Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[Contessa Donatella]

Well, I totally misunderstood those circumstances!!!! Thanks for the background. 62 is way young. 

 

Knowing Elvera a bit in the past few years I would bet that she would've been back like a light, fast, ready, willing, able. 

 

[DeeVee]

I agree. I think it goes back to Marland's sudden exit from the show. I'm certain he was planning to bring Rita back. They were setting it up for like a year. Then the EP Allen Potter quickly left after him, and the new people clearly had no interest in bringing her back. I doubt Lenore Kasdorf would have returned. Maybe that's why it took so long, they were looking for the right actress for the recast. She got lost in the shuffle. There would have been lots of potential in bringing her back, IMO.

I like her and feel like she was starting to fulfill her potential during her exit story (much like Ellen Parker did with hers). Up to then she was mostly the dutiful and wronged wife. Then she finally got meatier stuff to play and it was like, bye-bye. Would have loved it if they had brought her back.

Edited 13 hours ago by DeeVee

[P.J.]

I'm more than a little spotty on '70's GL history myself. I don't know a lot about Peggy and Roger at all, in fact in reading some stuff, I was a little surprised Roger had been married before Holly.

I don't know if Elvera was ever open to coming back. Although she was most identified with the role, I don't think it's hers for particularly long--maybe five years? It took them around twelve years to recast Amanda, and then they changed her entire personality and dropped her relationship to Jennifer and Morgan.

I think Ed and A-M were closer when it was Carl Evans in the role. Rick Hearst was interacting with the Bauers, but he's always in the middle of some Spaulding plot, whether it's Phillip-drama or A-M trying to make his Spaulding bones.

[Contessa Donatella]

I like her, too. She is a trouper, you can tell. And, also she cares, about the show, about history, other actors, also fans. Like a lot of actors she is on Facebook.

[Gatecrashers]

I disagree here. Sorry new pal... but, Charita was only 62 when she died. That is quite young for her generation and is definitely considered even younger now. Grant, Robert N., Liz, and Kim are all older than that now, and look fantastic. If Grant died today, would you consider him old?

Try sitcomsonline.com. You love it there!

[chrisml]

I will never understand how a medium directed at women has so many writers and producers who act as if being a wife or mother is the most horrible thing for a soap character to be.  So bizarre to me. It's just not a few producers or headwriters. It's most if not all of them. It's those maternal characters that a lot of us gravitate towards. It's those characters that ground the show and give the shows the heart when so much ridiculousness is going on. It's those characters that new producers overlook when they want to shake things up. 

 

[Contessa Donatella]

Yes, I know. I didn't know earlier but I've been told. 62 is way young.

[Contessa Donatella]

There's a throughline in BTS of self-hatred. Soaps like some other genres are ghettoized & stigmatized. It's that pink collar thing. If it's "women's shows" then that is considered low, lower & beneath notice. Not good enough. Unworthy.

 

[DRW50]

 

I think there have been claims that the show tried to get Lenore back after Roger's return, but it didn't happen. 

There's an SOD from 1986 that mentions the show's plans to bring back Hope, probably with a recast. Instead, we got the new Bauers. I assume once they decided to bring back Alan-Michael a year later as being in his late teens they gave up as they would have seen her as too old, or they thought it would be too confusing for new viewers, especially with no plans to bring Mike back. And then Alan-Michael went way down the list for characters the show cared about.

I think someone here years ago claimed that Elvera was fired because Gail Kobe wanted to show that anyone could go. Which, if true, is a joke given that Kobe ran many of the cast off anyway, and also makes me wonder if she just had it in for the Bauers as it's not as if Hope was a central heroine at that point.

I remember Rick's Alan-Michael in the Bauer kitchen at times but I never felt like they were important to him - he spent most of his time hanging around Spaulding Enterprises and whining about not getting enough respect. 

Robert Newman, IIRC, spoke of those scenes in later years and mentioned that Charita was not doing as well with her recovery as Bert was meant to be doing, which just impressed him even more at how she managed to play the scenes. That's a moving story, but it also speaks of how selfish the powers that be were at that time and how they clearly were ignoring signs they shouldn't have ignored. And then they didn't even bother to give her a proper sendoff. Sometimes I wonder how many viewers they lost for good over that farewell.

