In the April 25, 1986 end credit, there's a Lisa Loughbridge credited as Beth. Anyone remember her and how long the stint was?

Someone earlier asked about the Puerto Rico (as San Cristobel) remote and how long does it run? I want to say all of August, probably up to around Labor Day and the annual US Open Tennis preemptions in September.

3 minutes ago, Khan said:

They even had DP's Alan shoot and maim Roger, which is something CB's Alan never would've done, but was clearly done to usher Alan out.

I don't think that DP being brought in to write out the character was the original plan. He was definitely a temporary hire. They went to Zaslow and offered him the role of Alan. He refused (because it was a STUPID idea) and instead he offered to come back as Roger.

If you work out the timing of Roger's return, it had to be that they asked Zaslow sometime early to mid autumn. That was only a few of months after Bernau left, even though the story in the soap mags was that Bernau was going to eventually return.

So from that we can assume they started looking to permanently replace him fairly soon after he left. When Zaslow offered to come back as Roger, it was then that they made the decision to write Alan out.

DP stayed way longer than they originally intended once the decision was made to bring back Roger. Otherwise, I would imagine a new, permanent Alan would have taken over early in 1990 if Zaslow had not wanted to return to the show.

(YES, I agree, Alan would never have done that. But I give Long a little bit of a break because she must have had to do some really fast retooling of planned storylines to accomodate Zaslow's return).

1 hour ago, Spoon said:

In the April 25, 1986 end credit, there's a Lisa Loughbridge credited as Beth. Anyone remember her and how long the stint was?

I think Judi was making a movie and Lisa was on for a few weeks or a month.

duplicate.

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by P.J.

1 hour ago, kalbir said:

In what way?

GL introduced Alan Spaulding in 1977. Y&R introduced Jack Abbott in 1980.

I don't know what Chris Bernau Alan back story was but Bill Bell wrote Terry Lester Jack as playboy on the surface but deep down a lost little boy with parental issues (mother abandonment, always seeking his father's love and approval but messing up while doing so and could not live up to his father).

Jack was a manipulative business man with commitment issues, who sought his father's approval by proposing to naive little Patty Williams. And much like Alan, Jack had an adversarial relationship with his sister Ashley, eventually blackmailing her out of the presidency of Jabot. (although I'm not sure if that was Lester or Peter Bergman, tbh.) No, the Abbotts weren't cannibalistic like the Spauldings, but there are times you wonder if John's parenting was all that great. All his kids were messed up.

8 hours ago, DeeVee said:

Didn't she do it after her brain tumor was removed and she left with that doctor?

If she formally terminated her parental rights, the SOD recaps don't mention it, from what I can see. In '86, when Claire is fighting them for custody, she tries blackmailing Rick into siding with her. He witnesses her threatening baby Michelle, and everyone thinks she's having a breakdown. All the recap says is that Claire gives Michelle to the Bauers. (There's more crazy from Claire during the year, she's trying to manipulate Kyle into an affair, and she ends up getting thrown off a bridge by Reva's stalker, resulting in a coma and brain damage. She marries and leaves town with the doctor who treats her at the end of the year. The recap makes no mention of her making other legal arrangements for Michelle.)

Ed and Mo break up in early '89, after Fletch is rescued from the island after crashing in the plane with Alex. Unless more from '86 surfaces, it'll be a mystery if Mo was even in a position to formally adopt Michelle.

53 minutes ago, P.J. said:

And much like Alan, Jack had an adversarial relationship with his sister Ashley, eventually blackmailing her out of the presidency of Jabot. (although I'm not sure if that was Lester or Peter Bergman, tbh.)

I never thought of equating CB Alan/BM Alexandra with Terry Lester Jack/Eileen Davidson Ashley. The Jabot presidency blackmailing was in 1985.

Did viewers know about Alexandra when the Spaulding family was introduced in 1977, or was she a later creation?

8 minutes ago, kalbir said:

I never thought of equating CB Alan/BM Alexandra with Terry Lester Jack/Eileen Davidson Ashley. The Jabot presidency blackmailing was in 1985.

Did viewers know about Alexandra when the Spaulding family was introduced in 1977, or was she a later creation?

Later. We didn't even hear about Alexandra until Alan tells Vanessa that his sister's coming home and he asks her to plan the party to reintroduce her to Springfield. Around mid-January/early Feb '84.

1 minute ago, P.J. said:

Later. We didn't even hear about Alexandra until Alan tells Vanessa that his sister's coming home and he asks her to plan the party to reintroduce her to Springfield. Around mid-January/early Feb '84.

Pamela Long introduced Alexandra as a jet-setting socialite that was divorced from wealthy European Baron Von Halkein. I don't think she was originally intended to be business-minded or a messy matriarch.

12 hours ago, DeeVee said:

I was going to say, "No way, he was too young to play Alan." And he was, but then I looked it up and he was actually older than Ron Raines. So probably no matter who they cast, they would have de-aged Alan.

I have a much harder time imagining him as Buzz. Other than not having any physical similarity to CB, Lester did have a lot of the qualities Alan needed. We know he can play the ruthless but charming manipulator with the patrician air because he did that on Y&R. But playing a blue collar guy like Buzz who was crazy for motorcycles? Hmmm...I can't see it. Maybe they would have written Buzz a little differently to suit Terry better.

I can believe him as Buzz by that stage in his career. He'd aged noticeably and lost a lot of his vulnerability. I could see him embracing the snappier con artist persona Buzz had early on. I don't think they could have remade him into a mainstay the way they did with Justin as he wouldn't have stayed long. It would have been a bit strange seeing him as a father to Frank and Harley though.

