Search For Tomorrow Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

May 1955 TV Radio Mirror.

[DRW50]

July 1956 TV Radio Mirror. Karl Weber took over as Arthur Tate while Terry O'Sullivan went to Valiant Lady as they offered him more money.

[DRW50]

Edited August 24, 2011 by CarlD2

[dc11786]

The incident regarding Marge's accident sounds horrific. It sounds like both are strong individuals to talk about the incident.

Meg Mundy as 'The Respectful Prostitute'? I don't think Mona Aldrich would approve.

[DRW50]

It's hard to see Meg playing a prostitute!

I don't even like to think about what she probably went through.

I wonder what happened to Weber. It seems like he didn't do that much after the show. I kind of feel for him just being a placeholder for a few years.

[dc11786]

I also wanted to mention the whole Nathan / Jo kiss plot seems cliche, but I suspect the writers actually milked the drama out of it for several weeks / months instead of simply reuniting them quickly and playing another 'mistaken attraction' several monhts later or revealing Nathan killed his first wife who bore a stunning resemblance to Jo.

I didn't recognize the name of O'Sullivan's character on 'Valiant Lady.' I assume he was one of Helen's suitors, but maybe not. I just cannot imagine stealing one of the big name stars from another soap and not playing him opposite the lead. Was VL a CBS in-house soap? Wasn't P&G notoriously cheap in comparison to the in-house productions when it came to actors salaries.

[DRW50]

I wonder how long he was on VL. I know she married a governor but that didn't seem to be him.

Is it me or does Arthur always seem like a very weak man?

[dc11786]

Yes, Arthur seems a bit weak, but I think that works in terms of the story. Arthur's weakness allows him to provide the drama in the relationship, while Jo stands by her man as the noble wife and mother. Her later pairing with Sam Reynolds seems to be more on an even playing field with his ex-wife Andrea acting as the major catalyst for drama. It's a shame Andrea never came back into the story as Len was married to Patti. I guess Andrea was replaced by Stephanie in terms of female antagonist who acts as Jo's foil.

[DRW50]

saynotoursoap very very kindly uploaded a March 1983 episode of Search for Tomorrow. Stephanie takes in a young girl while there are fireworks between Liza and her nasty father-in-law Rusty.

What happened with the story with Stephanie and this girl? And with her older brother Craig Augistine? I like the idea of Stephanie mentoring a troubled girl, especially since Wendy was already grown by this time. I must say I was surprised at how raggedly styled Maree Cheatham was; it's not far off from her GH character.

The scenes with Liza and Rusty are a strange mix. They seem to be trying for Dynasty/Dallas style melodrama. Sherry Mathis does a good job with the material, overall, but the guy who plays Rusty is not good at all.

I really wish someone like Doug Marland could have written for Liza. I know he wasn't necessarily a miracle worker but he handled the super-glam/everyday fusion of ATWT very well and I wonder what he would have done for her.

Sherry Mathis was so beautiful, even in the slightly cheap fur. What a presence she had.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boeIR_qE95Q&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C45if59RFKw&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

[saynotoursoap]

This was not really my choice of an upload, but a friend of the actress who plays Andie wanted to see it, and of course, I complied. This was the only episode I had with the actress.

In my opinion, the 1982-84 era of SFT was particularly bad. I found little to enjoy in the plots and characters from the era, and my memory is hazy on the details. Keith, Andie, and Jenny all arrived in Henderson around the same time. Jenny hid a secret about giving up a child years before. Keith and Wendy fell in love, but Stephanie opposed the relationship as Keith was beneath Wendy socially. Keith and Wendy secretly married, and there was tension between Andie and Wendy. I believe that Andie ran away. Somehow the courts became involved, and Keith sent Andy to live with Stephanie so that he could be near her. Stephanie agreed, but forced Keith to end his relationship with Wendy. Shortly after the episode I posted on YT, it was revealed that Keith was not Andie's brother. He was actually her father, and her mother was...surprise, surprise...Jenny Deacon. Keith was forced to admit the truth when Andie became sick and went into a diabetic coma. Naturally, Wendy became enraged over Keith's lies and divorced him. It was at that point that she started having an affair with Warren Carter. If my memory does not fail me, Jenny fell in love with Lloyd Kendall's son Michael. She, Michael, Andie, and Keith all left Henderson in the fall of 1983. I believe they were casualties of the change in headwriter and producer.

