The Original Cast of Soaps

[SFK]

You make some great points. Interestingly, for me at least, in recent years I've lamented the loss of the small town feeling I got during the '80s, so I can only imagine what that felt like in the '70s. The Boutique, the boardinghouse, and those much-missed exterior shots were all I needed to get that vibe.

Speaking of Erica the superstar, have any of you ever watched AMC with a person who was unfamiliar with the show? On more than one occasion, I've had friends who just couldn't wrap their brains around this idea that Erica Kane is a celebrity. They know who Susan Lucci is, and they get that she's a star, they just had no idea that on All My Children, Erica, the CHARACTER is a celebrity too. Like years ago when she was heading to rehab on the plane and paparazzi were taking her pics, my friend was like, "Why are they doing that?" Me: Because she's Erica Kane. My friend: Yeah, I know that, but...

[All My Shadows]

I agree whole-heartedly. Don't me wrong, I enjoy and love what the show became after the restructuring, but the difference is undeniable.

A great quote from Francesca James from the time she was EP in the 90s:

"Pine Valley is the Peyton Place of the nineties. It's that small town just a train ride away from Philadelphia, Center City, and New York City that has never changed. We have no interest in really going urban or bizarre, because that doesn't serve the character of this particular show."

I always thought of Pine Valley as the type of place that no ordinary person who isn't from the area would ever hear of. It's just a small town...the population is large, but it's not a bustling metropolis with corporations here, businesses there, companies everywhere. I hate the fact that there are so many damn multimillion dollar companies in Pine Valley. Makes no freaking sense. If Erica Kane was a teenager today, she wouldn't really have a need to leave PV behind for greener pastures...

[EricMontreal22]

It wasn't all her fault--it's interesting in All Her Children she flat out says she will NOT allow the show to become an hour (though she says she's excited to do the week of hour long episodes before Ryan's Hope's premier to show them "how to do it right"--not slow down the stories or draw things out). They also interview the current Tara (sometone Braxton?) who says that she and many fo the other actors won't tolerate it--she predicted that soap audiences owuld grow unhappys aying it's next to impossible for an actor to be on an hour show for more than two years without leaving--and audiences hate recasts--of course none of these proved true though I don't think she stayed for it beign an hour.

Anyway when Agnes did change her mind (I think the network pressured her, but...) only a year or so after, a lot of the cast said they wouldnt' stick around or else said they only would briefly to help the transition so I think the restructuring was *partly* brough about by that. She also added the Cortlands I suspect because those larger than life characters are easier for hour long shows.

However many in the soap press--LaGuardia notably, think that AMC really came into its own when it became an hour. Earlier editions have said that the show was often too schizophrenic in terms of having a very comic scene, then a sad, scene, etc--LaGuardia claiming it often left viewers unsatifised (from the few 30 mins episodes I've seen I'd disagree but I'm a hardcore AMC fan so...) , also complaining about a lack of strong male characters and very poor production values in terms of budgets for sets, etc. In his early 80s book he says that AMC has now become prob the best soap consistantly on the air--saying that the new large budget improved a lot, mor einterestign male characters and even more "delightfully Dickensian characters and sceens" that elavated the writing and acting to that of classic drawing room theatre. As much as I'd love to see more of 70s AMC it does seem true that prob *the* classic AMC era in terms of viewers and critics was the first half of the 80s.

So Agnes did something right although as a fan of the history I agree that it was a loss to lose some of those families and characters. But as you say, most soaps restructured around this time (Bill Bell beign the only one who miraculously managed to almost restructure his COMPLETE SHOW within the first few years afte rhe turned Y&R to an hour in 1980) and in many rays, relatively speaking, AMC still character wise has more ties to its 70s (the Kanes and Martins) than, say One Life to Live or a number of other shows.

I do agree that it became too big too--not as much a small town especially by the late 80s but again--compared to most of the soaps that in the wake of 80s glam and Dallas nearly all did this--AMC prob handled it better than most. (But I'd love to see a concentrated effort to bring the show back down to side--have new characters have a clear profession--interesting but not necesarily random millionaire professions--and economic status. Pratt does seem to be handling this a bit better than past writers of late)

