Another World

[j swift]

I really appreciate this character dissection because (1) it is a great distraction during an awful time, (2) it brings back memories of when I was devoted fan of soaps and they inspired so many ideas about the culture, and (3) we experienced characters subjectively which makes us all experts. 

 

I get a little frustrated by posts that claim to know the motives and creative process of the production because those arguments always seem reductive and often ill informed.   

Edited May 7, 2020 by j swift

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

Personally, I don't think Harney played weakness or emotion well.  She was great 90% of the time when Alice was strong.  But when Alice needed to display emotion, Harney just couldn't do it.  One great example is the episode in which John Randolph dies.  Harney wails and moans trying to cry, and her performance in that episode is embarrassingly bad.  Close your eyes and imagine Jacquie Courtney in the same scenes.  She would have played it perfectly.   

 

I liked and accepted Harney as Alice.  And I believe she was the most accepted of all the recasts. I was rooting for Harney, because I wanted the character to remain a major focus of the action.  Harney managed to keep Alice almost front-and-center, so that much was a success.  She just couldn't play weakness or emotion.  Just my opinion.    

Edited May 7, 2020 by Neil Johnson

[Soaplovers]

Well a November 1964 episode had scenes of Alice talking about a party she was going to host, a beer keg, and stringing 2 guys along.  I always assumed Alice changed witnessing the drama of Pat, etc.  

 

 

As you'll see...Alice had a little Rachel in her back in 1964.

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

Wow, I loved Virginia Dwyer.  Mary was NBC's Nancy Hughes.  I was surprised to see the Gregory family already in the credits.  Who was the head-writer during this time?  

 

[Paul Raven]

The AWHP says Irna was headwriter until March 65. The Alex Gregory character came on in September 64 so James Lipton (next headwriter) expanded the family.Maybe that was always the plan as the Baxters would be phased out and the Gregorys moved in.

Ellen Weston would later play Karen Gregory.

[Xanthe]

 

I went to YouTube to see if I could find any evidence one way or another. I haven't spent enough time on the reveal that Donna was digging up the dirt on Sally, but I did find both May 4 & 7 1984 and they show Alice's return and David's murder. At this point Alice already knows Sally is Kevin's mother and she is eager to meet him and completely nonjudgemental when Sally talks about having given him up and kept his birth a secret.

Mary Page Keller's Sally was certainly a far cry from the Sally who pursued Joey Perrini or committed crimes with Phil Higley or wondered why Steve cared about his stepdaughter Diana's reputation more than hers. However I find myself willing to forgive the change because the balance of the relationships between the characters and cast involved worked so well: Sally, Peter, Donna, Cecile, Cass, Felicia... Moving Sally into the more virtuous column left more room for Cecile.

Edited May 9, 2020 by Xanthe
Grammar

[vetsoapfan]

 

George Reinholt was immensely popular, one of the top daytime leading men for years. In general, he was a very good actor...until he wasn't, LOL. When challenged  by intelligent material, he could present intriguing and nuanced performances and be quite commanding on screen. (To my shock, even Harding Lemay acknowledged this.) Towards the end of his run on both AW and OLTL, however, he looked bored and his performances suffered for it.

 

As for his hair, I always thought it was fine. His later 'do suited him better than the cut he started out with. And looking back at the 1970s and '80s, bad hair was rampant on soaps. Talent was my own first concern.

[FrenchFan]

I posted in the « discuss the soaps » summary for all soaps for January 1975 if you are ever interested. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

I agree with this analysis. Alice was never depicted as weak until Harding Lemay became headwriter, but she was a good, innocent person. She had not experienced many harsh realities of life until Rachel came along and blew apart the Matthews family. Alice did not know how to fight such a relentlessly manipulative, cruel and selfish woman because people like Rachel were so outside Alice's realm of experience. Literally YEARS of misery would wear anyone down, and Alice's increasing fragility under Rachel's endless assaults made perfect psychological sense.

 

I never saw Alice "slut-shame" Rachel, but she (like everyone else in Bay City) did acknowledge Rachel's total lack of morality in cheating on her sweet husband Russ and going after a "taken" man like Steve. Alice never tried to stop Steve from keeping and enriching his relationship with Jamie; she just did not want her husband spending time ALONE with the boy and Rachel. Alice knew that Rachel could tap very easily into Steve's own darker side, and that was very threatening. Considering all the heartache that had been unleashed before thanks to the Steve/Rachel dynamic, was it "selfish" of Alice to ask for limits on her husband's interaction with Rachel? Not in my book. It was totally understandable and made sense to me. I personally would have just killed Rachel...but that's just me.

