Another World Discussion Thread

[allmc2008]

How was David Canary's Steve??

[TimWil]

I wasn't crazy about him. He was just OK. I was hoping that after he was killed it turned out he was only impersonating Steve Frame. I hated that plastic surgery angle. It's never remotely believable IMO.

[watson71]

The Rachel/Steve/Alice story never worked in the early 80s because two of the three characters were recasts. Paul Rauch and P&G knew in late 81-1982 that they were in ratings trouble. They should have taken a second chance on George Reinholt as Steve at the time. By early 1983, Rauch would be gone, and Jacqueline Courtney would be back as Alice in 1984. If they had waited until 1983 or 84, I believe it would have been more successful storyline.

[TimWil]

I agree with that, watson71. I remember really scratching my head with the casting of Wesley Anne Pfenning as Alice. My ex Brian (who played Dan Shearer) said he and the rest of the cast did the same thing. There were the inevitable rumors that she may have been a "friend" of Paul Rauch's. It was Pfenning who had those first scenes at Sally's boarding school where we got our first look at SORAS'd Sally (Julie Philips). It was jarring enough at the time to see this new Alice who looked nothing at all like how we'd expect Alice to look but within a few weeks she was in scenes with a new, ahem, more mature Sally.

Edited June 30, 2014 by TimWil

[denzo30]

Tim, maybe that explains it. I never understood the casting of Wesley Anne in the role of Alice. Many people did not like Susan Harney as Alice. I enjoyed her but she was really the Alice that I knew. Although different than J Courtney, there was some similarities. At least the look anyway. When Pfenning came in, it was if Alice was a completely different person. She did not last very long at all. I think only 6 months. Most likely due to fans writing in with disappointment. No disrespect to the actress

[denzo30]

Wow, what a great story. I have always wanted to meet the legacy cast and ask about their day on AW. Consider yourself blessed

[TimWil]

I do, denzo30! I was fortunate to have those experiences. I've forgotten so much from those child actor days but I remember the exact moment, angle, etc. when I met Constance Ford. She impressed me so much.

I really liked Susan Harney as Alice. She had a contemporary look that seemed right to me. She may have been a shade young for the role. I just believed her completely as a young widow and mother trying to bring up her kid. My ex Brian was very fond of her.

Back to Sally/Julia-in June 1983 we were treated to the sight of Mary Page Keller replacing Dawn Benz as Sally and both Jonna Lee and Faith Ford replacing Kyra Sedgwick as Julia. The way they revealed these replacements all three times was exactly like this-the camera would start on the ground and pan up to them and the announcer would say "The role of ------ is now being played by -----." And each time this happened the girls were wearing those flat, princess style shoes that seemed to come back into fashion that year! It must have been an inside joke at the studio to have these reveals shot in that manner. I think when Taylor Miller replaced Mary Page Keller she was walking into a kitchen and placing down shopping bags, looking flustered, as the announcer told us who was now playing Sally!

Edited July 3, 2014 by TimWil

[denzo30]

And again, another 360 replacement. Mary Page Keller had dark hair and nothing like Sally Frame but she was a success and I consider her one of my fav Sally's and then they replace her with blonde Taylor Miller. I did not care for her at all. I recall Dawn Benz only being on the show for weeks if not days. Was she intro'd as a temp playing the role? She did look a bit like Jennifer Runyon who was playing the role except different color hair

[TimWil]

Benz was intended to be a long term cast member as Sally but she was very bland. She had no real appeal. I was very surprised that Mary Page Keller, who I knew well from RH, was playing the role but I liked her so much I never found her radically different hair color/facial features jarring. I never ever accepted Kelley Menighan (Hensley) as Emily on ATWT because her look was so radically different from Melanie Smith's.

[watson71]

Mary Page Keller is currently starring in the ABC Family drama Chasing Life. Having always liked MPK, I never cared for Taylor Miller's Sally. However, I think AW did a big disservice in killing off the character of Sally. There was plenty of story left for this character- she was Jamie's stepsister and Rachel's stepdaughter and would have had plenty to do with the return of Russ and the reveal that Josie and Olivia were his daughters. Killing Sally severely limited any reappearance of her mother, Alice. In fact we only saw Alice two more times- the 25th anniversary and Mac's funeral- before AW was cancelled. This also diminished Aunt Liz's screen time until Russ' return in 1989. Sally's son, Kevin Thatcher, could have been SORASed around the time that Matthew and Amanda were aged as well. Killing Sally ranks right up there with the killing of Ryan and Frankie.

[danfling]

Another World producer Robert Costello has passed away. Here is an obituary from the East Hampton Star:

Robert Costello, TV Producer, 93

April 26, 1921 - May 30, 2014

By Irene Silverman | June 26, 2014 - 10:06am

Robert E. Costello, a pioneering producer of classic ’50s television shows who later won a Peabody Award for the PBS series “The Adams Chronicles” and two Emmys for ABC’s daytime serial “Ryan’s Hope,” died of a heart attack on May 30 at his summer house in Amagansett’s Beach Hampton neighborhood. He was 93 and had been diagnosed many years before with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

In the ’60s and ’70s Mr. Costello introduced viewers to “The Patty Duke Show” and “Dark Shadows,” a vehicle for TV’s first vampires. He was most proud, however, of his work on “The Armstrong Circle Theatre,” a series of true-life “docudramas” that ran from 1950 to 1963 and gave such movie stars as James Dean, Grace Kelly, and Jack Lemmon their first taste of the small screen.