Geoffrey Scott was a perfectly serviceable actor, but I don't think you can recast Billy. It's similar to Clint on OLTL. Jerry ver Dorn is one of my favorite soap actors of all time, but I never thought I was watching Clint when I saw him. There was something intrinsic to Jordan - his presence, his heart, his easy chemistry with those around him...even the way Scott tried to imitate Billy's accent grated on me. It didn't help that the show had had a slew of recasts in this period, none of them as strong as the previous portrayers - Scott was sort of a last straw. 

Edited 10 hours ago by DRW50

[chrisml]

From the book, "Legendary Locals of Hamtramck, Michigan" in regards to Gail Kobe: 

Please register in order to view this content

[j swift]

@chrisml I got a chuckle out of her career trajectory from Polish dancer to Producer.  Impressive!

[Mitch64]

I think they were going with a Hope recast as they mentioned a "change of character" which I can only assume meant stronger. I think ER even by that time had..uh, not the soap look and I think a Hope who went to New York and started her own business needed a recast with a strong actress who could play a character taking on Alan (so weird that Bert's death was the perfect time of Hope to come home, maybe move into "Grandma's" old house.) But GL just made every slip it could during that time.

That's why JFP got rid of Maureen with the excuse she was boring, as she was a soap rarity, a stay at home Mom (even Kim Hughes had a glam job) that harkened back to the Bert Bauer/Alice Horton/Nancy Hughes days. The focus group would obvisously find her boring as they weren't aware of the context of her role and just watching her serve coffee and be a should to cry on..well, soap audiences were already dumbed down and wanted clones and possessions. 

Funny thing is that I only started to like post resurrection Reva when they made her more support..bouncing in between different characters and timing things together without a huge story(I will forget her miracle baby and foisting Brad Cole on her) If GL was around today Kimmer would have been the Bert Bauer of the show (which was also funny as she bitched that they were trying to turn her into that in 97, but it was more soccer mom (which never suited Reva) then earthy woman who had lived a full life they could have made her later.

[DeeVee]

It's interesting that we're talking about Charita right now, because if you look at the available older episodes of GL from the 50s and 60s, Bert was NOT the shining matriarch we saw during the 70s and 80s. She was a very complex character. She was dissatisfied with her lot, always disappointed in Bill and later on her children. Papa Bauer was constantly trying to set her straight. He was very fond of her in spite of everything.

That seemed to change around the time Bill was written out of the show and then the actor who played Papa Bauer died.

Regardless of era, she was still an important and vital character. (I like to think the reason she was the one Bauer who was fair to Alan was because of her past).

Bill Bell was very good at creating matriarchs who were interesting and complex. Kay Chancellor from Y&R--she was an alcoholic and nympho and yet anchored the show for decades. Sometimes shows had the "good matriarch" and the "dark matriach"--i.e. Van and Meg on Love of Life, Mary Matthews and Aunt Liz on AW (she wasn't "dark" but she was a terrible busybody), Mona and Phoebe on AMC, etc. Ada on AW was another wonderfully complex matriarch character. Good or dark or something in between, they were very important to the shows they anchored. 

Then GH catapulted soap operas into the mainstream. Before that, soaps were a niche--a very lucrative niche, but still a niche for a certain audience. Soaps started focusing so much on younger characters and trying to pull in a younger audience. The kind of storylines being written did not easily feature middle-aged women who were wives and mothers. 

She had a very successful prime time career. She was booked a lot as a guest star on prime time shows and she did films, as well. She came back to soaps for a time on Santa Barbara. Maybe because the Dobsons, who created Rita, created the part for her?

And we all know what a great decision that was.

The prejudice against older women on soaps strikes again...I don't think it would have been that big a deal.

I wasn't a huge Don Stewart fan, but the show definitely had a hole in it without Mike. Leaving Ross the only major legal eagle was awkward. He was shifting from prosecuting to defense a lot. Also, there was all that history between Mike and Alan that was right there ready to be used. Even though Alan and Ed were far from friends, his hatred of Ed and how he went after him and his family after his 1986 return didn't really ring true. It was almost as if they took scenes that should have been between him and Mike and stuck Ed in there instead.

[Soaplovers]

Bert was the poster child for toxic feminity.   She learned her lesson later on that being such a negative toxic individual didn't make her happy nor content.

Bert of the 70s and 80s still had a backbone, was self-sufficient, was active in her community, and had an active social life... and had leaned into her maternal nature.  

 

[Robluvthebeach]

I read an interview with Lenore Kasdorf and she had said was asked back to GL in 1987 but she turned it down but she said now with Michael (Roger) and Maureen (Holly) back, she would be more interested in returning. This had to be around 1989 and I think in SOD (more of a where are they now? type of article)