In honor of AW's 45th anniversary,I thought I'd start this thread and perhaps all future posts concerning this show could be in one place.at present there are several threads.

Here's a description from Irna Phillips at the time of debut.

"What I want to say is that none of us can face reality 24 hours a day. We must have private 'worlds', made up of our down dreams and pleasures and emotions, into which to retreat. Otherwise, it would be simply too much!"

The story follows the lives of the families of two brothers, William and James Matthews, in a suburban university town. It opens with the death of William, then shows how the sad events affects the widow and their children and the other brother and his family. Grandma Matthews gets into the action, to. The writer promises to relate to contemporary problems; two of them she mentioned are school dropouts and illegitimacy.

1 minute ago, amybrickwallace said:

I bet it was! I found it satisfying just from that one episode. 😂

When Rachel was married to Russ Matthews, he finally lost his patience with her atrocious behavior, took her over his knee and spanked her like a disobedient child. That was satisfying too, but when he did it, Russ was stone-faced, methodical and restrained. When Alice went after Rachel physically, she was totally out of control, and might have literally broken Rachel's neck, which...I was kind of hoping to see, LOL.

30 minutes ago, vetsoapfan said:

When Alice went after Rachel physically, she was totally out of control, and might have literally broken Rachel's neck, which...I was kind of hoping to see, LOL.

I'm sure a lot of people were. 😂

I probably have an unpopular opinion but I sometimes rooted for Rachel because of her upbringing.  Yes she was a bitch in the early days but the women on this show were so “uppity” like Alice Lenore Pat Liz.  They treated her like trash even after she reformed and was with Mac

53 minutes ago, TVFAN1144 said:

I probably have an unpopular opinion but I sometimes rooted for Rachel because of her upbringing.  Yes she was a bitch in the early days but the women on this show were so “uppity” like Alice Lenore Pat Liz.  They treated her like trash even after she reformed and was with Mac

I don't doubt that, either, and I bet that Agnes Nixon's writing was very multidimensional. She created Rachel, so she wouldn't have been just the bad girl.

After all these years, Nancy vs. Tonya in the ice skating world is still a benchmark of "good girl" vs. "bad girl". Tonya has many fans precisely because she's a scrapper and had to claw her way up from the wrong side of the tracks. In some ways, not unlike Alice and Rachel - just that the blond was the "bad girl"!

1 hour ago, TVFAN1144 said:

I probably have an unpopular opinion but I sometimes rooted for Rachel because of her upbringing.  Yes she was a bitch in the early days but the women on this show were so “uppity” like Alice Lenore Pat Liz.  They treated her like trash even after she reformed and was with Mac

This was deliberate for both Agnes Nixon (at every show she reused the archetype, from AMC to LOV) and Lemay. Lemay points it out in his book when he singles out the audience for rooting for Rachel, even before he took over, for going after what he wants - specifically the Black audience.

Edited October 10, 20214 yr by Vee

4 hours ago, amybrickwallace said:

Did she ever say why?

I can't imagine anyone would ask her straight-up. 

I have to imagine - and I think the timing bears that out - it may have been out of osmosis - maybe subconscious - with Charles Keating.
These things do happen when you spend a lot of time with someone. It would be ridiculous if she had made this as a conscious acting choice for Rachel but it may have been something that came up out of doing a lot of work with him.
Just speculatin'. It is not just her accent: her acting style definitely changed in the last eight-ish years of the show along with her accent and her styling.
Her affect became very much very wealthy woman joining a pot-smoking commune where they meditate and spend hours talking about the artistic value of a rock
I don't know VW personally but watching her social media leads me to the conclusion that basically for the last few years she just played Rachel as a weathier version of herself.

You're probably right, because I don't think she spoke like that until Rachel was paired with Carl. I certainly wouldn't be brave enough to ask, either. 😂

Bill Bell's writing for Leslie's nervous breakdown on Y&R was actually more believable than Lemay's for Alice. The two breakdowns happened about the same time, and some of the magazines had stories about this coincidence, especially since Jacquie Courtney and Janice Lynde were high in the reader polls at this time. Leslie Brooks had always been written as a gifted concert pianist who was shy and awkward socially, and played as such by Janice Lynde. When she opened up to a romantic relationship with Brad (Tom Hallick) and then seemed to be losing him to her sister, it's not implausible that Leslie could have had a breakdown.

