Another World Discussion Thread

[vetsoapfan]

 

His own words convict Lemay where Dwyer is concerned.

 

In his book, he heaps scorn on her, and is clearly infuriated, because she dared to edit and rewrite the lines he wrote for Mary which Dwyer felt were out of character. She rephrased her dialogue to be more in line with how Mary had been conceived, written and played for the previous 7 years. At the same time Lemay was raging about Dwyer's trying to keep a through-line with her character, he praised his pets Victoria Wyndham and Constance Ford to the skies for doing THE EXACT SAME THING. He applauded Ford for slashing reams of dialogue that Ada simply wouldn't be likely to say, but when Dwyer did it, he went out of his way to diminish her role on the show and belittle her personally. He purported to be able to read her mind and thoughts, and attributed negative motivations to her real-life behavior; motivations that he could not possibly have known to be accurate, and which Lemay was clearly inventing in his own mind out of petulant contempt for the women.

Edited February 6, 2020 by vetsoapfan

[denzo30]

Neil, I think you really hit the nail on the head.  From what I have seen, the very very little, I thought Dwyer did a great job as Mary and as someone else mentioned the screw up on dialogue is clearly seen with actress's such as Connie Ford and others.  You can notice this stuff now where you constantly see actors looking down back in those days (the scripts) but Lemay also critizied and had J Courtney fired over that, when I have seen VW and others do the exact same thing.  Rauch should have completly dismantled Lemay wanting to fire Dwyer but I am sure  since Lemay was doing such a wonderful job he did not want it to interfere with the ratings and let him do whatever he wanted.  Like you said, I am huge fan of Lemays too but when I read some of his interviews or hear audio about his writing and thoughts about characters and professional actors he sounds a bit condensending and thought he was god.  Irene Daily was clearly recasted as Liz Matthews with the intent to get rid of Virginia Dywer.  Apparently Hugh Marlow, thanked Lemay after he fired Virgina Dwyer because he said she screwed up his lines.  I thought Hugh Marlow was an awful actor..  

[Bill Bauer]

 

He really, really was. He delivered every line exactly the same way. Like he was announcing sports scores. 

 

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

I loved Hugh as Jim Matthews, he brought a warmth and genuineness to the role.  BUT the poor guy was not cut-out for daytime TV.  He stuttered and stammered through his lines -- sometimes as if he hadn't even attempted to memorize them.  And then he had the audacity to blame Virginia Dwyer for his difficulty.  That's ludicrous.  At times the man was embarrassingly bad.  But I still loved him.  

[SoapDope]

There was some 1980 episodes of the show on youtube and boy was Hugh Marlowe BAD. He seemed like he was reading a teleprompter and all zoned out. There was one scene where he was talking to Pat on the sofa and it was uncomfortable to watch. 

[AbcNbc247]

True. I'm a big fan of Lemay too but he did do a lot of damage. He's lucky he was such a talented writer and had a talented cast to work with, otherwise AW might have been cancelled long before 1999. I don't think there's been a soap opera family that was as decimated as much as the Matthews family. Some others come close, but I think the Matthewses have all of them beat. That's one of the things that I like about DOOL, and B&B too; the original families are still featured.

I noticed that too. When it came to Connie Ford, he was the inexperienced writer but when it came to Virginia Dwyer, she was the inexperienced actress. I love that book, and Lemay was one of the best writers in the business, but every time I read it, I understand more and more how much of an ass he was lol.

[vetsoapfan]

 

Lemay's accusations about Courtney--that she was "always" looking down so that she could read the lines off the cuff of her nurse's uniform, and that she sobbed in scenes so that she wouldn't have to be bothered actually learning any dialogue--are clearly absurd, dishonest and gratuitously childish. But that was Lemay. Once he decided to dislike an actor, he set out to annihilate them.

 

As for Dwyer being responsible for Marlowe's trouble with dialogue...ha! That is a laugh. There came a point in the 1970s when Hugh Marlowe really started to forget, flub and mangle his lines regardless of who his scene partner was. He was always "going up" and glancing at the teleprompter. This became more apparent when the show went to an hour. Indeed, after Dwyer was fired, Marlowe's stumbling got significantly worse, and you could tell that although he would be featured in scenes, his lines were kept to a minimum while everyone else around him did most of the talking.

 

 

Blaming Dwyer for his own issues was probably Marlowe's way of saving face. Lemay bought into it because it served the writer's own vindictive purposes to denigrate Dwyer, but ANYONE else who watched AW in the 1970s and early 1980s could see Marlowe was the one having trouble. Still, I wanted to see him remain on the show, even in a limited capacity, because he played the patriarch of the Matthews family, and I had a feeling that when Marlowe finally left the show, Jim Matthews would cease to exist and not be recast.

[Paul Raven]

Lemay may have written the Matthews family differently in his tenure but they were not decimated by any means.

Yes Mary was killed off, Alice recast and Russ written out but there was nothing that couldn't have been corrected.

 

Russ was brought back later as was Susan but post Lemay Mike, Marianne, Russ. Pat, Alice were all dropped.

 

Subsequent regimes made half hearted attempts to revive the family.

 

The late 70's/early 80's was the time the show needed to keep the Matthews in play, nowt write them off.

 

But the same thing was happening to the Hughes, Hortons and Bauers.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Paul Raven

[SoapDope]

How was Marlowe in the role circa 1969-75 ? I have seen his later work and he was awful. It was uncomfortable to see him stumble through a scene. 

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

I assume he tried a little harder in the early days.  Otherwise, he likely would have been fired.  But I started watching regularly in 1971, and he was flubbing his lines then.    

 

I've read a quote from Beverly Penberthy somewhere online in which she says, Marlowe had a late-in-life child and took the job at AW only because he needed the income to raise the kid and get him through college.  And because of that, he basically phoned-in his performances.  

 

I do know the part about the kid is true. His son is Christopher Marlowe who I believe is a sports reporter (or something like that). 

Edited February 6, 2020 by Neil Johnson

[Albert]

I have a memory of a scene with Maeve Kinkaed’s Angie. She was downstairs in the Matthews home possibly working for Jim. Hugh Marlowe is behind her and flubs a line and she has an expression on her face and mouth may have fallen open with a “What?”

Wish I could see again to confirm. I expect 1978ish.

[SoapDope]

That sounds hilarious. He was cringe worthy a lot of the time. He was once married to K.T. Stevens (Vanessa Prentiss on Y&R) and they had 2 sons. Chris Marlowe is one of them.

 

He had a third child with his wife after his divorce from Stevens. 

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

So he had a child younger then Chris?  Wow, that kid must still be rather young.  

[Dion]

 

Referred to as an infant in this 1969 article about Marlowe joinng AW, so 50, maybe 51

 

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1917&dat=19690830&id=_KVGAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Y-kMAAAAIBAJ&pg=3682,6447586&hl=en

Edited February 7, 2020 by Dion

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

 

Wow, that's amazing.