I recall reading that awesome article about Dennis Parker that JSwift posted above. What was most interesting to me was that Parker and Joey Alan Phipps (the original Kelly McGrath) had been lovers and Parker helped Phipps get the role of Kelly.

 

One charming story about Ruth Levine from TV Guide 2/23/1980

In case you missed it, here is a recap of what has happened lately to the 
real-life men and women who labor on ABC’s soap opera The Edge of Night... 

Henry, the soap-opera writer who secretly wants to do mysteries, dreamed 
up a new character named Nola, an aging movie star who drinks too much 
and has a messed-up love life. Nick, Henry’s boss, loved the idea but couldn’t 
find the right actress for the part. Meanwhile, Ruth, the casting director— 
unaware of the new character Henry had created—went to a cocktail party 
where she met Kim, a famous actress with some 40 years’ experience on 
stage, screen and television. The next day, when Nick told Ruth that Henry 
needed someone to play Nola, Ruth immediately thought of Kim! At first 
Kim said no, but eventually she agreed to play not one but three parts: Nola, 
the aging actress; Hester, a witch; and Mrs. Cory, a woman who drugs her 
neighbors! 

Ruth is Ruth Levine, the casting director who quite accidentally met Kim 
at that cocktail party last spring. And Kim, believe it or not, is Kim Hunter, 
who won an Academy Award in 1952 as Stella Kowalski in “A Streetcar 
Named Desire” and went on to a long and illustrious acting career without 
ever watching a soap opera, let alone appearing in one. 

 

Edited October 2, 20214 yr by j swift

^ How cool is that? What a great story.

Variety reported that in early 1965 CBS was pondering moving Edge of Night to primetime but putting plans on hold to see how Peyton Place on ABC held up.

The upshot was instead they went with the ATWT spinoff Our Private World.

Wonder how the EON run would have worked out? Would it be a spinoff of some sort as I can't see them dropping Edge in the daytime.

27 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

Variety reported that in early 1965 CBS was pondering moving Edge of Night to primetime but putting plans on hold to see how Peyton Place on ABC held up.

The upshot was instead they went with the ATWT spinoff Our Private World.

Wonder how the EON run would have worked out? Would it be a spinoff of some sort as I can't see them dropping Edge in the daytime.

EDGE in primetime could have been interesting, but it might have been redundant with Perry Mason still on the air then - and on the same network, CBS.

Actor Patrick Horgan (Ansel Scott) passed away this morning.

Actor Patrick Horgan (Ansel Scott) passed away this morning.

His wife shared the following on Facebook:

This morning in the wee hours, John Patrick Finnbar Horgan left this world. His death from heart failure was peaceful. This was his favorite picture of one of the happiest times of his life as he sat in the garden of a house we rented in Ireland, holding a can of Harp beer in his hand, watching James and his cousin Olivia at the ages of 4 and 5 cavort in the stream that ran below. He lived the life he wanted right up to the end and was spared much suffering for which I am so grateful. He will be missed by many but his legacy will live on in a website that his sons James and Christopher will get up and running soon. On the website will be a recording of his reading of Finnegans Wake, one of the crowning achievements of his over thirty year career of recording books for the blind. RIP my dear Hargoo, let flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.

5 hours ago, danfling said:

Actor Patrick Horgan (Ansel Scott) passed away this morning.

His wife shared the following on Facebook:

This morning in the wee hours, John Patrick Finnbar Horgan left this world. His death from heart failure was peaceful. This was his favorite picture of one of the happiest times of his life as he sat in the garden of a house we rented in Ireland, holding a can of Harp beer in his hand, watching James and his cousin Olivia at the ages of 4 and 5 cavort in the stream that ran below. He lived the life he wanted right up to the end and was spared much suffering for which I am so grateful. He will be missed by many but his legacy will live on in a website that his sons James and Christopher will get up and running soon. On the website will be a recording of his reading of Finnegans Wake, one of the crowning achievements of his over thirty year career of recording books for the blind. RIP my dear Hargoo, let flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.

