ALL: Are you a Nixon or a Bell??

[All My Shadows]

I agree, but it's not so much about who wrote it as much as it is about how they wrote it. Bell's work (basing this solely on his 90s Y&R and B&B work), to me, is sophisticated, mature, intricate, and cultured. There's a sort of slickness about it. Nixon's stuff (basing this on numerous classic AMC episodes I've seen) is light, isn't afraid to be a little bizarre, but also very, very sentimental and warm. Two perfectly good styles that worked well for many, many years, but also very different styles.

I'm currently borrowing "Worlds Without End" from my university's library and there's a part where it goes at length about how both Irna Phillips and the Hummerts (creators and writers of "The Romance of Helen Trent," "Ma Perkins," and other long-running radio soaps) had massive radio success, yet their styles were so different and appealed to different audiences. What Irna's followers thought of as good writing might have been seen as boring and dull by the Hummert crowd and the Irna folks might have looked at the Hummert soaps as ridiculous, silly bull ish.

[Sylph]

I couldn't agree more!

[Toups]

I'm a Bell because Reilly's style was closer to Bell than Nixon.

[Chris B]

Definitely more of a Bell which I consider to be more mature, sophisticated and laid back. I've never really seen Nixon's work, but I loved Claire Labine and Paul Mayer's stuff on Ryan's Hope. Now that's a model which should be looked into more often. They took a concept nobody wanted and made it successful must see tv. They still had all the soap opera staples while remaining grounded in reality and telling the type of stories they wanted to tell. A writer like Lynn Latham could learn a lot from them.

[DaytimeFan]

I'm a Bell, I prefer the slickness, nastiness, melodramatics, glamor, glitz and intricate nature of the storytelling. I felt that Bell captured the psychology of his characters better than anyone.

That said, I love Nixon's writing as well. She does humor much better than Bell who never did well with humor. Additionally, AMC had a sense of community and identity under Nixon's pen that Bell never bothered with. Nixon's characters were more likable than Bells...however, his characters were more entrancing.

To me, they are opposite ends of the spectrum. Nixon is light and Bell is dark. Both absolutely brilliant.

[SteveFrame]

Definitely more of a Bell which I consider to be more mature, sophisticated and laid back. I've never really seen Nixon's work, but I loved Claire Labine and Paul Mayer's stuff on Ryan's Hope. Now that's a model which should be looked into more often. They took a concept nobody wanted and made it successful must see tv. They still had all the soap opera staples while remaining grounded in reality and telling the type of stories they wanted to tell. A writer like Lynn Latham could learn a lot from them.

Labine & Mayer are so overlooked by many. They were a spectacular team totally reinvigorating both Where The Heart Is and Love of Life before moving on to their own show, Ryan's Hope. They were both script writers for WTHI and then promoted up. I think both were. I know for sure that Mayer was and I think I read that Labine was too.

They were responsible for the first curse word on daytime when they had Meg Hart call her granddaughter a bastard. Their stories on both WTHI and LOL were grounded in the history of the shows as well as being edgy and groundbreaking. Too bad later writers of Love of Life could not hold on to that for the show.

What is sad is that Labine went on to do well by herself as a writer but Mayer on the other hand was terrible after their partnership ended. His tenure as SFT's head writer is one of the worst ever for the show. There were rumors for awhile that he was secretly consulting at Santa Barbara but I never knew that for truth. But after his disastrous stint at SFT he evidently quit. The last news I had of him was that he had switched careers and was now a psychotherapist in New York.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I think The Dobson's are often overlooked as well. As Eric and I were discussing in the Irna thread, they totally revitalized both GL and ATWT, two soaps that were seen as too out of date and stale before they took over. They knew how to balance contemporary issues with classic soap opera staples. They're one of the few HW's who I think can handle writing truly serious subject matter, but also write some fun campy fluff at the same time.

[EricMontreal22]

Hahah I just saw two episodes of the breast cancer story on Y&R in 1975 and MAN the dialogue is PAINFUL--the way they try to incorporate statistics (two characters discussing another person's biopsy basically say "80% of these are malignant I recently read" etc etc) is just so unsophisticated it hurts. Points for trying though and the actual scenes of how the family deals with it are heartfelt and moving.

