Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[Soaplovers]

 

I remember Vicky.  She was slowly introduced as an assistant to the dr that did Reva's cloning, as well as being Vanessa's personal doctor when she was ill.  I think Vicky double crossed him, and the fall out was his death causing Vanessa to instantly dislike her.  In fact, I recall Vanessa background checked Vicky and revealed to Alan that she was the grand daughter of the Jamaica branch of the family.. and it looked as if the show was gearing up for a Vicky vs Alan battle.. than the show recast the actress (who was cold and lacked warmth) with another actress that smiled too much and lacked any of the backbone of the first Vicky.  The character fell by the wayside because of a recast that wasn't needed.

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

Thanks. I'd forgotten there was a recast. She was involved in the Spaulding business plots for awhile. I think there was a gap between the two actresses, like they were deciding whether or not to recast. Then they did recast and it just didn't work. There was no proper exit for the character. She just stopped appearing on screen. Later head writers were not interested in mentioning her.

 

Edited August 21, 2018 by JarrodMFiresofLove

[Khan]

 

Which was okay by me, since she was handled badly from day one.

[Skylover]

I was looking at the history of Guiding Light and noticed not many of the original cast lasted long. Was Charita Bauer as Bert Bauer the only one who transitioned from radio to tv? I think Helen Wagner might have been the only other actor but she only lasted a couple of months into the TV broadcasts. Bert lasted from 1950-1984 which is a long time. It seems like not many actors lasted very long in the early days of soap operas.

[Mitch]

The Vicky storyline had potential..especially when they were gearing up Vanessa to take over the more "Alex" role as being alpha gal in Spaulding. She was pissed at both Vicky and Alan and getting back her business balls, but then they brought Marj back..which left Van to dwindle back to sighing about Matt..the excuse was that they needed "Alex to tell Vickies story" but in usual E & B..they dropped both.  San Crud and the mob came along and all the rest was lost (say what you want about Cleva..and I hated it..the rest of the show perked along around it and was not swallowed whole by it...)  I would have loved if they had kept Vanessa being large and in charge at Spaulding and thwarting Alan at every turn and fighting with Vickie as Matt grew estranged from Van..(I thought Matt/Beth had potential without it being about age and with Beth desperately chasing another man...) Maeve K in Biz Mode was as closer to BevAlex then screeching Marj would ever be.

But I also think there was more to the Vicky story earlier....an interview about the time of Zaz departure had E & B talking about it stalling and obliterating the Barbados Spaulding story AND the return of Ellen Parker....did they plan on having Roger having Mo nursed to health in Barbados??? I never saw any follow up so I dont know if it was BS or if it was something that wasnt supposed to get out.

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

I think the contracts were different in those days of radio soaps. The performers were contracted to the network and worked on more than one show at a time. Many just freelanced. So they would have a short-term role on this soap and on that soap at the same time. In Charita's case, she became a real fan favorite and so overly identified as Bert she was restricted from doing other characters on other shows. When they transitioned to TV, her popularity ensured the television format would be based around her character. She dominated the show in the 50s and 60s.

 

In the early 70s she had a lull in storyline but the Dobsons breathed new life into the character during the mid-to-late 70s. Marland didn't really use her very much in the early 80s, he was more interested in the younger newer character he was introducing. After Marland left she had health problems but Pam Long wrote her real-life amputation into the show and that was arguably her strongest storyline. So she remained relevant up to the end. She had a long run and earned a lifetime achievement Emmy.

Edited August 22, 2018 by JarrodMFiresofLove

[Soaplovers]

 

Pam long used Bert quite a bit...she was the voice and moral go to.  I had heard Long had planned to test H.B and Bert together but sadly this was never explored...just like her planned Mike/Alexandra story didnt pan out.

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

Yeah I think Bert was Long's type of character. Long liked telling stories with heart and Bert fit perfectly into that.

 

At the time I remember being upset when Mike was written out. I think instead of putting him with Alex they put him with Lillian for awhile, after the stuff with Bradley ended. But then Mike was sent packing to D.C. around October 1984.

 

Looking at the Dobson episodes I watched the other day, it's clear that Mike has exhausted a lot of his storyline by late 1977 and as the years wore on, there was even less they could do with him. Marland played up the Mike-Alan-Hope stuff but that could only last so long. By comparison, Ed was younger and had a younger family (Freddie/Rick, Chrissie/Blake and then Michelle). It's easy to see years of story ahead for Ed but not for Mike. So in hindsight I think Long and Kobe made the right decision axing Mike.

 

If Charita had not gotten sick again and passed away, Bert undoubtedly would have remained on the show. She would always have had a place in Ed's stories.

Edited August 22, 2018 by JarrodMFiresofLove

[Soaplovers]

 

I think that is why Long struggled when head writing Santa Barbara because there wasnt thst Bert type of character, plus it wasnt known for being a community based soap.  It was in a unique category of it's own.  From what I have seen, I think she wrote Jo and Stu on SFT quite well and used both up till the finale (she was there in the last 6 months with another head writer).

