Edge of Night (EON) (No spoilers please)

[bboy875]

Yes! I remember her played by an Asian actress. Thanks! 

[robbwolff]

Good memory! The young woman's name was Diana Selkirk and the role was played by Susan Yusen. Mike did get her father Howard's corneas. After leaving the cult, Diana moved in with the Karrs and became obsessed with Mike. After Mike realized Diana was a troublemaker, she decided he wasn't worthy of her father's corneas and tried to blind him again. That storyline seemed truncated as well. Diana showed up around early December and was written out by the end of March.

[Broderick]

Thank you, Robbwolff!  Diana Selkirk!  I was coming up with "Diane Solaris", "Dina Celery", and so many other things that weren't even close, I didn't even try guessing.  lol.  

I remember Miss Selkirk's "parting gift" for Mike -- the acid for his eyes.  Seems like Deborah Saxon ran across her at the bus stop or in a café and wondered why she was leaving town with a suitcase and a bottle of acid, then intercepted her before she could do any damage.  

In this episode, we get a new RECORD STORE set, for Gavin & Kelly to have a brief conversation in.   Looks like the set designer used a wall of windows, 10 posters, a dozen record albums, two record bins, and a cash register.  Total cost $3.  

Too bad today's soaps aren't this clever with their sets.  

Edited November 4, 2022 by Broderick

[robbwolff]

It's not the best photo, but Diana can be seen in this magazine cover in the lower right. Susan Yusen is sitting next tot David Garrison, who played Cody and later starred on Married with Children. Lee Godart is in the upper right. I noticed that neither Irving Allen Lee and Denny Albee aren't seen here. I recall Albee and Godart had some kind of altercation in the spring of 1980 that led to Albee's departure.

 

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[Broderick]

Yep, there's Diana/Diane Selkirk/Solaris/Celery!  I always got a kick out of the boy who played Cody.  Looking at the picture, I really get the feeling that if the story had been allowed to play to its fruition, Eliot Dorn would've been the "Jim Jones", rather than Cody.  I'm glad we got a couple more years of Eliot Dorn as the sleazy Unicorn owner.  Star Wilson was beautiful.  

[j swift]

I don't know if it was Sleasar's influence, or the times, but I appreciate the sophistication of Raven having sexual relationships with both Elliott Dorn and Derek Mallory without any negative consequences.  She didn't have a pregnancy scare, she wasn't shamed, and she maintained a friendship with Chief Mallory after she married Sky.  Just like life, some adults have sex before marriage without karmic punishment, but it still seems rare on soaps in 2022.  

[danfling]

For years, I have had a theory about the cult storyline and its follow-up.

Going back several years, the character of Kelly McGrath had been intended to be a more grown-up Timmy Ferriday.   However, because the character was supposed to have a romance with Jody Travis and because Timmy and Jody were cousins, the decision was made to make the character the son of Geri McGrath Pollock and Lee Pollock (Nancy's brother).

I think that the character of Joanie Collier and the character of Diana Selkirk were originally intended to be the same character.    Eileen Finley (Joanie Collier) was a contract role until her last week, when she was seen and listed with the non-contract characters in the show's credits.   Joanie was said to be a runaway from her parents (in Baton Rouge, Louisiana), and, during this final appearence, she told Deborah that she had decided to return to her family.   Then, suddenly, Diana Selkirk was shown and she had a background with the cult, Cody, and Elliott.  She moved into the house of Mike and Nancy, developed something of a crush on Mike, and, finally, fell out with Mike and tried to pour acid into his eyes to blind him again.

Not only do I feel that Joanie and Diana were intended to be the same character, but I think that the character was going to be the daughter of Nancy's sister, Cookie, and husband Ron Christopher.  Cookie and Ron could have had a daughter (with a name such as "Janet Christopher") who used the initials J. C. as her alias when she got to the Monticello area.

After the collapse of the cult, Joanie would be revealed as Nancy's niece and would be invited to live with Nancy and the blinded Mike (just as Diana was invited to live there).  Ron could pass away off camera, and his corneas used as Mike's transplants.  Joanie could have been mentally unstable after her running away from home and her involvement with Elliott and Cody.   She could have become angry with Mike over anything and tried to avenge the gift of Ron's corneas by pouring acid into the eyes of Mike.   (One should not forget that Cookie had become mentally unstable twice over her relationship with men - once going into shock after seeing the dead body of her first husband Malcolm Thomas and being placed on trial for his murder and later following the affair of her second husband Ron Christopher with Tiffany Whitney.)

One of the main reasons for my believing this theory is the making of Joanie Collier a contract role and then abruptly writing her off in such a hurry and then the short run for the character of Diana Selkirk.

