Another World

[vetsoapfan]

When my memory does not fail me!

 

It's strange, though: there are many minute details from 60 years ago which I remember with great clarity, yet specifics from a TV show I watched last Monday have already slipped my mind. Whenever a new season of something arrives on Netflix, I never seem to recall how the previous season ended, and I have to hunt down recaps before watching the new episodes. 

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[Soaplovers]

I think Lemay's original instinct that Steve/Rachel/Alice was played out was correct.  Anytime a story is dragged out, characters are diminished.

[amybrickwallace]

They were front and center for about 7 years, right? It's amazing that they kept that up for so long. It probably was past time to move the characters into other orbits.

[Nicholas Blair]

Judith Barcroft has said in interviews that she was ready to leave AW because Lenore had become "Rita Recap," but when TPTB told her about the murder trial storyline, she was happy to stay. The show moved two secondary characters, Walter and Lenore, to the front burner, and Val Dufour and Judith Barcroft took a very well-written story and knocked it out of the park.

The first Wayne Addison was Edmund Hashim, a competent actor but too obviously a weasel, so the role was recast with Robert Milli, a suave, good-looking villain who could plausibly pretend to woo rich widow Liz Matthews (Nancy Wickwire) while plotting to cheat Steven Frame and everyone else. Walter Curtin, desperate to get more money to give his wife Lenore the kind of upscale life she had always known, was an easy cat's paw. Walter had no idea that Lenore loved him and didn't care how much money he was making.

The notion of seducing Walter's lovely blonde wife greatly appealed to Addison, and the fact that Lenore seemed repulsed by him added spice to the game. Liz expected a marriage proposal, but Wayne managed to suggest that he was having an affair with Lenore and even implied that the child she was carrying was his. As he was planning to leave Bay City with his ill-gotten gains, he taunted Liz about how little he cared for her and how he'd been carrying on with Lenore. When he turned his back on Liz, she picked up a statuette she'd given him--he had taunted her about that, too--and prepared to hit him over the head with it. End of episode, probably a Friday.

We next saw Liz in the lobby of Wayne Addison's apartment building, where she ran into a dithery clubwoman friend, Louella (Dorothy Blackburn), who was on her way to a shop on the first level that repaired clocks or watches (don't recall which). Wayne's dead body was discovered, killed by a blow to the head with the statuette. Eventually the finger of suspicion pointed to Lenore, because everyone "knew" that she had been having an affair with Wayne.

To the viewers, of course, Liz was the prime suspect. Would TPTB dare write off this troublemaking villainess we loved to hate? Liz had also been a prime suspect in the Danny Fargo murder, and it was always plausible (pre-Lemay) that Liz could commit murder. Liz had covered her tracks by persuading Louella that she had the date wrong about when they had seen each other in Wayne's building. Or was the real killer a more dispensable character, like Bernice Robinson (the excellent Janis Young, whose only soap role this was), Addison's ex-wife who was up to her ears in his financial misdealings, or another of Addison's cohorts or victims? I see from the Somerset thread that Robert Delaney was another of Addison's victims.

As the net closed around Lenore, and Walter prepared a defense for his wife, at some point there was a scene where Walter opened a wall safe and took out Lenore's missing scarf. We didn't know for sure yet, but it suddenly dawned on us that Walter could be guilty of the crime his wife was accused of. Walter had supposedly been in New York on the day of the crime. The question was not just was Walter guilty, but would the show go there? I believe that at some point before the trial we were shown a flashback where Addison breaks up Liz's attempt to hit him with the statuette and she rushes out of his apartment. Walter soon shows up, Wayne taunts Walter by showing him the scarf Lenore has left after their supposed tryst, and Walter picks up the statuette and finishes the job Liz had started.

