Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[John]

I thought melissa Hayden quit

[Paul Raven]

Gillian Spencer replaced Ellen Weston as Robin in August 1964.

[DRW50]

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[DRW50]

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[DRW50]

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[victoria foxton]

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[DRW50]

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Mart Hulswit and John Wesley Shipp had such a wonderful chemistry together that I don't really remember with Peter Simon in the role.

 

This was the only time in these years I remember the show putting any real focus on the idea of other people actually living in the boarding house.

 

I think when saynotoursoap used to post here he said that Pam Long made the Reardons feel more like a family and more likeable. I can kind of see that, as Tony always seems very offputting to me in this era.

 

Here's the next episode, which munecojim put up a while back.

 

 

[John]

Was Kelly & Morgan's wedding Kristin's last episode as Morgan before Jennifer Cooke took over?

[DRW50]

 

She appears for a few more weeks, in honeymoon scenes at (was it Mike Bauer's cabin?).

[robbwolff]

Not sure if this was ever reported here but I just saw that longtime Guiding Light director Harry Eggart passed away  in October 2017. I had the privilege to meet Harry in a writing workshop on Cape Cod in the summer of 2005 (he lived on the Cape). The instructor was William J. (Bill) Mann, who has written biographies about Katharine Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, and Elizabeth Taylor, among others. Harry was a sweet, humble man. There were about 6 students in the workshop and Harry had shared the beginning of a novel he was writing. It was a murder mystery set behind the scenes at a soap opera. As the instructor Bill and I were chatting with Harry, he shared that he had directed Guiding Light. Bill and I were immediately captivated as we had both watched the show in the 80s. We talked about the Nola, Kelly, and Morgan storyline. Harry shared tidbits about working on the show, and the honor of being involved in the memorial to Charita Bauer. We lost touch after the workshop so I'm not sure if he ever finished his novel. I can tell you that he was a very caring, compassionate man and that his writing was suspenseful, intriguing, and polished. 

[DRW50]

 

Thank you for sharing this with us. Sounds like a memory to treasure.

[Khan]

That's sad to hear about Harry Eggart. He was one of my favorite directors.

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[Khan]

Harding "Pete" Lemay, the legendary HW who was also part of Doug Marland's Emmy-winning writing staff, has passed away:

 

https://www.welovesoaps.net/2018/07/Harding-Lemay-obituary.html

[danfling]

He won an Emmy award for his writing Guiding Light.

 

Here is his New York Times obituary:

 

O

• "May you celebrate a life well-lived and cherish the many..."
  - G.Guest Boo

bituary

Send Flowers

 

 

LEMAY--Harding.

Harding "Pete" Lemay, born March 16, 1922, died peacefully on May 26, 2018 at 96 years of age. The many friends and colleagues from his long and storied life mourn his passing. We knew him as a gentle and loving man of remarkable accomplishment and humanity. And we knew him as a great romantic. Our hearts go out to his beloved widow, Gloria Gardner. Playwright, teacher, memoirist, editor, and an early pioneer of television soap operas, he is said to have single- handedly written almost every episode of Another World from 1971-79 as head writer. He won a Daytime Emmy for that show and another for Guiding Light. Born into rural poverty, as the fifth of thirteen children near his mother's St. Regis Mohawk Indian reservation in North Bangor, New York, he escaped his parents' alcoholism and his father's suicide by running away to New York City at age 17, finding early refuge at the famous Brace Memorial Newsboys' Home. After Army service in World War II took him to France and Germany at the end of the war, he entered the Neighborhood Playhouse on the GI Bill to become an actor. By the mid-fifties, he was deeply ensconced in the world of books and publishing, He was co-host with Virgilia Peterson of a WNYC radio program Books in Profile leading to working at Alfred A. Knopf in 1958 as Publicity Director. He became Vice President and editor working with Elizabeth Bowen, John Updike, John Cheever. His ground-breaking memoir, Inside, Looking Out, Harper's Magazine Press (1971) was dubbed "an American classic" by Newsweek and "a literary event" by Saturday Review. It was nominated for a national book award for biography. A second memoir, Eight Years In Another World (Atheneum) was published in 1981. His deepest passion was for playwriting. He entered New Dramatists, the NYC playwrights laboratory, in 1963 along with John Guare and Lanford Wilson, where he became a long-serving board member. His 13 plays were first presented in readings and workshops at New Dramatists and featured his longtime friend and collaborator Marian Seldes. A devoted teacher, he taught literature and drama for many years at Hunter College and The New School for Social Research. As part of the Pen American Prison Writing Program, he read dozens of plays a year by incarcerated men and women. His first marriage, to actress Priscilla Amidon, ended in divorce. His second wife, Dorothy Shaw, died in 1994. He is survived by his wife of 20 years, Gloria Gardner of New York City; his son, Stephen Lemay and daughter, Susan Pain, and son-in-law, Kevin Pain; and three grandchildren.

Published in The New York Times on July 4, 2018

[Mitch]

I hated that we lost the "map" of Springfield that various writers helped create in our heads over the years.

The Bauer house was originally next door to the house Alan and Hope lived in (typical Marland annoying character Hope was..she didn't want to live in a mansion...) but then they moved back to the Mansion,..the Bauers lived on a different street name..(I cant remember it...)but other writers would occasionally say the Bauers lived next door... the Spaulding mansion was next to the Country Club..as Alex mentions suing the club for a gate, etc. Pam Long did create "the Hill" which later writers dropped...( I liked it, a small town friends lived in had a mansion and it was on "the Hill" and gothically loomed over the town.) H.B. and Reva/Billy and Van/the Spauldings/ and the Chamberlins...(Henry/Quola..live in the old "English" house) are said to live on the hill. 

 

7th Street is Company/Boardinghouse, Cedars...5th Street is the Diner..which is on the river...(Harley was called a "river rat" by snotty kids..) Reva Bend is..in the bend of the river and also not a "great" neighborhood...(it must have gentrified to have snooty Holly living there later...) The set for the Bauer house has been consistent through the years as was Ross's house..the Spaulding mansion changed constantly, as did Company..RevaBend stayed the same through Hollybend and then somehow became the Jessup farm set...

 

I used to love Alan's weird black apartment which had an elevator open in his bachelor pad living room..Roger's asian theme pad tried to come close but it lost out to Alan's cool evilness.