39 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

From that time period, the one thing that was played for laughs, that stands out to me the most, was Cecile and Kathleen's pie fight, while that French can-can music played.

I believe Cecile was intentionally used for comedic elements maybe twice. I mean, start with her being royalty from where? Tanquir!!! LOL From the first moment it's a gag, isn't it? And, her kidnapping Cass? I mean does a serious character do that? Well, literally, if you go another way & it's horror, sure. And, what you describe, a food fight, yeah, it's going to be played for laughs.

20 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I don't see the people who were brought into AW around 1986 as being that different from JFP, but I don't feel like going back and forth either.

Not a problem. I can respect different POVs. 

14 minutes ago, chrisml said:

I was just about to compose a post where I mention this period AW reminds me of JFP's  time on GL (1993-95) where it just reeked of cynicism and desperation. OR ATWT during Black and Stern. The common denominator is P&G. They allowed this stuff to go on.

Black & Stern is on Les Moonves' head. He knew their work including NO DAYTIME. He recommended them anyway. Thank god their tenure was brief. But, Moonves is CBS not P&G. At any rate we have a true dilemma because we see this time at AW so differently. Vive la difference!

1 hour ago, chrisml said:

I'm one of the few who preferred Mary with Reginald and wish that they had made Reginald less of a villain and made the Reginald/Mary/Vince triangle more of a battle and less a foregone conclusion. Mary choosing Reginald had much more storyline possibilities. What if what if what if...

 

So many things would have had to be different for Mary to want to go back to Reginald. It could have been interesting if it had been handled completely differently but as it was we had a very black and white Mary good/Reginald bad. If she had been able to ignore his worldly crimes and how he treated his own children there was still the fact that he had separated her from her children. Maybe if they had shown us more intimacy and affection between them and had allowed him to have real vulnerabilities it could have worked but as it played out they didn't do much to present him with any sympathetic hook.

1 hour ago, Contessa Donatella said:

I think they cared. I think at times fans underestimate both the creative types & the execs. Certainly there can be specific times & specific people when ego & hubris are huge issues. But, basically, and most of the time the people involved very much want things to work.

There are a lot of ways to define wanting things to work. Fans are mostly thinking of preserving or restoring characters and an atmosphere that drew them to the show. The sponsor may only be thinking of the bottom line. When a producer or HW comes in and decides that their vision will deliver for the bottom line and they need to fire most of the cast in order to do it it can feel very much like not caring. 

28 minutes ago, Xanthe said:

There are a lot of ways to define wanting things to work. Fans are mostly thinking of preserving or restoring characters and an atmosphere that drew them to the show. The sponsor may only be thinking of the bottom line. When a producer or HW comes in and decides that their vision will deliver for the bottom line and they need to fire most of the cast in order to do it it can feel very much like not caring. 

That is a specific example where I would agree with those fans so I would be critical of the execs doing so. I frankly think that "caring" in this regard is not conducive to dialog. Basically you point out its very subjective nature. What is caring to one person might be callous disregard to another. I suggest it is a trap & we fell in it!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJpvz5bpuwg/

1996 Daytime Emmy Awards Presentation Show
abridged, non-soap content has been edited out

On 5-22-1996, in NY, NY, at Radio City Music Hall, featuring the Rockettes, in primetime on CBS, our hosts, Eric Braeden & Melody Thomas Scott 
EB introduced NYPD Blue James McDaniel & DAYS Deidre Hall who presented Best Actor with nominees GH Maurice Benard, Y&R Peter Bergman, Y&R Eric Braeden, AMC David Canary & AW Charles Keating who won for the first time. 
"Thank you very much ladies & gentlemen. Thank you my dear hearts. I have to confess. I've prepared nothing. I've never been a prize winner. Not even as a child. I lost 3 Emmys. Once I lost a Tony. A friend recently lost an Oscar. My agent said, 'Following in the steps of Susan Lucci couldn't do you any harm.' So I have to rethink my entire career. Ladies & gentlemen, no one person ever deserves such an award. We all know this is the result of collaboration. So I am privileged to accept this on behalf of my fellows at ANOTHER WORLD!"

