Jump to content

Guiding Light Discussion Thread


Paul Raven

Recommended Posts

  • Members

 

 

I could barely watch the show during that time. Having had a decades-long attachment to TGL, it was hard for me to let go, but after the Curlee writing team left, all quality of storytelling went with it. The last 16 years of the show were generally...dreadful. :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 17.8k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

  • Members

I've tried, but I just can't hate on Justin Deas. (Buzz Cooper? Yes. JD? No.) He is fantastic. He just needed a strong director at GUIDING LIGHT to rein him in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I still think it is funny how Justin Deas shared that once Bruce Barry tried to rein him in and then he phoned in his material. Of course, I wonder how long it took for Mr. Barry to do that.

Edited by ~bl~
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I love Bruce Barry as a director and will defend him and his work until we both are in the grave. Nevertheless, even I was left scratching my head when JD said he told him to give "10 percent less," or words to that effect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I am very interested in producer Lucy Ferri Rittenberg.

She was the executive producer of The Guiding Light from 1952 until around 1976.

Does anyone here know anything about her that could be posted? Especially when she died (assuming that she has died).

So many performers who later became more famous began on The Guiding Light during her time: Sandy Dennis, Dyan Cannon, Victoria Wyndham, Don Scardino, Christina Pickles, Nancy Addison, Billy Dee Williams, Olivia Cole, etc.

I think that she was one of the greatest producers of the soap operas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Oh that video of Cassie made me realize just how trashily entertaining E & B's GL was...up until the San Crud point. I LURVED Moniz Dinah and her evil schemes and hated Cassie. I wish they had made Cassie a villianess after Reva pulled the plug on Richard. LW always reminded me of a bitchy entilted cheerleader that eveyone had to love OR ELSE!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

LW actually did kind of play a bitchy entitled character on Loving... I remember she was pretty popular on that show.. and was surprised at how GL didn't want to play up that element of her portrayal.. instead trying to cast her as a good girl opposite Moniz's Dinah. I would have been more interested in the Dinah vs. Cassie fight if Cassie was written as being flawed and called on it by everyone other then Dinah.

After Dinah came back in the form of GT, did dinah and Cassie have much interaction after the initial identity theft story?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Oh yeah, Dinah inserted herself into Edmund and Cassie's lives by becoming their surrogate. She miscarried but took part in Edmund's baby switch scheme until he locked her up and left her to die. After that I don't think they had any interaction too much after Nicole Forrester took over but I stopped watching regularly.

Speaking of the 1970s GL, I was wondering about Sara McIntyre. Who were her contemporaries and what other leading ladies was she comparable too?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Making Dinah such a crazy, sometimes very funny schemer and psycho was one of my favorite things B&E did - I think Wendy knew how to play this, and make it somewhat vulnerable. I never believed her as a heroine.

I wouldn't say Laura Wright's character on Loving was bitchy or entitled. I think Laura in most of her GL run could have played both a heroine and a bitch, then toward the end became too cold for heroine status.

Sara's character seemed to be an intelligent woman, but was also frequently in peril in her years as a leading lady. I think she started out as more of a possible scheming or "other woman" type (didn't Paul's feelings for her help push Robin to kill herself?).

Not sure who she'd be comparable to. For leading ladies, I think her main contemporary was Leslie.

GL ad about 7 minutes in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpPRFG8n71o

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   1 member




  • Recent Posts

    • Thanks @DRW50 for the video. I guess that is the closest we will get to pre-1979 Roger/Holly storylines.
    • Yeah that's likely the case and it will all be awful.
    • I appreciate your POV and ideas here. I don't, however, trust Josh Griffith to make this anything like a good story. My guess is that much of it will be off-camera and that we'll have to be happy with Mariah retelling the nightmare in bits and pieces. Meanwhile, Tessa will still be strumming her damn guitar with Daniel. Ugh. I know I'm negative about this show. I am hate watching with every fiber of my being, and there's nothing about it that's working for me. I never recall Y&R being worse.
    • A batch of photos from Episode #67 which aired Thursday June 5 in USA. Some are scene pictures, and some are behind-the-scenes. https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/cbs-entertainment/shows/beyond-the-gates/photos?episode=25710 Posting because there's a pic of director Michael V. Pomarico; and a pic of director Steven Williford whose photo caption says "J. Steven Williford".
    • Please register in order to view this content