SteveF--like I said I agree about making it too big--but I think in the first half of the 80s AMC still had quite a bit of small charm charm--I was just watching online two episodes from 1981 and one from 1984. Like I said a lot of the changes were not all Agnes doing (also Wisner Washam became a much bigger writing force on the show by then so deserves some of the blame/praise) and I bet ABC was pressuring her to make it more Dallas big--as the soaps were all becoming--and she suffered a lot of exodus leading back to 1977 when it became an hour show. (in one interview about Loving when it was created Agnes also says--and I dunno if this is fair or not or an excuse--that she hopes to be able to do some of that small town feel for her new 30 minute soap--somethign she claimed was harder to do with an hour--I think she finds mor elarger than life characters can propel the action in an hour)

[EricMontreal22]

The Cortlands also brought some gothicness to AMC (something Agnes and all brought back again with the Marricks ten years later which was even MORE Jane Eyre inspired lol) I admit I love that--but I do get why some felt it was out of tone with the show.

There are some 70s eps of AMC online--all the 30 min ones I've seen are from the first two years and don't seem to be online--the two from 70 and 71 that were in the I Love Lucci marathon and the 1970 one as part of Daytime to Remember. Great vintage, and yeah simplistic but wo nderful stuff. I'd LOVE to see more from this era especially the 1975 or so time that is documented with such fondness in All her Children) The next earliest AMC ep I know of is early in the hour run--Tom and Erica's wedding from 1978 (Tom and Erica's breakup over birth control pills has been shown a few times--I Love Luccdi and Daytime to remember from 1979 and for a long time that was the oldest hour ep I had in my collection)

ANyway it's a GREAT GREAT episode--and interesting to even see people like Robin Strasser as Dr Christina a role I always read never fully caught on though she was on for a while--and a VERY early Brooke (sigh how i miss her). Here's the first part of the ep

[EricMontreal22]

yeah--that's why they have Center City (is "C" City just short for Center City or was there a Sea City too? that always confused me) so close, and then just a bit further away New York City--they don't need PV for that.

That quote by James is from World's WIthout End right--where she later says it shoudl feel liek a DOuglas Sirk movie like th esmall town gossipy community of All That Heaven Allows? When I read that it made me really wish, if we can't get Felicia Minei Behr back, we could get James back for EP--I know she still directs sometime. Sirk is my fave melodrama director--but it's obvious that James *gets* the feel of the piece.

(Behr's Pine Valleyw as more 90s big but she gets the feel I think too--it was interesting to see interviews with a "Felicia Minei"--an assitant to the producer in 1976's All her Children--I had no idea she had been associated with AMC that long!)

[SFK]

Looch is looking hot here.

Yes, I've seen that ep and I believe it's the only ep I've ever seen with RS as Christina. It's kind of hard to believe that she and Lucci occupied the same show, but as Robin has said, since Susan was playing the "Rachel" part, she couldn't too, so she got the very "gray" Christina who she didn't enjoy playing. I believe a long-term fan over at WoST said that he remembered those two sharing only a handful of scenes tops.

BTW, having visited a friend at Bryn Mawr back in college, I remember having an "ah-ha" moment when I saw that "Center City" isn't fictional. It was a destination on the train, a section of Philly.

[All My Shadows]

True. I stand corrected, or at least enlightened. I always forget that angle...the whole angle of many soap performers not wanting to do hour long shows. I suspect that that's why so many soap stars from the 1960s and 1970s and from half-hour shows that survived past the 1970s (SFT, EON, RH, etc) don't show up too much on soaps today and haven't been around much at all since there were more 30 minute soaps than 60 minute soaps.

To each his own. Perhaps it's my unnatural, since birth love and devotion and obsession with all things 70s, but I'd take 70s AMC over any other era of the show, no doubt. I could just soak myself up in allllll of that lol.

Ain't that the truth. Of all the soaps on the air today that were around in the 70s, I think only AMC, ATWT, and DAYS can truly say that they still have ties to that era, AMC and ATWT slightly having an edge over DAYS. Dig up a 70s episode of AMC (such as Erica and Tom's wedding) or ATWT (there's a great 1978 episode on YouTube) and you see characters who should be familiar in some way to current viewers, even if they've only been watching the last few years. I'm not saying that every show needs to have nothing but characters over 50 and flashbacks in every episode, but it's nice to see for yourself that just as you're watching Erica Kane or Barbara Ryan now, thirty years ago people were doing the same thing. It really drives home the longevity of the shows, unlike when you look at an episode of OLTL and noooooooone of the characters have any ties to any of the characters currently on the show.

coughcoughcoughcoughcough WHERE?