I loathed the character of Rusty Sentell. David Gale was indeed miscast. He had previously played Father Mark Reddin on The Secret Storm during the infamous plot in which he left the priesthood for Laurie Stevens. However, the character of Rusty was not particuarly well written either. The idea had been that he would be one of those elegant villains, not too different from an Alan Spaulding or Mason Capwell. The difference was that those characters had redeeming qualities and a depth which Rusty lacked. He was written as very one-dimensional, an overused plot device to create synthetic tension in the marriage of Liza and Travis. The ill-conceived development, matched by Gale's inability to find an iota of humanity in the character made Rusty insufferable to me.

As for Stephanie, Maree Cheatham did become somewhat more dowdy around this time. In this particular episode, she is dressed casually because she is supposedly helping the maid prepare things for Andie; however, the character did not have a love interest at this time either, so she was typically not dressed and coiffed in the style to which you generally see her. Cheatham was becoming bored with the show by this time, and I think it shows. She is much more like the Stephanie we know and love in the 1980 episodes, warpped in fur and being bitchy to Janet.

Sherry Mathis was a gem. Easily she could have remained in that part forever and never grown stale like the other great ladies of daytime: Helen Wagner, Charita Bauer, Mary Stuart. I wish she had stayed with Search one more year so that she could have been our last Liza.

[DRW50]

Thank you for the extra details. I always hesitate to be critical of these shows because you're really doing us a favor by uploading them and they're all great, but I do agree with what you said about this episode. I actually did like the scenes with Stephanie and the little girl (I especially liked that she was a fan of comic books). It was mostly the stuff with Rusty I wasn't crazy about. I didn't realize he was Father Reddin. I remember him briefly on RH as a lawyer during the Barbara Wilde story.

Was Michael the blind character?

What did you think of Linda Gibonney as Jenny? I see her there in the scenes with Jo and Stu. That outfit kind of annoys me for some reason...it reminds me of a mime.

What was the place Jo and Stu were running at this time?

I wonder why they kept Janet's house yet didn't keep her. It's strange that Rusty would want to stay in her home. I didn't think she was rich.

[Paul Raven]

David Gale had also played Beau Richardson of EON in the late 70's.I hated the 'back from the dead' story for Rusty.This ep was from the time Joanna Lee was exec producer and she was trying to do more domestic stories after all the spy/adventure stuff.

There were way too many new characters.Each new producer/writer added and dropped characters,leaving a few core people to interact with them and it grew tiresome.

Viable characters like Gary,Tom,Danny,Laine,Patti etc who were actually related to those core characters were ignored in favor of the newbies and the show suffered.

[DRW50]

When was the back from the dead story? Before or after this?

I've heard some good things about Lee's era but this was mixed for me.

[Paul Raven]

When Travis came on in 78,the back story was that Rusty was dead and I don't think the Corringtons planned for him to be resurrected,But in 82 it was decided to bring Rusty back,only to be killed off again.

Lee did a SOD interview which I will try and dig out on the weekend.

[DRW50]

Thanks. If you can't find it I may have it.

It sounds like Rusty's arrival was around the time the ratings started falling.

Where do you think Search went wrong in the writing for Travis/Liza?

I don't know why it annoys me but I also wonder if Jo and Stu would have run that place we saw in the March 1983 episode. It, and Jenny's outfit, don't really seem like them. Then again I have barely seen them so what do I know.