Another World

[Mona Kane Croft]

You've written a very good analysis of the way many long-term fans felt about the Matthews family.  When a soap opera has a middle-class core family and the writing is compelling, the fans tend to identify with members of that family.  You might see yourself in a character, and see your grandmother, mother, father, brother, etc in other characters.  And to to a large degree, the audience watches because of the characters, not the storylines.  That was certainly the case on Another World during the Nixon, Cenedela, and Lemay years.  

Edited Wednesday at 04:26 PM by Mona Kane Croft

[Contessa Donatella]

https://rumble.com/v53yfmu-another-world-7-28-1989.html

https://rumble.com/v54z1y0-another-world-8-24-1989-consecutive-days-of-1989.html

Consecutive Days of 1989 from 7-28 through 8-24

First & Last Links Here

[DRW50]

Thanks @Mona Kane Croft . I always respect your knowledge and memories of that era of AW so your words mean a lot.

[vetsoapfan]

@DRW50 You wrote a fine piece here.  For those of us who had watched and loved AW from the beginning, eliminating the Matthews family was like choosing to get rid of the Waltons from...well, from The Waltons. It took the heart out of the show, and after they were gone and the writing continued to get worse, many veteran viewers simply felt that AW wasn't AW any more.

Edited Thursday at 05:25 AM by vetsoapfan

[DRW50]

Coming from you, that means a lot. 

This really shows again what even a handful of clips from the wiped era of soaps can do to help inform a viewer. There were certainly some families on AW I cared about, like The Corys, but it wasn't a show I ever watched for family interaction. The found family/friendship elements appealed to me more. Yet I do find myself so fascinated by the Matthews in these clips, and I am sure that would have been even more the case if Jacqueline Courtney had stayed as Alice, and if they had a warmer actor as Russ in these years. 

I can see where the show might have decided the family was easy to replace and the chicer elements, characters jet-setting and knowing all the right parties and people, were what made the show unique, along with the inevitable parade of younger actors. Yet Pat and her family feel so current to me in these moments, not just for 1975 or 1976, but for today. 

I think about the potential even in the early '80s, with Julia and Sally, and the expansion of the family through adoption, a topic that soaps are ideal to cover. 

(I wonder if they ever talked to each other about being adopted, or if Julia was even mentioned when Sally died)

If they had kept those family bonds and connections, then when the very rich writing tapered off by 1979 or 1980, then, as you said, those viewers might have stayed around. As it was, the show was incredibly lucky to make it another twenty years.

 

[Paul Raven]

Great analysis and comments @DRW50 Had Jacquie stayed there probably would be more interest in Alice's family or maybe Pat still would have been dumped with them figuring they had enough over 40 ladies.

It just seems foolish that. when a show is struggling,  the core family is dropped. Pat and her kids had plenty of story material and there was Ricky in the wings who could have come to stay with Liz, a long lost  child for Russ (that did that later).

Or at least give Tracey a kid that Russ could step parent.

Maybe Lionel Johnson wanted to leave, so send Mike  off for a few weeks/months and recast. Instead they married him off and he left for good.

The dismantling of the show at that time was something they never recovered from.

 

 

[vetsoapfan]

Awww, shucks. 

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As an original cast member, beloved by the fans, Jacqueline Courtney was an important cornerstone of Bay City at the time. The day I dropped the show for good, as a daily viewer, was the day I saw Susan Harney in the role of Alice. It hadn't helped matters that I found David Bailey so stodgy and one dimensional as Russ, and that Virginia Dwyer and George Reinholt had also gotten the axe. I was hanging in for Courtney, and when she was dismissed, my patience with the show evaporated.

(It takes A LOT for me to drop a favorite soap. I continued with ATWT and TGL to the bitter end, primarily because of a few veteran characters/actors whom I cared for.)

TIIC at most soaps have made this same blunder for decades, and they never learn. P&G continued the idiocy by decimating several vets Hughes from ATWT and the Bauers from TGL in the early 1980s, moves which seriously damaged those series.

Right. Recognizable human drama is relevant at any time, through any decade.

This reminds me: at one point, someone asked Jamie how he and Sally were related, since his father was planning to adopt Sally too, and Sally had ended up as a Frame. Jamie replied, "She's like a cousin or something."

