In 1984-85, AW did see a spike in the ratings. While it wasn't enough of a spike to pull it out of 8th place in the ratings, it was enough to make it more competitive with its competition. In 1985, Rachel was shot by Carl Hutchins and had amnesia. Jacqueline Courtney's Alice was Rachel's doctor in the hospital, and their past history was brought up. However, the writers did not do enough with it. This could have given VW and JC a great storyline. Rachel even "rejected" being Mac's wife and refused to sleep in the same bed and even moved out of the Cory mansion. Mac could have easily started a relationship with Alice again while Rachel had amnesia. In addition, amnesiac Rachel could have befriended Brittney when she came to town to find Catlin and set up a Rachel/Brittney and Alice/Sally rivalry. It makes you really wonder why the writers made so many blunders....

Scenes of Rachel with amnesia:

Soap Opera Digest reports back in the August 76 issue that Jennifer Leak would be joining the show (Olive Gordon) and also Lynn Lowery ex How To Survive a Marriage.

Lowery never appeared so was the role dropped or did another actress take over? Any ideas what role it may have been?

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Edited October 6, 201411 yr by DRW50

Paul - Lynn Lowry did appear on Another World. She says so on her own Web site. According to the Another World home page, she played the role of Doris Bennett.

Juniorz and Carl - I'm with Carl. I much preferred Sally Spencer as MJ than Layman. I found Layman horribly boring and wooden. And I'm a bit incredulous to the claim that Layman's MJ was incredibly popular. Personally, I don't recall any of MJ's stories when Layman was playing the role, aside from flirting with Larry Ewing.

I don't think I said incredibly popular- Kathleen was always the most popular among the McKinnon gals. But MJ was a popular character under Layman and certainly one of the show's heroines at the time. To each their own, but I just can't stand Sally Spencer's MJ and found her about as interesting as a wet rag.

And I LOVED the Larry/MJ flirtation. I still wish they did something with that.

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Edited February 23, 201411 yr by DRW50

First of about 5 (so far) bits from Late 97/Late in Malone's run. I found myself really intrigued by a lot of this, though I know Malone's AW was rather unpopular, mostly for aping his OLTL, though because this focuses on Rachel/Carl and Alex/Felicia, I'm not sure I see that. Anyone able to clarify for this here clueless fool?

EDIT: As soon as I heard Cindy ask the African artpiece "which one of you is going to make Grant love me?", that story instantly became dumb as hell.

Edited November 4, 201312 yr by beebs

The main story people saw as an OLTL ripoff was Toni's rape storyline. Cindy's comic relief stories also felt like they were transplanted from Alex Olanov.

I was so excited when I learned Michael Malone was going to write Another World. I'd only seen a few snippets of his OLTL work, but I was tremendously impressed with what I read in the soap press about a number of his stories - notably Billy Douglas and Viki's DID. Before his AW work even aired, I was intrigued by interviews with him in which he talked about Toni's rape as a vehicle to examine racism and classism in Bay City. But oh, what a disappointment his tenure was. He maintains NBC and/or P&G rejected/sabotaged many of his ideas -- for instance, the Toni story didn't play out at all like he had teased it in advance. I'm actually inclined to believe him, though I still think what did end up on screen should have been better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rZCDH5mDj8

Question about those end credits- I've noticed in the credits I've seen from that period onward, Constance Ford is listed below Victoria Wyndham and Douglass Watson. AW's credits are listed in order of seniority, like DAYS, so why is she CF below VW and DW? I thought she preceded both of them- didn't she start with Strasser? Was she off the show or off-contract for a period of time in the 70s? What gives?

I think Wyndham and Watson probably had it in their contracts that they would always get top billing as the 'stars' of the show.

It's probably a lot like Edge's closing credits. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Ann Flood and Forrest Compton got top billing and Mandel Kramer was third, even though he'd been on the show longer.

As for Michael Malone, I loved his work... but I also have no doubt NBC interfered big time. That was when the network was trying very hard to kill AW and succeeded. Sons of b*****s.

I think Wyndham and Watson probably had it in their contracts that they would always get top billing as the 'stars' of the show.

I have had numerous disagreements with people over this. Harding Lemay and Paul Rauch did move VW and DW as star billing of the show around 1975. Not bad for Watson, considering he had only been on the show one year prior. If you look at the ending credits from 1976, they are completely out of whack. C Ford is lower than than other actors on the show as well. In fact, at that time, the longest running actor playing on AW at that time was Michael T. Ryan (John Randolph). He had been on the show since 1964 and I think he was like the 5th or 6th credit in. so, they did do some on seniority and others they wanted to make stars of the show. Ryan played up until 1979 and was the longest running actor on the show at that time