Another World

[Xanthe]

I was going through some old AW stuff and found that I had this old sticker of David Oliver. I was always somewhat perplexed by it because although he was very cute as far as I could tell he was not insanely popular or a household name.

I did some searching today using the phrase "LOOKING GOOD" and discovered that Ted McGinley and a lot of other men whose names I do not recognize were part of the same series of photos and you could get a jigsaw puzzle or a calendar. And the origin appears to be a 1983 book called Looking Good: Men of USC. I am not surprised that there was a book of photos of models who may or may not have graduated from USC, really only that they made stickers and puzzles where they were credited with their names.

Please register in order to view this content

[amybrickwallace]

Interesting story! Thanks for posting the sticker picture.

[Nicholas Blair]

Exactly right about Susan Harney and Jacqueline Courtney. Harney was pretty; she could act; and if she had been playing a different character or if Alice were going to be only a supporting character, she would have been more than acceptable. Harney was better than her successors who played not-the-real-Alice. Lemay said that Harney had more "technical variety" than Courtney, and I would be inclined to agree. Courtney's limitations of technique showed up when she had to play an evil British twin on OLTL.

And how much do 99% of the viewers care about "technical variety"? Not much. They recognize star quality. They recognize actors who can bring genuine emotion to their roles. They know who they care about and who they want to see on screen. They didn't tune in AMC to see Susan Lucci display her technical skills; they tuned in to see what Erica was up to next.

Courtney received some fairly shoddy writing from Lemay--a foolish running away from Steve after a misunderstood conversation; an unmotivated mental breakdown (because Rachel said she wanted the house Alice lived in!)--and she sold the hell out of this. Courtney held back nothing from these scenes, yet did not fall into theatrical melodrama. The audience knew who it wanted to see and why, and the audience was right.

I don't know the backstage story about Nicolas Coster's firing, but I thought he had started phoning in his performances. He had been one of my favorites ever since Somerset. He had a certain catch in his voice that he used for moments of deep sincerity, a nice effect, but toward the end of his time on AW that catch was appearing with great regularity.

[vetsoapfan]

What surprised me was that Lemay admitted Courtney was very possibly a reason why OLTL's ratings steadily increased after she was hired on that program. AW's ratings had also risen after her return in 1971 and remained high during her 1970s' tenure there, but started to drift downwards  after she left. Certainly I am not implying that JC was the sole reason why a show's numbers would rise or fall (the improved writing on OLTL versus the weakening writing on AW had a significant impact, IMHO), but viewers do loathe losing their favorite on-screen faces.

In the earliest days of the show, Alice was quite bubbly, akin to the Hollyood teens of the era;  animated and energetic. Then after a few months, she became quieter, more somber on-screen. According to Courtney's recollections many years later, Irna Phillips did not like the "Gidget-esque" version of the character, so JC was asked/told to tone it down. She said to herself that, from then on, she was just not going to move a muscle on her face, LOL. It worked. Irna loved it, and a more introspective, tender Alice Matthews was born.

It lowered over the years, and became huskier. Ptrobably due to smoking.

[vetsoapfan]

ITA that her take on Maggie Ashley was not successful, but I tend to blame the conception of that character and the production end of things for the failure. The clipped British accent, which poor Courtney couldn't pull off...why was that even imposed on her? The awful, fake wig...why? Those frumpy glasses which kept sliding down her nose and made Maggie seem like a caricature rather than an actual character...why? I daresay that a majority of actresses would have failed bringing Maggie successfully to life under those punitive conditions. Ugh.

Throughout entertainment history, there have been many actors whose technical skills may have been narrow, but nevertheless, they had a certain something, a certain magic, a certain star appeal that the audience responded to in droves. While I felt they improved as the years went on, I don't think people like Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe or Cary Grant were regarded as the world's greatest thespians...but the audience loved them anyway. I thought Courtney was very good, and very powerful, when asked to play a "good girl" and romantic lead. I didn't care if she couldn't pull off inhabiting the role of an evil twin, because that was simply not the function she was meant to serve on either AW or OLTL, anyway.