That line has always stuck with me, because...it was stupid, LOL. If anything, Sally could be called his stepsister, through her adoption by Jamie's stepmother. (But since Steven died, even that description is "iffy").

THIS! As long as viewers are emotionally attached to the characters, they will persevere with a soap for a long, long time. If all their best-loved characters are written out, however, and the shows are poorly written and produced, viewers drift away.

AW, ATWT and TGL (among others) lasted much longer than their substandard quality deserved, and I believe die-hard viewer loyalty helped them...until it just wasn't enough anymore.

[DRW50]

They did still write for Pat and Marianne at this point, so not keeping Michael around does confuse me. I can only assume they decided they had edgier or more compelling male characters in that age range and didn't need him, but in the long run they would have benefited from having someone around who was related to longtime characters instead of one of a sea of men who would be forgotten within a few years (Jerry Grove, Rick Holloway, Pete Shea, etc.). 

Then as the years passed one new writer or producer after another came in, and the past was buried under another layer, but given that the show did at least bring Pat and Alice back for visits in 1989, enough memories and groundwork for longer-term returns and a revival of the Matthews family beyond Josie and Olivia were still there. 

 

You're right. That makes no sense. Another reminder of how little awareness many writers had of the history of their show (which is somehow still true even now with Wiki, Youtube, etc.).

GL and ATWT did gut their core families, getting rid of people who still could have had plenty of stories (Don Hughes, Mike Bauer...too many Bauers to list). It seemed like AW decided to not even hang on to one core Matthews member, an Ed or a Bob. In another world (no pun intended) they probably would have kept Russ on, but it just didn't happen. You were mostly left with Liz, who was absorbed elsewhere and slowly eroded in importance. It's a shame.

Edited Thursday at 06:20 AM by DRW50

[Jdee43]

It's so much easier to destroy than it is to build. Lemay's/Rauch's Another World is a prime example (Guza's General Hospital is too). While it was entertaining to see Lemay and Rauch dismantle and destroy what Another World had built up from 1964-1975, what they put in its place paled in comparison to what they got rid of. AW was extremely lucky to limp along 20 more years, 1979-1999 on such skimpy, depleted foundations.   

[Reverend Ruthledge]

AW from 1964-1975 was soap opera at its best. The Matthews was a great soap family and right up there with the Bauers, the Hughes and the Hortons. How AW stayed on the air the last twenty years that it did is, in my opinion, nothing short of a miracle. 

[Contessa Donatella]

Something that we do know about a lot of that "miraculous" time period is that NBC asked P&G to sell AW to them. (They wanted to own their soaps like ABC.) When P&G said NO, then they tried actively to kill the show & get it off the air & put a new show on in its place that they owned. P&G fought them not just for years, but for decades.

Personally I call that internecine warfare behind the scenes. I think I may have stolen that from a long-time AW poster here & there, Wade Golden. It was a post of his, years ago, that opened up my eyes to NBC's chicanery, skullduggery, etc. 

Edited Thursday at 04:41 PM by Contessa Donatella
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[Vee]

I think this is a wonderful discussion with a ton of valid points, but I also think it's complicated. When Lemay came in AW had been on the air less than a decade. The Matthews were not any more deeply baked in than some of the early families or couples on other soaps in formative periods, like how Bell did a sea change at Y&R or like how certain key couples and characters got sunsetted out at ATWT, GL, etc. early on on television. Even AW had managed to turn over stars like Bill and Missy, Lee, etc. all before the Rauch regime. So I'm not sure we can say that the singular moment in time when the show was simply about the Matthewses, etc. was its purest and best form vs. the next 20+ years. And I say that as someone with very little affinity for AW, so I may just be talking out of my ass which I am known for.

What I think is obvious and true is that Lemay and Rauch did not value certain key stars and connective family tissue as much as they should've. It was a massive mistake letting Jacquie Courtney walk who could've shored up so many new arrivals or storylines if they'd had any respect for her, and there were other interesting Matthews family characters that could've been bolstered or brought back, and found better recasts for. (I'm not convinced the twins in their adult forms were the most fascinating options, but I do like Lionel Johnston.) The other key problematic issue is Lemay loved to invest in Broadway/NYC theater talent for roles on his show who would inevitably leave quickly when they got a more exciting gig elsewhere, so you had a revolving door of mostly cosmopolitan characters and some hardscrabble ones, all played by high-end urban actors who would all dip when the next muse surfaced. That's turning over a ton of the canvas often throughout the '70s with little time put into recasts, or putting down stronger roots with some more lasting characters. By the '80s Iris is gone, most of Lemay's fairhaired stars are gone, and what do they do but flounder for much of the next several years and onward? You could've forestalled some of that by investing more in some of the Matthews characters, or marrying them to some of those chic newcomers. What happens if you get a better Willis recast or actually (gasp) recast the enigmatic Carol Lamonte, or others?