On 5/12/2025 at 5:50 PM, Xanthe said:

So many things would have had to be different for Mary to want to go back to Reginald. It could have been interesting if it had been handled completely differently but as it was we had a very black and white Mary good/Reginald bad. If she had been able to ignore his worldly crimes and how he treated his own children there was still the fact that he had separated her from her children. Maybe if they had shown us more intimacy and affection between them and had allowed him to have real vulnerabilities it could have worked but as it played out they didn't do much to present him with any sympathetic hook.

 

The casting of Reginald seemed to have been part of the reason for a lack of exploration of vulnerability in the character.

I know Mary talked about not liking the change in Reg, but her disappointment was rarely explored once she left him. 

• For example, did she ever question if Reg was conning her in Paraguay, or was the Bay City version of Reg real?
• Imagine running a philanthropic center in Paraguay, and then becoming a social worker in Bay City?  It must have been so frustrating to once be able to provide anything that anyone needed, and now having to rely on government funded programs.
• And lastly, she went from a house full of servants, to living over a restaurant.  We were supposed to believe that she was so blinded by her love for Vince and the kids, that she never longed for her life when someone else washed her lingerie?

LaGuardia, R. (1974b). The wonderful world of TV soap operas. ISBN-13 ISBN-13 978-0345272836

It took Harding “Pete” Lemay, however, a skilled playwright who thoroughly believed in the heretofore unexplained psychological potential of the daytime serial, to transform Mrs. Nixon’s love-triangle subplot into a balanced story contrasting realistic human behavior and that “other world of fantasy and striving. He found story devices no longer necessary.” For example, Lemay said, “I didn’t feel it was necessary to keep Rachel a black-and-white character. I didn’t see her as a villainess… I saw her instead as a human being who had always had bad breaks and who defeats herself because she is so used to failure. When she lost Steve this last time, I wanted the audience to feel her pain as I felt it. I wanted them to feel her tears.

Mr. Lemay, along with his producer, Paul Rauch, should be given an Award for the Greatest Contribution to Daytime Serials, for completely eliminating melodramatic cliche’s in a daytime drama, and for their invaluable demonstration that, what viewers really want is drama based on psychology rather than on escapist melodrama. Under Lemay and Rauch “Another World”, which had previously used many tried-and-true soap opera devices (although fewer than most other shows), got rid of them, employed inward writing, and became one of the top two or three daytime television shows.

About the only happy event in “Another World” was the birth of Ada’s daughter, Nancy, named after Ada’s dear friend on her deathbed Nancy Wickwire.

 

Edit to add: Emphasis on "dear friend". Should be changed to "special friend".

 

1 hour ago, j swift said:

I know Mary talked about not liking the change in Reg, but her disappointment was rarely explored once she left him. 

I totally agree and that's why I wish they had played up Mary's connection to Reginald because I think Alexander had more chemistry with Considine. They never explored her backstory and just thought Mary belonged back with her family. I think a better story would be if she rejected Vince and wanted to stay with Reginald. I know we've litigated Reginald's character, but I wish they had played it that way because it would have kept the Loves and the McKinnons connected beyond just Vicky and Jake. 

This may be a duplication. If so, sorry. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJrG-lRpf_M/
Another World on HLOTS

Lemay came on in 1971, Rauch in 1972. From 1971-1974, they pretty much continued the show as it had been under Agnes Nixon, with its escapist star-crossed love triangles. But then in 1975, with the expansion to an hour, it seemed they were given permission by NBC or Lin Bolen, to do more of their own thing. They did and transformed the show into a high-brow theater hour, focusing on their favorites and on psychological conflicts. It was good from 1975-1979, but it was a bit overhyped and wasn't sustainable. 

Lin Bolen was into psychological, realistic drama, as seen from the failed soap opera she developed  and pushed from 1974-1975, How to Survive a Marriage. I wonder how much of the new one hour AW in 1975 was Bolen encouraging/ordering Lemay and Rauch to incorporate some elements of her How to Survive a Marriage. Or perhaps Lemay and Rauch were fans of How to Succeed, and incorporated elements of it on their own?

