Another World Discussion Thread

[danfling]

I am not postive if this storyline was written by Ms. Nixon or Mr. Cenedella, but I would love to see the storyline in which the housekeeped/nanny was trying to poison Pat Matthews Randolph.

 

Just as Mr. Cenedella followed Ms. Nixon and the characters were in place, Ms. Nixon's left the Bible for The Guiding Light after she left to write Another World.    Subsequent writers used this Bible for many years following her departure.

 

And, Mr. Cenedella, when creating Another World:Somerset showed that he could create and write very well.   To me, it was perfectly created.    I never saw his work on Another World, but I was introduced to him when he was writing Somerset.

[amybrickwallace]

So do I, just to see Rue McClanahan.

[Nicholas Blair]

I saw most of Cenedella's work on AW, but I am not sure when it began. I believe most of the time with Lisa Cameron, John Cunningham, and Nancy Wickwire was under Cenedella, though this may have been from based on Agnes' bible. The whole Wayne Addison story, leading up to the murder, Lenore on trial, and her husband Walter Curtin, who defended her, being the actual killer, was first rate.

Cenedella does get a bad rap, mostly undeserved, from Harding Lemay, although I will say this: the Rue McClanahan storyline seemed endless. She played Caroline Johnson, a baby nurse looking after the Randolph twins--but her own twin babies had died. Her friend, Jane Overstreet (Frances Sternhagen) was concerned that this would be too much for her. It was obvious that sooner or later the nanny would snap and kidnap the twins or try to poison Pat. Of course she fell in love with John and talked to her friend Jane about the married man she was in love with who was going to leave his wife. Rue McClanahan was good in this role, of course, and some people really liked the story, so they kept dragging it out. I think I missed the eventual resolution. Unlike some actors--Lisa Cameron for one--Rue and Frances did go on to have the solid careers they deserved.

The resolution of the Walter Curtin storyline was dragged out too long, and I don't blame Lemay for making fun of all the scenes where Val Dufour got Lenore's scarf out of the safe and cried over it. On the other hand, Lemay never resolved the story either. After Lemay took over, Walter did eventually confess to a horrified Lenore, and he did eventually get drunk and go off a bridge in his car which caught fire. Lenore's keeping this secret--after all, she had Walter's child to raise--ultimately wrecked her marriage to Robert Delaney, but she left Bay City with the secret kept when so much more could have been done with this.

I believe that Cenedella's tenure included the time when Robert Hover was playing Russ Matthews after Sam Groom (beyond compare) left to star in a Canadian TV series, IIRC. Hover's acting was about on a par with David Bailey's, but Bailey was certainly more handsome. This is when Russ, after divorcing Rachel, was in a triangle with a doctor, Paula (Beverley Owen) and Cindy Clark (Leonie Norton), one of his patients. Basically, Cindy Clark was AW's Carol Deming, the nice sweet pure virginal (and frankly, not all that interesting) girl that Irna felt was worthy of Russ Matthews/Tom Hughes. Dr. Paula lost out to Cindy and left town. Without naming her, Lemay suggested that Leonie Norton was like Irna's favorite silent screen heroines, and Cindy died of her soap opera illness not long after Lemay took charge. That was one change I approved. Not that Leonie Norton was a bad actress: she wasn't. Killing off Cindy opened up Russ for more story, but except for Sharlene, Lemay's writing for Russ was weak and unmemorable.

Of course, Cindy was the sister of Ted Clark (Stephen Bolster), the ex-con whom Rachel had impulsively married. I'm hazy on whether Margaret Impert was the Rachel who married him or if Robin Strasser had returned by then. Impert was the Strasser lookalike who was hired on the apparent hope that no one would notice the difference. We did, however. Margaret Impert was a competent actress, sweet and gentle--in other words, not Rachel.

I know this is a very long post but there is much more to say, and I agree with danfling that Cenedella wrote well for Somerset.

 

[amybrickwallace]

That was a great post - thanks!!

[Nicholas Blair]

I believe in this interim period Sam Groom had left, Jacquie Courtney had married and moved to Mississippi, and Robin Strasser left at some point. George Reinholt had more of a supporting role during the Wayne Addison story. These happenings did not make it easy for any writer.

Still, Val Dufour, Judith Barcroft, Nancy Wickwire, Lisa Cameron, and John Cunningham were all on my A List. Pat & John always had a lot of fans, especially those who had followed the story from the beginning, when Pat "got pregnant, shot her boyfriend, and married her lawyer," as a classmate of mine put it.

This was also the launch of AW:Somerset, as Somerset characters were introduced and then eventually moved to the new show.

[danfling]

Didn't Dr. Russ Matthews date Iris Wheeler?

[amybrickwallace]

According to AWHP, Iris and Russ were engaged in 1975.

[Nicholas Blair]

I don't know why Lemay backed away from this. It seemed to have a ton of story potential. Had Russ married Iris, his wife's stepmother would have been his ex-wife. Russ was always drawn to the wrong women.

By the way, by the 1980s not many AW viewers would have known that Jamie Frame got his name because he was originally named James Russell Matthews, named after his supposed grandfather and his supposed father.

[amybrickwallace]

I agree - it would have been fun.

[Xanthe]

Interesting. The AWHP says  it was originally James Gerald after the two grandfathers and then James Steven in the early 80s. Is James Gerald an error or yet another variation? I do find it as Gerald in the Soaps & Serials novelization "Affairs of the Moment" but I can't lay my hands on the Kate Lowe Kerrigan one to check it. (Not that I expect the novelizations to be completely accurate in any case, but it's interesting to see what they used.)

 I am always fascinated to see the little pieces that the writers considered ephemeral and unimportant so they either weren't documented or future writers didn't bother to look them up and changed them. 

 

Edited October 6, 2021 by Xanthe

[Nicholas Blair]

My memory is probably wrong. James Gerald certainly would be reasonable, although Rachel had had no contact with her father for years.

[amybrickwallace]

It said James Gerald in the AW 35th Anniversary coffee table book, not that those books are exempt from errors.

[Dion]

Rachel and Ted were married on July 6, 1971 (according to AWHP) so Rachel actually married Ted during Robin Strasser's first run.

And yes it was an impulsive marriage, their courtship literally played out over the course of just two weeks!

[amybrickwallace]

If Russ had actually married Iris, Rachel would have gone from being his wife to his sister-in-law (through their marriages to Ted and Cindy) to his stepmother-in-law!! The Matthews family would definitely have been tearing their hair out.

Please register in order to view this content

[Soaplovers]

It seemed like Cendrella had to move away from the Steve/Alice/Rachel story..partly due to Jacqueline Courtney taking time off the show.

It kind of appeared that Rachel kind of moved on somewhat to Ted.  I know Vicky Wyndham came in to play the last months of that marriage.

Did Lemay resort to Rachel chasing Steve again, or was that already in place when he took over?