Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

That and the racist issue. I don't think GL ever saw Amelia Marshall as a leading lady, even though I think the audience saw her that way.

[SamandWillowFan]

Were any of the other actors to play Alan-Michael besides Rick Hearst well-received?

[P.J.]

Carl T Evans who played the first adult Alan Michael was. He was a good actor, but not the powerhouse that Hearst was. Michael Dietz--not so much. And the last one, whose name I can't remember, I'm not sure it's fair to judge him. The writers didn't really even know what to do with him. I can't recall a thing he did, other than workout to "Fortunate Son" on an Inside the Light.

[chrisml]

As it's been discussed in this forum, Marcy Walker felt she had been used by JFP so that JFP could keep her job. That was a disaster for Walker and for the show as Marcy Walker never fit into the show from what I've seen (and perhaps she did and I missed those moments). The Joe Lando thing was ridiculous. The audience knows not to invest in his character because he will be gone by the time he has to film Dr. Quinn. Why waste the audience's time? She had the money to pay him, not not keep or hire an actor the audience cared about?  I understand McKinsey and Simms leaving ruined any momentum for the storyline, but I always felt the problem was that JFP had resorted to her usual "strong women become desperate harpies to keep a man" trope for Alex and Mindy. She even used the same blood test switch story on OLTL with the character of Nora. It was obvious JFP had no interest in Gilly. Did JFP ever produce a show where African American characters had front burner storylines?  I had forgotten Laibson was a producer on GL. I'm surprised he didn't work out as I liked his work on AW.

[Lujack4Ever]

That last guy to play Alan Michael I don't even consider him the same character....he was so far removed from Hearst's portrayal. Felt the same way about NuMallet. He felt like a completely different character. It didn't help that he came back and didn't mention Julie once. He felt like he had zero ties to anyone.

[P.J.]

Rewatching Quint and Nola's romance, and while I love them (Lisa is so young...) Vanessa is a HOOT reacting to everything going on with a snobbish, cynical exhaustion at how happy they and everyone all around them are.  

[Contessa Donatella]

I had to look it up. I was going crazy. His name is Michael Dempsey. I do swear & declare that I do not remember his name or looking at a picture of him, his face, either. I believe you & the IMDb.com are in cahoots to make up this recast! OMG, what a shame to be so forgettable. 

[dc11786]

Michael Dempsey, like most of Wheeler´s hires, was just generic. I don´t think he was a bad actor, but I could never really tell based on what I saw. I remember when they brought him back I was excited because it looked like they might be actually attempting to revitalize the Spauldings. There was some sort of boardroom battle (again) with Beth vying for CEO because she wanted to protect her children´s legacy. I believe Mary Kay Adams was even dragged in for an episode for the vote. It may have been around this time that Beth married Alan in Ravenwood (that was the name of the psychiatric hospital, correct?). 

I had stopped watching several months earlier when it was clear this was now the Harley show and when it was revealed Phillip was still alive (all that story for months on end for nothing). Anyway, I popped back in and tuned quickly back out when they voted Harley as CEO out of nowhere over Beth. That was all I needed to know. I assumed that, like everything else in that era, Alan Michael´s return would have something to do with Harley as they had been married once similar to Robert Bogue´s Mallet. 

Dempsey was paired with the equally unmemorable Mandy Bruno´s Marina, who would have been better off paired with Tom Pelphrey´s Jonathan because maybe he could have lit a spark in her performance. 

[Contessa Donatella]

The point was to give other players some time on the front burner. Typically the front burner was used up by Reva & by Phillip. Personally I thought it was great that Grant did it & also that it was temp & not perm. And probably as an actor he worked on something else while he was gone. Actors like that. And, jobs on soaps used to afford that kind of variety to the hired help. 

[MichaelGL]

That A-M barely interacted with anyone outside of Marina and Harley. It was a horrible return. With the exception of Dinah, many of Wheeler's returns, most notably recasts, were like new characters. Dylan? Unrecognizable. Mallet? A Pig and Neanderthal. Susan/Daisy? Basically a new teen character. 

