ATWT: Whatever happened to the Lowells?

[King of Pine Valley]

When "As the World Turns" premiered back in 1956, it was a 30-minute soap originally focused on the lives of two closely related families in the fictional town of Oakdale: the wealthy Lowells and the middle-class Hughes.

As the years went on, the Hughes had become one of daytime's most beloved and most prominent families.

But the Lowells were kinda phased out and we don't know the reason why.

So my question is: Whatever really happened to the Lowell family?

[Mitch]

Well, the Lowells are still on the show, in the form of Emily and Dani (great granddaughter and great, great, grandaughter.) The Lowells really faced a problem from the start as Ellen was the only child and there were no male characters to carry on the name. However, Ellen was a Lowell and the Stewarts were the core family right along with the Hugheses for most of the last 30 years (during the Dobson era they overshadowed the Hugheses.)

I think the Stewarts suffered a lot of problems in that they killed off the two sons so there were only females and the name eventually, except for Emily and Susan ( a Stewart by marriage) died out.

[Pooch Cafe]

Didn't Judge Lowell live with the Stewarts for awhile?

Pooch

[All My Shadows]

The Lowells didn't really die out...there just weren't a lot of them to begin with. With the Hugheses, you had Chris, Nancy, Grandpa, Bob, Don, Penny, Edith, even John. With the Lowells, you had the Judge, Jim, Claire, and Ellen. Two times as many Hugheses as there were Lowells. Jim died, the Judge was phased out with age, Claire died, and Ellen was phased out in the 90s (which was a shame because they started treating her as a contemporary of Nancy when she was really in the Bob, Lisa, Kim, Susan age range).

Honestly, the Lowells just gave way to the Stewarts in the 1960s. Ellen married David and the Stewarts became the new second core family. Which is why it aggravates me that on Wiki someone wrote that the Hughes family is "the only core family that remains." They were the only core family to begin with, dumbasses.

[SteveFrame]

Irna Phillips and William Bell can be traced to the root of the problem for Ellen Lowell.

I am a firm believer in that even if I love someone I can look at their faults. I love both Irna and Bill but they made one big mistake - a mistake that cost the show big time in the long run.

They were the ones who started the aging process that aged Ellen too fast. They started it but the later writers in the mid to late 60's really impacted it.

No way in hell should Ellen's son ever been made the same age as Bob. Ellen was just a few years older than Bob when the show began. Even with the casting of Patricia Bruder in 1960 they still weren't that far apart. But suddenly in the late 60's Ellen was old enough to be Bob's mother. There was no way then that the writers could portray Ellen as Penny's contemporary anymore. They had to push her to Nancy's contemporary to make Dan's age work.

I have always found it funny that on many shows mother and son are portrayed by actors who are not too far apart in age with the actress usually older. In the case of Dan and Ellen, John Colenback was actually a few years older than Patricia Bruder.

The writers at AMC have done the same thing with Erica. And that is the reason I am sure we don't see Tara on the show. they have made Tara a grandmother of a teenager while making Erica consistently younger. Jeff was always the older brother, but they deaged Jeff to fit Erica's age recently and so Tara has to stay offscreen. I know that is not the only reason but it sure makes it hard for the writers to bring her back.