Sorry, just realized I'd somehow lost a whole paragraph in that last post.

On 5/7/2025 at 8:25 PM, bongobong said:

I can understand JFP's reasoning for getting rid of Donna, even if I didn't agree with it (she was my favorite of the 3).

Okay, well her reasons were that she had a mandate to reduce the size of the cast & she had another mandate to make the cast overall younger, so her reason for picking Donna to off was because she was too old. 

So, is that what you understand? Or are you thinking of something else? Which if so, I would be delighted to hear about it! 

She had arbitrarily picked 50 as the age people needed to be younger than.  And, that is why she got rid of both Bridget & Spencer Harrison.  And, getting rid of Bridget was another of her horrible ideas. 

On 5/7/2025 at 8:25 PM, bongobong said:

This would be a weird comment to make about the face of the show if it wasn't damn accurate. In the 90s she was mostly confined to her own orbit with her daughters and Cass, aside from a few stories.

Why do you refer to her as the Face of the Show?

On 5/7/2025 at 9:35 PM, bongobong said:

Don't remember Cass & Donna at all. Was it last year of the show before he got with Lila? I was mostly checked out at that point.

Don't feel bad. I am a major Cass fan & I don't remember him with Donna either, LOL! Can we say forgettable? And, yes, Lila was the most last minute of last minutes!!!! Come to think of it, I am a major Donna fan, too!

Edited May 9May 9 by Contessa Donatella

On 5/8/2025 at 9:17 AM, DRW50 said:

Long ago, this Rachel fan channel uploaded a number of clips of Rachel with Felicia during the alcoholism story, and this one in particular stands out for me. 

And then you have this scene, which is the dark mirror of the above, especially the final moment:

When Dano tried some of this old weepy type of material when she went back to ABC, it mostly fell flat, as the atmosphere wasn't the same and her character always felt shoehorned in. It worked perfectly at this period on AW because you had Iris, you had Rachel, you had Donna - you had a number of tough-but-vulnerable women of a certain age, most of them grandmothers by this point, but still trying to find love, find themselves. This is what AW could h

When you bring up what I like to call "Shapiro's Folly" you think Dano's acting choices mattered? I ask because I don't think so. As far as I could tell almost universally the ABC fans hated the very idea of her being on all 4 shows!  And, I agreed. If she wanted success she should have planted "Rae" on one show & given up her idea of branding, or whatever it was that she was after. I'm sure your point, about Dano's acting style, like with all new characters, some would like her & some would not. But to me, at the time the thing of moving her from show to show was so huge & also so questionable as to popularity. 

 

Edited May 9May 9 by Contessa Donatella

36 minutes ago, Contessa Donatella said:

Okay, well her reasons were that she had a mandate to reduce the size of the cast & she had another mandate to make the cast overall younger, so her reason for picking Donna to off was because she was too old. 

So, is that what you understand? Or are you thinking of something else? Which if so, I would be delighted to hear about it! 

She had arbitrarily picked 50 as the age people needed to be younger than.  And, that is why she got rid of both Bridget & Spencer Harrison.  And, getting rid of Bridget was another of her horrible ideas. 

Why do you refer to her as the Face of the Show?

Don't feel bad. I am a major Cass fan & I don't remember him with Donna either, LOL! Can we say forgettable? And, yes, Lila was the most last minute of last minutes!!!! 

They went bowling.

14 minutes ago, Daytime Watcher said:

They went bowling.

Who went bowling? JFP & Anna? Is there any more to this?

 

31 minutes ago, Contessa Donatella said:

When you bring up what I like to call "Shapiro's Folly" you think Dano's acting choices mattered? I ask because I don't think so. As far as I could tell almost universally the ABC fans hated the very idea of her being on all 4 shows! And, BTW, the headwriters also hated it, at least according to comments made by Passanante. But, it is not hard to imagine that they'd feel that way.

I don't think they were the biggest factor, but I do think there's a specific style to Dano's work that wasn't helped by how pointless her character often felt (and later on the various writers clearly saw the character as a joke).

I think bringing Dano back to OLTL as her original character Gretel/Rae was a last minute thing because P & G wouldn't let ABC use the Felicia character.

So even though she had ties to OLTL from back in the day, she just didn't fit into the OLTL of the late 90s/early 00s.. nor did she really fit into the other soaps at ABC either. 

6 minutes ago, Soaplovers said:

I think bringing Dano back to OLTL as her original character Gretel/Rae was a last minute thing because P & G wouldn't let ABC use the Felicia character.

