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40 years ago today, August 11, 1978, Rachel Cory went into premature labor and gave birth to Amanda 4 weeks early.   Any long time viewers remember the scenes when Mac lets it slip to Iris that Amanda is his first born daughter and that Iris was adopted?  Was anyone surprised by this revelation?   Obviously, they later made Iris Mac's biological child as well, but this must have caused quite the stir in pre-Internet days.

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Imagine if they hadn't retconed Iris's parentage then Paulina could have been Iris's sister (from the same biological parents) rather than Mac's daughter.

 

I've always thought it sullied male characters to have long lost kids pop-up all over the country.  So, making Paulina into Iris's unknown sister that Mac was trying to find before his death to give Iris a family would have been kinder to his memory.  I know Mac was the kind of guy to boff a gal in his limo, but I don't think he would have left a daughter in the rain forest.

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No, (although nobody ever did the math), she was supposedly conceived before Mac became involved with Rachel and was therefore older than Matthew and Amanda.  Her parentage was confirmed in the red swan box mystery that was Rachel's first story after Mac passed.

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I'll give AW a pass on that red swan mystery since the storylines for the entire show had to be rewritten following Douglass Watson's death.  I wonder if Paulina and Ken Jordan even figured into the storylines at all.  I'm sure that in the original storyline that either Mac and/or Rachel were in some kind of danger and would be saved by Iris, so that Mac would forgive Iris for being "The Chief."

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Was there much soap press about Carmen assuming the role of Iris? We didn't have the Internet back then and I don't know how many folks read soap magazines. I wonder how many viewers were truly unspoiled and surprised, and if there were commercials teasing Iris's return. I have zero idea, I wasn't an NBC fan at the time, but I did post the videos of Iris's return from Soapnet reruns 

on my YouTube page.

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Once Vivian returned in September to be the Cory maid, along with the Bennett Publishing attempted takeover of Cory Publishing, viewers could put two and two together to figure out that Iris imminent return would happen you just didn't know when.  Rachel opened the door to the Cory mansion and said "Iris," however you did not see Iris until the next episode being played by Carmen Duncan.   Duncan's Iris was immediately front and center on the show, and Harding Lemay took great lengths to not only make her "The Chief," he had her romantically involved with Evan Bates (Earl Battis- Janice Frame's son) who was already working at Cory Publishing with his eye on Amanda.  Michael Hudson was also involved with Iris in the past, as well.  

 

The return of Iris story was clearly Lemay's idea and penned by Donna Swajeski as well.  It took 6 months for Mac to discover that Iris was "The Chief"  as Iris confessed on the witness stand in the Jason Frame murder trial.    Mac's confrontation with Iris was one of Douglass Watson's last episodes as Mac, and everyone blamed Iris for Mac's passing from a broken heart.

 

Carmen Duncan should have received an Emmy in 1990 just on the scenes where she confesses to Mac that she was "The Chief" and when Rachel tells her that Mac has died.  

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I was looking at old SOD's on Tumblr.  3 weeks before Iris's return there's a promo about intrigue in Bay City and they show Rachel open the door.  Then, 2 weeks prior the promo was about someone coming to Bay City ( it seems like they are trying to be gender neutral to fake viewers into thinking it might be Steve ) and they show Rachel opening the door.  The week after the reveal SOD had an intro article with Carmen Duncan (to show the power of NBC's PR dept, there is no mention of the accent what so ever).

 

I agree that the tie-in of the reveal and a murder trial was vintage AW.  What AW fan can't still hear Mac calling out Rachel's name when he learned that Mitch was Matthew's father during her murder trial?  Or Walter Curtain and his reveal of the having the scarf/being the killer who freed Lenore?  Courtroom reveals were so juicy because they had to tell the truth in front of the whole town (who take days off to attend a trial without a complaint).

Edited by j swift
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It seemed like an odd revelation to make that Iris was adopted and then later to reverse the whole thing. I also found it odd in watching a couple summer 1979 90-minute eps of how cordial Iris was to Rachel at that point in AW history; I guess Iris had rejected Mac by that point and didn't like Janice so she felt sorry for Rachel? 

 

I really enjoyed Carmen Duncan's Iris and hated that her and the character were so undervalued and underplayed right up until that mind-boggling terrible exit. 

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Sending her off to jail for shooting Carl at his wedding to Rachel was a bad move.  Iris was many things, but a murderer was not one of them.  Before she would shoot someone, Iris would hire a hitman to do it for her lol 😂  Iris left the show to go to jail and was never heard from or seen again.

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I don't know.. I could have bought it if she had hired a gunman to do the job for her... but we have to remember that Iris was her own worst enemy.  Many a marriage of hers was ruined because of her inability to move on from Mac so I could see Rachel marrying Carl as a betrayal against Mac's memory and she snapped.  

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That would also mean that Paulina had to be older than Jamie too if Mack did not have an affair on Rachel but yet the actresses playing the role seemed and looked much younger than Jamie.  just stupid writing.  Which means Mack actually found out about 3 children as being his.  Sandy, Iris and Paulina

Ha, I don't ever recall episodes from 1979 where Iris was cordial to Rachel.  If anything, I think the Bev portray of Iris is way more evil towards Rachel than Carmens.  In the 70's, Rachel and Iris could not even be in the same room together.  Unless, you are looking at footage of Iris pretending to like Rachel to manipulate.  However, Rachel never jumped on that bandwagon..

 

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Not quite, Mac didn't live in Bay City when Rachel got pregnant by Steve with Jamie so, Paulina could have been younger or the same age.  She would have to be older than Matt or Amanda because they sprouted on screen while Mac lived in Bay City.

 

While I've never tried to imagine Iris's age (because a gentleman wouldn't do such a thing) Sandy and Jamie were played around the same age in the early 1980's when Sandy was introduced.  Jamie never grew any older after that; he stayed perennially in his early 30's throughout the 80's and 90's which allowed his original SORASing to catch up with him in a 'Benjamin Button' sort of way.  Paulina could have been born in South America at any time between when Mac slept with Sandy's mom in Nevada up until he came to Bay City (BTW I am psuedo-appalled in retrospect that 'Paulina from the Rain Forrest' was always played by a blond actress).

 

Any way, when Mac first dated Rachel he was a very sexual being.  He had an impulsive tryst in the back of his limousine and, when Rachel found out, his rather sophisticated defense was that they weren't exclusive sexual partners at the time. Ada even told Rachel that unless she locked Mac down he would see other women.  His eye would often wonder while at the Cory Complex.  However, there is an interesting thread between all of Mac's illegitimate children, there were illusions that the mothers were all some how involved in the sex industry.  Iris's biological mother was a hooker which is why Mac's wife adopted her, Sandy was an escort (and I think his mother was also a hooker), and Paulina's mother wasn't a hooker but that relationship was never portrayed as romantic.  So, even though Mac could date anyone he wanted, he also paid for something extra on the side...  

Edited by j swift
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