Paul Rauch hired by Y&R

[Vee]

The lighting at his GL was like the whole production design was being done by eight-year-old girls. Bright! Shiny! Pastels! It was a gaudy, bouffant hairdo, teased, buffed, cheap cocktail dress/matronly power suit, fake tan, fake nails, big-titted nightmare.

[Kubla Khan]

Paul Rauch is a nightmare. That's all.

[MTSRocks]

I heard he was hired as creative consultant?

[FrenchFan]

I only remember the way he fired Lillian Hayman on OLTL. She was said that it was her last day on the show in the parking lot after shooting. What a way to deal with an original cast member. I hate Rauch. I don't want this big ego near Y&R.

[David V]

Paul Rauch's tenure in charge of Another World- 12 years (1972-84) was the longest in the show's history, the second longest being Michael Laibson (1988-93)- the post-Rauch turnover of EPs and HWs is often considered to have held the show back.

As all have noted, his period in charge of AW was for most part brilliant, during the years Harding Lemay wrote the show. Lemay avoided "soap cliches" in writing, and went into depth in exploring character motivations, which are things today's writers could learn a lot from. Even after the departures of Reinholt and Courtney, they did a good job of keeping the show at or near the top of the ratings until 1978 when they started to slip. Lemay left the show in 1979, the year AW expanded to 90 minutes. The storylines were still good at the time, but IIRC some of the dialogue and "stretching scenes" were let-downs during the 90-minute phase. Rauch was still EP at the time, and remained so even when the show's ratings were pulled down by the catastrophic collapse of NBCD in 1980. It was there that the dizzying turnover of HWs had began. Towards the end of Rauch's period as EP, however, things began to pick up and by 1983-84 (helped by Days' own resurgence at the time) AW recovered some of its lost ground.

His tenure on One Life To Life was noted for some strange storylines (proving that some JER's wacky ideas were not new and not original- even the "Possession" storyline was something that aped Another Life), but it was also a period where OLTL got consistently strong ratings and in the years 1986-88 they were very close to the top, even going top for a few weeks IIRC.

His period in charge of Santa Barbara came next, by which time the show was sadly on its deathbed. IIRC, a number of big name actors came to the show in a bid to garner attention.

And most recently Guiding Light. The show had a lot of damage done to it in the post-JFP period, with quality and ratings having sunk, leading to sweeping changes at P&G that saw MADD take over. Rauch became EP, Brown and Esensten became joint HWs. One of the highlights of the show was the astonishing performances of Cynthia Watros, which led to a richly deserved Emmy in 1998. However, this period also saw the departure of Michael Zaslow, which remains one of the most disgusting things to have ever happened in Daytime. The recast Roger, Dennis Parlato, has gone on record saying he would never have accepted the role if he was aware of what had happened. (In any case, MADD appears to take most of the blame for what happened). During 1998, however, the clone storyline resulted in a ratings spike that saw GL climb above AMC and OLTL for the first time in many years. Those ratings gains however were withered away after Santos and San Cristobel.

So I'm not sure what to make of Rauch. His success at AW is beyond doubt during the Lemay years, but also consider the mess of his later years in charge which the show didn't extract itself from until his final year. At OLTL there were far out storylines but strong ratings which suggests he was with the right show at the right time- after all, OLTL's ratings success in those years were largely built off the success of GH and AMC. Not much could be said about SB because of the state of decay on the show. Whilst at GL it was very up and down at a time when the overall decline of the soap genre really began.

[EricMontreal22]

Lemay hasn't had much more success since his AW era than Rauch though--the last time I know he consulted was for OLL under JFP's EP era (especially when there was a year with no HW listed)--hardly a golden era for that soap.

[EricMontreal22]

I read a quote by him where he actually said something like he pays a ton for the sets so wants every aspect of them to be seen lol

[EricMontreal22]

Well it wasn't I'm just saying

Rauch at OLTL was partly responsible for the show becoming more and more about the rich and the rich--as I think even Erika SLezak mentioned (how the show was now about the rich and white)

[LondonScribe]

Pray for an end to a drought and you'll get rain, or you could get a flood, wiping everything out (good and bad)...

[Sylph]

But can you guarantee that those stories were penned by Harding Lemay? He was just consulting.

If someone confirms that all those stories came from him, I will accept your judgment.

[EricMontreal22]

Well no, I actually think JFP came up with most of them, cuz when she finally hired Megan McT as HW the story tone hardly changed at all (and I suspect that that's partly cuz JFP was dictating them--McT seems to love to follow out orders) But Lemay had a LOT of positive stuff to say about the show and JFP that I felt was all wrong (similarly he said The City was an unworkable concept and awful--when during its last months I thought it was the best thing on ABCDaytime), EVen in th e80s his brief return to AW and his period at Doctors hardly made any impact... If we're looking in terms of legacy and ratings Rauch prob has had more recent success than anything Lemay was involved in.

[Sylph]

He was right about The City - it was unbelievable pure awfulness that I liked to watch. I'm afraid this topic has turned into a marry-go-round: honestly, I think his time passed when he left AW the first time. And the other stuff he did can't hardly be seen as true tenures/stints given their duration and all surrounding them.

[Greg's GL]

For the most part, I think Rauch was pretty good as EP at GL, other than what others have said about the lighting. The bad things that stand out were his treatment of the stars - MZ for one. The other one was Maeve Kinkaid. It was at this time that she was tired of dying her hair and wanted to start going gray on screen. From what I've heard, PR was completely against this and that's what ultimately lead to MK leaving the show at the end of the 90s.

[EricMontreal22]

The City was unbelievable pure awfulness? By soap standards? We watched different shows

But I agree with your later comment for sure--I just like bringing up how bad a consultant I thought he was ;)I didn't realize it bugged you so much

[Sylph]

The show was terrible. But I liked it!