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Honestly, as a viewer who had watched the show religiously for 11 years before Harney came aboard, I'll admit that my principle objection to her was that she was NOT Jacqueline Courtney. It's true. Harney was an okay-to-good actress, but she just was not the "real" Alice. We had literally watched Courtney from when she was a teenager, and suddenly seeing her replaced was jarring. Plus, she was the only remaining original cast member, and the show needed her as an anchor. Courtney projected a warmth and sweetness on-screen; a certain charisma that went beyond just technical acting talent and which cannot be manufactured. Susan Harney lacked that "je ne sais quoi" which had made Alice so beloved. (Again, I was shocked when even the caustic and condescending Harding Lemay acknowledge this. He credited Alice's dwindling popularity in the later 1970s to the change in actresses, and wondered if the surge in OLTL's ratings could be partially attributed to Courtney's joining that cast.)

 

THIS. 

 

Harney was very...lacking in those scenes. Her wailing and hysterics just did not ring true at all. Courtney may have had her critics, but that girl could cry believably and make you feel her pain, the way Judith Light, Denise Alexander and Genie Francis could. A few different critics in the 1970s' daytime press labelled Courtney as the genre's "very best crier." I agreed!

 

Harney probably was the best-accepted "replacement" Alice. Pfenning was stiff and Borgenson was painfully bland and colorless. 

 

 

[AbcNbc247]

I wonder about that too. In the episodes where Walter and Lenore got married, Alice seemed so bubbly and cheerful, like the type of person that you would love to be around. But by the Lemay episodes she seemed so weak and withdrawn. I like to think that that's what Lemay was going for; that Steve's betrayal and the years of torment by Rachel wore Alice down, which IMO makes a lot of sense. But sometimes I wonder about what Lemay's intentions were, especially after every time I read his book.

[vetsoapfan]

 

I will give Lemay credit for keeping certain core actors around for years even though he detested them and/or belittled their talent, but he clearly did not understand some of the characters, and this showed. Alice became an ultra-fragile Dresden doll; Mary Matthews became something of a shrew. Because I had watched from the beginning, I could justify the changes in my own mind. It made psychological sense that under constant pressure, Alice would eventually start to crumble. It was also understandable that, after seeing the harm they did to both Russ and Alice, Mary would be bitter and unforgiving towards Steve and Rachel. So it did work psychologically, and it made for years of riveting drama, but I wonder how much of the personalty changes for characters like Mary and Alice were precipitated by the writer's contempt for the actors.

[AbcNbc247]

I know most soap writers prefer their own characters as opposed to somebody else's but it does seems like there might have been some scheming on his part and on Rauch's part too to diminish the presence of the actors that he wasn't fond of. He was very lucky that he was such a talented writer and had such a talented cast to work with, otherwise with the changes that he made, AW might have been cancelled long before 1999. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Lemay admitted, himself, that he diminished Virginia Dwyer's presence on the show by shifting story focus from Mary to Aunt Liz. But even Liz Matthews went through a transformation under Lemay's pen. Previously, she had been much more fierce and aggressive, particularly when Audra Lindley was in the role.  Lindley's Liz would fly into rages and scream and SCREAM at people, whereas Lemay turned Liz into an overly-emotional busybody with good intentions. There's a famous scene (available on youtube) in which Aunt Liz is looking after Alice, who is teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Rachel marches into the house and announces that she is kicking Alice out of it so that Rachel can move in with Jamie. As Rachel attacks and berates Alice, Aunt Liz just sits there meekly on the bed with tears in her eyes. HA! The Aunt Liz of yore would have ripped Rachel's hair out, dragged her down the stairs and thrown her out the door...screaming at her all the way!

 

As Lemay's writing started to deteriorate in 1975, I believe that it was mainly the core elements of the show still intact, and the talented actors involved, which kept it afloat.

[AbcNbc247]

I would have loved to have seen Audra Lindley's Liz in action and Nancy Wickwire's too. 

 

Here's an audio clip of Liz ripping poor Susan to shreds about Fred. I'm not sure if Audra and Nancy though. This video also has some audio clips of the famous Rachel/Alice scene before Alice's engagement party and the scenes where Jim tells Mary about Rachel.

 

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by AbcNbc247

[Mona Kane Croft]

 

Lemay preferred writing for neurotic characters.  So, if he could find (or manufacture) even a little neurosis in a character, he was happy writing for them.  He found neurosis in John, Pat, Lenore, Alice, Steve, Rachel, Willis, Iris, Angie, etc. He didn't like Mary, because she was basically the show's matriarch and a happy well-adjusted woman -- an archetype he didn't understand, and thought unnecessary.  He wanted very badly to turn Mary into a meddling shrew like Aunt Liz. But when Dwyer was reluctant to play the role that way, he simply brought Liz back from Arizona, gave Liz most of the scenes he'd formerly been writing for Mary, and then minimized Mary to the point she was "out of town" much of the time.   

Edited May 9, 2020 by Neil Johnson