Texas!

[DRW50]

@SFK Thanks for finding that. Bobbie Wygant's soap gems are always a treat, and what a true surprise to find more Beverlee McKinsey content. I had to laugh that she seemed to be in a bit of conflict with Bobbie right at the start. 

[Xanthe]

I thought at first that Beverlee was kidding when she said she had only just met Jerry since the first moment was Bobbie asking Jerry not to have his arm around Beverlee to give production more flexibility in the editing.

I find Beverlee so charismatic. And it was interesting to me to hear her discuss the change in Iris' personality, especially talking about reacting to the other actors who might be playing the villain's rôle. In the AW thread we have talked about Nicolas Coster complaining that Beverlee delivered her lines by rote as if she simply ignored her scene partner. 

 

[Soaplovers]

I could see Beverlee opting to do that as Iris...because Iris was a daddy girls and always wanted center stage..and talked just for the sake of talking.

It made sense for her and Jerry to do Bobbie's show since she was a Dallas local and good promotion for Texas

[Paul Raven]

Sept 81 Jon Michael Reed

A more notable exit is that of Kin Shriner in the role of Jeb Hampton on Texas. Kin, son of the late Hoosier humorist, Herb Shriner, began his soap career as a delivery boy on 'The Young and The Restless" five years ago. He then attained super soap stardom as Scotty Baldwin on "'General Hospital." Last year, "Texas" lured Shriner from "GH" with one of the most lucrative salaries in soap history. The ploy, unfortunately, didn't lure viewers away from "GH" to 'Texas."

"It's ridiculous of me to complain," says Shriner, "when I was pulling down such big bucks. I went for the money, and why not? But I also went from the number one soap to the newest, and 'Texas' never knew what to do with me. 1 was frustrated because I really didn't have a character. Jeb didn't have a motivating story. His romances never worked out, and just about the only interesting period for me was during the New York location sequences where Jeb had an active cause, a motivation for action to rescue Elena. In recent months I've worked maybe twice a week and even those times I may have had four pages of dialogue, tops.

I guess I wasn't the easiest person to get along with on the set. I didn't hide my frustration that I wasn't doing anything challenging. Now that my year's contract with "Texas' is completed, I'm going back to California to face the unknown. I don't have any regrets since I'm a believer in taking chances and I made a lot of new friends in New York." Would he consider returning to "GH" should that show offer him an encore? "Not on a permanent basis," says Shriner, 'but I wouldn't mind going back to wrap up Scotty and Laura's divorce." Meanwhile, on "Texas," simply fade away when he joins a former story girlfriend, Courtney, in Dallas. It's the epitome of going out with a whimper instead of a bang.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Paul Raven

[Melroser]

Clearly Texas wasted both Kin Shriner and Catherine Hickland (Courtney). It's too bad they couldn't have worked out something with Bev McKinsey, too. If she wanted to leave because she was tired and didn't like the way Iris was being written, the show should have worked with her. (Unless maybe she didn't tell them why and only complained after she left). They could have cut back her days for a while and figure out a different direction than just pitting her against Paige. 

I thought Texas had a strong cast. It's sad that it never caught on. 

[dc11786]

Shringer's Jeb Hampton was an interesting construct. As Ginny's younger brother, it allowed him to come on the scene as a part of the Marshall set without the blood ties. The heart mumur allowed him to be tied to Kevin and Courtney. The military background also gave him a potential entry into the Eliot / Barrett story, but I don't think that was an angle that ever really was explored. Personally, given his backstory with the drug addicted singer Suzanne, it might have been interesting to have played him a bit more with Paige. I am curious where the Corringtons would have taken the character as I believe they were out by February, 1981. Wasn't Jeb also tested with Lacey Wheeler, too? 

I don't think Catherine Hickland was setting the world on fire as Courtney, and I don't think it was necessarily the writing. She was saddled with weak pairings in the beginning. Her chemistry wasn't there with Lee Patterson and Joel Colodner was fine as the perennial loser, but he lacked the gravitas that would have been required to hold his own had Courtney committed to a relationship with Bart after Reena was aware of Kevin and Courtney's relationship. I get the sense that Gulf Hospital was originally intended to play a bigger role given that originally Russ was going to be in Houston as well, but the medical group didn't last long and Courtney's lack of true connection to the Marshalls didn't help. I would have brought back Courtney in the fall of 1981 with Harley Jane Kozak in the role. 

