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 hour ago, vetsoapfan said:

Was that the same insider who revealed that Phyllis Diller was Robin Strasser's and Susan Lucci's mom? 🤔🤣

The tidbits we find on the internet can often be just as entertaining as anything we see on TV!

They claimed to have been a soap writer and got their start working with Claire Labine. One of their other claims was that Corinne Jacker had been the first African American head writer for a soap opera.

27 minutes ago, robbwolff said:

They claimed to have been a soap writer and got their start working with Claire Labine. One of their other claims was that Corinne Jacker had been the first African American head writer for a soap opera.

Ahhh, yet another anonymous "soap writer" elaborating on past work that cannot be verified. 🙄

When you attempt to get specifics out of them, these alleged writers suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke.

Color me sceptical, LOL.

3 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

The show did start cutting back his lines. By 1979 or 1980, Marlowe would be included in scenes but have little dialogue to recite. An example of this is the episode (available on youtube) in which John Randolph dies. Jim Matthews is in scenes with Aunt Liz and Dan Shearer, but remains largely quiet while the other characters do the majority of the talking. He does get a few lines, but nothing close to the number of everyone else's.

"Ouch" is right. Lemay had been introduced to work by people like Irna Phillips, Agnes Nixon and Henry Slesar, and in his opinion, they only knew what NOT to do? Pffft! Those legendary scribes ruled the roost!

Lemay did have some respect for Slesar, saying that Slesar wrote a different kind of show. Lemay admitted his own inability to write courtroom scenes, one of Slesar's strengths.

The episode with John Randolph's death shows some of the limitations of Lemay's imagination. There are several scenes where women are told about John Randolph's death. Each one bursts into tears. IRL, people react to news like that differently. Some will cry. Some will seem stoic and cry later. Some may seem incredulous and scarcely believe the news. By having all the women react the same way, Lemay missed an opportunity to show how people react differently.

I'm not one of them, but I can't help but think that a lot of today's soap fans, particularly the ones on Twitter, would find Lemay's work boring.

1 hour ago, robbwolff said:

One of their other claims was that Corinne Jacker had been the first African American head writer for a soap opera.

Corinne Jacker: AW's worst head writer.

5 minutes ago, Nicholas Blair said:

The episode with John Randolph's death shows some of the limitations of Lemay's imagination. There are several scenes where women are told about John Randolph's death. Each one bursts into tears. IRL, people react to news like that differently. Some will cry. Some will seem stoic and cry later. Some may seem incredulous and scarcely believe the news. By having all the women react the same way, Lemay missed an opportunity to show how people react differently.

True.

As much as I enjoy that episode, once John dies, it really does just becomes the same scene over and over again, just with a little tweaks here and there. 

42 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

I'm not one of them, but I can't help but think that a lot of today's soap fans, particularly the ones on Twitter, would find Lemay's work boring.

No question whatsoever that this would be the case.
I always rag on modern soaps for going to the opposite extreme and completely sacrificing the kind of long-term storytelling and play-every-beat aspect that make soap a distinct and wonderful genre but their fundamental diagnosis: that current audiences need a faster pace isn't wrong. 
I think today's soap get it wrong by playing things as fast as primetime - which basically throws away the one advantage daytime has over primetime which is time - but some legendary runs like Lemay's AW or Bell's Days/Y&R would drive people mental today.

1 hour ago, AbcNbc247 said:

I'm not one of them, but I can't help but think that a lot of today's soap fans, particularly the ones on Twitter, would find Lemay's work boring.

Corinne Jacker: AW's worst head writer.

True.

As much as I enjoy that episode, once John dies, it really does just becomes the same scene over and over again, just with a little tweaks here and there. 

This was when it was on for 90 minutes so there was a lot of stretching things over and over

3 hours ago, Nicholas Blair said:

Lemay did have some respect for Slesar, saying that Slesar wrote a different kind of show. Lemay admitted his own inability to write courtroom scenes, one of Slesar's strengths.

The episode with John Randolph's death shows some of the limitations of Lemay's imagination. There are several scenes where women are told about John Randolph's death. Each one bursts into tears. IRL, people react to news like that differently. Some will cry. Some will seem stoic and cry later. Some may seem incredulous and scarcely believe the news. By having all the women react the same way, Lemay missed an opportunity to show how people react differently.

I think by that time, Lemay was pretty much burned out. I found much of his work during his first three years on AW to be brilliant, even though I found fault with some of his choices, but even by 1975 there were issues with his writing. The problems continued to grow over the next few years.

3 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

I'm not one of them, but I can't help but think that a lot of today's soap fans, particularly the ones on Twitter, would find Lemay's work boring.

