11 minutes ago, P.J. said:

The movie was The Cradle Will Fall. What a shitty thing to do. I'm not Elvera's biggest fan, but she deserved better than that.

I'm not sure I disagree with not bringing back John for the 60th. Truth be told, one-off type returns annoy me. For example, while Adam Thorpe returned for Blake's wedding, it was to interact mostly with characters he'd never interacted with. Kelly didn't have a family base to interact with.

I agree - she did deserve better.

Kelly isn't someone I would have brought back either, although I guess he could have had closure with Nola.

Here's the interview with CTE

I'm only at the part where Carl got cast as A-M, but I can't help thinking:

They had Brad Pitt auditioning, who was clearly wrong for the part, but instead of creating a character for him, they did it for--Frank D.

For some reason, this is hilarious to me. 😂

I could see Brad Pitt as Dylan, maybe, but as Alan-Michael? No, lol.

3 minutes ago, Khan said:

I could see Brad Pitt as Dylan, maybe, but as Alan-Michael? No, lol.

Clearly, Carl's resemblence to Chris was a big advantage to getting that part.

I'm guessing that they knew there was something to that Brad Pitt kid and they should call him back in even if he was wrong for the part. Possibly if another part came up later that would be right for him.

Maybe that's how he got the brief stint at AW, which I think happened around this time.

6 minutes ago, Khan said:

I could see Brad Pitt as Dylan, maybe, but as Alan-Michael? No, lol.

Or Ian Ziering's character.

16 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

I'm only at the part where Carl got cast as A-M, but I can't help thinking:

They had Brad Pitt auditioning, who was clearly wrong for the part, but instead of creating a character for him, they did it for--Frank D.

For some reason, this is hilarious to me. 😂

Brad floated all around the soaps in the mid/late '80s but never seemed to get a permanent gig. I guess they just didn't see it (to be honest I never quite have either).

2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Another tidbit (I hope the fans who like to talk about the old days can see this)

Someone in the chat mentioned that they used to talk to Elvera Roussel but haven't in years. They mentioned that CBS fought for Elvera when Kobe/Long wanted her out. CBS said she's promoting a movie for us (the TV-movie various GL actors were in at the time), give her 13 weeks. So Kobe/Long did. Then 13 weeks later they fired Elvera.

They mentioned that Elvera and John Wesley Shipp were going to return for GL's 60th in 1997. They said that Rauch stopped Elvera and John from returning.

I was not watching live so I didn't see the chat.

I remember that movie The Cradle Will Fall, yes it was a terrible TV movie based on a wildy popular bestseller at the time. CBS was doing an experiment where they were going to tie in soaps with TV movies to see if they could get soap viewers to tune in to the TV movies. I'm not sure if they did it with other soaps, but since GL was my show I did watch it (so yeah, it worked, because I read the book and thought it was trash, lol).

The funny, or maybe kind of sad, part about this is that they had Hope involved in hospital business--which wasn't the case on the soap. At all. All of a sudden, she was doing stuff that had no connection to Alan. It was kind of wild because it was like, why weren't they doing this with Hope on GL? It should have been a wake-up moment for the writers to realize that the problem with her character was how they kept her tethered so tightly to Alan.

Jerry ver Dorn also did the movie, which gave Ross and Hope some scenes together, and hells bells, what an opportunity to have created an interesting quadrangle with Alan/Hope/Ross/Trish.

I gather from what others have said about her firing was that Kobe was making a point--that nobody was safe. I honestly do not understand why the network let her get away with this. Even if you weren't a fan of Roussel or Hope at that time, they eviscerated the cast. In the short-term it didn't hurt the show, but in the long-term it was catestrophic.

I can understand them not bringing her back in 1997--a lot of fans wouldn't have even remembered her.

2 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

I was not watching live so I didn't see the chat.

I remember that movie The Cradle Will Fall, yes it was a terrible TV movie based on a wildy popular bestseller at the time. CBS was doing an experiment where they were going to tie in soaps with TV movies to see if they could get soap viewers to tune in to the TV movies. I'm not sure if they did it with other soaps, but since GL was my show I did watch it (so yeah, it worked, because I read the book and thought it was trash, lol).

The funny, or maybe kind of sad, part about this is that they had Hope involved in hospital business--which wasn't the case on the soap. At all. All of a sudden, she was doing stuff that had no connection to Alan. It was kind of wild because it was like, why weren't they doing this with Hope on GL? It should have been a wake-up moment for the writers to realize that the problem with her character was how they kept her tethered so tightly to Alan.

Jerry ver Dorn also did the movie, which gave Ross and Hope some scenes together, and hells bells, what an opportunity to have created an interesting quadrangle with Alan/Hope/Ross/Trish.

I gather from what others have said about her firing was that Kobe was making a point--that nobody was safe. I honestly do not understand why the network let her get away with this. Even if you weren't a fan of Roussel or Hope at that time, they eviscerated the cast. In the short-term it didn't hurt the show, but in the long-term it was catestrophic.

I can understand them not bringing her back in 1997--a lot of fans wouldn't have even remembered her.

A year or so before ABC had had several GH cast members playing other roles in a TV-movie with Suzanne Pleshette, but playing their soap characters I don't think was ever done.

The most ridiculous part of the "teaching a lesson" reason is Kobe fired just about the whole cast anyway, so what was the point? Did Jerry ver Dorn learn his lesson and no one else did?

I didn't realize the movie did much more with Hope than the show did. That's just sad.

