Paul Rauch hired by Y&R

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I love Bridget, but when the killed Maurren, they killed off the last real Reardon on the show. I don't count Matt, as he's never been too much of a main character IMO.

I too didn't know what else to do with her, and I didn't like when she was stuck between Hart and Dinah.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Honestly, Y&R's needed some excitement for a while now. And we're not getting it from Josh Griffith, Paul Rauch does excitement and can do it very well. Besides, I don't think he'll have the same leeway at Y&R as he did at AW in the 70's, OLTL in the 80's, and GL in the 90's. He has Sony, Bloom, and the Bell's, and the numerous other corporate idiots looking over his shoulder.

Rauch can produce a quality show, and Harding LaMay said than even though he could be a bully, if a writer stands firm and does what he/she wants to do, Rauch will let that writer do whatever he/she wants to do. A lot of the problems with Rauch's shows post-LeMay was the writing.

[Mitch]

Bridget could have been a recurring kind of Aunt Ruby character. They could have shown her at the bar, providing exposition, she could have been a friend of Cassie's at the time and could have helped her fight Dinah. She also coulda/shoulda been there for Michelle, as her big sister figure. They wouldnt have had to have her on contract and we could have had the connection...(and Peter Reardon on canvas.)

Its kind of like Frank Cooper. I dont care about the character or the actor, but its nice he is still around. I just dont get why he has a contract.

It wouldnt have worked with the actress, but I kinda would have liked Bridget and Rick to get together and form a younger core couple. Kinda of weird with the family connection but considering what GL has done since then.

[jenniferkate]

First off, thanks to Y&R world viewer for setting me straight on the AW history! I corrected it in the blog.

As for Marj Dusay/Melissa Hayden. Marj was told she was fired-she took it very well (it was after she lost her son to AIDS, so losing a job was nothing) Melissa I believed was fired, but they could've done a lot with storyline wise as Mitch said.

[SteveFrame]

The person above is right Lemay is the one who wanted Dwyer, Reinholt and Courtney gone. Rauch wanted to keep Lemay happy and he gave in.

Lemay did not get along with Reinholt at all as they disagreed about story all the time. Reinholt esp. argued as Nixon had written Steve Frame as an only child with no family and that had even been mentioned - suddenly Lemay invented a big family for Steve - patterned after Lemay's own family. Reinholt was way too passionate about things but he had the right ideas. He cared about the writing. He cared about the way soaps were preceived as being second class TV. He cared about the way soap actors were degraded. He cared about the fact that soap actors worked more hours for the money but got paid a lot less than their primetime counterparts. He just got too passionate about it and his passion caused him to lose his job on both AW and OLTL. And it caused no one to want to really work with him again.

The firings of Courtney & Dwyer by Lemay were more petty than anything for me.

Lemay liked stage actors. Courtney & Dwyer had been trained in the soaps and that is how they acted - his words and not mine. He felt they were too soapy. both were fine actresses. Both were beloved by fans as well, but he wanted to upgrade the acting on the show.

Rauch gave in as he liked Lemay and they worked well together. He gave Lemay pretty much anything he wanted. P&G did too except for making Michael Randolph gay - that one P&G vetoed. Rauch and Lemay both wanted that one but P&G would not allow it.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

It's funny how Rauch's full first year on GL was hailed by critics and the magazines, here's a CBS promo from 1997 where they mentioned both TV Guide and SOD crowning GL the best soap of 1997.

LOL! At the middle clip of Annie throwing herself down the stairs, I wish that was on youtube too.

[David V]

Courtney returned to Another World in 1984, though I think Rauch had departed by then but Richard Culliton was in his first stint as HW. It was around this time that AW was recovering, helped by the Sally/Catlin pairing.

[aMLCproduction]

I don't think Y&R and team knows what it wants to do. Too many cooks spoil the broth. Y&R is really good right now. All these changes, from a show that is known for it's consistency. I'll wait to see what happens. Though I do know PR's work and it is good for the most part

[vetsoapfan]

"Not trying to be an ass, but I found some things wrong with your article...Actually, Rauch had no choice but to fire Reinholdt, it was Harding LeMay and Reinholdt that were feuding, not Rauch and Reinholdt. LeMay and Reinholdt had gotten into numerous arguments over the direction of the Steve character during that time period, and LeMay had had it with Reinholdt's attitude and decided to kill Steve off. "

Actually, may I respectfully correct your correction?

While it's true that George Reinholt had open contempt for the written material he was given (a fact which vexed the haughty Harding Lemay), it was indeed Paul Rauch who made the final decision to fire the actor. In his book, EIGHT YEARS IN ANOTHER WORLD, and in magazine interviews from the time (I have scores upon scores of daytime TV publications from the 1970s), Lemay remarked that he would have continued writing for Reinholt (whose popularity was beyond question), except for Paul Rauch's insistence that that he be fired. With that in mind, Lemay sat down with Rauch and planned Steven Frame's elimination from the story.