I agree. But I suspect they would complain about anything which they felt was too slow moving; not flashy enough. Tennessee Williams, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Harper Lee might have also incited their wrath. Many folks today (particularly some of the ones on Twitter, LOL) have the attention spans of gnats.

3 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Corinne Jacker: AW's worst head writer.

True.

She certainly was "down there," wasn't she? I wonder what would have become of the revisited  Alice/Steve/Rachel triangle with a capable writer at the helm, and a return of Jacqueline Courtney and George Reinholt. What ended up on screen, under Jacker's pen, was a disaster.

3 hours ago, AbcNbc247 said:

As much as I enjoy that episode, once John dies, it really does just becomes the same scene over and over again, just with a little tweaks here and there. 

Sadly, a lot of tedious repetition was foisted on the audience then.

Edited October 16, 20214 yr by vetsoapfan

4 minutes ago, vetsoapfan said:

She certainly was "down there," wasn't she? I wonder what would have become of the revisited  Alice/Steve/Rachel triangle with a capable writer at the helm, and a return of Jacqueline Courtney and George Reinholt. What ended up on screen, under Jacker's pen, was a disaster.

That reminds me - I saw this tweeted today. Even just the tweet looks awful (especially that Chromakey). I don't know, I haven't seen this story, maybe I am not being fair.  I just don't know why they thought the remaining fans who knew Alice and Steve would want to see strangers. 

 

9 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

That reminds me - I saw this tweeted today. Even just the tweet looks awful (especially that Chromakey). I don't know, I haven't seen this story, maybe I am not being fair.  I just don't know why they thought the remaining fans who knew Alice and Steve would want to see strangers. 

 

You are being fair, because you are being truthful. The Chromakey was dreadful, and we were NOT interested in watching strangers playing once-beloved characters, particularly Linda Borgenson who was painfully bland and nondescript. Borgenson and Canary had no chemistry at all. There was no reason to care. 

3 hours ago, TVFAN1144 said:

This was when it was on for 90 minutes so there was a lot of stretching things over and over

Especially how to stall for time while figuring out how to break a 10-dollar bill.

19 minutes ago, amybrickwallace said:

Especially how to stall for time while figuring out how to break a 10-dollar bill.

LOL I nearly forgot about that ridiculous scene.

I still joke with my friends about how about 60% of that episode was about people's various difficulties in trying to tell everyone in town that John Randolph had died in a fire at the edge of town. AT LEAST TWICE. 😆

The show expanded to 60 minutes and then to 90 minutes without TPTB figuring out how much additional story they would need. After Reinholt was fired, he showed one of the magazine writers a scene where Vic Hastings and Angie Perrini (probably the original one, the boring Toni Kalem) talked on and on about office furniture until Steve Frame came in and said he was going to Australia.

18 minutes ago, Nicholas Blair said:

The show expanded to 60 minutes and then to 90 minutes without TPTB figuring out how much additional story they would need. After Reinholt was fired, he showed one of the magazine writers a scene where Vic Hastings and Angie Perrini (probably the original one, the boring Toni Kalem) talked on and on about office furniture until Steve Frame came in and said he was going to Australia.

I'll give Lemay the benefit of the doubt re: the 60 minute move, as at least the move was unprecedented (I know there had been some soaps move from 15 to 30 minutes, but they were, of course, the first to go to an hour, in any medium) and they were still trying to work out the kinks for awhile. But expanding to 90mins not four years later and STILL not be prepared was just weird to me. They adjusted quickly, but those early episodes are just painful.

Edited October 16, 20214 yr by beebs

1 hour ago, beebs said:

LOL I nearly forgot about that ridiculous scene.

I wish I could. 😂

3 hours ago, DRW50 said:

That reminds me - I saw this tweeted today. Even just the tweet looks awful (especially that Chromakey). I don't know, I haven't seen this story, maybe I am not being fair.  I just don't know why they thought the remaining fans who knew Alice and Steve would want to see strangers. 

 

Believe it or not, the Chromokey scenes were one of the few things AW got right about Steve's return.   Since the days when Agnes Nixon created Steve, he always had a house in St Croix.  And between 1968 and 1975, Steve went to St Croix several times with Alice, and at least one time when he was married to Rachel.  Each time, the beach beyond the terrace was shown with Chromakey.  And when Mary Matthews died on this same St Croix terrace in 1975, it was done with the Chromakey horizon.    Corrine Jacker got almost nothing accurate about Steve and Alice's history, but somebody in the studio (probably Paul Rauch) must have told her about Steve and Alice's romantic times at the old place in St Croix, and the Chromakey beach.  So I can't complain about that.