If not a stronger actor, I would've loved to have seen A-M interact with characters outside of Wheeler/Kreizman's favorites and reference some history. Vanessa, Frank, anyone who was a Bauer on the canvas. Even Holly. I would've even supported them forming some type of new bond between him and Dinah. All of that went out of the window when A-M was forced to be in the orbit of the Cooper girls, which really was the characters undoing the last time he was in Springfield. 

 

[dc11786]

I don´t think Grant Alexander was happy with being killed off, even if it was temporary. The show clearly wanted him back for most of next few years. I don´t think bringing him back in 2009 was a bad idea. My bone of contention was spending nearly nine months on a murder mystery in 2004-2005 where it turns out that the character was never dead to begin with and the character wasn´t coming back was a waste of time and energy. I liked Harley, but that story did me in. The trial, the prison stint, the GusH on the run... it was too much. 

Granted, I haven´t looked at episode counts, but Phillip was never guzzling story the way Reva, Richard/Cassie, and Danny/Michelle did.  If anything, all Phillip´s departure did was to elevate Harley, which did no one any favors. 

[Contessa Donatella]

I understood what your point was, completely. As soap fans we find it frustrating to churn through a lot of story elements & then POOF the original situation vanishes & it's like Dorothy back home in Kansas!  

I have given you what my understanding of the situation was from BTS information at the time. Naturally, you can credit it or not. At the time I lived in Brooklyn & was close to the Digest GL Editor & one of the HWs & actors & other soap journos. I mention that only to give a source for BTS information. Otherwise it seems to come out of the blue. I also have not checked episode counts but I believe that KZ & GA were both operating with guarantees of 4. I'm sure RN had to, also, but mostly we just considered that he had to be KZ's scene partner as opposed to having story of his own. I know people here tend to think of Harley as eating a lot of front burner. But, Phillip had children with Beth, with Harley & Spalding doings, always. Anyway, you might consider it a theory.  

[Khan]

Pairing Michael Dempsey's A-M with Mandy Bruno's Marina was so wrong when you consider that Eleni believed for awhile that A-M was Marina's biological father.

I agree.

[dc11786]

To me, the Phillip murder story was an attempt to replicate some of what ¨Days of our Lives" had done when Reilly returned in 2003 with the serial killer story and brought them all back in 2004. Kill off some veterans (or in GL´s case, one veteran) save some money and bring them back later on. The problem was Grant Alexander wasn´t interested in coming back. You can´t tell a story about a character not being dead and not bring the character back. That is just poor storytelling. Now, I don´t know who´s final decision it was, but the show should have recasted Phillip if the show was so interested in having him come back from the dead.

During this time, Wheeler didn´t seem big on recasting characters who had already been appearing under her (the only exceptions I can think of are Mandy Bruno as Kit Paquin had just been hired by Conboy when Wheeler started, Nicole Forrester because Laura Wright´s departure was unexpected, and Jeff Branson as Shayne who had been offscreen for several years at that point.)

I was pretty good at following GL online media at the time through here and the GLBuzz forum so I am pretty well versed on the BTS stuff at the time. 

[Vee]

I liked how the disastrous Brian Gaskill Dylan recast got memory-holed. IIRC Morgan Englund just came back at the end and all was forgotten.

Mandy Bruno seemed like a nice enough girl but Marina as a character was supremely bland with her in the role. I remember when Wheeler just began pairing up people who were dating IRL like the Mormon collective family she very clearly envisioned the show as being - Mallet and Marina, disgusting since she was born when he was first on the show (to say nothing of when they put her with Alan-Michael, who IIRC literally thought he was her father) but in Wheeler's mind Bogue and Bruno are together IRL so why not, right?

I thought (and still think) Robert Bogue was really talented (I will never forget him turning up in a series of eccentric roles in the Grand Theft Auto games, including the central villain of GTA5, but even wilder was OLTL original cast member Doris Belack in GTA4). He had chemistry with a lot of people, so of course the show chained him to the worst possible option til the very end of the run. Then there was the whole alleged drama with him, Ehlers, etc. BTS.

It was not a secret that Grant allegedly quit/was fired under a cloud, and they spent years trying to coax him to return. I knew that and I hardly watched the show in those days. I'm not saying you didn't know this, to be clear - but anyone else acting like it was some amiable exit is misinformed IMO.

Edited December 26, 2023 by Vee