Bill Bell's DOOL: 1966-1973

[Sylph]

Has anyone here been a regular viewer during Bill's HW stint from 1966 until 1973? I've heard a lot of praise, but I would like to know the specifics directly from people who watched it!

Or from those who read about the period!

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I would like to know more about his legal dispute with Betty Corday, which led to him writing storyline projections on DAYS two years or so after Y&R had already started. It also gave Betty Corday a consulting credit on Y&R, which she kept until her death.

[Sylph]

And gave her a percentage of ownership in Y&R.

[EricMontreal22]

It was on Days that he started his obsession with incest

[SteveFrame]

Bill Bell's Days followed by Pat Falken Smith's first stint and then Ann Marcus' stint to me were the best eras of Days.

due in part to a shorter time slot, stories sort of lasted a while with shorter arcs in there.

The Bill/Laura/Mickey triangle last 8 to 10 years with many different obstacles thrown in there finally emerging with 2 great couples Bill/Laura and Mickey/Maggie.

Julie was a young b*itch transformed into a heroine when she found love with Doug. IT took them 6 years to finally make it to the altar and then they weren't happy long before Doug fathered the child by invitro with Rebecca and then Julie got raped. then she got burned and turned away from everyone. Doug got remarried. A lot of that of course happened after Bell left.

Then of course the other big stories of his tenrue were Marie falling in love with her brother who had gotten a new face and had no memory of his previous life. This was his only endeavor with incest while there.

But he did set the precedent for Days heroines to always be raped. While he was there he had both of Days central heroines raped: Laura by Bill and Susan by her brother-in-law, Eric. Then of course later writers had Julie raped followed by Marlena and so forth.

One thing that characterized Bell's Days for the most part was slow building stories with big climaxes. The Hortons were central but not the only characters. There were lots of other families: the Andersons, the Grants, the Peters, the Hunters. And then many other lone characters thrown in like Don Craig, David Martin, and Doug Williams.

He for the most part centered his stories around 3 females: Laura Spencer Horton, Susan Hunter Martin Peters, and Julie Olson.

Minor females who got a lot too were Addie Horton Olson, Amanda Howard, Maggie Simmons, Marie Horton (in the 60's), Marlena Evans (in the latter part of his tenure), Linda Anderson, Phyllis Anderson, Brooke Hamilton, & Mary Anderson.

Some would say it was also couple oriented but I think more female oriented is appropriate. The main couples were David & Susan; Bill & Laura, & Doug & Julie but they were not the only couples either.

In the latter part of his tenure he also introduced one of the first black families to daytime: the Grants when David Banning was taken in by the family. Other shows had featured black characters but not really black families at that point.

Of course David & Valerie were the first black/white couple in daytime too.

Despite most of his tenure being 30 minutes, he was able to cover a lot of characters and keep them all interesting and unique. No one ever dominated the story. And it was very family oriented too.

[Gray Bunny]

From a viewer standpoint, how believable or unbelievable was it that in 1965 Julie Olson was a teenager and by the mid-70's, she was the mother of a son in his 20's? Reading up on the history, it just seems awkward that Julie wasn't even old enough to drive in 1965 and by the early 80's she was already a grandmother!

[DaysFanatic777]

Bill Bell helped solidify the REAL "Days of Our Lives". This show was the best Daytime Drama on the air during those years (AW was great too, and ATWT's was a desereving 3rd). Bell was female centric, which was a smart idea since the majority of the audience during the Days was female, but as a male, I didn't feel lost. I could identify with Doug, a former convict with a sketchy past, that would do anything for money. He knew how to build compex, intersting characters, and tie them into the family structure of the show. He was also GREAT at redeeming characters.

For Example : Julie....I'll be honest, I didn't like her. she was a B*tch, and didn't deserve love, BUT...when Doug married Addie after a misunderstanding about David....I had to feel for Julie. I mean who thinks they are going to elope one day, and finds out your potential spouse married your mother the next. It redeemed Julie instantly. I have never rooted for a couple before the way I rooted for Doug and Julie.

I'll put it this way...Bill Bell got the Corday's vision for this show and made it a reality. He made Days a golden show, witrh complex and character driven story arcs that would go on forever, and yet not bore the public. Every scene stood for something, and moved the story, even if the story lasted almost a decade. Bell proved himself with "Days". He got his own show he did so well.

