Another World

[Paul Raven]

Agree, this is just another example common to many soaps where characters who could have been brought back to tighten the canvas and solidify families are ignored in favor of new characters.

 

[OzFrog]

Even now, 37 years later, it is still incredible how Ellen Wheeler pulled this off…

 

[DRW50]

 

[Contessa Donatella]

It was as a result of the AWHP creator Eddie Drueding and some other AW fans that the show had enough clips to do this anniversary show! P&G's own tapes suffered because of the practice of "wiping".

[DRW50]

Yes. IIRC he said he'd suggested even more moments for them that weren't used.

[Contessa Donatella]

He had great ideas! He always does. He gave them a clip of VW very angry & aggressive, just GREAT!

I saw a picture today of Rachel's half-sister, not Nancy, but Pammy & I have absolutely NO recollection of any Pammy!

[Xanthe]

Ellen will always be my favourite Marley/Victoria because she did such a tremendous job physically differentiating between the twins and with the portrayal of Victoria's pain and neediness. Obviously some of the credit for the characterization goes to the writers but I thought that the character lost something when Rhonda Lewin and then Anne Heche played her as a bit of a spoiled brat who for some reason trusted Reginald and Peter. Even if Ellen's Vicky had allowed Reginald to pamper her she would I think have been on the alert to see what the catch was.

[watson71]

Pammy Davis was a character played by Pamela Toll on the first year of Somerset (1970-71).  She was the daughter of Gerald and Marsha Davis, and she was Rachel's half sister.  I know at some point in 1987-88, there was a blurb in Soap Opera Digest that TPTB were playing with the idea of bringing Pammy back to Another World, but nothing ever came of it.  

[Contessa Donatella]

I love AW. I love the Love/Hudson twins. I love how uncanny recasts were at being successful. Ellen is my favorite at playing both twins. It's really hard to say why because the reason is that she was absolutely the best one at doing it! When she was still playing Marley only I wondered if she was going to pull it off. You could even say I was dubious. And within the first 20 seconds when she showed herself as Vicky, WHOA! she knocked it right outta the park! Rhonda I don't score because she was there & as Vicky only & for such a short period of time. So, I appreciate that she did just fine. Anne Heche was brilliance. Again like EW she excelled at playing this dual role thing. But her Marley took a back seat to her Vicky, so she is my favorite at just being Vicky. And, her Marley wig had a life of its own & may not have been very friendly! Jensen, too, had a Marley who sat second chair in the orchestra, never first. And, Jensen played the role over the longest duration of time I believe & at some point the writers started writing Vicky *to* JB, not that she was more like Jensen as a person, just more like Jensen walking around as Vicky. Then when JB had some medical issue arise Cynthia Watros did a fine job standing in. And, just because this is something I thought of yesterday, their most often scene partner, Tommy Eplin, was not only a talented, good looking actor but a friend & good partner to all his leading ladies.

[Clapping my hands!] Oh goodie, thnx so much. Curiosity eats at me & I was gonna have to go on a "Pammy" search tomorrow. You've given me a present of knowledge.

[j swift]

I've been thinking about @watson71's comment that Paulina should have been Nancy, and while I think Cali Timmons was best suited as Paulina, I agree that Judy Evans would've served the story better as Nancy, and Paulina could've just exited as being convicted for shooting Jake.

On a similar note, there is such a difference in characterization between this Vicky

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and this Vicky

that I wonder if Jensen should have been cast as Nicole rather than Victoria?  Before she went off to prison, Nicole was a romantic heroine, and more likely to be chosen as a potential political partner.   Does anyone recall the trivia that Lauri Landry's Nicole left Bay City to explore med school options?  Yes, Nicole was a high fashion model/coke addict/designer/potential med student.  It's a stretch but it would have tied Nicole to Grant's early medical issues in way that never seemed logically justified between Vicky and Grant.

@OzFrog retweet amazed me that the reveal of that story didn't happen during sweeps, and made me wonder if the original plan for Marley was always for her to be a twin?  Certainly there were a lot of early clues that she was Donna's daughter from the time of her introduction. Within Marley's first month on screen a drunk Peter says that one of the Love kids is illegitimate.  The David Thatcher/Royal Dunning murders were obviously written with the revelation in mind.  However, Ellen's very mannered portrayal of Marley also seemed to foreshadow an "evil twin" plot.  I am terrible at tracking writers, but I think Marley was introduced by a different writer than the one who wrote Vicky's introductory plotline.  Yet, I can't help but wonder if those were acting choices or writing choices that lead to such a distinct difference in the portrayal of each twin.

Finally, with regard to @watson71's reply about Pamela Davis.  It is a shame that they never revisited the character, because  she was poorly fleshed out in her original incarnation, and was therefore just a Rachel wannabe on a riverboat in Somerset.  But, there are such interesting contrasts that Rachel was a woman who craved male attention while raised by her loving mother and absent father, while Pammy was a woman who craved male attention due to inconsistent boundaries set by her neer-do-well father.  The differences in their origins could have made for fun conflicts between the two sisters, especially if they were in a love triangle with Carl.  For the hat trick, perhaps Carmen should have been Pam rather than Iris?

 

Edited July 11, 2022 by j swift

[Contessa Donatella]

Remember the 4th of July when they had the KBAY talent show?

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[Jdee43]

I guess the most important decision in the history of the show came in the mid-70s when they decided to center it around Victoria Wyndham and her character, totally obliterating the history of the show up to that point, and eventually making it a show about groups of best friends as opposed to core families. Any background as to why they did this? Was Victoria Wyndham friends with the producers? Was she really that charismatic to build a show around?

Another P&G soap, Search for Tomorrow, was basically centered around one character. Why would the producers think that this approach would work for Another World?

[DRW50]

Was the show that built around Rachel?

[RavenWhitney]

No. It was an ensemble.  No more built around Rachel than OLTL was built around Vickie or AMC built around Erica.

[Contessa Donatella]

When NBC changed its perspective toward AW, from liking it, to disliking it, one of the things they tried to do to kill AW, was to try to get rid of Victoria. That's a sort of backwards way of looking at it. I do know that Victoria was the star of the show. I do not know if Rachel was to AW what Jo was to SFT. That just seems wrong to me. I also know that when Jensen wanted to get as much out of the show as she could, she wanted to be the star of the show & she made no headway *at all* in stripping that moniker from VW. VW did a lot in the way of leadership at the show, the Fan Club Luncheon & what the actors did, Couplets, Love Letters, communicating with  fans about fan activism, etc. She felt a sense of responsibility.

I thought of both of those examples when thinking what to say. Ensemble, good word.