The 1970 and 1971 episodes are up on YouTube and have been for a while. They were taken from both the DTR and the ILL marathon. As far as 70s AMC on YouTube, I think that's it, besides the Tom-Erica wedding and the pills episode, though it's a DTR, so it's cut up.

Yep, it's from WWE (teeheehee), and yep, she goes on to talk about how she views soaps as forties movies. She felt that those types of movies just aren't made anymore (they aren't!) and that daytime was sort of the outlet for that type of storytelling and performing. I agree with her a lot, but I don't feel that allll of daytime should have been in that mold. AMC, yes. Without a doubt. But other soaps had different stories to tell and should have been modeled on other things.

[SteveFrame]

Eric, That was Stephanie Braxton as Tara. She was on for 2 years as Tara and was loved by so many. She made many forget all about karen Lyn Gorney who had left the show to pursure her dreams. In fact many online I have talked to preferred Braxton as Tara - in ranking the ones who played her. She came to All My Children in 1974 after a very popular run on Secret Storm as Laurie Hollister.

she is married in real life to Dan Hamilton who has acted on many soaps as well as serving as director.

Her step-son is actor Josh Hamilton who played Charlie Brent on AMC. He has been in several movies in small roles in the last few years.

*******************************************

I agree about 80's having some of the small town feel but only when it was still in Pine Valley. When it focused on New York so much it all went away. That just didn't seem like AMC at all.

I understood about some of the characters leaving and had no problem with some of those even though I would have loved to have kept Tara and Jeff around. And the Tylers really didn't disappear until after Phoebe's death. What later writers did to her and Langley was sickening. One year all year long everytime they are mentioned Langley is off somewhere even after Louis Edmonds died. Then all of a sudden he is dead and no funeral or anything. And I truly felt the way Phoebe's death was handled was sickening. I know some liked the funeral but I didn't. My biggest problem was not her funeral but her death should have been used more for a story and not as a prop in the Babe, JR and Jamie triangle. That was an insult to the legacy of her character.

[All My Shadows]

And yes, Felicia Minei was with the show since the very beginning, I believe.

[Pine Charles]

Yeah, if you go to the end of this clip (from a 1971 episode), she's listed as 'Associate Producer':

[EricMontreal22]

Shadows PM me about those early 80s AMC eps... They're fun--the 1984 one was Erica's first wedding to Adam which is a riot, the 1981 ones focus on Palmer trying to break up Cliff and Nina using Sean Cudahy and Sybil to do so--and on Devon realizing Wally's cheated on her with her best friend Becky (?) Kennicott--a character I didn't even know of--I thought the only Kennicotts were Mary and Dan in the 70s. The 1981 ones has the briefly recast Brooke as well which is amusing.

SteveF I think that's a bit harsh on the Phoebe funeral. It wasn't perfect--but I do think it was WAY more than honestly any of us expected--certainly than I expected from AMC at that time. The Jamie plot point was maybe about 4 minutes of the full episode which was filled with great clips, character returns, etc, stuff that I never expected to see at ABC Daytime in the past 5 years frankly especially for a character that a large majority of AMC viewers at the time prob didn't know much about. I get your criticism but to call it sickening is hyperbole IMHO--at any rate for me it exceeded my (granted VERY low) expectations. I do agree about Langley--he was always on these endless archeological digs--but I think they didn't quite know how to handle it--and then it got to be too late--he had been off canvas for a long time, Ruth Warrick wasn't capable of handling really havey scenes to discuss it, etc. But I agree it definetly was completely botched--though I sorta get the rationale for why it was handled that way -- if that makes any sense.

But nothing compares to a lack of exit for Brooke something I still wish they'd rectify (mainly luring Julia back to the show)--Seriously if I wasn't sucha die hard that prob woulda made me stop watching--especially since she's long been my fave character (yeah even when Iw as a 12 year old getting hooked in the early 90s lol )

I wonder if that 30 minute show thing is why it seems so few Loving/City stars had later soap careers--I never thought about that. Certainly the work loads of being a popular character on a 30 min show are VASTLY different than an hour show. I sometimes wonder how/if major actors on hour shows really have much of a life otherwise--but in All her Children the actors talk about how working on the 30 min show actually gets them home usually by 4pm every day.

I believe the I Love Lucci marathon showed the full Tom/Erica pills ep that DTR slightly edited (I wish we had those eps in full but I'm happy for what we have)--but I don't have my DVD-Rs of Lucci here to check...

