Another World Discussion Thread

[AbcNbc247]

Thanks! 

I appreciate that!

[Contessa Donatella]

@AbcNbc247 Thank you for this upload! 

This is an upload of Eddie's that someone must have taken at Paley Center with a recorder aimed at the screen. Therefore video & audio are both compromised. I believe this is the Randolph house where Pat has moved out & no one is living there. Michael is there going through things with some young female. At 25:34 the doorbell rings & Michael answers it & it's Aunt Liz. By 32:20 it's changed to John's office. 

At 44:00-ish Aunt Liz again, now with the twins & Russ, etc, & they invite her to stay for family supper. 

At 57:00-ish end credits roll & voice-over plugs Somerset coming up next. 

A scene with Louise with one of the plants but she doesn't know its name so it must be a new one. Molly & Darryl. Michael & Glenda. Rachel, Ada, Brooks, 

Rachel just finished a sculpture. Liz talks to John about his taking up so much of her time. Sharlene is worried about Russ finding out about her past because Willis is headed back to town. Emma tries to convince her to tell Russ herself.

Another end credits & you can clearly see names plus this voice-over: "And on most of these stations, stay tuned for romance, suspense & drama on ... Somerset." This is the rings logo, btw. 

Pat & Michael have a talk. The twins want their parents back together. Pat brings up John still being legally married to Olive. (Olive is with Willis out of town but headed for Bay City.)

And the scene I'm looking for with Michael & Liz is not here. 

Edited July 21, 2023 by Donna L. Bridges
combining posts

[AbcNbc247]

If that scene was the one that won Irene Dailey the Emmy, it was probably from 1978-79

[Contessa Donatella]

Yes, if it is, then I think it was performed in 1978 & she won in the awards presentation in 1979. So, if it had been in this combo clip it would have been the last half hour. Liz was in, off & on, the whole clip. 

[Xanthe]

The recovery post-Depriest had a lot of positives, but Stacy and Derek make me want to throw things and Amanda and Nicole are very limited. I do like the way a lot of people are more interconnected -- during Depriest it often felt like groups of people were off in their own little bubbles and the only thing that tied all of the groups together was fearing the Sin Stalker or hating Reginald. But Sharlene interacts with Josie, John, Jason, and also Rachel and Iris. Josie and Matt have peripheral friends as well as their families. Cass has Nicole and Felicia and Caroline and Zach, and so on.  

I recently watched the scenes where Dawn was diagnosed with AIDS and it was staggering to me that they had Jamie in the middle of the hospital informing Scott and Chad of the diagnosis *before* they all go in to tell Dawn. I know we're more conscious of privacy nowadays but holy cow. 

[Xanthe]

In early 1989, after Jamie had left her for Vicky, Lisa decided to try video dating and had a date with a guy called Girard. The actor is credited as Graham Winston but I believe it is Graham Winton who later played Caleb Snyder on As the World Turns.

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Sometimes I wonder whether if Joanna Going had stayed or if Lisa had been recast they could have done something effective with the Jamie/Lisa/Vicky triangle over the long term. Before she left, Lisa got very friendly with Matt while he was confused about whether he and Josie were ready to have sex and both that and her departure were a bit unsatisfying. But Laurence Lau's Jamie could be very pompous and shouty so a long-term triangle might not have worked well without a Jamie recast. Around the same time as Lisa's video date, Jamie and Nicole had lunch and reminisced about what messes they had been back in the day and now they were fine stodgy successes in relationships with volatile messes like Vicky and Cass. While it was nice of them to acknowledge their pasts (there had been some earlier scenes between Nicole and a pregnant Vicky where Nicole behaved as if she had never been acquainted with Jamie at all and I don't think she acknowledged anything with Stacy after Stacy showed up either), it was a bit sad to think how much more interesting these characters could be. 

