2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

RIP Camilla Carr, who was on AW in 79-80 as Rita Connelly, aunt to Joey's soon-to-be-late wife Eileen Simpson and the estranged wife of Rose Perrini's beau Paul Connelly.

Rita and Paul Connelly were created by Harding Lemay as new characters enlarging the cast for AW's expansion to 90-minutes in 1979. Both were ill-conceived characters, in my opinion -- especially Aunt Rita who was essentially a working-class version of Liz Matthews. Aunt Rita was a shrew to her husband (Paul), and meddled terribly into the lives of her niece and nephew, Eileen and Morgan Simpson, who were late-teens or early-adults at that time. Aunt Rita was simply nasty, with not an ounce of humor, and no redeeming qualities -- unlike Aunt Liz, who had an established background on AW as a lonely widow with plenty of money, but no one to love.

By adding Paul and Rita Connelly to the cast, I believe Lemay was attempting to add some sort of serious religious conflict to AW, as he had done so successfully with social-class conflict. But his attempt was an utter failure, because Aunt Rita was nothing more than a stereotyped religious bigot. And because Rita and Paul were Catholic, the entire story arc gave rather anti-Catholic vibes. I'm not Catholic, but even I was uncomfortable seeing a devote Catholic woman being portrayed as such a nasty interfering bitch. Yes, Lemay's least successful character creation was Aunt Rita Connelly.

24 minutes ago, Tisy-Lish said:

Rita and Paul Connelly were created by Harding Lemay as new characters enlarging the cast for AW's expansion to 90-minutes in 1979. Both were ill-conceived characters, in my opinion -- especially Aunt Rita who was essentially a working-class version of Liz Matthews. Aunt Rita was a shrew to her husband (Paul), and meddled terribly into the lives of her niece and nephew, Eileen and Morgan Simpson, who were late-teens or early-adults at that time. Aunt Rita was simply nasty, with not an ounce of humor, and no redeeming qualities -- unlike Aunt Liz, who had an established background on AW as a lonely widow with plenty of money, but no one to love.

By adding Paul and Rita Connelly to the cast, I believe Lemay was attempting to add some sort of serious religious conflict to AW, as he had done so successfully with social-class conflict. But his attempt was an utter failure, because Aunt Rita was nothing more than a stereotyped religious bigot. And because Rita and Paul were Catholic, the entire story arc gave rather anti-Catholic vibes. I'm not Catholic, but even I was uncomfortable seeing a devote Catholic woman being portrayed as such a nasty interfering bitch. Yes, Lemay's least successful character creation was Aunt Rita Connelly.

Thanks for the info. I knew basically nothing. I forgot Eileen even had a brother. I wonder what Lemay would have done with them.