8 hours ago, kalbir said:

Pamela Long introduced Alexandra as a jet-setting socialite that was divorced from wealthy European Baron Von Halkein. I don't think she was originally intended to be business-minded or a messy matriarch.

Oh, I'm sure Alex was meant to be a business force and Alan's equal. Her first moves are all about kicking Alan out of Spaulding. She simply hid her agenda. The same way she surveilled the party getting the lay of the land on Springfield dynamics before revealing herself.

15 hours ago, kalbir said:

I don't know what Chris Bernau Alan back story was

Let me try and untangle it for you, because it's a tad messy:

When Alan, Elizabeth, and Phillip were introduced by the Dobsons, Alan was from Chicago. They lived with Jackie while Alan kept pushing Elizabeth to find them a house. No mention of Alan having any previous connection to Springfield. He chose Springfield as a good place for business development (I think Jackie recommended it to him so she could be close to Phillip). He did this a lot. Elizabeth mentions they moved around many times for this reason since they were married.

When they found a house of their own, they ended up living next door to Ed and Rita. If you think about it, it was a little odd that Ed and Rita could afford to live next door to the Spaulding mansion. In the beginning it was just a big house in an upscale neighborhood. Making it more believable that Ed would end up living next door to the Spauldings.

Marland added a little bit to Alan's backstory when he came in. Marland made Henry Alan's business mentor when he was a young man--in Chicago. Henry also knew Lucille Wexler and knew Lucille had been Brandon's mistress. The implication was Alan spent much of his youth in Chicago, although Brandon had connections to people in SF.

Pam Long came in and once again retooled the Spaulding family history. She invented a never-before-mentioned sister, Alex. She wrote storylines (The Fishing Trip Mystery and The Barbados Storyline) that included backstory where the Spauldings were a prominent family in Springfield going back at first to the 1960s, and then back to the 1940s, with implications that the family history in SF went back even further. She created Founders Day. That was the day Alan was born--in Springfield, not Chicago. Alex and Alan talked about their childhood as if they had always lived in SF and the mansion. It was really Long who established the Spauldings as a family that had history in SF going back a few generations. From then on, that's how most of the subsequent writers treated them.

That's the evolution of the Spaulding family history on GL.

Was Alan a playboy? Well, no, at least not when we first meet him because he was already married, but he was a notorious womanizer. Elizabeth claimed he cheated on her during their honeymoon.

Did he have daddy issues? Oh, YEAH. The backstory goes that he took Spaulding away from Brandon in revenge because he was such a terrible father. Alan talks to Hope about this when they're on the island, saying he was determined to be a better father than Brandon was to him. He dumped Brandon in a nursing home and refused to see him, even when they told him he was probably dying. Long extrapolated on that, creating more specific details of how he treated his children horribly, i.e. he paid off Alex's lover to take their son away from her.

When I said he was like Jack, I don't mean specific relationships or story beats. But they had some similar qualities--both liked to chase women, both were manipulative and ambitious, both had complicated relationships with a sibling and with their father. As far as business, Alan resembled Victor Newman more than Jack, who was often on the losing end of business fights.

11 hours ago, kalbir said:

Pamela Long introduced Alexandra as a jet-setting socialite that was divorced from wealthy European Baron Von Halkein. I don't think she was originally intended to be business-minded or a messy matriarch.

IMO, Alex was introduced as a replacement for Alan, because Bernau was about to exit the show for the first time. In order to keep the Spaulding family in the forefront, Long needed a family head.

Unlike the failed attempt to create a new branch of the Bauer family, this worked for a few reasons:

Bev.

She was part of the main branch of the Spaulding family.

They came up with a credible backstory that explained why she wasn't mentioned before.

They gave her some strong initial storylines: pushing her brother out of Spaulding, and her search for her son.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by DeeVee

3 hours ago, P.J. said:

Oh, I'm sure Alex was meant to be a business force and Alan's equal. Her first moves are all about kicking Alan out of Spaulding. She simply hid her agenda. The same way she surveilled the party getting the lay of the land on Springfield dynamics before revealing herself.

But was Alexandra initially interested in running Spaulding or was it more about beating Alan? During the Calhoun era Alexandra was shown as being business-minded.

31 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

Let me try and untangle it for you, because it's a tad messy:

Your breakdown is pretty good and helpful for a viewer to fill in the gaps.

26 minutes ago, DeeVee said:

IMO, Alex was introduced as a replacement for Alan, because Bernau was about to exit the show for the first time. In order to keep the Spaulding family in the forefront, Long needed a family head.

Going by the timeline, Beverlee McKinsey arrival February 1984 and Chris Bernau first departure May 1984, so this makes sense.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by kalbir

On 4/24/2026 at 5:44 PM, Speed Racer said:

What GL should have had is a story centered on elder abuse. It was the perfect soap to do it - GL had the correct players and structure for it. Maybe have Vanessa smack Henry around a bit during her pill-popping period. Or have Nola or Jenna be the guilty party. But it'd be best if Vanessa beat on him - it would have been a tough story to write, accept and successfully move past, but it could have been done.

Vanessa, Nola or Jenna abusing...Henry??? What, did you find McTavish's storyline projections somewhere?

The only storyline like this that would work is Reva slapping that old fool (and cliche) Hawk. Well, I could accept actually Reva and or Buzz being strapped to a chair and the people of SF collectively come and slap the hell out of them, like the citizens of Haddonfield turning on the Monsters that have been abusing(their ears) for years.