Can you share the link, please?

There doesn't appear to be an obit up yet, but I did read his wife's post on FB. I don't know if any of his EDGE work is available, but Retro TV aired his entire 1970-74 run on TD as the evil Dr. John Morrison. May he RIP. 🙏

7 minutes ago, amybrickwallace said:

There doesn't appear to be an obit up yet, but I did read his wife's post on FB. I don't know if any of his EDGE work is available, but Retro TV aired his entire 1970-74 run on TD as the evil Dr. John Morrison. May he RIP. 🙏

That's what I meant, I'd like to see the FB post myself.

I don't know about the Facebook post, but several sources have subsequently reported Patrick Horgan's death.  I went to YouTube and watched his final "Edge" appearance as Ansel Scott in early 1983, when he told Ian Devereaux, "I'm sorry, my dear boy, but I'm alive and well and haven't heard from Raven in the past three years."  He was mighty suave, urbane, and sleazy in his scene.  lol.  

While I was at it, I made the TRAGIC MISTAKE of re-watching the transition from Henry Slesar to Lee Sheldon in late May/early June of 1983.  Gosh, it's immediately horrible.  It's the worst short-term deterioration of a soap that I've ever seen.  (Viewers who saw the shaky hand-held camera transition to Peapack on "Guiding Light" might disagree!) 

My siblings and I were teenagers in the summer of 1983, and I can remember watching an episode of "Edge" that left us all cringing at how amateurish and thrown-together it looked.  We joked that it appeared Henry Slesar had allowed his ten-year old nephew to write it.  The scenes were sloppy and disjointed, most of the dialogue seemed utterly pointless, all the sequences were  short and haphazard, and the majority of the scenes were underscored with cheesy, outdated music that completely worked AGAINST the mood being set by the (childlike) dialogue.  We just couldn't believe what we were seeing.  Our beloved, sophisticated, witty "film noir" show had suddenly, overnight, degenerated into the crappiest piece of mundane garbage we'd ever seen on television.  At the end of the episode, the credits rolled, and it said "written by Lee Sheldon".    I remember shaking my head and saying, "It's evidently a writer's strike, and this poor guy is the best they could find on short notice."

I've been thinking I maybe misjudged him.  Perhaps he wasn't as awkwardly bad as I'd remembered.  He was.  You can tell Slesar's final episode and Sheldon's first episode without even watching the credits.  It's plumb awful.  

 

I thought the idea of that subliminal messages story was pretty cool. It's a shame it apparently didn't turn out well.

27 minutes ago, Vee said:

I thought the idea of that subliminal messages story was pretty cool. It's a shame it apparently didn't turn out well.

Sheldon had his moments for sure.  I think the subliminal messages could've been effective, but as you noted, he bungled it.  The "Alice in Wonderland" sequence at the end of the show was probably somewhat stupid, but was an effective way to conclude a mystery show.  It was just his day-to-day plotting, scene structure, "humor" and dialogue -- yikes!  

49 minutes ago, Vee said:

I thought the idea of that subliminal messages story was pretty cool. It's a shame it apparently didn't turn out well.

Did you ever watch the hypnosis/cult story in the last months of Another Life? (featuring a very charismatic villainess and a guest role for the wonderful Lori March)

Edited October 11, 20214 yr by DRW50

I don't know that one, no.

In one of Lee Sheldon's first episodes, the Preacher Emerson character delivers this long speech about his father (Del Emerson) conducting a wedding of "gator wrestlers" on the "Florida/Louisiana border".   Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's about 175 miles from extreme western Florida to extreme eastern Louisiana.  There's two entire Gulf States (Alabama and Mississippi) in between Florida and Louisiana.  Lee Sheldon was too stupid (or lazy) to look at a map and see that there's no such thing as a Florida/Louisiana border.  It's just scene after scene of complete nonsense that doesn't advance the plot, doesn't make any sense, and completely fails at being humorous.  I've never seen anything like it.