Yeah Pine Valley has changed TONS since that time--and in many ways for the worse and in some ways the damage can not be undone. But I recenly read here someone who said that OLTL had far more ties to its past than AMC, something that baffled me. You can watch those 1970 eps of AMC on youtube and even as anew viewer you feel SOME conncection--there's erica, there's Joe. I love watching old 70s Y&R episodes but besides Kay, that's imply not true--and it's even less true of some other shows. (Are there any Bauers on GL anymore? I can't remember...)

Oh and despite what I said about what I think for many classic AMC is--I'm with you--even from the little I've seen, and not being born till the early 80s, I have an affinity for soaps from the 70s--and the 70s in general (hopefully Sylph doesn't read this and tease me more for my Donna Summer love ) and that's the era of AMC I'm most in love with--perhaps becuase it's by far the hardest era to "see" (although I've been lucky to see more of it than I have of my other show OLTL--but but there simply seems to be a lot more of the CBS soaps from the 70s out there for various reasons...) I wonder how many episodes from the 70s ABC even has saved of AMC--around 78 they started saving every episode right? I know there are at least a FEW from before then that are saved because we've seen a few colour clips/images in books--not just the early kinescopes

[SteveFrame]

For the majority of the Loving cast though they were familiar with hour long shows - many of them anyway - some even before they went to Loving.

The one star of Loving that totally shocked me never got another role was Christine Tudor. Beore Loving she had been hired to replace Judith Light at One Life To Live, but at the last minute they decided to just write Karen off. But the lady was fantastic at Loving esp. those final months. but she just disappeared.

It is kind of like one of those mysteries like why in the world Augusta Dabney never got a long term role as matriarch on any show. Until she got Loving she bounced around on soaps staying a few years here or there but never anything like Virginia Dwyer, Frances Reid or Helen Wagner or even Barbara Berjer got.

[All My Shadows]

Will do!

GL has a few Bauers left...Rick, mainly. I think the travesty known as Leah was ditched last year or so...other than that, though? Rick's about it.

You've found more 70s CBS stuff than ABC stuff? Wow, that's surprising. I always think of P&G and CBS as the leaders of erasing soap tapes and not saving them until like...1978-1979, besides Y&R, of course. The 70s CBS stuff I've seen are 1975 episodes of Y&R and "Love of Life" and a 1978 episode of ATWT. There's 1979 episodes of stuff floating around, but they're all stuff that was archived so it's nothing special (well, it is, but it's not something that's especially rare).

As far as I know, AMC started saving episodes in the summer/fall of 1976. I read somewhere (dont remember where) that Agnes was indeed against a runtime expansion and fought it tooth and nail, and the only way she agreed to do it was if ABC would begin saving all of the show's episodes in their archives, which they did. Once they did, she began to work on expanding the show. The permanent expansion happened on April 25, 1977 (the show's been in the same exact timeslot since then).

[EricMontreal22]

I always thought that was partly her own choice--because theatre acting was so important to her, but that's completely conjecture. Even Isabelle was recast a few times. I did love her in the role though.

Totally agreed about Christine Tudor. I guess I was exagerating--we've since seen many of the Loving/City people on hour shows even if for shorter uns (lisa Peluso, Ted King, Amelia Heinle, Lisa LoCicero, Randolph Mantooth, etc) but some liek Amy Van Horne I expected to get jobs right after City ended.

[EricMontreal22]

Oh I didn't know Rick Bauer was still on the show! LOL I just flip for the last five mins sometimes if I get home early and nothign really captivates me so...

Yeah at least online I've seen a lot more 70s (albeit VERY late 70s) ATWT, GL, DAYS (Ok not Doctors--did Corday save all his eps) and mid 70s Y&R--although thinking on it I haven't exactly found a LOT more than 70s AMC or GH... It's funny that there's quite a bit (relatively speaking) of 60s soaps out there compared to 70s--it seems to me anyway...

76? that makes sense--I remember hearing that before--that that was one of Agnes' stipulations--to save eps. So there's a lot out there I wish we could see (I know Daytime to Remember had a '76 ep of OLTL that I believe they edited down from 45 mins to 30 mins for the show). And I wonder how many pre '76 AMC eps exist in kinescopes, etc? not *that* many I'd imagine as many of the clips we see over and over again are form those same eps (although one of those eps has that iconic early Erica scene about wanting more from life--so it makes sense it's reused a lot).

it's funny reading how much Agnes fought against the hour format--and of course later on Bell felt the same way--they just didn't seem to think much of the hour format.