Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[BetterForgotten]

I think Long's second stint was way better than her first - but I don't know if that was more Nancy Curlee and Robert Calhoun's influence. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

I think it was a combination of Long growing as a writer and a good, solid team around her. Look at Hogan Sheffer's tenure at ATWT, which was good during his first year and lousy thereafter. A good co-headwriter does wonders.

[BetterForgotten]

I did hear Calhoun and Long didn't get along very well and were like oil and water, but I guess that worked. 

[Soapsuds]

It went from Carolyn Culliton as his Co-Headwriter to awful Jean Pissy.

[robbwolff]

It was Julie Poll's book that mentioned that Paul Kincaid was Bill's son. Others have pointed out that Poll's book had lots of errors so she may have been wrong about Paul's paternity.

 

Falken Smith's replacements, L. Virginia Browne and Gene Palumbo, seemed to maintain the core of Guiding Light during their four-month stint though they dropped Sara McIntyre. According to Browne, Gail Kobe fired her. Browne also claimed that Guiding Light used her bible for about a year. I wonder how true that was. 

[DRW50]

I remember Schemering's book saying Browne brought the ratings up and also introduced the older Philip.

[robbwolff]

Not according to Browne. In her remarks to the Another World Home Page back in 2006, she said:

 

Christopher Schemering wrote a book called the "Soap Opera Encyclopedia" and, in it, he says that I took over Guiding Light and it then went into a "slump." I was pretty darned surprised as, within four months of becoming head writer, I had raised the ratings by two full points and our position from 8th to 3rd. In fact, the folks at P&G filled my office with flowers to congratulate me. Ken Fitts (a P&G exec) said he hoped we'd be working together for years. The VERY NEXT DAY, Allen Potter, the executive producer, announced he was leaving to be replaced by Gail Kobe and she fired me -- the very next day after receiving all those flowers and wishes for years and years of working together. And then they continued to use my bible for 9 more months and kept my name on the credits as headwriter for that long.

 

Her claim that she was credited as head writer for 9 more months is totally incorrect. She and Palumbo were out of the credits by April 1983 and Carolyn DeMoney Culliton, Richard Culliton, and Gary Tomlin was listed as head writers.

 

[Paul Raven]

I think the decision to drop Sara was from P&G as another cost cutting/younger push.

[vetsoapfan]

 

And as soon as the Pissy One came aboard, the quality of the writing collapsed noticeably.

 

 

 

 

I am racking my brain, trying to remember the specifics, but I really can't be sure. With several decades' worth of soap history clogging up my mental hard drive, certain facts are bound to get fuzzy...if not erased altogether, alas.

 

Browne and Palumbo were not bad (particularly compared to some of the "writers" the show hired later), but they were not great, either. I would rate them "acceptable."

 

 

 

When even first-hand accounts by those involved are skewered and riddled with misinformation, tracking down the actual facts can be a chore!

[DRW50]

I can't really say I thought the show was any better with Sheffer and Culliton, but then the ATWT I enjoyed was gone by 1996 anyway. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

You didn't think the show was better with Sheffer and Culliton, than it was with Sheffer and jean P?

 

I felt that for a soap novice, Sheffer's earliest material showed promise...until he dumbed down the show, ignored the vets, and went the camp route

[DRW50]

 

I thought it was marginally better, mostly thanks to stuff that had already started before his arrival, like Katie's scheming. Stories like "crazy Julia" that the soap magazines got the vapors over at the time made me feel sick - I couldn't have a great haha over Julia punching Jack or killing animals. And Craig was a disgusting, offensive, failed recast from day 1. That stuff soured me on what I might have enjoyed elsewhere.

[zanereed]

I thought Pat Falken Smith did great work in the small time she was there. Now I can't recall, even though it was discussed here previously - was she fired by Potter or someone else at P & G? I don't think she overlapped with Kobe at all, did she?

 

I'm still trying to remember the whole Bill Bauer/Simone Kincaid/Victor Kincaid/Paul Kincaid storyline. I still think that only Hillary was Bill's bio-daughter. From what I remember:

 

1. Bill and SImone meet in Switerland and had an affair.

2. Bill returns to Springfield and Simone is pregnant with Hillary.

3. Simone moves to Vancouver and meets and marries Victor Kincaid. Kincaid passes off Hillary as his own.

4. I thought that Simone then got pregnant again shortly into their marriage and had Paul.

 

But, here's where it gets confusing...

 

5. Bill at some point located Simone in Vancouver and they had an affair again...I think this was even before Bill's plane crashed in 1969. It could have been that Paul was conceived during one of their flings, so both of them were Bill's?

 

This is probably the most the whole saga has been discussed about since it ended in 1978! 

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Edited December 16, 2016 by zanereed

[vetsoapfan]

 

 

The Julia material was disgusting, and Hunt Block's entire run as Craig was a disaster, IMHO. Scott Bryce simply was Craig. The attempts at replacing him failed.

 

 

 

Yes, PFS was excellent at TGL, and immediately hit the ground running with good, literate scripts, a keen understanding of the characters and their relationships, and an obvious knowledge of the show's history. Firing her was a MAJOR gaffe on the part of TPTB, but...we came to expect stupidity from the executives.

 

I remember the Paul Kinkaid business the way that you do, but in all honesty, regardless of whom his father was originally supposed to be, it would not be too much of a stretch for the audience to accept that he was finally proven to be Bill Bauer's son. It would have provided the show's core family with a great deal of solid material to play out.

[victoria foxton]

How long was PFS HW on GL? On Wikipedia the dates are always wrong. What stories did PFS do? besides the Mona/Rebecca story she inherited.