I also want to report for anyone here who does not know this, but Susan Yusan (Diana Selkirk) lost her real-life husband on September 11, 2001 in the Middle Eastern attacks on New York City.

 

 

[robbwolff]

I've never seen anything about Kelly originally being planned to be Timmy Faraday except for fan speculation. Was this actually reported in the soap press? Joanie and Diana were on the canvas at the same time. According to synopses available online, Joanie (or was it Joni?) arrived in September 1978 and was around until the Children of the Earth storyline was brought to an abrupt end in January 1979. A dying Howard Selkirk was introduced at the end of November with the offer to give his corneas to Mike if he rescued Diana from the cult. Diana showed up sometime in December and was written out in March 1979. 

[DeliaIrisFan]

Thanks for sharing all this info about the Children of the Earth story - it's fascinating.  As it happens, I've been watching the Margo Dorn murder mystery and there was an episode in which Deborah confided in someone (Derek? Steve?) that she suspected Eliot partly because of their shared history with the cult, which seemed completely out of left field from everything I'd seen of both characters up until then.  It makes more sense that she was undercover.

If the mandate from ABC/P&G was to end the story ASAP, I can't help but wonder why they would go to the trouble of changing who the cult leader was?  And, in any event, why keep Eliot around as a reminder?  It is telling that the "abrupt" ending in the wake of a real PR mess sounds more thoughtful than the way modern soaps have been dropping characters and stories left and right for decades, presumably just based on of focus groups or whatever.

[robbwolff]

This is just speculation, but knowing that Henry Slesar had planned this story many months in advance, I can easily imagine that he already had plans for Eliot for future storylines, including his marriage to Margo Huntington, his involvement in the Mansion of the Damned story, and his eventual murder. Like I said, it's just speculation but Slesar was meticulous with his storytelling and how one story would then feed into the next story. As a writer myself, his storytelling inspires and impresses me.

[Broderick]

It was strictly my own speculation that Eliot Dorn had been salvaged from Children of the Earth, in order to get more mileage out of the character prior to killing him off (since the cult storyline was truncated).  Slesar indicated that "changes were made to the storyline", and we'll never know exactly what those changes were.  All of us who love Slesar know that his trademark was an ironic twist at the conclusion of a story, stunning the viewer with "nothing here is the way it originally appeared".  Very possibly, he had always intended the "twist" to be that Cody was the brains behind the cult, and Eliot was merely the front man.

 

 Doesn't sound likely.  For the storyline to work, Timmy Faraday would've needed to spend his adolescence in Europe with an upper-middle-class family, where he encountered the deceptive girl that led to the knife attack in Rome.  (Kelly's whole backstory was predicated on that event, which led him to become a suspect in the Eliot Dorn and Cliff Nelson knife attacks.)  It would've taken a lot of fancy footwork to explain how Serena Faraday's kid wandered into that environment.  With Kelly, it worked fine. 

 Slesar seemed to have a laissez-faire approach to the sex lives of his characters; he didn't offer much judgement, or make them pay a price for a "sexual sin".   That was probably because his stories were principally about mystery and crime, rather than sex.  When April learned that Eliot Dorn was sleeping with Margo's maid, Eliot's (sheepish) response was, "Margo and I have an open marriage."  He was exaggerating, of course, but that's a subject most soaps wouldn't have touched in the late 1970s (or even today!) with a 10-foot pole.  April was a bit horrified and asked Miles if she should mention Eliot's tryst to her mother.  Miles seemed to offer Henry Slesar's own advice, "It's none of your business, so just forget about it.  They're both adults."  Miles was able to test his own advice at the tennis club vacation a short time later, when he accidentally discovered that Eliot was sleeping with Raven Swift, as well as with Sarah the maid.  

[danfling]

I would never have speculated that Kelly had been intended to be Timmy Ferriday.   I did read that during some of the run of Kelly that the character had been intended to be Timmy Ferriday but that the male character was changed because Timmy and Jody Feriday were related.  I don't think that my mind could have made such a speculation.

And, it was Joanie Collier (not Joni).    Eileen Finley played Joanie.

 

 

[TEdgeofNight]

Sharon Gabet is a gem. She posts several episodes from the early 80's on Facebook (and youtube) and responds to comments. She's a treasure. She has a great memory and tells it like it was. Love love love Sharon Gabet.

[j swift]

They've uploaded many of the holiday episodes recently (shhh, keep it cool so they don't get a copyright strike)

 

[EONGLOLTL]

Happy 47th ABC Birthday to The Edge of Night!  I wish the 90 minute debut episode was available in it's entirety.   Cheers to the cast and crew!

Edited December 1, 2022 by EONGLOLTL