"Muted catatonic grief" seems like something Jacquie Courtney could have played very well. Muted grief is how she played Alice when she ran away to New York and met the Carringtons.

Lemay more or less brags about how he disliked Courtney and Reinholt from the beginning, mentioning a Christmas party where he ignored the two of them while spending all his time with his new BFFs on the show. I don't have the book to check the exact names, but I believe this would have included Nicolas Coster, Susan Sullivan, Victoria Wyndham, and a few others.

 

7 minutes ago, Nicholas Blair said:

Lemay more or less brags about how he disliked Courtney and Reinholt from the beginning, mentioning a Christmas party where he ignored the two of them while spending all his time with his new BFFs on the show. I don't have the book to check the exact names, but I believe this would have included Nicolas Coster, Susan Sullivan, Victoria Wyndham, and a few others.

Doug Watson, Constance Ford, Beverly Penberthy and Irene Dailey.

I caught a Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour playlist on youtube, and I see they have a lot of AW actors: David Oliver, Mary Page Keller, Kim Morgan Greene, Rick Porter, etc. I was aware of their characters even if I hadn't seen them. However, Tom Wiggin was introduced as being from Another World. I had no idea he was on the show. Did he play an important character or was he one of those 80's AW characters who drift in and drift right back out?

22 hours ago, Xanthe said:

I did some searching today using the phrase "LOOKING GOOD" and discovered that Ted McGinley and a lot of other men whose names I do not recognize were part of the same series of photos and you could get a jigsaw puzzle or a calendar. And the origin appears to be a 1983 book called Looking Good: Men of USC. I am not surprised that there was a book of photos of models who may or may not have graduated from USC, really only that they made stickers and puzzles where they were credited with their names.

I have vague recollection that David Oliver invested in the company that produced the first college guy calendar.  In the 1980s it became a huge trend, which obviously peaked with the Chippendale's calendar and the teen pop movie Campus Man; which was based on their story.  However, as I remember David Oliver was one of the original investors, and the campaign came out of the USC marketing and business department students.  I know McGinley is a few years older than David Oliver, but they were both Trojans, and USC has a long history of students who began successful businesses while matriculating, including everything from cookies to real estate.

Edited October 10, 20214 yr by j swift

12 minutes ago, chrisml said:

I caught a Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour playlist on youtube, and I see they have a lot of AW actors: David Oliver, Mary Page Keller, Kim Morgan Greene, Rick Porter, etc. I was aware of their characters even if I hadn't seen them. However, Tom Wiggin was introduced as being from Another World. I had no idea he was on the show. Did he play an important character or was he one of those 80's AW characters who drift in and drift right back out?

Tom Wiggin played Gil Fenton.  He was introduced as Felicia's chauffeur and debuted on the same episode as Linda Dano's Felicia.  He was involved with Felicia for awhile, then dated Julia Shearer.  He worked for Frame Construction and disappeared from the show sometime in 1984.

Just now, watson71 said:

Tom Wiggin played Gil Fenton.  He was introduced as Felicia's chauffeur and debuted on the same episode as Linda Dano's Felicia.  He was involved with Felicia for awhile, then dated Julia Shearer.  He worked for Frame Construction and disappeared from the show sometime in 1984.

Thank you for the info. I figured it had to be something like this since I had never read anything about him being on the show. It's amazing to me how much talent AW squandered in the eighties. 

Just now, chrisml said:

Thank you for the info. I figured it had to be something like this since I had never read anything about him being on the show. It's amazing to me how much talent AW squandered in the eighties. 

At one point, Gil's mom and dad were also introduced in 1983- Marie and George Fenton.  Marie worked at Smiley's as a waitress with Maisie.

2 minutes ago, chrisml said:

It's amazing to me how much talent AW squandered in the eighties. 

They sure did! Charles Keating went on the record as incredulous that AW let Morgan Freeman get away.