The Great Douglas Marland

[SteveFrame]

I just picked up off of others and thought this was just all about his ATWT tenure.

Douglas Marland had great stories on all the other shows he wrote for.

I loved the whole Carrie Todd Marler story on GL. It was riveting.

Also the Nola fantasies he wrote were some of the most romantic and brilliant scenes ever.

I always hated that he and Allen Potter didn't get along. He was really good for GL.

Over at GH I don't remember any particular stories but it was characters that I remember from there. He wrote Tracy Quartermaine better than other writer since. She was such a wonderful bitch.

The Scotty & Laura love story was wonderful. And of course the whole lead up to the rape of Laura and all was just a brilliant story. I just hate what happened to it after that.

If I have my time frame right, his best story there had to be the Alan/Rick/Monica/Lesley quad. Talk about action sequences. he wrote the wonderful scenes of Alan chasing Rick too.

He was brilliant at The Doctors too. I loved the whole revenge on Matt story - that I think he actually inherited but turned into gold. It was really well done.

I know that people jumped all over me when I used to compare Hogan Sheffer while he was at Days with what he did on ATWT - saying they were differnt shows. But Douglas Marland is a perfect example here of a writer doing what he did at one soap on another.

Marland loved the lower class large family. I know that he based them in part on his own family but I have wondered if he got that from working under Harding Lemay who wrote the Frames into Another World.

If you will watch on each of Marland's headwriting tenures. He wrote in a lower class large family or at least expanded on them.

On The Doctors, he introduced the Dancys who are easily the predecessors of all the other that followed.

When he got to GH, he started to enlarge Bobbi Spencer's family introducing her brother and then their "aunt" Ruby.

When he got to GL, he did it with the Reardons.

Then comes Loving and we got the Rescotts.

Then came the masterpiece - the one that he fully got to explore - the Snyders - he even gave them his mother's maiden name.

You will notice that all of them had a father who was out of the picture. Only did The Dancy's get their father back even though he had abandoned them. Each had the sympathetic mother figure.

Marland was truly a gem. And I agree with so many we need another Marland today.

[Soapsuds]

It was Steve. Dan doesnt know how to read. Love ya Dan.

[Dan]

Well poo on you...

Who needs ATWT? Bah!

[Soapsuds]

You can post about GL too. I just dont remember what he wrote for that show....what stories.

It's ok Dan post away about GL too.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Yes, I think that whole family's essence was lost when Marland died. They haven't recovered, every writing regime since hasn't understood them. They were Marland's unique creations. Ever since, I think the Snyder's have become the family, or at least some of the characters from the Snyder clan, that ate ATWT. Marland knew how to incorporate all of the families on the show, very few writers know how to do that today.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

It appears Marland had a tumultuous relationship with Gloria Monty and Alan Potter. Robert Calhoun was the only producer he's ever gushed about.

I've only seen Marland's work when Laurence Caso was EP at ATWT, did things change in any way when Calhoun went to GL and was replaced by Caso?

[Mitch]

Marland was the absolute best in creating a cohesive canvas and including everyone, young and old, and making family stories which involved history and the vets. When he came to ATWT it had been pretty damaged by previous writers, including the Dobsons, who obscured the Hughes family and promoted the IMO bland Stewarts to the only core family along with the Montgomerys. Marlands best story was the he fixed it and put the Hughes front and center and made them the center point of the community. Instead of doing promoting the Coopers to lone core family on GL Wheeler should have taken a page out of Marland's GL and put her resources in to fixing the Bauers and using that center much as Marland used the Hughes set almost everyday.

Some of his best storylines to me was the Doug Cummings Murder Mystery (before the internet, I was extremely suprised he was the killer) all the clues worked together and fit, and the Frannie/Sabrina mystery, which was a template for rewriting history correctly. (Okay, Sabrina was a dud, would have been so much more fun if Bob and Kim found their lost baby was now a drug dealing whore.. but that wouldnt be Marland.

His weakness was that he was way too white bread and polite. Everyone in Oakdale, even the Snyders were WASPs. His sex scenese were snoozes (Marland seemed to be afraid of sex) and he relied way too heavily on the HOT STUD in jeans with the rich nice girl. He also too often relied on business being BAD....and even though his characters were mostly well off, ambition was bad and work took the place of romance and family life, so it was bad.