[Contessa Donatella]

(During 1978-79) "NBC was the only network to cancel a soap, "For Richer, For Poorer," and it expanded one of its hour-long daytime dramas to 90 minutes. It appears the expansion of "Another World," hasn't set a trend. CBS and ABC aren't planning to convert any of their current soaps to 90-minute marathons. The NBC experiment was looked upon as a failure by the two competing networks and they could be right. "Another World" wasn't leading its time period in the ratings as an hour show, so the move to 90 minutes was implemented with the hope of building an audience that would stay for the whole hour and a half. It did not work out that way. In any event, NBC has been toying with the idea of turning "Days of our Lives" into a 90-minute entry." 

Steven H. Scheuer. (1979). Daytime Programs. TV: The Television Annual 1978-79. Collier Macmillan Publishers. p. 124.

[Mona Kane Croft]

Days of Our Lives would have been a better choice to transition to the 90-minute format.  DOOL always had stronger (not necessarily better) plots than AW.  And DOOL still had a healthy strong core-family that centered the show.  

In my opinion, a 90-minute soap would need strong identifiable plots to keep the audience interested.  Lemay's nearly plotless writing style on AW worked well at both 30 and 60-minutes, but became boring during the 90-minute era.  Also, AW's core-family (the Matthews), while still on the show, had been pushed to the side, and was weakening quickly. AW was in transition, and had lost any real identity by the late-1970s. A 90-minute show needs a clear focus, and DOOL's Horton family could have provided that.   

I'm not suggesting DOOL would have been successful at 90-minutes, but it certainly stood a better chance of survival than AW.   

Edited July 24, 2023 by Neil Johnson

[ranger1rg]

I have to push back on this. I don't think DAYS would have done better than AW in a 90-minute format. It demands too much time from the audience and demands too much from the writers.

DAYS had "stronger (not necessarily better) plots than AW"? I'm not sure what that even means. And I'm sorry, but Harding Lemay's writing style was not plotless.

[Contessa Donatella]

Well, I am interested in reading your thoughts, like always but I don't agree. I'm on record saying that the 90 minute show was a cockamamie idea! I find it to be without merit. And, worse than not being good, I think it's actually bad. It's an awkward amount of time. Longer than a show. Shorter than a movie. Long enough to need an intermission. Not long enough to get one. I believe that Fred Silverman was a genius but this is one of his follies, not an example of his brilliance. 

Also, I think Pete had plots. I don't think DAYS had stronger plots necessarily. I don't think the Hortons would have made a too-long show more palatable. I think DAYS would have failed with it, too. I have a sense that Silverman had his eye on THE DOCTORS too. Meaning he was thinking high concept "take over the whole afternoon with 3-90 minute blocks"! I think that's a sign that sometime the leadership is crazy. They did an hour-long trial show with DOC. 

But, I appreciate your thinking outside the box! 

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Besides this quote from this book I bought, there's a newspaper article I will attach here. It's even crazier as it says AW's 90 minute show was a success.  

[j swift]

Bitch stole my look - Cecile vs. Barbie edition

Edited July 30, 2023 by j swift

[Beetle Bailey]

Am I misremembering things or when Julie Philips played Sally Frame in the early 80's, didn't she try to have Eileen Simpson sold into a white slavery ring because she wanted Joey Perrini for herself?

[Mona Kane Croft]

I don't think Sally was the cause of Eileen's white slavery drama.  But there might have been a connection, because didn't Phil Higley (the cult leader) trade Eileen to the human trafficking people?  I can't remember the details, but the writing for Sally was terrible during this period.  The writers couldn't decide if Sally was a "good girl" or a "bad girl." This ambiguity lasted through a couple of recasts, until Mary Page Keller took over the role, and finally played Sally as an ingenue -- which Sally should have been from the beginning.  

[AbcNbc247]

 

I think this was it. 

Sally came back to town with Phil Higley and they schemed to break up Joey and Eileen. Sally then got Joey drunk and got into bed with him for Eileen to see. So then Eileen got closer to Phil and he eventually raped her. Eileen then ran away to NY, I think and that’s when she got kidnapped by the white slavers.  

[Liberty City]