ALL SOAPS: Best and Worst Recasts

[Quent]

The Connor Walsh recast is probably the all-time worst. To take a very popular actress (Allyson Rice Taylor) and replace her with someone totally wrong for the part (Susan Batten) is bad enough, but to do so in THE VERY SAME SCENE was ridiculous.

[Soapsuds]

Yup, she was very popular at the time of being let go. Not to mention that Susan Batten had no chemistry with Alexander Walters(Mark Kasnoff).

[SFK]

I saved a picture from an old magazine where Dinah Lee is making a spectacle of herself and a regal Clay (Larkin) and a fabulously svelte looking Gwyn (Christine) are glaring at her.

Celeste was of course married to Wesley Addy, and I guess it was a pretty big deal to get someone like her in a contract role on a soap. We watched All About Eve a few months ago, she and Bette had some rocky times on set. She may have been my favorite Isabelle, the brightest personality/presence, she seemed to sweep in and out of rooms, and the white hair was certainly different/striking. Did Meg Mundy last beyond the pilot movie? She and Ann looked like they could have been sisters. She had aged quite a bit by the time she was playing Gillian's grandmother on AMC. Not too many memories of Patricia Barry other than my mom's comment that they'd repainted the portrait yet again. Did they fire PB to bring back AD?

[juniorz1]

I caught it and she wasn't at all right for the part. I may be biased because I hated her as a recast Pamela on SB, but she couldn't touch Louise Sorel.

To me, James Horan was the one and only Clayton. I know some people liked Larkin and Dennis Parlato, but neither could touch Horan IMO.

Thankfully they did. PB was bad, and though there's no denying Celeste Holm's acting, Augusta Dabney IS Isabelle.

[DRW50]

There was a very smug "We got our friend a job now that we're at ATWT" feeling which those involved put forth in the soap press at that time, almost to the point where reading between the lines they seemed to be saying they didn't care about Connor, they just wanted to give Susan Batten a job.

I felt sorry for Susan but that was and is one of the most fascinating and fierce reactions I can remember to a soap recast. They sent canned food to the studio, asking for her to be canned. Even a soap writer couldn't dream that plot up.

[SFK]

James Horan was creepy, and perhaps the best suited for the original concept of the "real Clay" character, dark, hurt, sneaky, brooding, creepy... In hindsight, Larkin's Clay reminds me of the few clips I've seen of Ernest Graves as Victor Lord, or a younger Palmer Cortlandt.