Another World Discussion Thread

[vetsoapfan]

Yes, SB had suffered from management woes and atrocious headwriting for a long time, so Raunch only put...the final nail in that coffin, LOL.

[amybrickwallace]

Ironically, he had taken over as EP from John Conroy. Sharon Gabet said in her recent interview on Brandon's Buzz that when she got the job at OLTL as Melinda, she was a bit afraid of him because she'd heard stories about him from other actors and did her best to stay out of his way. But she was also quick to credit him for hiring her when she asked for a job, and she said that she always appreciated that.

[Paul Raven]

There was talk of George going to The Doctors when all the drama went down at AW.

Imagine if instead of moving to OLTL, George and Jacquie has reteamed at TD and played out a new love story there.

Thinking back to how Lemay moved Rachel in a new direction by giving her the man and lifestyle she had always aspired to in Mac, do posters think it might have been interesting if the same psychology had been applied to Alice? She had always been the good girl who believed in happy endings (despite all her trauma).Maybe seeing Rachel happy with Mac and losing Steve could have damaged her and she became bitter and manipulative.

Do you think JC could have played that? I think with careful writing it might have worked.

[amybrickwallace]

I think Jacquie could have definitely pulled it off. It sounds a lot like Great Expectations - and I think Lemay could have easily written a Dickens homage without ripping off the original story; giving his own twists and turns to it.

[DRW50]

Making Alice a darker character would have been fascinating, and I think Jacquie could have played it, but I wonder if fans would have let it happen.

[amybrickwallace]

Do you think fans would have been more accepting of it if they had played it out with Susan Harney?

[DRW50]

They might have, although I'm not sure how much fans cared about her Alice.

vetsoapfan, I'm trying to find more of the Reinholt firing stuff I posted, but here's one.

Edited October 6, 2014 by DRW50

[amybrickwallace]

Thanks for posting that, Carl.

I feel pretty silly because I checked back several pages on this thread and saw that someone had already posted the Rachel/Alice scene here back in August. I thought I'd checked all the pages to make sure it wasn't there before I posted it. Looks like I missed a page. Then again, I've been sick with a bad cold the last few weeks, stuck in bed with my laptop. I choose to blame the cold!! LOL

Getting back to George Reinholt, during his AW run, he looked an awful lot like future SB star Dane Witherspoon. If circumstances had been different, maybe they could have played father/son in something - whether it be on TV or stage. Now they're both gone.

[DRW50]

And in another world (no pun intended) Robin Wright, who also played a second daughter, long-suffering heroine, would have followed Courtney's path.

I uploaded some Reinholt articles when he passed. I'm not sure I put the link here at the time.

http://boards.soapoperanetwork.com/topic/49414-oltl-aw-secret-storms-george-reinholt-dead-at-73/

[amybrickwallace]

My favorite pictures are the ones of them in Central Park. I also think it would have been interesting if footage of him in Cabaret (or even audio) existed. I wonder how he would have sounded singing "Wilkommen".

[vetsoapfan]

Courtney was a much better actress than Lemay gave her credit for; the fans knew it, and the critics and editors of the soap press at the time acknowledged it. I'm sure she could have played out a storyline in which a devastated Alice became bitter about life and all the rocks it had thrown her way. Lemay tried to touch on this a bit when Harney was in the role. Alice was being sarcastic and derogatory at one point, and her cousin Susan remarked, "Alice, it's unlike you to criticize someone gratuitously." Alice replied, "Yeah, well, I've changed." Of course, she really hadn't. The character of Alice was inherently a decent, loving person, and no temporary, half-hearted attempt by Lemay ever made the audience believe otherwise.

[vetsoapfan]

The audience's interest in Alice dwindled significantly after Jacquie Courtney was fired. Even Lemay admitted in his book that despite continued storyline attention paid to the character as played by Susan Harney, Alice was never again a hugely popular character as she had been with Courtney in the role.

So whatever they did with Alice after the replacements started piling on (and most of them were dreadful in the role), the audience wasn't very interested in Alice anymore.

[vetsoapfan]

Yes, I had seen that article, but thanks for pointing it out again. Reinholt's ego was out of control, LOL, but he was right to resist Lemay's writing an entirely new and contradictory backstory for Steven Frame, than had originally been played out on screen.

[DRW50]

What was your view of each of the Alices after Courtney?

[vetsoapfan]

Jacqueline Courtney was the definitive Alice, of course, and none of the replacements (whom I always referred to as "the fake Alices") ever really impressed me. Courtney moved over to OLTL on November 12, 1975, and I became a staunch and loyal supporter on that show from that moment on (even though I had already watched and enjoyed it previously).

My rating of the Alices:

Susan Harney: ** (out of four stars)

Wesley Ann Pfenning: BOMB (What was Rauch thinking?!?)

Vana Tribbey: **

Linda Borgeson: *