[Contessa Donatella]

If you weren't new here you'd know that there is fairly universal agreement that Pete Lemay's biggest blunder was not wanting Jacqueline Courtney as Alice. Although it was up to Paul Rauch to fire or not to fire, so the ultimate buck stops there. But, we know getting rid of JC began with Lemay. I mean he admits that in print. Of course, he doesn't think he was wrong. We, however, do! 

[j swift]

I'll repeat my question in hopes of getting an answer, since it was buried in a long post.

In 1969 when Rachel told Alice at the engagement party that Steve got her pregnant, did the audience know that already or was it a surprise?

In reading the synopsis, it seems as if Rachel hadn't admitted it to anyone, which made me wonder if those watching at home knew the truth.  I know we saw Rachel and Steve do the deed, but was there reason to believe that Russ couldn't have been the father?

One more: - Was Robin Strasser really with child?  Because she spends so much time off-screen in 1969, I was wondering if she actually gave birth. 

Edited Thursday at 10:08 PM by j swift

[Mona Kane Croft]

Thank you for your intelligent and thoughtful post.  Although I disagree with you on several issues, it seems you take soaps very seriously, as do I.   I'll respond to a few of your points below:

I think whether certain families are deeply baked has less to do with how much time has passed, and more to do with how the audience feels about them.  And the audience did love the Matthews family -- especially after Agnes Nixon joined the show and made the writing more compelling and more deeply woven than earlier writers.  Not to mention, the severe ratings decline almost literally coincided with the decline of the Matthews family.  There were obviously multiple reasons for the ratings decline, but there certainly was a correlation between lower ratings and fewer Matthews. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but still . . .

And the exits of Bill, Missy, Lee, etc. are not particularly germane to the argument, because even the most ardent soap fans have no expectation that every single member of the core family will remain on the show forever.  Some die, some move away, some return, while others are never mentioned again. All while the core family maintains its position as the center of the drama.

 I personally believe Bill Bell's ability to successfully introduce an almost entirely new cast of characters in the early-1980s had everything to do with him being the creator of the show.  And to a slightly lesser degree, his talent as a writer.  Had ANY other head-writer tried the same thing at Y&R, I feel certain the ratings would have tanked almost immediately.  Of course, this is just my opinion.  

Not value them?  They held most of them in contempt. They seemed to expect that popular soap opera actors would operate with little-to-no ego, while both Rauch and Lemay were almost completely driven by ego.  That was a disaster waiting to happen.

But I need to make clear -- I loved Lemay's character driven style. He knew how to write believable people and believable scenes and relationships.   

I do agree with you on this point.  If Lemay (or any later head-writers) found a particular member of the Matthews family boring, I'm sure the audience would have supported giving that character a rest, while bringing back other members of the extended clan.  Or even recasts, in some cases.  As long as the matriarch and patriarch plus one or two of their kids remain, the rest of the family can rotate in and out as the years pass.  Of course, the writing needs to be compelling as well.   

 

Again, I agree.  The revolving door of actors/characters during Lemay's run was unprecedented, and it did harm to the show.  I've joked many times that Lemay's favorite line of dialogue was, "I'm leaving Bay City."

In 1979-80, Tom King made a horrible mistake by writing off so many of Lemay's characters.  King seemed to have learned from Lemay, how to write for Lemay's characters. So he did well with Rachel, Iris, Mac, Ada, Dennis, and to a lesser degree Pat, Jamie, and Clarice.  But the characters Tom King created were almost universally a poor-fit for Another World. Most were embarrassingly bad, really.  So especially with Iris on her way out, King should have maintained as many of Lemay's characters as possible and played to his own strengths. And his own strength was writing for Lemay's characters.    

Edited Thursday at 10:57 PM by Mona Kane Croft