Another World Discussion Thread

[amybrickwallace]

He was an adorable baby/toddler, and it was a good move casting him as Paulina's son. All love and prayers to the Evans/Luciano family. What a horrible loss, and especially so close to Christmas.

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[AbcNbc247]

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Thank you, Eddie Drueding!

[Melroser]

Just listened to that podcast and found it prophetic that even in 1979 Harding Lemay could recognize that network interference was going to be a problem for daytime. I agree, they should give writers the opportunity to write. Then make a change if the stories don't work. Don't hire them to write the show and then tell them what to write. Backwards to me. 

[KMan101]

 

Late to this but that's so unbelievably heartbreaking and sad. I feel so bad for Judi Evans and her husband  

 

THIS! 

 

I need to listen to that podcast.

 

I know Ron has his many many many faults but I know for a fact (as much as you can from second-hand info, but I trust what I hear when I hear it) interference has been going on with DAYS for a very long time (some folks on Twitter talk about it a lot too, there's interference on the regular) and it shows on-screen. It sucks. We've been on a downhill slide since 1995. They've constantly been trying to turn the soaps into clones of each other instead of remembering and sticking with what worked for them in the first place.

 

I really swear they're sabotaging them on purpose. But I also really believe we just have that many incompetent folks running things. Steve Kent is a massive problem for Y&R and probably DAYS too.

Edited December 28, 2019 by KMan101

[AbcNbc247]

That was definitely true in terms of AW

[Efulton]

I have listened to and read many Harding Lemay interviews.  This was the first one where he came across as humble and not arrogant. I wish the interviewer would have spent some time asking about Mr.  Lemay's 1988 return.  Other than the the interview was great.

[Contessa Donatella]

"Julie Pinson auditioned for the part of Lily when Chris Goutman had it in his head to burn Martha Byrne." - Donna L. Bridges

 

MARY STUART...If America's three contributions to world culture are musical comedy, jazz, and soap opera, …

 

Eileen Davidson: As a lead actress who’d always been known as a dramatic actress, it was just such a hoot for me, and so freeing to just let go and have fun.  I had a tape recorder and I would read the scene and turn it off when the character I was supposed to be talked.  I ran lines that way.  The major way that I knew it was working was because the crew was laughing, and I was laughing, we were cracking up all the time.  

They worked me to death.  I was at the end of my contract, I was going to leave after the first year I played Susan. And they asked me to stay an additional year to finish off the storyline, so I did.  James (Reilly; Headwriter) actually ended apologizing to me at the end of it.  He knew he’d worked me sixteen-hour days, Saturdays, I was really exhausted.  He apologized to me.  He said he couldn’t help it, he felt inspired by me.  He had no reason to apologize, it was a great, great, great thing for me!

 

"Some people don't like killing any character on a soap, but I believe that the death can be as important as the life if it shakes up the town and spins great story for the characters left behind. This was one of those cases." - Jill Lorie Hurst, GL, Otalia, Gus's death

 

"This is a big, bad blow to everybody in the soap business. It’s staggering having two shows canceled in such a short span of time." - Chris Goutman, ATWT
(CBS killed GL & ATWT back to back. Before two years had been up, ABC had killed  AMC & OLTL, also back to back. Network deaths.)

 

Elana Levine is a professor with the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee who will publish a book in © 2020 HER STORIES: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History."

 

"At NBC programmers admitted that they went to a 90-minute show 'because they couldn't come up with a better idea.'"

 

from the Another World Home Page: Nearby Towns (Fictional) to Bay City: Somerset, Bedfordtown, Brookville, Ogden (100 miles away; Ogden Memorial), Centerville.

In the Irna Phillips universe there were small cities clustered near each other. They were Oakdale, Illinois [ATWT], Flat Rock, Centerville, Somerset, [itself] Bedfordtown, Brookville, Ogden, Centerville, Bay City, Illinois, [AW], and Henderson [SFT].
 
