Another World Discussion Thread

[Efulton]

Donna is this you?  I enjoy chatting with you but your response here is unnecessarily aggressive. 

Edited March 1, 2024 by Efulton

[Contessa Donatella]

Cool, no problem. It relates to her identity as Mary Matthews. And, that is something that an actor might feel. But, I'm not sure what you're looking for either. 

Yes, it's me. That was play. May not have gone over. 

[Efulton]

Ok thanks for clarifying!!  All good!  

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[Xanthe]

It's somehow worse than that -- I just looked it up and he entirely absolves himself of taking her seat intentionally ("I had apparently appropriated the wall seat she usually occupied"), but sneers at Dwyer both for his assumption that she would have preferred his seat in order to let her public gaze upon her but also for his idea that she was more than consoled by the fact that the seat she got allowed her to gaze at her reflection in a mirror. He mocks her to the reader for graciously signing autographs for fans before she arrives at the table, for bringing fan mail to show him how popular she is with the audience, for drinking sherry, for claiming that she understood her character and her fans' appreciation of her, and for daring to disagree with his assessment that the character was unrealistic. Then he insults her to her face by telling her she is an inexperienced actress and makes up his mind to write Mary out.

[Contessa Donatella]

EESH. Did I phuck up? Sorry, Mona, that was not real aggression. Wheee. 

It's just an anecdote I have always loved. She looked in her closet & every single garment seemed like MARY MARY MARY & she says she tossed her whole closet & went shopping the next day. 

[Mona Kane Croft]

If multiple people were stopping Dwyer to ask for autographs as she entered a small restaurant, perhaps Lemay should have recognized something important about that, rather than using it as a way to ridicule the obviously very popular actress.  Dear God in Heaven!!

Hey Countess -- you and I are soap opera friends now.  Seriously, we are.  We will occasionally disagree, and perhaps even have a few serious disagreements. Frankly, I believe about 85% of the time, we AGREE.  But my intent is to always respond to your posts with respect, and no ridicule.  I am not a member of the Nasty-Girls Club.  LOL.   

I'm sure this is all understood, but I just wanted to verify.   

[vetsoapfan]

Thank you for refreshing my memory. He really was caustic and condescending towards people whom he decided to vilify, LOL.

People try to argue with me that Lemay did not have the power to fire Dwyer, and technically that was probably true; he needed the approval of TPTB. But with relentless determination to fire an actress he disliked, it's clear he was a prime motivating factor in her dismissal.

After Jacquie Courtney was fired, she wrote a magazine piece about leaving the show, trying diplomatically to say that she did not agree with the way TPTB were taking her character. Lemay later wrote that she may have had it "written for her." Huh? As if she were incapable of stringing sentences together in a  text like anybody else? His snide insults are hard to fathom.

It makes me wonder (again) why Bill Bell killed off Jennifer Brooks on Y&R in 1977. Generally, soaps are loathe to kill off the principal matriarch unless they have no choice whatsoever (i.e. death of the actress).

At least AW held on to Aunt Liz and Ada for a long time.

[Contessa Donatella]

Somehow my new text got squished into the quoted material. Here below is what I added. (This is really weird.) 

 

Our being fast AW buddies cannot be reiterated too much! 

Edited March 1, 2024 by Contessa Donatella
uh-oh

[Mona Kane Croft]

I too have questioned Bell's decision to kill-off Jennifer Brooks.  But I have a tendency to respect big decisions like that, if they are made by the show's creator, rather than later writers.   Similarly, I fairly easily accepted Bell's decision to write-off Y&R's two original families, the Brooks' and the Fosters, only because that decision was made by Bill Bell himself.  

Had a later writer made those decisions, I would still be bitching about it 40 years later.   Just as I still bitch about Lemay killing-off Mary Matthews, or the Bauers being minimized while Pam Long was head-writer, or the Martins being minimized every time Agnes Nixon came and went from All My Children, or the way the Hortons were minimized by every head-writer post-1983.   

Edited March 1, 2024 by Mona Kane Croft

[Contessa Donatella]

Now, I've read this. It's in the book Lee Bell got Michael Maloney to write "with her". Gonna have to look it up. But, I believe I can satisfy this particular curiosity. 

