Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[rsclassicfanforever]

There are some more to come, and we will jump to february 1982

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[MichaelGL]

I can see Hope coming back as a more business oriented woman in the early 90s. 

Years ago someone suggested casting Julia Barr in the role, and I can't stop thinking that she would've been perfect for it while playing a new and reinvented Hope Bauer. 

[Mitch64]

Barr as Hope and Roscoe Borne as Alan would be hot...(imagine Alan being sexy again...) but was Barr ever available?

 

 

[allmc2008]

Is it true there was a scene in which Aubrey Dollar and Marty West were on a couch and his pants fell down by accident exposing his rear, which traumatized her? 

And all this aired.

Not referring to the sex scene. 

 

Someone is insisting that happened but I'm certain that didn’t. 

[Mitch64]

I think Aubrey was so busy trying to keep from laughing at Marty's pitiful attempts at straight seduction that her mind was elsewhere! Supposedly there was a scene where he "accidently" showed it and supposedly that was what got Conwest kicked to the curb but I don't think those two incidents were connected. I never heard her being traumatized.

[P.J.]

Thank you! And I've got to ask, do you have the Nov 1983 episode where we find out Billy's alive? 1163 and 1164 are the same episode. In 1167, Vanessa and Billy show up at his apartment to tell Mindy, Trish and Josh he's alive. But we never see Billy reveal himself to Vanessa before that.

[DRW50]

She left the show briefly in the early '80s and was fired in 2006, so those would have been the only two times.

[Khan]

My choice for a Hope recast has always been Marcia McCabe (ex-Sunny, SFT).

[NothinButAttitude]

Didn't Robin Mattson play Hope at one point? I always wanted to see her come back in the role and see how she'd be in a more modern era. 

All this talk about Hope saddens me b/c I just don't get how folks didn't see the importance of the Bauers post-1994. 

Even though Hope should've been back on the canvas when Alan Michael was on the show, after Meta left the show, it would've really been great for her to emerge and fill the Bauer matriarch role. And she should've been the conscious for Alan throughout the remainder of the show's run. 

[Efulton]

Robin Mattson would have been my first choice too.

[Liberty City]

Yes, she was the fifth actress in the role. Shame she did not last longer or was given a chance to return.

[Franko]

While I wouldn't trade Robin's time on All My Children, I have to admit that having her return as Hope after Santa Barbara wrapped could have been a good thing for Guiding Light.

[Mitch64]

I think she was available in 2000, it would have been a good time to bring Hope back as the show was flailing along.  Though it would have been interesting if they brought back Hope when in 85 for Bert's funeral and then maybe she would fall into the sack with Bolger's Phillip (he always played older to me then GA) instead of attempting a Beth reunion (he and Evans had no chemistry) just in time for Alan's return.  Maybe a bit too Revaish...but I could see the net suits biting on that storyline to bring her back.

[Liberty City]

Mattson had a lot of open availability between soap gigs. It just makes me question why regimes didn't bother returning a Bauer to the canvas; almost seems like TPTB wanted to remove the Bauer family at some point.

[vetsoapfan]

Yep, TPTB definitely decimated the Bauer family in the early 1980s. Producer Gail Kobe acknowledged in the press that the fans were enraged about it, and that they kept demanding the return of the core family. She said, "Don't be surprised to see Mike and Hope written back into the story."

Soap Opera Digest also reported that TGL's fans' most-requested move for the show at that time was to bring back the Bauers, but as we all know, that never happened.

Instead, we got a bunch of Santoses, San Cristocrapians, Coopers, etc.

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BTW, I wanted Elvera Roussel to return as Hope, but barring that, I would have cast Jacqueline Courtney in the role. (Thanks to the extreme SORASing of Alan-Michael, Robin Mattson was too young in the 1980s to return to the show. She was born in 1956, according to Google. In 1987, she would have only been 31 to AM's 17. I know soaps cast wildly age-inappropriate actors to play parents and their adult offspring all the time, but it's a practice I find irritating and distracting. At least in 1987, Courtney was in her 40s.)

If neither Roussel nor Courtney had worked out, I would have accepted Barr.