 

I always thought Long should have gone to Another World..imho.

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

Yes, Jo and Stu were very much refocused during those last six months of Search, and I agree, that was down to Long. In fact I think if the show hadn't been cancelled she probably would have had Jo and Stu marry. There were subtle hints of that, especially one episode where she had Jo and Stu on some vacation, sharing a cruise ship cabin together. I think she was interested in taking those two long serving characters into a whole new frontier. She would have reinvented them yet kept their friendship at the core of a meaningful marriage. She liked writing for older established characters that helped guide the show's sense of community.

[zanereed]

 

Actually, I think Long was starting to write a very interesting storyline for Mike in 1984. Mike had been heavily involved with Alan from the Spaulding family's initial introduction in 1977, and he was front and center in it  - even when Marland took over. The problem with Mike was that the character had no solid family at that point, unlike Ed. Mike was clearly the more stable of the Bauer brothers, but with no wife and his only child (Hope) SORAS'd and now with a grandson (Alan-Michael), he became more of a supporting character. This was probably due in part to Don Stewart's refusal to work with some of the actresses that Marland had planned for him (Jennifer Richards, for example).

 

By 1984, however, Pam Long planned a love triangle with Alexandra/Mike/Lillian. The repercussions of that triangle would no doubt have carried over into Lujack and Beth. However, once again it appeared that Stewart wasn't set on working with Bev. I think that was the final straw for Kobe, and she fired Stewart.

 

I still think that if Long's end game would have been Mike and Alexandra, that marriage (or potential marriage) could have sparked more years of Bauer-Spaulding storylines, especially when Bernau eventually returned to the show and if TPTB brought back Hope (and not a severely SORAS'd Alan-Michael).

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

Good post. I agree with what you wrote.

[Skylover]

Does much exist of the radio episodes?

[vetsoapfan]

I think Mike Bauer was an essential legacy character who should never have been eliminated from TGL. You do not axe John-Boy from The Waltons or Spock from Star Trek just because new writers have no interest in them or are not creative enough to invent new material for such essential components of the series. Or because new viewers may have no clue about their historical significance.  Inventive scribes, had they had been truly invested in Mike, could have easily created new ties, relationships, and storylines for him. Hope Bauer as well. Of course, Don Stewart's demands should never have been allowed to negatively influence or restrict the writer's plans for the character, and if he became too difficult to work with, he should have been replaced (I would have accepted Jed Allan!), but the character should not have been removed from the canvas.

 

The problem with getting rid of Mike Bauer, Hope Bauer, Hillary Bauer and even killing off Bill Bauer was that it destroyed the heart of the show: the Bauer family. With Bert gone, and a woefully miscast actor in the role of Ed, the family was essentially gutted, and in the long-run that put the first major nail in the show's coffin.

 

The 1980s were such a terrible time for TGL. So many viable, important characters butchered or written out for no reason. So many new, useless ones introduced, rammed down our throats and then (mercifully) dumped. Intelligent writing dumbed down with a focus on painfully STOOPID fantasy garbage. Other posters have mentioned Elizabeth Spaulding. It always annoyed me to no end that the character was simply dropped and ceased to exist, even though her relationship with Phillip was so important and their story unfinished. With her wiped out of existence, I suppose we were to assume she had passed away (like Stuart Brooks on Y&R and Tommy Horton on DAYS), but the whole mess reeked of incompetence.

 

Thank heaven I have my memories of 1950 to 1983! 

 

 

 

Yes. The earliest episode of the radio version which still exists is from 1940. Months' worth of 1950 still exist too, and are available in a wonderful collection of MP3 CDs. The main story that year was about Meta Bauer facing murder charges after killing her husband Ted. (He deserved it.)

 

If you do a youtube search for radio eps, you'll find a lot. 

 

There are also these resources:

 

https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/soap-opera/the-guiding-light

 

https://archive.org/details/otr_guidinglight

Edited August 22, 2018 by vetsoapfan

[dc11786]

 

There is a long string of episodes, I want to say almost a year's worth, from 1950 leading up and including the trial of Meta Bauer, one of the show's original heroines, for the murder. I don't want to spoil too much for you. I believe the episodes are available on youtube. If not, the Old Time Radio Researchers Library should have them and other soap episodes.

 

 

I'm definitely going to get the details wrong on this, but Elizabeth Spaulding was killed off in the early 1990s. Offscreen, obviously. I believe it was around the time of Beth and Phillip's wedding. Later, when the show killed off Phillip under Kriezman, I remember the obituary read that he was the son of Alan and the late Elizabeth Spaulding which is how I learned about it (I had only started watching in 1998). On a similar note, during the same crappy storyline, there was a time where Phillip was disappearing and Harley was trying to figure out where he was going. They revealed that Phillip had a model version of Springfield that he was trying to develop. I thought it would have been better if they had him visit Jackie Marler's grave. I felt like if they really were going to explore the emotional complexity and deterioration of Phillip, it had to be linked back to Phillip's original parentage.