Just looked down, 9 people here. 

[vetsoapfan]

With the endless cast defections among the actors playing the Brooks and Foster characters, I can understand Bill Bell finally throwing up his hands and deciding to start over with a largely-clean slate. He was William J. Bell; he was soap-savvy and creative enough to make it work. Other (and lesser) writers and producers over the years, who tried to reinvent classic soaps, just never had the ability to succeed.

Instead of introducing and then axing so many new characters and families over the years, AW should have concentrated on strengthening its roots and returning Bay City to its core.

I would have worked for them, cheaply, LOL!

[Mona Kane Croft]

Of course! When Lemay left AW in 1979 the show was populated with wonderful characters with so much potential -- the middle-class Matthews family, the wealthy Corys, the working-class Perrinis and Frames, and all the wonderful characters that surrounded them.    Even if the new writers wanted to strengthen the storylines and plots, why in the world would they jettison so many of Lemay's beloved characters??   It was nuts, and led to the continued ratings decline for twenty-years.   

[vetsoapfan]

Yep.

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[Contessa Donatella]

And remember this came at the time when CBS forced him to go to an hour. Each & every person was signed to contracts that specified a half hour. Automatically, on the exact same day, no one had a contract. They'd been on this hot new soap & suddenly they might have thought they'd find a better role or a bigger paycheck. But, you may know this ... 

Okay, sorry. What I read about is Jamie Lyn Bauer & Lorie. Why he didn't feel he could recast her. etc. 

[Contessa Donatella]

Maloney, M., & Bell, L. P. (2012). The Young and Restless Life 0f William J. Bell. Sourcebooks, Inc.

Excerpts from

p.38

Irna & Bill co-created Another World. The show bible dated 8-26-63 is 24 pages long. "In a community not too far from Oakdale, a community near the university -- one that is certainly not what we usually think of as suburbia but not completely cosmopolitan either -- live two families," Irna & Bill wrote.

"As far as Another World is concerned, we believe that in some way we all create 'another world' for ourselves. If we didn't, facing reality 24 hours a day would be too much. But as for another world for women, we feel that the viewer, who we hope will come to know all the people to whom you've been introduced will recognize in this story that a home and a family should be solidified & not attached."

Creating AW also provided valuable lessons. "It was a whole new level of learning," Bill said of starting an original daytime series. Another World, which Rose Cooperman titled & which chronicled the lives of the Matthews family.

Bill & Irna left AW & James Lipton came in but then he also left & Agnes Nixon came in. Her Alice/Steve/Rachel triangle put the show on the map.

"Aggie did a fabulous job with that show," praised Bill.

Maloney, M., & Bell, L. P. (2012). The Young and Restless Life 0f William J. Bell. Sourcebooks, Inc.

Michael Maloney's Bill Bell book p. 255 Retirement speech. From the Rainbow Room, 1998.

"I have a deep conviction about the state of the serial today, although it does not relate to all of them," Bill stated. But it relates to the need to create stories that an audience can relate to, stories that deal with real people, that have real problems & real relationships, God willing, that can impact positively on the lives of our viewers. Enough said."

p.262 "I'm quite clear that Bill believed he owed his success to his

partnership with Lee," says Susan Seaforth Hayes. "Who knows where ideas for a writer come from? Those little geniuses that whisper into your ear & make stories & scenes into scripts of gold. Maybe it was because the person sitting beside him was not belittling, but was instead enthusiastic about his every achievement. I would not be a bit surprised if that fountain of work came out of a perfect love. Bill Bell was one human being in a million who had the grace to share his success & say that it came out of his marriage to Lee. How great was that?

"She was the most difficult person I ever met who was in this business." - Paul Rauch, Emmy-winning producer of AW, OLTL, GL, SB, Y&R, FR/FP, about Irna Phillips. Michael Maloney Bill Bell book

"Rita Marshall, the no-nonsense soap opera producer of fictional Southwest General in the film TOOTSIE was modeled after Gloria Monty, the iconic and iron-willed producer who helmed General Hospital in its heyday." - Michael Maloney Bill Bell book p. 29.