Bell's influence was erased by 1980 or so, and the show became a Brady centric drama, and lost it's class. Days went from an industry trend-setter, to a GH ripoff. It was fun to watch in the 80's, but it wasn't "Days" anymore.

[koos]

Days might've turned into a GH ripoff, but at least they didn't go full-force with the sci-fi crap until the '90s.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Pat Falken Smith seemed to keep a lot of Bell's techniques and storylines going during her first DAYS stint. However, when Smith defected to GH, it seemed like her vision got too corrupted with Gloria Monty's ideas. Smith would later bring A LOT of what Monty forced on her on GH to DAYS. Not to mention, DAYS and GH seemed have a lot of the same writers in common in the 80's.

I think it's also fair to say that Bell would go on to recycle many of his DAYS stories on early Y&R, he just did things a bit differently and had more control, as it was his own show.

I wonder what his relationship with Betty Corday was like after their legal disputes.

[Sedrick]

Bell's stint at DAYS can arguably be credited with creating the more contemporary, edgy, and sophisticated storytelling that soon came to define the golden era of daytime drama...

Bell had been co-writing WORLD TURNS for years when in 1966 Betty Corday turned to him to help save her late husband's floundering creation. Apparently Bell's creativity must have been suffering mightily at the ultra-conservative WORLD TURNS, because as soon as he was running his own show with DAYS, his mind unleashed a flurry of controversial tales that placed a heavy emphasis on sexual matters--and that was extremely shocking for the mid-60's!

Bell took what had been a slow-moving, somewhat pale and colorless program, in some ways an attempt by NBC to have their own WORLD TURNS just without the drama and rich characterizations (in its first year DAYS played more like a daytime version of THE WALTONS) and immediately turned the show into a production that clearly stood out from the rest of the daytime pack. His DAYS was a sneak peek at what he would ultimately create in 1973 with Y&R...slow-moving yet powerfully well-written interlocking stories dealing with sexual and psychiatric themes in which social controversy was mixed in with swirling tales of romance and suspense, all presented in a rapturous production featuring beautiful people who often burst into song.

From what I understand of the situation in 1973, Bell struck the deal with CBS for Y&R fairly suddenly, and he was still under contract to Corday Productions. By this time Bell had become one of two superstar writers (Agnes Nixon being the other) who had done what no one else had: taken over a failing show and led it to the top of the ratings in little or no time. He had single-handedly saved DAYS from cancellation and turned the show into a formidable competitor for the top spot in the ratings. Betty Corday wasn't about to let her ship go without its captain...but at the last minute a deal was worked out that gave Corday Productions a share of the ownership of Y&R (the company's name remains to this day in the show's credits), and Bell fulfilled the remaining two years on his DAYS contract by providing the long-term story to new headwriter Pat Falken-Smith.

In fact the Bell/Corday battle was nothing compared to the battles the Cordays and NBC would have with Falken-Smith in the late 70's!

[DaytimeFan]

I can't speak to Betty Corday's relationship with the Bells...but Ken Corday is a very close friend of the Bell family and wrote a long piece about Bill Bell in one of the commemorative DAYS books published in the '90s that was VERY flattering.

My suspicion is that the Bells and Cordays didn't really fight, rather, it was the Cordays and Sony (then Screen Gems or Columbia Tristar) that had it out which is why the Corday's got a piece of the action at Y&R. DAYS and Y&R are both produced via Sony.

[MarkH]

Ok, now please continue this chapter of the story!

[Sylph]

OK, you can have your post.

But - this topic had a concealed purpose, sort of - it was supposed to be about Bill Bell's masterful storytelling technique. And thanks to SteveFrame, DaysFanatic777 and Sedrick!

I would read such posts for hours and hours...

[Cat]

So could I!

Sedrick's post (which literally gave me shivers) makes me wish they would either retransmit Bill Bell's Days' episodes... or that they would take the scripts he wrote and do a "new" soap around them. I read an interview with WJB once, he said he wanted to get the early scripts from Y&R and have actors redo them.

[Sylph]

Sedrick's posts are one of the best on SON - detailed, researched, thought-through and very well written. A joy to read.