       
    • I think the gross ickiness is Josh Griffith's intention. At birth, Ian Ward stole Mariah from Sharon, so that Sharon knew only of the Cassie twin and not the Mariah twin.  Sharon gave up Cassie for adoption at birth, never knowing that Mariah existed. When Ian Ward stole baby Mariah, he had her be raised by a woman member of his cult. She grew up in his cult. Years later, after Mariah was an adult in Genoa City and had left him, he tried to kidnap her to marry him himself, I sort of remember some icky scenes where he had arranged a wedding, but she escaped or was rescued -- it was so gross that I chose to forget it, and I don't want to look up the details. Mariah is feeling traumatized/triggered by Ian Ward being in Genoa City several months ago, because he was obsessed with her, and he terrorized her loved ones, interacted with Tessa, and drugged Sharon, which ultimately resulted in the death of Heather -- causing the grief of Daniel and Lucy. None of that was Mariah's fault. But she was so horrified by what happened, that she feels she did something wrong that caused this hateful villain to continue to obsess about her.   Based on small comments that Mariah made recently, I think she feels completely worthless. I gather that when she was away on the business trip a month or two ago, all of what happened with Ian Ward and Heather's death just hit her all at once and she was mentally/emotionally collapsing, and just felt unable to call for help.  During the business trip she sat in her hotel room and spiraled more, feeling more and more worthless and afraid. Finally she started drinking at a bar, and that's when the creepy old man approached her.  By that point, she wasn't in her right mind, and started interacting with the guy.  Either she thought he was Ian, or she thought he was someone like Ian, and she would be *required* to flirt with him in a role play, and do what he commanded, almost like old programming being reactivated.  Or perhaps just simple self-loathing playing out. I don't know if the guy actually knew Ian or Jordan, or if he was a random stranger.  But Mariah's fear/loathing/subconscious chaos kicked in. And then... well that's as far as her flashbacks have aired so far. She can't bear to face the rest of whatever it was.  I gather that in the coming episodes, we'll (eventually) find out what happened next as we see more of the icky flashbacks. --------------- The rest of this post is only my speculation: I think that she felt like she was supposed to have sex with him but didn't want to, and may have tried to kill him instead. Or he r*ped her.  Or they didn't have sex at all, but it's all convoluted in her mind.  Something horrible happened but I don't think it was her fault.  If the man died, maybe she covered it up?  I really don't know, I'm just speculating ideas. At any rate, I'm totally convinced that this is NOT a conventional "cheating storyline" where someone willingly has sex outside their relationship. ----------------- This is basically Josh Griffith's obsession with dark storylines, creepy villains, and terrible writing of "mental health issues".
    • The most we ever saw was on the "Roger years" tape.

      Please register in order to view this content

       
    • Right. Literally for decades, soaps mesmerized their audiences with tales of romance, family conflict, class struggles, and recognizable interpersonal-relationship sagas. We didn't need relentless, heavy violence. We didn't need clones, mad scientists, extra-terrestrials and demon possessions. We didn't need gaggles of plastic himbos and bimbos pushing beloved vets off-screen. We only needed to see people whom we cared about, and the intelligent, moving progression of their lives. Flashy sets, gaudy gimmicks, and high-falutin' hairdos be damned. The characters and the words were important.
    • Absolutely! Brad should've simply moved on from Lunacy. There's no point of freeing her, if you're not going to at least make an attempt at redemption or incorporating her into the fold. It happened with Quinn, who committed quite a few felonies before become the Forrester Matriarch.  Heck, keep Lunacy in prison and have Poppy/Finn discover that she gave birth to twins - 'Sunny' could've come on with a clean slate and still had Sheila/Finn and all the other drama. It certainly couldn't have been worse than what we've witnessed with the destruction of $B.    
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy