Another World

[amybrickwallace]

Thanks for answering. That's a little surprising. It would have been interesting to see Rachel trying to have a real relationship with her father. I guess Mac came on shortly thereafter and made the need for her dad moot.

[vetsoapfan]

I thought that completely abandoning the Gerald Davis character was a wasted opportunity. Rachel had a half-sister on her father's side, named Pammy Davis, who also could have been used to create reams of dramatic conflict with Rachel. Many, if not most, writers and producers on soaps do  not mine the past effectively, IMHO.

[allmc2008]

Everyone at the end keeps saying "Nobody knows where he is". Watch the Alice/Rachel fight

 

[amybrickwallace]

They don't, which is a shame. So many good stories could come from effectively mining history.

[vetsoapfan]

They may not have known specifically where in the building he was being kept, after being moved to solitary, but everyone knew the name and location of the prison and that Steve was in that building. After Alice's breakdown, Lenore drove out there and tried to convince the authorities to let her see Steve, so she could update him on Alice's condition.

[amybrickwallace]

How long did Alice's breakdown story last, anyway? 

[vetsoapfan]

A petulant Harding Lemay was infuriated that Jacquie Courtney portrayed Alice's acute schizophrenic nervous breakdown so overtly (he said he wanted it to be played as "muted grief" instead of raging emotion), and so ended the story almost immediately. Alice recovered from her breakdown within a few days, went back to normal, and the character began to diminish in prominence, as Lemay brought Rachel more and more to the foreground.

[amybrickwallace]

Ouch. Sounds like sour grapes. As good a writer as he was, he did seem petty at times - and he made it clear he had pets. It's obvious Jacquie Courtney wasn't one of them for whatever reason.

[vetsoapfan]

There were specific rumors about why he had it out for her, but in the end, who knows? Not all rumors are true. As the writer steering the ship, it was his job to do what was best for the SHOW and the AUDIENCE, not to cater to his own whims.

[AbcNbc247]

I think it had a lot to do with people who weren’t going to adhere to his style. But the more I read his book, the more it seems like there was some scheming going on, on his part

[Xanthe]

What struck me, reading the book, was how remote from the studio and the day to day rehearsal and taping Lemay was. He obviously had preferences which he describes as being based on acting ability. His preferences were probably not as unbiased as he claims, but I have difficulty imagining he had enough interpersonal contact to be pretending that a personal dislike was artistic. 

[j swift]

Having read Eight Years in Another World in the last decade and being utterly charmed by the memoir, I am defensive of Harding Lemay and feel that he is often misunderstood in present day discussions.  As one can hear in his podcast interview on We Love Soaps, he was a witty, sometimes old fashioned, raconteur, who liked to take the piss out of others.  I mean his take on Doug Marland's Rules for How Not to Ruin a Soap were very amusing and I appreciated how he immediately dismissed the essay that most fans had taken on as a gospel on soap production.  He was hired to turn around the ship on a soap that was loosing viewers and he helped it gain awards, press, and increased ratings, so the idea that one needs to be beholden to the legacy of a soap were understandably seen as an overrated value.

First, imagine writing a book after quitting a job, anyone would tend to be sassy, subject to overstate their importance, and air their grievances.  It wasn't necessarily representative of his feelings about soaps in general, nor was it meant to describe how he would feel about writing in the future, it was just a collection of stories about that time period.

Second, I think he is pretty clear from the outset that he was an employee of the production, and although he had opinions, he lacked the power to enact his wishes with regarding to the casting and pacing of the show, which is one of the reasons that he ultimately left the show. 

Third, when taken out of context his comments on Irma Phillips and Virginia Dwyer may seem rude, however he is clearly using the opportunity of writing a memoir to dish some dirt and entertain the reader.  He writes as if he was bitching to a friend, and he was not trying to diminish the entire contribution that both woman made to the show.  In fact, he tries to be diplomatic when retelling his stories, from his perspective, and he never directly insults either person.

So, I think notions about his motivations may be a bit overwrought, and we should remember that especially in the days when soaps were owned by the advertisers, every decision was done by committee so that nobody had complete control over the product.

Edited August 12, 2021 by j swift

[Efulton]

I have read Eight Years in Another World multiple times as well as several interviews with Harding Lemay.  There is no doubt that he was charming, intelligent and extremely talented.  Writing Irma Phillip’s obituary was a classy move. His Another World got me hooked on soaps and was like nothing before or since. However,  he was also arrogant and had a huge ego.  His disrespect towards Virginia Dwyer and Jacqueline Courtney was gross. Getting them fired was completely unnecessary and I believe it caused long term damage to the show.  He expected everyone to fall in line yet was unwilling to find any common ground IF he didn’t like the actor.  Connie Ford was a genius for changing his dialogue.  Hugh Marlowe was a movie star so it was fine he could not remember his lines.  Virginia and Jacqueline fought for consistency with characters they created so they had to be punished.  

[AbcNbc247]

I do sometimes wonder if he purposely diminished the presence of George Reinholt and Jacquie Courtney, or made storyline choices that he knew they wouldn’t agree with, in order to get them to leave the show.

[Soaplovers]

Maybe Lemay had trouble with writing a middle class family...it seemed he did well with working class and higher class characters.

And he didn't know how to make The Matthew's family compelling.