I'm not sure anything could have kept Beverlee McKinsey on "Texas." I think the show was strong with her, but I don't necessarily think the show needed her to survive. I would be curious to see what the show could have been like if they had just kept Iris cunning from the beginning and was manipulating Alex into thinking she had changed, while still meddling in Dennis' life. Then again, I'd also like to see what the Corringtons could have done if they were given two years to develop the show onscreen. 

[victoria foxton]

 

[victoria foxton]

 

[victoria foxton]

Really enjoying Pam Long's Texas run is lively and very watchable. A far cry from the 1981 episodes. Which were very dull and rather generic. Also, Pam Long was great as Ashley. 

 

Edited March 12, 2023 by victoria foxton

[victoria foxton]

 

  

[Paul Raven]

Tv Guide Nov 1969.

Carla had a guest spot in The Survivors around this time.

When Carla Borelli was six months old, her mother, a San Francisco grocer’s wife, took one look at that beautiful ltalian baby face and decided, Carla, my girl, you’ve got to be a model. So Carla was a model before she could talk. The tap and ballet lessons began when. she was 7.

By the time she was 15, alas, she had no worlds left to conquer. She was “the top model” in San Francisco, making a sinfully large sum of money. “I needed more to do,” Carla remembers. “New conquests. SoI signed a contract with 20th Century-Fox. Trouble was, they didn’t know what to do with me and they told me to go home.”

Carla went home “a very rebellious young lady.’ She kept auditioning for things when she should have been doing her school work.

“l rebelled,” she says,“because I didn’t get what I wanted.” Two years later she tried again in Hollywood. “I lived with a wonderful little old Italian lady who made wine. Right off the bat I was making commercials, and I knew there was something here for me.”

Still, it took her a few years to collect that ‘‘something.’’ She decided to commute to her Los Angeles jobs, which gave her a chance for some more schooling. She also snagged herself a husband, a good-looking University of Michigan graduate named Jack Demorest, who was employed by a billboard firm in San Francisco.

“1 told him my needs,” Carla recalls, “and outlined the rules of the game. He understood. I know |’m not easy to be married to. At one point we had to take a trip around the world to get reacquainted. Then a couple of years ago I persuaded him he couid do better in Los Angeles.”

Carla read biographies of Bette Davis and Helen Hayes and even arranged to be caught carrying a copy of Stanislavsky’s “An Actor Prepares.’ Nothing rubbed off. She had to content herself with making ‘‘a great deal of money doing commercials. Photographers used her extensively because, said one, “She was sexy but had the -nice look when you needed it.” She wasn’t satisfied, however. “Modeling is one-dimensional,” she says. ‘‘Acting is three-dimensional. I wanted to be something of an Anne Bancroft, to use my total self.”

Last season the “‘total self’ was finally allowed to get into the act. Universal Studio needed ‘‘a very beautiful girl with a visual look who could move” in a Name of the Game episode. She had only one scene, but the part was fat—an Italian playgirl who dies of an overdose of barbiturates. Carla swung well enough in it for the studio to sign her to a contract which allowed her to keep up her modeling activities. She did an It Takes a Thief episode. She appeared as one of Don Knotts’s ladies in “The Love God.” She even got herself cast in an underground movie called “Don’t Throw Cushions in the Ring.” The film, made on a shoestring by the actor Steve Ihnat, is about a man who strives very hard to be a successful actor but, when he gets his desire, experiences disappointment.

“It is the problem of our Affluent Society,’’ Carla explains. “What do you do after you have everything?”

Last spring she made a second Name of the Game as a woman of ill repute. When the scene was over, all the studio still photographer had to do was make a slight motion toward his Rolleiflex. The sloe-eyed beauty wearing the Rita Hayworth-like black lace chemise fell instinctively to her knees on the satin bedspread, head up, lips slightly parted in the classic Hayworth pose. When the still photo was released to 900 papers a few weeks later, even The New York Times printed it.