Edited May 15, 2025May 15 by Jdee43

14 hours ago, chrisml said:

I wish they had played it that way because it would have kept the Loves and the McKinnons connected beyond just Vicky and Jake. 

If Reginald had had more dimensions he probably wouldn't have been killed off and Carl might not have been brought back to fill the international supervillain role.

I think though that the Loves were also severely damaged by the way Nicole and Peter were made irredeemable and written out. I definitely feel that loss more than the loss of Reginald, primarily since they were good characters to begin with and were only ruined during this period. 

 

Edited May 15, 2025May 15 by Xanthe
Spelling

13 hours ago, chrisml said:

I totally agree and that's why I wish they had played up Mary's connection to Reginald because I think Alexander had more chemistry with Considine. They never explored her backstory and just thought Mary belonged back with her family. I think a better story would be if she rejected Vince and wanted to stay with Reginald. I know we've litigated Reginald's character, but I wish they had played it that way because it would have kept the Loves and the McKinnons connected beyond just Vicky and Jake. 

Imagine the possibilities if Mary was the politically correct moral center of the Loves and clashed with Donna over her snobby socialite tendencies (once the re-recast was done).

5 hours ago, Jdee43 said:

Lemay came on in 1971, Rauch in 1972. From 1971-1974, they pretty much continued the show as it had been under Agnes Nixon, with its escapist star-crossed love triangles. But then in 1975, with the expansion to an hour, it seemed they were given permission by NBC or Lin Bolen, to do more of their own thing. They did and transformed the show into a high-brow theater hour, focusing on their favorites and on psychological conflicts. It was good from 1975-1979, but it was a bit overhyped and wasn't sustainable. 

Lin Bolen was into psychological, realistic drama, as seen from the failed soap opera she developed  and pushed from 1974-1975, How to Survive a Marriage. I wonder how much of the new one hour AW in 1975 was Bolen encouraging/ordering Lemay and Rauch to incorporate some elements of her How to Survive a Marriage. Or perhaps Lemay and Rauch were fans of How to Succeed, and incorporated elements of it on their own?

I have a feeling it was either coincidence or it was an idea whose time had come. Remember Bill Bell was also into the psycho-sexual. So it was happening more than one place.

Pete Lemay began disagreeing with Irna quite early on. He shut up & listened at first, naturally because he had to learn the basics. But, as soon as he had, they began to have arguments, disagreements. They both were devotees of character-driven but the similarities stopped pretty quickly.

Bolin as far as AW was concerned was nuts & bolts, or more $$$. It was all about the numbers. And the numbers were great, double the ad revenue & that went to the network.

As far HTSAM was concerned, that was her baby, no one else's.

It is so funny to me that Lemay started this by accident.

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJxW5DLJLId/
Another World is my forever favorite soap opera. But it's finale is almost universally hated by its fans. What this is, is an edit where I've deleted everything I didn't like!!!

Does anyone have a favorite adult Russ Matthews?  Which actor did you like most?  Sam Groom, Robert Hover, or David Bailey??  And why?  

And if Russ had returned late in AW's run, what actor would you have wanted to portray him?  One of the former actors, or someone new??  

13 hours ago, Tisy-Lish said:

Does anyone have a favorite adult Russ Matthews?  Which actor did you like most?  Sam Groom, Robert Hover, or David Bailey??  And why?  

And if Russ had returned late in AW's run, what actor would you have wanted to portray him?  One of the former actors, or someone new??  

I think I join others here who believe that Russ never really got over Rachel. So, I would have considered him in the wake of Mac's death as a partner for Rachel. I do not even remember Hover, might as well be WHOver?!!! But, Sam Groom & David Bailey each in their own ways were good. Of course, it would have been good to have some more relatives for him & my own strong preference was for Beverly Penberthy. Pat could have functioned as his sister and she could have worked at Cory, too.  But, always open to new talent.