So, we all of us have some semblance of an idea of how fine a writer Irna Phillips was. And, how prolific. And, how timely. And, how she could direct, focus & aim at her target. I've just finished through the Bill Bell book, and all throughout they mention Irna's unpublished memoir or unfinished autobiography. Whichever it is, it is with Irna's papers at one or more locales. I talked to someone today who has read it & deemed it far from being ready to do anything with. As far as she knows Irna's daughter has died, which would put it into the ownership of Irna's son. What a terrible shame that the remarkable writer that Irna was couldn't have knuckled down & finished a fantastic memoir. After all, she had so many tales to tell and so many people to tell them about. I wonder if she just was not ready to die yet--and death caught her unawares.

 

Earlier this year Days of our Lives celebrated the 50th anniversary of Susan Seaforth Hayes being on the show! They had flashbacks of much younger Julie, in San Francisco, on the rotary phone to first much younger Tom & then, after, to much younger Alice with them inviting her to return to Salem for a visit over the holidays. (Their rotary phones were on mantles, of all places. Would you put one there?) Corday arranged for Bill Hayes to be able to - once again - sing "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" to Julie. It was live! They did more flashbacks, where most of them were just Doug & Julie. He gave her one serious passionate kiss. Later that week she was a guest on a Soap Opera Digest podcast with Stephanie & Mara & she revealed that she had never seen those early flashbacks before. She seemed somewhat taken aback at what she looked like in them. But, she looked fine & more than that, she looked like she really did in the show at the time. I was a fan then & already had a big crush on Julie. It was *years* before my father & I realized that we *both* had crushes on Julie.

 

Judi Evans Lucianos' son Austin died Friday.

[VanessaReardon]

I can see why these so called ‘activists’ got the soaps cancelled. Would you want to deal with this??? lol

[Vee]

@Errol @Toups why is Donna quoting herself and others about random soaps in unrelated threads?

[Khan]

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[Contessa Donatella]

 

What is Vee quoting?

They weren't "so-called" activists!

[slick jones]

Hack-tivists @VanessaReardon

 

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Let's just "calls them like we sees them".......

 

 

[chrisml]

I've been thinking of Nancy Frangione and why her last stint didn't work. I don't remember much of it. Why didn't it work out? Was this another JFP thing?

[watson71]

 

First, TPTB never put Nancy Frangione on a contract when she returned in Fall 1995.  In the closing credits she was always listed with the recurring characters.  They also did not place Cecile in the opening credits that debuted in March 1996 because she was a recurring character- and not on contract.  Then, the writers gave Cecile two poorly written story arc.  First, they tried to rewrite history and say that Cass, not Sandy, was Maggie's father.  Long time viewers who were watching the show in 1982-83 knew that Cass wasn't even in Bay City at the time and Cecile went back and forth on whether Sandy or Jamie was Maggie's dad.  Next, Cecile hired Rafael to "kidnap" Maggie so that she could get ransom money from the Corys to help her with her money troubles.  Again, another poorly written story.  In early Summer 1996, Cecile left Bay City never to be heard from again.  Frangione deserved better than this.  TPTB should have kept Cecile on the canvas.  She- not Lila- should have been the one to marry Cass in the AW finale.

[Xanthe]

 

I thought I remembered reading that Steve Schnetzer campaigned for the Maggie storyline at the time. And I can understand the argument that just because Cass wasn't on the canvas at the time [when Maggie was conceived] doesn't rule out the possibility that Cecile could have met Cass and had a fling with him offscreen within that timeline. There would have to be an explanation for why she never tried to use Maggie as leverage earlier in their relationship though. 

 

As for Cass marrying Cecile in the finale ... Cass matured so much from his beginning through his first marriage to Kathleen and then later with Frankie and Charlie that in order for that to be satisfying, the character of Cecile would have had to grow a lot as well. Otherwise she and Cass would have been too far apart. How would it have been possible to rehabilitate the character so that the audience could imagine Cecile and Cass living happily ever after?

Edited December 31, 2019 by Xanthe