Edge of Night (EON) (No spoilers please)

[Soaplovers]

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Looks like 77 more episodes from early 1981 will be uploaded soon...the Sharkey/Bryson clinic mystery...Nancy's last good story before she was marginalized by Slesar/Sheldon, and P & G.

[Joseph]

Late night thinking can bring sudden surprising realizations, Did anyone else remember that what would be Lois Kibbee's Centennary will be fairly soon????

[MissPalmer]

Wonderful! Amazing! 

[Joseph]

AMEN To That!

[Joseph]

Just for the Sake of Completing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYqj_AmlZiI

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[Joseph]

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And The Beginning of The Love Story is ON!!!

[Broderick]

The 1981 episodes will be fun to watch again after all these years.  But yeah, they're kinda sad -- no more real stories for Nancy after that, and NONE for Draper and April.  Draper leaves in an abrupt hurry as soon as the Bryson story is finished.

And things get sort of weird.  The person we believe is Schuyler is really Jefferson Brown  (a good story), and the person we believe is Gunther is really Bruno (utterly stupid), and then Valerie Bryson pops up and says she knew Jeff Brown when he was transforming into Schuyler Whitney but he told her his name is Jim Dedrickson, and there's a guy in the cast named Jim Diedrickson, but he's neither Jeff Brown NOR Schuyler Whitney but someone else entirely.  And there's a guy running around who says he's Carlo Crown, but he's really Collier Wells.  It all sorta became too many false names & identities. 

I'd like to see Henry Slesar's ORIGINAL plan for this time period, before Tony Craig left and before Larkin Malloy's popularity necessitated creating a "real" Schuyler Whitney.  (I believe in the original story projection Schuyler was dead as a hammer.)   

[danfling]

It is so interesting how our soap operas would change plans from the original intentions!  Did the show think that the actor who played Draper was going to stay only to be suprised at the actor's leaving the cast?

[RavenWhitney]

Also, Henry was on strike for 5 months in 1981 and the show was written (with his long term projection) by Laurie Durbrow and Lois Kibbee (as confirmed to me years later by Ernie Townsend who played Cliff).  While Laurie and Lois followed Henry's outline, Henry wasn't writing the show and execs were making changes and decisions; some stories were changed, some delayed or scrapped.  Henry's stories from 1981 to his 1983 firing definitely had their low points because (a) he was passed his prime even though at his worst he never stooped to the crap that Sheldon wrote or what followed in daytime on all the shows; and (b) we know ABC was involved in casting, story etc., and there was a ton of pressure to mirror GH because of Monty's success with that show during 80-82 (she ruined the soap industry in my opinion during the strike starting with the rape then producing Tom Racina's freeze the world book as a GH storyline during the writer strike).  There are many brilliant moments in the final Henry years. Buffy's character, the actress who played Nora, Raven and Sky, anything with Geraldine, Jody/Gavin, Ian/Camilla... Worth watching until the moment Lee Sheldon's stories aired. It was quickly downhill from there. And sad and painful to watch.

Edited June 15, 2022 by RavenWhitney

[Broderick]

Oh, there are some DEFINITE highlights.  I thoroughly enjoyed everything involving Catherine Bruno who played Nora Fulton.  She was AWFUL in the most entertaining way imaginable.  

I also enjoyed every aspect of the (initial) Jefferson Brown storyline.  When he first appeared and we thought he was Schuyler Whitney, he was charming, but he was also snotty and cold.  It was fun watching him deteriorate into an outright killer.  I'll always remember the chilling scene in the dance studio when "Gunther" (or the person we assumed was Gunther) pretended to be shot and mortally wounded by Gavin Wylie.  Gavin jumped and ran, leaving the bloodied "Gunther" on the studio floor.  "Gunther" and "Schuyler" were laughing about how successfully they'd frightened Gavin Wylie, but meanwhile "Schuyler" was putting on black gloves, wiping the fingerprints off the pistol, and it became crystal clear that he intended to murder "Gunther" in cold blood, to make Gavin appear guilty of Gunther's death.  I could barely believe what I was seeing.  Neither could "Gunther", lol.   

My understanding is that Jefferson Brown/Schuyler Whitney's reign of terror was intended to be a one-shot deal.  While "Schuyler" was attempting to murder Raven during the Switzerland remote, "Schuyler" was going to fall to his death, and during his final sequence, we were supposed to see how he'd killed the REAL Schuyler with a fatal fall in order to assume Schuyler's identity.  There was to be no more Larkin Malloy on the show after that scene.  But because Larkin Malloy had become so popular, the death scene understandably had to be rewritten to exclude the real Schuyler's death so that he could reappear later as the character who, in Slesar's original projection, was long-since dead.  Then the idea of the "real Gunther" joining the "real Schuyler" took shape, and in my opinion that was just too much.

I've never known what happened to Tony Craig (Draper).  Guess he just opted out.  But it seemed so sudden, considering that he and Terry Davis had become the most frequently seen characters on the canvas.   They'd driven the Margo Huntington story, the amnesia story, the Clown Puppet story, and then the Bryson story.  Then -- poof! -- Draper suddenly took a "crime commission position" in Europe and left the show in the middle of a random episode, never to be seen again.  With April following a few months later.  I found their exit a little hard to take, especially with Frances Fisher, Joe Lambie, and Jayne Bentzen leaving all in the same general time period, along with Forrest Compton and Ann Flood getting somewhat diminished roles. 

It suddenly seemed that we had a plethora of vague, MEANDERING scenes involving the Maskers acting troupe and various waitresses at Sid's Tavern and "hijinks" involving minor characters -- none of which ever really congealed into the type of carefully plotted "Big Umbrella Storylines" that we'd gotten accustomed to during Slesar's best years.  But yes, anything was better than Lee Sheldon.        

       

[DRW50]

What reason was given for Tony going? He didn't seem to do much post-Edge.

[TEdgeofNight]

Love seeing Doris Belack in the clips. She had just come off from The Doctors. Looking forward to seeing the 1981 episodes. 

Edited June 16, 2022 by TEdgeofNight

[Soaplovers]

According to an interview he gave in 2009, he was burned out and wanted out.  He did say the show offered him a 1 year contract plus options for tv movies, but he was feeling the burnout.

https://archive.triblive.com/news/ex-edge-of-night-soap-opera-star-craig-shines-at-pnc-park/

 

I'm going to say that Sky/Raven actually hurt the show since neither characters were involved in actual professions that were the hallmark of the show and they ate up airtime.

 

[DRW50]

Thanks. That makes a lot of sense. I did like Draper, and April, but he was very  overused.

[Broderick]

I re-watched all the available episodes from 1979 to 1980 a couple of years ago, and I observed the four most featured actors were April, Draper, Logan, and Deborah Saxon.  All four actors left in 1981.  

 

I was crazy about Sharon Gabet and Larkin Malloy, but I agree with you completely.   It caused a certain "fragmentation" in the storylines.  (Also, a lot of Sharon's best work was opposite Terry Davis, Tony Craig, Joe Lambie and Frances Fisher, who left.)