BUFFALO COURIER-EXPRESS, Saturday, March 1, 1980 [TV Page)
'Children' Plays Up Daisy's Appearance by Jon Michael Reed
The All My Children audience could smell the plot herring a mile away, or at least months ago when ruthless tycoon Palmer Cortlandt began raging and flying off the handle at the mere mention of his "deceased" The scent grew stronger when Palmer's daughter Nina and her beloved beau, Cliff, began questioning the circumstances of Daisy's death. Then Myra, the mysteriously domineering Cortlandt housekeeper, arranged a seance so Nina could "speak"" to her mother's spirit. By this time, the smell was positively overwhelming. The rotted herring, or, rather, the rotted corpse of Daisy Cortlandt was revealed not to be a corpse at all. She's very much alive, secretly quartered in Myra's servant bedroom.
DAISY, of course, is Myra's prodigal daughter, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who married, then ran away with a lover from Palmer and her infant daughter. All these years, she's been paid through Palmer's hefty bank account to play dead. And when should Daisy make her long-awaited "appear- ance" but at Nina's 19th birthday party, which was a masked ' ball extravaganza the likes of which haven't been seen in soap annals.
THE BALL, incidentally, was taped on location at a bona-fide Victorian mansion with long, dark, threatening corridors and involved a. full orchestra, nearly a hundred extras, and virtually every "AMC" character bedecked in dazzling array. Although one would have thought that this type of Gothic mystery plot had been washed . out of soap opera linen by now, it has attracted a huge and deliriously "glued" audience. In the hands of a soap-writing veteran like "AMC's" Agnes Nixon, this old-turkey plot has turned out to be a surprisingly young and juciily appealing one. Add a dash of old fashioned, pure and innocent romance between Nina and Cliff, and the old as-the-soap-opera hills recipe has turned out to be a gourmet treat.
BUT THE MOST savory ingredient in the whole stew is the casting of, actress Gillian Spencer as Daisy. Gillian is no stranger to soap operas. For the past few years she's been a dialogue writer for "As the World Turns" and briefly for "Guiding Light." Prior to that, she was in front of the "ATWT" cameras as Jennifer Hughes, Dr. Bob's late and lamented wife. And even earlier she portrayed Vicki Lord Riley on "One Life to Live" before Erika Slezak inherited the role. In her previous soap incarnations, Gillian was a gentle, delicate-as-a-flower heroine, although she received "training" for Daisy when she played Nikki, Vicki's "trampy" splitpersonality on "OLTL" for a spell. This time out, as Daisy, Gillian has an even greater opportunity to project a wdrnan with a "'trollopy' past and a devilishly naughty nature, She's playing it to the hilt and "AMC" couldn't have made a finer choice. Welcome back, darling Jill.
By
Paul Raven ·
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