it is revealed that Mike is still alive after all!!

[Dave_01]

The great Rita Lakin discusses taking the job as TD's writer:

 

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[amybrickwallace]

Too bad she didn’t stay. The show was magical under her pen.

[amybrickwallace]

The son of a TD alum has come forward against Kevin Spacey. Jeramie Rain, who played Nurse Samantha Toliver from 1972 until around 1976, and her ex-husband, Richard Dreyfuss, are the parents of Harry Dreyfuss, who just shared his story:

 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/harrydreyfuss2/actor-harry-dreyfuss-when-i-was-18-kevin-spacey-groped-me?utm_term=.ihYORGOVq#.cw08k98Mo

[Khan]

 

Agree.  I tried to watch some of the Pollocks' stuff, but I had to bail out.  Maggie's story (with her growing suspicions that she was losing her sanity) bordered on insulting; and it was exasperating me how characters like Althea, who was still in the middle of that tiresome mess with John Morrison, had to behave like a total idiot to keep the plot from coming undone.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Khan

[amybrickwallace]

That "murder mystery" was a total snooze. Patrick Horgan deserved better.