Ironically, in his letter of dismissal to George Reinholt (yes, I have a copy of that), Rauch refers to a possible return to the show at a later time; a curious subject to bring up, if Reinholt were indeed that difficult to work with.) Other actors, such as John Considine (Vic Hastings), who worked with Reinholt, acknowledged in print that they never saw the allegedly dreadful behavior Rauch used as an excuse to let Reinholt go.

As for the firing of Jacqueline Courtney, who played the show's central heroine Alice Matthews Frame, it's true Lemay deemed her acting to be too soap opera-ish. Paul Rauch had a meeting with the actress, and outlined a storyline for her which went against the grain of the character, and which made no sense. When Courtney pointed that out, Rauch simply waited until she went on vacation, and then let her know she had been fired. Very, very tacky.

Virginia Dwyer, who played Alice's mother Mary Matthews, the matriarch of the show, was criticized by both Lemay and Rauch for re-writing her dialogue to keep her character consistent with how the role had always been written. Lemay had a vision of Mary Matthews as an unpleasantly domineering, almost shrew-like person, who was unnaturally involved with her children's lives. Dwyer would routinely alter her scripts to have them jive with the on-screen relationships already established, which made both Lemay and Rauch furious. In his book, Lemay tells an absurd story about having lunch with Dwyer, and feigns being able to read her mind about all sorts of things, including why she sat in a particular chair. It was clear he had in out for her. While he railed against her changing dialogue to preserve the integrity of her character, he praised to the hills other actors like Constance Ford (Ada) and Victoria Wyndham (Rachel), who did the same thing. Of course, those were people whom he liked.

In an article from AFTERNOON TV, called "I Told MY Daughter, 'I Will Not Die For Them'!", Dwyer tells of Lemay's inability to write for warm, nurturing matriarch-type characters, whom he didn't think really existed, and about the backstage manipulations that had led to Mary Matthews' death. She said that she was satisfied in the knowledge that at the very end, Mary had been seen as just such a person.

1975 was a very dark period at ANOTHER WORLD, and the decimation of the main families would weaken the show's foundation to the point where, a few years later, when Lemay left and other, talent-free writers took over, there was very little at its core to help keep it running.

[Sylph]

I disagree that it was only Lemay who fired Reinholt, it was Rauch's decision, too. And if everything he did on stage is true and all those petty things he said for various TV magazines, then the decision to fire him was the right one. His acting talents were also very, very specific and his constant changes of dialogue... That also contributed to his firing.

Here's a quote from Lemay about soap opera actors:

At our story conferences, only Paul, who, like me, had trained as an actor in the Neighboorhood Playhouse, shared my disdain for the typical soap opera actor. ... They often attended major casting sessions, disagreeing with Paul's choices and mine, and Paul spent his considerable powers of persuasion convincing them we knew which actors were best for forthcoming roles.

EDIT: Oh, look, a lot of what I wanted to add vetsoapfan wrote first!

[Toups]

Woah! That's juicy stuff! If there was the internet back then, Lemay/Rauch would be so hated.

[Sylph]

OK, maybe, whatever... But Harding is probably the most fondly remembered HW ever. Together with Bill, Agnes etc.

And Rauch got a certain reputation very early on.

[SteveFrame]

Not by all of us.

For the same reason that I disregard Rauch I disregard Harding.

Harding was no more innocent in all that stuff than Rauch was. For some reason Harding is just forgiven. I think people decided they needed a villian in the piece and for some reason made Rauch the villian when Harding was just as guilty.

They both thought just a like. It was Harding who wanted to disregard AW history - wanting to change the fact that Steve Frame was by history an only child, to change Mary Matthews into what he changed Liz Matthews into, he tore the Matthews family apart, changed Liz Matthews from a woman to be reckoned with into just a meddlesome old aunt - he ripped AW at it's core.

Although I think Harding Lemay is a great writer - those are things that I never have forgiven him for. People on the Internet especially blame Jill Farren Phelps and Margaret DePriest for AW's cancellatin - no two people are more to blame for AW's cancellation than Harding Lemay and Paul Rauch are.

Harding Lemay did more damage to a core family on a show than even the writers did to the Bauer family on The Guiding Light. Yet he is forgiven.

I give him his due that he is a good writer, but he did not think at all at what he was doing to the show in the long term. The thing that separates him from Agnes Nixon and William J. Bell is that they thought in the long term - Harding Lemay was no better than many of the writers today who think in the current and what will bring ratings up now - forget what it does to the core and the heart of the show.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

WOW! Thank you so much for all of this background information!

[Khan]

On this point, SteveFrame, we agree: disregarding the fact that Steve was an only child was wrong. I understand why Harding Lemay needed to introduce the Frames (with them on the canvas, you have a lower-class family struggling to enter "another world" financially and socially); IMO, however, it would've been just as effective if Vince, Willis, Sharlene, et al had been Steve's cousins rather than his siblings.