Yes, that is why. I mean, not last minute but it was not what Shapiro originally wanted. First, she tried to buy the show. Then she tried to buy the character. Meanwhile several other companies also tried to buy the show. 

1 hour ago, Contessa Donatella said:

Who went bowling? JFP & Anna? Is there any more to this?

 

lol Cass and Donna went on a bowling date!

I still don't know when/how did Iris find out about Evan's connection to Janice?

4 minutes ago, Daytime Watcher said:

lol Cass and Donna went on a bowling date!

OH!!! I love it. I can't believe I missed that. In one of the 2 fan events held the 2 years after the sorry end of our lovely show, both  Anna Stuart & Stephen Schnetzer attended & I got to talk to each of them. Obviously I was in heaven. Although at least I didn't do my shy star struck thing.

As someone who was watching OLTL at the time, Dano did excellent work, but the writing was weird. Dano even got Emmy nominated for what she did. However, it did feel that the writers did not know what to do with her, but to be fair, it did feel like a lot of that was that the character was a network mandate and the writers were making it up as they were going on. I didn't watch Dano's trek around all the soaps. That kind of thing would have worked better with an ABC performer not someone who had been off OLTL for decades.

I can't imagine AW without Felicia Gallant. I really don't want to because she provided so much joy for me when there was so much disappointment on that show. The only time I thought her character didn't work was the John/Felicia storyline but it got Anna Holbrook an Emmy so I can't complain all that much. It's just another example of drama at the expense of character.

4 hours ago, chrisml said:

As someone who was watching OLTL at the time, Dano did excellent work, but the writing was weird. Dano even got Emmy nominated for what she did. However, it did feel that the writers did not know what to do with her, but to be fair, it did feel like a lot of that was that the character was a network mandate and the writers were making it up as they were going on. I didn't watch Dano's trek around all the soaps. That kind of thing would have worked better with an ABC performer not someone who had been off OLTL for decades.

I can't imagine AW without Felicia Gallant. I really don't want to because she provided so much joy for me when there was so much disappointment on that show. The only time I thought her character didn't work was the John/Felicia storyline but it got Anna Holbrook an Emmy so I can't complain all that much. It's just another example of drama at the expense of character.

I LOVED LD on AW...one of my all time favorite characters! However, on OLTL, her character was pretty pointless from the word go. I think trying to make her this character she played decades before was also a bad choice. She should have been a brand new character that could have been tied into the current canvas better. Rae really had no connections or family on the show.

Imagine if she had been brought on as a recast Melinda Cramer, freshly released from the hospital. She would have been tied into a major family, be Kelly's mother, and have some real drama to play opposite RS.

Edited May 8May 8 by 1974mdp

I loved Felicia and Donna. They were two of the reasons I couldn't stop watching the show even when the writing was horrible. I was never really a fan of Rachel's unless she was sniping at Cecile (my fave character!). But Felicia and Donna (especially Anna Stuart) are AW to me. Of course, it was around the time of their arrivals that I remember I started watching the show. I was 10 in '83. For me, they were always there. I wouldn't have wanted either of them to be killed off. 

Rachel and Mac were okay for me but I never saw most of their relationship play or Rachel's previous work with Steve and Alice. I just saw her as there; the matriarch. Never a fan of Rachel and Carl. It made no sense whatsoever. 

I did like Quinn and was shocked when they killed her off. Her and Zack were just starting to become a couple I wanted to watch. She should definitely have been a fixture on the show along with her family. Carter and Thomasina I thought were fun and a great couple, too. 

That's the thing about being an AW fan. The show was always on the brink of greatness, but then it would shoot itself in the foot with stupid decisions from writing to cast exits, etc. They could just never quite get it together. The cast was amazing! It's the only thing that saved them for so long. 

Edited May 8May 8 by Melroser

5 minutes ago, 1974mdp said:

I LOVED LD on AW...one of my all time favorite characters! However, on OLTL, her character was pretty pointless from the word go. I think trying to make her this character she played decades before was also a bad choice. She should have been a brand new character that could have been tied into the current canvas better. Rae really had no connections or family on the show.

Imagine if she had been brought on as a recast Melinda Cramer, freshly released from the hospital. She would have been tied into a major family, be Kelly's mother, and have some real drama to play opposite RS.

I watched it all. I was fine with her on both GH and on PC. But, what you describe for Llanview would've worked really well. I just think the whole concept of moving her from show to show was  in big trouble from the start.

And, there were some specific blunders, like MAX, GMAB, she had no idea whether she'd had a boy or a girl and he was at least a decade older than any of the others. 

I did very much like the idea that Myrtle was her mom.