I think with Mike and Alan-Michael around they could have had reason for Hope to briefly return, but I imagine Rauch would have felt she wasn't hot enough. I should probably be surprised he didn't back out of Mike's return.

2 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

A year or so before ABC had had several GH cast members playing other roles in a TV-movie with Suzanne Pleshette, but playing their soap characters I don't think was ever done.

Oooh, I think I know which one you're talking about. I don't remember the title, but Pleshette played a soap writer. It was a murder mystery, and members of the cast were getting killed off on the soap. Does that sound right?

The Cradle Will Rock thing didn't just have the soap characters/actors play roles in the movie, they wrote into episodes of GL the leads of the movie--Ben Murphy and I want to say Lauren Hutton? Murphy played a doctor. I recall a scene on GL, not in the movie, where Hope comes to his office to talk to him.

An interesting concept but I don't think it went much further than that.

Just now, DeeVee said:

Oooh, I think I know which one you're talking about. I don't remember the title, but Pleshette played a soap writer. It was a murder mystery, and members of the cast were getting killed off on the soap. Does that sound right?

The Cradle Will Rock thing didn't just have the soap characters/actors play roles in the movie, they wrote into episodes of GL the leads of the movie--Ben Murphy and I want to say Lauren Hutton? Murphy played a doctor. I recall a scene on GL, not in the movie, where Hope comes to his office to talk to him.

An interesting concept but I don't think it went much further than that.

That's right,

I didn't realize Ben and Lauren popped up on GL. I hope some of that material shows up someday.

What a unique idea, and an interesting choice to use GL as the guinea pig. A shame they never tried again.

26 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

I was not watching live so I didn't see the chat.

I remember that movie The Cradle Will Fall, yes it was a terrible TV movie based on a wildy popular bestseller at the time. CBS was doing an experiment where they were going to tie in soaps with TV movies to see if they could get soap viewers to tune in to the TV movies. I'm not sure if they did it with other soaps, but since GL was my show I did watch it (so yeah, it worked, because I read the book and thought it was trash, lol).

The funny, or maybe kind of sad, part about this is that they had Hope involved in hospital business--which wasn't the case on the soap. At all. All of a sudden, she was doing stuff that had no connection to Alan. It was kind of wild because it was like, why weren't they doing this with Hope on GL? It should have been a wake-up moment for the writers to realize that the problem with her character was how they kept her tethered so tightly to Alan.

Jerry ver Dorn also did the movie, which gave Ross and Hope some scenes together, and hells bells, what an opportunity to have created an interesting quadrangle with Alan/Hope/Ross/Trish.

I gather from what others have said about her firing was that Kobe was making a point--that nobody was safe. I honestly do not understand why the network let her get away with this. Even if you weren't a fan of Roussel or Hope at that time, they eviscerated the cast. In the short-term it didn't hurt the show, but in the long-term it was catestrophic.

I can understand them not bringing her back in 1997--a lot of fans wouldn't have even remembered her.

That movie's awful. It would be interesting to see the ratings on it--if that was an experiment, then I assume it failed, because I can't recall any other movies tie ins being made. CBS always seemed to be a step behind; ABC was using it's primetime to tie in viewers across their schedule (I'm binging The Love Boat, and stars from their primetime make multiple appearances. About season five they threw in some of their soap stars like Lucci, Tristan Rogers and Richard Dean Anderson).

Re Kobe "making a point"....you'd have thought that point would've been made already, as she'd fired Kathleen Cullen and Janet Grey. Arguably, maybe Janet wasn't as big a fan favorite as Elvera, but she'd been there longer.

A big problem with the constant regime changes that when characters got "cleaned out", there wasn't a structure left to really welcome return visits. In '97, who do you bring back that adds to story? I think Don Stewart came back, didn't he? The Bauers had dwindled, and Alan-Michael wasn't there. They got Michael Tylo back, but McTrash had trashed Quint and Nola, and Vanessa's "dead". Billy's back, but Vanessa's "dead" and married to that [!@#$%^&*] lunkhead ****. '97 would have been the optimal time to bring on Stacey Chamberlain, but they couldn't even get that right...

45 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

That's right,

I didn't realize Ben and Lauren popped up on GL. I hope some of that material shows up someday.

What a unique idea, and an interesting choice to use GL as the guinea pig. A shame they never tried again.

Now that you say that, Ben was on episodes of the show. He tells Quint that Rebecca had a tumor or something that led to her bizarre behavior.

Brad Pitt might not have been hired by GL, but a year later Dallas hired him in the role of Randy. His acting was nothing to write home about.

1 minute ago, P.J. said:

A big problem with the constant regime changes that when characters got "cleaned out", there wasn't a structure left to really welcome return visits. In '97, who do you bring back that adds to story? I think Don Stewart came back, didn't he? The Bauers had dwindled, and Alan-Michael wasn't there. They got Michael Tylo back, but McTrash had trashed Quint and Nola, and Vanessa's "dead". Billy's back, but Vanessa's "dead" and married to that [!@#$%^&*] lunkhead ****. '97 would have been the optimal time to bring on Stacey Chamberlain, but they couldn't even get that right...

Alan-Michael was still there, barely, at the time Mike was, but left almost immediately after.

Harley and Jenna were initially just anniversary returns.

I'm not entirely sure who I would have brought back. Maybe try to get Tom O'Rourke back as Justin and bring back Sam (recast if need be), who could be a rival for Dinah.