Lemay changed the personalities of many characters he had inherited. Sometimes it worked, made sense and was justified. Sometimes not. He clearly did not understand Mary Matthews, for example, and his take on Aunt Liz was a complete turnabout from how that character had always been presented. Alice had an acute schizophrenic nervous breakdown in 1974 and practically recovered overnight, which was both absurd and irresponsible writing. Yet through it all, the audience adored Jacqueline Courtney.

I liked Coster and Robert Delany as well, as his being let go (along with so many other popular stars in the 1970s and early 1980s) surely contributed to AW's decline in popularity.

Still, I loved the show from 1964 to 1975 (particularly from 1966 to 1974), so I had quite a long stretch of satisfying entertainment from it. All soaps go through their ups and downs, and I never expect the "good times" to last forever.

[amybrickwallace]

Yes, exactly!!

[Xanthe]

Lemay's version of this story is that the nervous breakdown was written as "muted catatonic grief". He complained to Paul Rauch about Courtney's "histrionic display"; Rauch claimed that Courtney avoided being directed properly by waiting until taping to reveal her performance, and anyway refused to change her interpretation. So Lemay then wrote her as cured because he wasn't getting what he wanted. Courtney's alleged unwillingness to change is the complete opposite of the story where she immediately shifted from bubbly Alice to please Irna Phillips, so it makes me wonder whether Rauch was lying to Lemay or whether a more secure and mature Courtney was simply emboldened to insist on her own interpretation. It's certainly possible (in either case) that Courtney's abilities were limited and she needed to play within her range. If Lemay had been able to figure out how to play to her strengths instead of expecting her to be something she wasn't it would have been better for the show.

 

[vetsoapfan]

The problem with Lemay's assertion is, that the way the story and scenes were being written completely validated Courtney's interpretation and performance choices. Alice goes beserk during Rachel's taunting visit, and physically lunges at her? Alice hides herself in the downstairs hall closet when people come to check on her, and then becomes belligerent with them? None of the scenes as written suggested "muted catatonic grief," as Lemay later tried to claim. If he had not wanted Alice to be in the throes of hysterics, he should not have written her that way in the first place. His feeble justification is BS, in my opinion, because he simply loathed the actress personally and he so often looked for any reason to denigrate her.

As for Rauch lying, when Courtney passed away, he gave an interview in which he said she was a "great gal," who "always gave first-rate performances on AW."

I wouldn't completely trust anything these self-serving men had to say.

[amybrickwallace]

Same here. 

[watson71]

Does any of JC's Maggie Ashley exist on YouTube?  JC's Maggie sounds just like what happened to Vicky Wyndham playing Justine- a clipped British accent - and while they didn't give VW a bad wig and glasses- they did give her a deformed face and a hook for a hand.  

[BetterForgotten]

It didn’t help that VW had started to speak with a faux-English accent long before playing Justine…

[amybrickwallace]

Did she ever say why?

[AbcNbc247]

Well, if what we saw in that episode wasn’t in the script, all I can say is that JC was one hell of an improv actress.

[amybrickwallace]

That was incredible work. I totally believe that Alice had a long fuse and Rachel finally reached the end of it.

[vetsoapfan]

Yes, videos of Jacquie Courtney as Maggie are on youtube, or at least have been in the past. (As we all know, many things get deleted without warning.) Maybe in the Viki/Clint OLTL playlists; I don't remember where I saw them. BTW, I would say that Justine on AW was even more painful to endure than Maggie on OLTL.

The idea that Courtney decided on her own to "improvise" all the verbal conflict with her friends and family, and the physical attack on Rachel, when Lemay had written for Alice to be in a "muted catatonic" state is just ridiculous. When Alice was at her worst, and Lenore found her huddled in the hall closet, did Courtney just run in there by herself, without following any script or directorial advice?

Please register in order to view this content

 Of course not. She played the scenes as written, regardless of what Lemay claimed later. I guess the scribe felt when he wrote his book that no one would ever be able to see the vintage episodes again, so no one would ever be able to label his accounts improbable/absurd.

Believe me, as a viewer who had waited YEARS for Rachel to get her a$$ kicked, watching Alice finally lunge at her and throw copper pots at her as Rachel fled from the house was enormously, deliciously satisfying. To me, it was one of the most memorable episodes in the show's history.