One legendary episode, “The Contender,” starred Paul Newman as a professional boxer who fears he will be brain-damaged if he keeps fighting; another, “The Engineer of Death: The Eichmann Story” (with Carroll O’Connor, a k a Archie Bunker, as Eichmann), included actual footage of Auschwitz and was rebroadcast the day after Eichmann’s trial in Israel.

Mr. Costello took a roundabout path to television. Born in Chicago on April 26, 1921, to Robert E. Costello Sr. and the former Bernice McClure, he was an only child. His father sold advertising space in farm magazines, and often took the boy with him on cross-country business trips. The family settled when he was 5 in Jackson Heights, Queens, where he attended high school.

He entered Dartmouth College in 1939 but left to join the O.S.S., the Office of Strategic Services, soon after America went to war. He was a code-cracker and ciphers man, stationed in Europe and North Africa, where he met his first wife, the former Mary Eddy, now Mary Eddy Furman. They were married in Algiers.

Many other members of his Dartmouth class of ’43 enlisted in the military before they could graduate. Along with those classmates, Mr. Costello finally received his college diploma 50 years late, marching proudly with the class of 1993.

He returned home after the war to attend the Yale School of Drama, graduating with an M.F.A., after which the Stevens Institute of Technology hired him for his first job, in its theater research unit. Mr. Costello had been something of an artist as a child — his parents once gave a railroad porter $10 to keep him busy, according to family lore, and the porter taught him to draw — and while at Stevens he illustrated a book called “Theaters and Auditoriums.”

Then came an odd but entertaining interlude: The book caught the attention of a wealthy Dutch businessman who owned a team of performing Lipizzaners. He hired Mr. Costello as the lighting and theater designer of the horses’ act, and later sent him through Switzerland supervising the animals in a one-ring circus.

Mr. Costello married his second wife, Barbara Bolton, the actress Barbara Dello Joio, in 1950. Five years later they bought the Amagansett house, said to have been the first one built on Marine Boulevard. They were divorced in the 1960s.

His TV productions in those years included “Mister Peepers,” “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” “Another World,” and many more. The demands on his time allowed him little time for hobbies, but he managed to amass a vast collection of whaling harpoons and scrimshaw, including one Civil War-era carving bearing the words “Death to the Confederacy” and the carved heads of several Southern generals.

After retiring in the ’80s, Mr. Costello became a tenured professor at New York University’s Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television. With his third wife, the former Sybil Weinberger, a TV music producer and Emmy-winner in her own right, he also lived in Manhattan. They were married for 37 years.

He leaves three daughters and a son. Martha Keating of Church Creek, Md., and Julia Costello of Mokelumne Hill, Calif., are the children of his first wife; Kathleen Bar-Tur of New York City and Ned Bolton Costello of Old Lyme, Conn., are the children of his second. Both former wives survive, and “all spouses are friendly with each other,” said the family.

Mr. Costello is survived also by seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. He was cremated, and his ashes will be buried at Green River Cemetery in Springs on July 23 following a private family service there.

[TimWil]

I agree, Sally should never have been killed off. She was a true young heroine of the show.

[amybrickwallace]

Those BTS stories of the AW actors are fascinating. Keep 'em coming!!

[danfling]

Actress Rosemary Murphy, who played Amanda's mother-in-law on Another World has died.

(CNN) -- Rosemary Murphy, an Emmy Award-winning actress, has died. She was 89

Murphy died Saturday night at her home in Manhattan, her agent confirmed to CNN. The New York Times cited cancer as the cause of death.

Murphy was known for her film role as Miss Maudie Atkinson in the 1962 classic "To Kill a Mockingbird." Murphy played the neighbor to widower and lawyer Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck.

In 1976, it was Murphy's portrayal of Sara Delano Roosevelt, the mother of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the ABC television movie "Eleanor and Franklin" that earned her an Emmy. The following year she was nominated for another Emmy when she reprised her role as Roosevelt for the sequel, "Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years."

Murphy also appeared on Broadway receiving Tony nominations for roles in 1960's "Period of Adjustment" as the wife of a Korean War veteran; as Dorothy Cleaves, a wife who finds out about her husband's infidelity in "Any Wednesday" and in "A Delicate Balance," where she played an alcoholic named Claire.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" now an e-book

She continued to work in television, portraying the mother of presidents. In the 1984 mini-series "George Washington" Murphy played Mary Ball Washington, the mother of the nation's first president. She also portrayed Rose Kennedy, the mother of President John F. Kennedy, in 1991's "A Woman Named Jackie."

Her later TV credits include the long-running soap operas, "The Young and the Restless" and "As the World Turns." According to IMDB, one of Murphy's last roles was for the film "The Romantics" with Katie Holmes, Anna Paquin and Josh Duhamel.

Murphy's survivors include a sister, Mildred Pond.

[DRW50]

Loretta Fowler?

I liked her. I was disappointed they didn't ever have her come back.