Carla was born 25 years too late to be another Hayworth. However, she might make it as the house Raquel Welch. In any event, she'll make it. “I'm finding out what works for me,” she says.

 

[Contessa Donatella]

I've been working to try to correct the inaccurate info that Bev McKinsey was the first to get star billing on a US soap. I published this blog today. It sets out in chronological order the known instances of star billing, describes them & provides a YouTube link. 

http://shallotpeelblog.org/2023/08/19/blog-249-v-2-star-billing-in-us-soap-operas/

1. 1965 DAYS MacDonald Carey

2. 1969 Bright Promise Dana Andrews

3. 1970 AMC Rosemary Prinz

4. 1974 How To Survive a Marriage Rosemary Prinz

5. 1980 Texas Beverlee McKinsey

You might know this already: GL: Pam Long had someone specific in mind for Reva Shayne, not KZ, a redhead, who was it? The answer: Carla Borelli played Reena on TEXAS & she turned Reva down because she was too much like Reena. 

I don't know if you've seen Beverlee's Canadian "City Lights" interview. Sorry this is such a long handle URL. 

https://www.facebook.com/scottmckinsey/videos/10224621908925295/?__cft__[0]=AZWqSjjWbMb7qaofRN2s_-v72IB6CAHMSAVc3CZoFwkFgRgLiOwJUAUpRX83xXjtYmVNv8NzD3krdt1vRqqvhQ7KWXHrna-9SJLCnMOPIH7JqW8SBSVnwnn2-raop2hzOFroiKA0I-jEC1IZnzMWbhrlGuWHfUffMsNYfetnLy21mvzJJqUJTGqrfl4borCCl8E0avpobYk1ZemSFHzdvf-0&__tn__=-UK-R

This is considered by her son Scott to be her best & most candid interview & I concur. She's very clear that whomever it was planning to spin Texas off of AW, that they just assumed she'd do it & went pretty far in planning before bringing her into the loop. I believe that is part of the reason she was in such a good negotiating position! They needed her so very much more than she even wanted them. 

Patrick Mulcahey told me that the team that had been hired to initially write Texas had nothing to do so they put them to work writing on AW. I believe he said for a few months, which seems long. And, he has no writing credits for AW! He expressed great frustration with that & also with the state of both his IMDb & wikipedia pages. Said they were so wrong & he'd tried to correct them & finally just told one of them to take it down & just ignored them ever since. 

I'm running a fan campaign right now to try to get a Posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award for Beverlee & I would dearly appreciate it if you would go sign the petition!! Thanks! 

https://chng.it/JBsh8Y9tkk

Oh, yeah, something else you might know. Beverlee had a photographic memory. She learned her lines & all of the punctuation & every one else's lines. On the weekend she'd reverse the order of her scripts for the next week & learn first Friday & last Monday & that would be what she'd do the next day. She said that in preparing she'd try to imagine everything & anything a director might ask her to do so she'd be 100% prepared. She was not known to suffer fools easily & also was perhaps not very tolerant of anyone who had trouble getting their lines or heaven forbid didn't care to try to get their lines. 

Supposedly Nic Coster went to set one day for taping without any trousers on, just his shirt tail hanging down over part of his boxers -- and he said that Beverlee didn't notice. 

Only KZ threw her & Kim began to worry when Bev kept going off her lines with her & only her. So she just asked why & Bev said it was that her eyes were so blue. She kept gettting lost in them. 

Just found out that IMDb will accept the correction!! 

Please register in order to view this content

 

Edited August 20, 2023 by Donna L. Bridges
more info; approved!

[AMCOLTLLover]

Thank God for them wasting his talent otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten him back on GH and him being involved with Robin
Mattson as Heather.. It all Worked out in the end 

[TEdgeofNight]

I am of the opinion that Beverlee McKinsey would NOT want to get a posthumous Emmy Award. So, NO, I will not sign the petition. 

[Contessa Donatella]