The Doctors

[DRW50]

I didn't know any of that -- fascinating! So did he leave ATWT or was he fired? I wonder if they still write now.

[Bright Eyes]

Doesn't David write for Days of our Lives now? I know he was hired recently (past couple years).

Edited August 16, 2010 by Amello

[Khan]

Yes, David Cherrill still write for DAYS. Supposedly, he went into retirement after leaving OLTL's writing staff, but Gary Tomlin, w/ whom Cherrill worked on OLTL, ANOTHER WORLD and (I think) SEARCH FOR TOMORROW, coaxed him back.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

So, no comments Elizabeth Levin & David Cherrill era of the show?

[DRW50]

saynotoursoap usually replies eventually, so hopefully they'll have some good comments.

[DRW50]

From the 9/77 SOD. SOD Publishing Inc.

Edited November 22, 2010 by CarlD2

[Paul Raven]

Thankyou again Carlfor all of this stuff you are sharing with us in the various posts.

To answer my earlier question about actor Anthony Cannon and his character of Tom Barrett,he was involved with Althea. He might have been a victim of writer changes as Althea was next matched up with Scott Conrad.

When Gerald Gordon returned in 77,did he usher Althea out of the show?

[FrenchFan]

No, Liz Hubbard left in July 1977 when Althea moved to Japan with Penny and Jerry. She would come back on early February 1981 after Penny had died.

Gordon had left "The Doctors" in July 1976 when Althea and Nick couldn't agree about having babies or not. In August, he joined the cast of "General Hospital" as Dr. Mark Dante until July 1978. Gordon did not come back to "The Doctors" in 1977.

[Paul Raven]

Thanks for that, i am getting my dates confused.

I wonder why they killed off Penny?She could have been recast and been a major player, or kept offscreen until needed. Althea had already lost her son Buddy. i wonder if this was mentioned at the time of Penny's death.

[DRW50]

I guess they thought there wasn't any purpose for Penny since the show had moved on with the Dancys or other new characters, but it does seem like a waste.

Thanks for reading and commenting on the stuff I post, Paul Raven. I have a Lydia Bruce interview I'll post in a few minutes.

[DRW50]

From the July 77 SOD. S. O. D. Publishing Inc.

Edited November 22, 2010 by CarlD2

[DRW50]

From the March 16 82 SOD, a party for the show. Network Publishing Co

Edited November 22, 2010 by CarlD2

[saynotoursoap]

I thought the eras of Linda Grover and Levin/Cherrill were excellent. To be honest I never thought that Doug Marland's writing style really suited The Doctors. Doug's best stories were always about large families and communities, and The Doctors was not about either of those. The Doctors always centered around a few core characters and Hope Memorial. Grover took Billy Aldrich and Greta Powers' forbidden teen love affair to create the unwanted pregnancy story. The story was excellent and worked so well because it drove an enormous wedge between Matt and Maggie and Steve and Carolee, who had always been good friends. As a subplot, it created discord in the Aldrich marriage because Steve and Carolee disagreed about Billy's responsibility in the matter, as well as Mona Croft's interference. Grover used that in a good medical story, with Doreen Aldrich convinced she had terminal leukemia. Doreen went off the deep end, deciding she her last days could only be happy with Steve. She kidnapped Carolee and held her captive in a grimy warehouse. This led to the story of Carolee being raped by Doreen's accomplice Mel, which triggered another source of conflict in the Aldrich, while bring the Powers and Aldrich back together. Of course Doreen's story had a twist ending in that she was not really dying at all.

Levin and Cherrill kept the same tone as Grover, so the transition between regimes was not jarring at all. I thought Levin and Cherrill balanced the series well. They wrote the sad story of Sara Dancy's terminal illness. They gave Nola a bit of comedy to play with her spacey nursemaid Mildred. The scenes in the Croft mansion with Nola and Mildred were reminiscent of Iris and Vivian on Another World. Levin and Cherrill also attempted to add diversity to the series. After Palmer Deane was written out in the mid-70's, The Doctors became a very white-bred soap. A number of African American characters started to turn up in 1979, and after Levin/Cherrill left, those characters were quickly dropped. Levin is playwright, so the dialogue was particularly sharp and resonated with emotion and subtext.

The problem with The Doctors was that it was inevitably compared to General Hospital, and vice versa. The two shows seemed to always compete in the ratings, with one being popular and the other not so. The two switched places back and forth in popularity over the years. At the time GH went into its zenith on ABC, I think NBC and Colgate-Palmolive felt pressure to compete with GH. Even during the late 70's, The Doctors always had respectable, if mediocre ratings. It held most of its lead-in audience from Days of Our Lives, but that was not enough for NBC. To me The Doctors was always a "small soap". I compare it to Ryan's Hope. I don't think The Doctors ever would have become a major hit for NBC on the same level as what GH did at ABC. Even though they both centered around hospitals, they were very different programs, with a different tone and focus.

NBC was notorious for making bad decisions. They had thrown away one good soap after another in an attempt to be #1, and typically the moderately rated soaps ended up being replaced with ones that were much less successful.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Thanks for the reply, saynotoursoap!

It's interesting that the show wasn't a community based soap in the traditional sense, I can see why, this really made it stand out amongst most of the soaps at the time.

[DRW50]

Petronia Paley's character was one of those introduced around 77 or 78, right? Did she ever do anything? I know Petronia was cast on AW a few years later.

Do you think any of the stories like the one about Carolee's kidnapping and rape might have been too much for viewers?

What seems impressive about the non-traditional soaps back then is they still knew how to write in the soap format. There was none of the "look at how different I am, screw you viewers" you get today.