These scenes were filmed while Robert Milli was still there, but not shown until this later time. The AW Home Page used to follow the sequence of scripts filmed and suggested that the audience knew from the start that Walter was guilty. The actual sequence of events was much more interesting. I wish I remembered more precisely when the revelations were made, but before the trial we knew that Walter was defending his wife for the crime he had committed.

Lenore's situation looked bad, made even worse when on cross-examination Rachel was so eager to defend Steve, a possible suspect, that she made things even worse for her "best friend" Lenore. Fortunately, Louella realized that she had indeed seen Liz in the building around the time of the murder (did she have a receipt with the date? that detail I don't know) and testified to that effect. Now Walter could show reasonable doubt, with Liz as a plausible suspect, and Lenore was acquitted.

I don't recall exactly how, but it was quickly made clear that Liz would not be prosecuted for the murder because her defense could always show reasonable doubt because of Lenore. Whether this was said by the D.A., Tom Albini (Pierrino Mascarino, who had played the seedy detective Grady Perrette on EON), I am not sure. (I remember being interested that Mascarino had played his EON character with a New York accent, but the D. A. without.)

So far the storytelling had been superb, and the performances equally so. How would this story be resolved? The answer, unfortunately, would be "not nearly so well as it had been told up till then."

 

 

 

[Vee]

This is essential detail, thank you.

[vetsoapfan]

Yes, from 1968 to 1975. Lemay's writing started to falter in 1975, but until then, the Alice/Steve/Rachel saga had remained strong, vibrant and compelling. I'd counter that it certainly wasn't played out in 1971 when Lemay arrived. The years 1971-4 were particularly engrossing for both this story and the show in general.

On Days, Bill Bell and Pat Falken Smith kept the Bill/Laura/Mickey plot going for a solid decade and it was never boring. Ditto the long-running Roger/Holly business on TGL. the endless Jill/Katherine feud on Y&R, etc. With intriguing actors/characters and solid, imaginative writing, the longer soaps can extend audience-pleasing plots, the better. That being said, later trying to revisit/extend the Alice/Steve/Rachel storyline with different actors and dreadful writing was a major blunder. Since there was no chemistry whatsoever  between the bland Linda Borgenson and David Canary, the new versions of Steve and Alice should have been shifted into other orbits in the early 1980s. By then, there was no question that the story was dead and should have remained buried.

[amybrickwallace]

That was just a BAD idea. 

[AbcNbc247]

Great post @Nicholas Blair!

It does sound like Steve/Alice/Rachel was backburnered for Wayne Addison, (I remembering reading about this mini-story of Steve hitting his head, getting amnesia and think he was still engaged to Alice that ultimately went no where) but it still sounds so compelling and fascinating.

[amybrickwallace]

It does! It's fun to read posts like that from people who watched the first time.

[DRW50]

There are a few audio clips of the Wayne Addison story on Youtube. Here  is his last scene with Liz. 

 

[vetsoapfan]

Jacqueline Courtney had taken an extended leave of absence and was off AW from June of 1970 to July of 1971, except for a few guest appearances. She was deemed too popular to replace (this was later conclusively proven to be true, when the show tried to do so in the later 1970s and early 1980s), and the Alice/Steve story was put on hold for more than a year. I doubt it would have been backburnered at all, if the show had had any choice. When Courtney returned, the story became the focal point of AW again, and reigned surpreme for the next several years.

Corrine Jacker later acknowledged that she disliked writing for the show, and it was evident from her dreadful writing.

[AbcNbc247]

Was that when she had her daughter?

[amybrickwallace]

I believe she got married in 1970 and had her daughter in 1971, so yes.

[DRW50]

From what I remember of the soap magazines at the time, her husband was a doctor in Arizona or somewhere, and part of the reason for her break was for his career.

[vetsoapfan]

That's right. The family had to move away, at least for a while, to accomodate Courtney's husband's career. But Lyle B. Hill, the producer at the time, told Courtney that they would hold the role of Alice open for a while, in hopes of her return. During her absence, she made several guest appearance on the program.