[SteveFrame]

I totally agree with you on that too. It is such a shame that they do not have an Emmy on their mantle. They should have one for GL especially, but sadly the CBS soaps were so overlooked in the 70's and early 80's in regards to the Emmys.

I loved Labine & Mayer, but they robbed many deserving writers of Emmy awards. As I have said before the year they came up with the King Kong story they didn't deserve their win at all, but they got it.

In fact the 2 of them won every time they were nominated for Best Writing.

The Dobson's were never honored with a win while at ATWT, but they truly were responsible for putting ATWT on the Emmy map. ATWT had totally been ignored until they came aboard. Then Larry Bryggman and Henderson Forsythe both were honored with noms and given the best stories they had in years.

The Dobson years are some of my favorites of both GL and ATWT, but esp. ATWT. I loved the John raping Dee story and then when John was believed dead and David went on trial for it. Then David missing and having the affair with Cynthia Haines (played by Linda Dano) - such great stuff.

They really knew how to use the characters on screen. Even though they did create their own characters they intertwined them with the current families.

[EricMontreal22]

I always thought Labine and Meyer came out of the Agnes Nixon tradition but since they never worked on any of her shows (well Claire ultimately had a less successful run with her son at OLTL but it hadn't been an Agnes show for ages by that time) I'm not sure if they were influenced by Agnes--watched her soaps or not. Still the sense of family, community, more "realistic" characters, humour playing a huge part, etc, feels more Agnes than Bill to me.

[EricMontreal22]

One reason for the overlook may be that their own soaps--Ryan's Hope and Santa Barbara are gone now, and never really broke free of being cult favorites. It's interesting that with the anomaly of GH all the currently running soaps can be traced back to Irna and her two sucessors.

[Sean]

Though they won their fourth writing Emmy at the 1980 ceremony, it only covered material from 1979 - the gorilla storyline ran from January-March 1980, and they weren't nominated in 1981.

While they had their own style to a degree, they were definitely more in the vein of Nixon than Bell.

I recently came across an old New York Times article online from 1988 in which he was interviewed about his new profession. Apparently he specifically became a therapist for lawyers (and he seems to have been a social worker before writing for soaps).

[EricMontreal22]

Oh and to answer my own question, I admit I'm a Nixon guy although I have tons of respect and admiration for Bell. It was AMC in 91 that got me into soaps and a part of this I bet does have to do with what your first soap was. But I appreciate that her characters felt more like people you'd know, the soapiness was always balanced with humour (both outrageous in her larger than life, Dickensian characters like Opal and Billy Clyde and small character based stuff), her plotting was second to none and she was also good at inventive, different stories.

Bill is more i think what people think of who don't watch soaps when they say "soap opera"--little humour, stylized characters, VERY moody, those long pauses, etc. But Bell basically either invented these "cliches" or improved on them--he did classic soap opera better than anyone and his shows were completely hypnotic I find--you have this almost overwhelming sense of doom watchign his classic shows in a way--that the story has this momemntum it won't waver from. Part of how he stylized his characters also had to do with his focus on what the older soap books call "Spcysexual melodrama"--the internal mind.

I know both were very close friends and had a long time respect for each other (there's an interesting part of All Her Children where author Dan Wakefield is staying at Agnes' house and at the dinner table her teenaged daughter mentions a new soap that is startign to become popular. They never name the soap but it's obviously Y&R as the daughter says it's no fair that being out in Hollywood they can use all those actors who look like models to lure people in and says she thinks they're ripping off AMC's infamous onscreen face lift storyline--Agnes is then quoted as saying that there' s no ripping off, she knwos the writer well and he's probably the best soap writer there is--and that his style is vastly different than hers as he doesn't feel humour is a part of soap opera and she does) But I love looking into how both learned under Irna but took different things from her and went in their own direction.

[Pine Charles]

I'm a Nixon.

On her soaps, especially AMC, you found more earthy characters. I also loved the satire/humor. Dorothy Lyman as Opal was the best example of this.

Speaking of Lyman's Opal, this is a hoot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj0J5O-E_eo

[mr. sweet]

Personally I am a Bell fan.