His worst storylines was the Carolyn Cummings thing, and the boring Walsh siblings getting the best of Lucinda. Oh and the ghost in the castle crap!!!

I happened to like the Lilith Meckenkne thing....thought she was Annie Dutton before Annie Dutton...but I HATED Shannon Bore Ass and loved it when Lillith produced the shrunken head and said it was her!LOL...I was so angry when her sad ass came back to the show...I was actually saying, "She cant be alive her damn head was shrunk," like Whoopi on Soap Dish!

[DeeeDee]

Yep.

What did Marland have against the Stewarts though?

[Faulkner]

Linc Lafferty

[Mitch]

I don't think he had anything against the Stewarts...by the time he came along the David actor had left the show but for some reason they didnt want to kill him off, Annie and Dee were already written out, and Betsy and Steve had been on overload. He wrote for Betsy until the actress left and he brought back Emily (after years of no mention)as the slut we know and love. He wrote for Ellen, (who was never the most exciting of characters or actresses to begin with.) I will say he did make Nancy Hughes more gentle then she was in the past...she was a huge buttinsky and very opinionated, I think Caso brought Nancy and Chris back and they wrote her as being more headstrong then Marland changed her too.

Another interesting thing about Marland is the homo eroticisim in his writing. At least on ATWT, some of the actresses, well, lets say they just werent as pretty as the actors. Was Marland gay and out..in the closet...or just straight with a penchant for gay porno fantasies (studs in jeans)?

[Soapsuds]

Which one? There were two of them.

[Quent]

Mitch, I agree with a lot of what you said, but two big disagreements. The Lucinda vs. Evan and Connor storyline was great, the type of industry intrigue that the show never does anymore. Also, I loved Shannon O'Hara! What a breath of fresh air. Her relationships with John Dixon, Harriet Corbman, Earl Mitchell and especially Barbara were great. As much as I loved the character of Jessica Griffin, she didn't have one-tenth the chemistry Shannon had with Duncan.

[Soapsuds]

The Lucinda vs Connor was a masterpiece. I loved it! That was great soap writing. Shannon was ok. I could take her or leave her. Ducan and Jessica to me had zero chemistry. I prefered him with Shannon.

[Soapsuds]

I totally/completely disagree. Read my above comment. The Lucinda vs Connor story brought great ratings for ATWT. I remember it doing real well.

[Paul Raven]

Here's a quote I saved years ago from Doug Marland,when he was writing GL

From his GH days,

I remember meeting Agnes Nixon downstairs at the elevator because Agnes was a consultant for all the shows on ABC and it was the week that General Hospital hit number one solid-we wiped everything else out. The fact that this poor pathetic show was the solid number one show was like victory--this was the first story meeting I haven't dreaded.Agnes said, "Don't be too sure." I said, "What can they say, we're number one?" Jackie Smith came in and said, her opening remarks, she was a half-hour late, and said, "We're in terrible trouble." I couldn't believe it. Her maid that morning had said that

the Laura, Bobbie, Scotty thing was boring, she didn't like it --all our eggs are in that basket.

I said, "It was the basket that brought us here." She said, "Yes, now we have to find ways to stay there." "We can't go on telling the same story." I said, "The story isn't even over yet." I couldn't believe it. Agnes was totally right. She winked at me from across the room. There is an incredible instinct to panic. I have not found that at all with P & G.

About censorship. Sometimes I'll argue violently against. We had a big problem last year with the first Morgan-Kelly sex scene. They certainly got very uptight and weren't going to let it happen. Codes and Practices got very strict and said they were not going to let them go to bed together. There is a year and a half story down the drain.Their feeling was that, since my projection had them marry a year and so many months later, wasn't I really saying to teenage girls--17- or 18-year-old girls--that if you have sex with this boy it means a happy ending? They marry a year from now. I said, No, that's not what I am saying at all. There is a lot of interim story where she suffers a great deal. What I'm telling is that you can be physically ready for sex at a lot of ages but are you ready for it emotionally, for the responsibilities that go along with a sexual relationship? I said the moral of the story was she was not. She is going to go through a lot--she is not going to marry Kelly a year from now because she had sex with him this year. That's not the story. To me, I said, there is a moral point of view and a very good lesson for a lot of teenagers.They need to know that along with physical satisfaction goes an emotional responsibility and you have to be ready for it.