I thought of Robert Newman, too! In his case I can believe women saw him and said, "Wow, he's cute," but more like in a teddy bear way, not in a hot hunk way. I can see Marland being annoyed that he didn't work out quite the way he intended. But Long came in and figured out a much better way to use him, as the spare child who lost his first love.

Beecroft, I don't know. I think he had his fans.

Derek was a snore of a character from Day 1. Probably another case of not using the actor to his best advantage. Venton almost was cast in the Bruce Willis role on Moonlighting, so he must have had the ability to be funny and sexy. On GL he was never anythingbut dull as dishwater.

True. But hard to spark with the ever dull Hillary.

I don't know--it's hard to distinguish "flopped" from "didn't work as intended."

LOL...poor Peter Simon. Not easy getting months of "We want Mart back" mail.

I really do think it was Ted LePlat. Those quotes seem like past tense, and Beecroft, Newman and Pinter were still on the show at the time. Marland never had Newman as any kind of sexy stud - he was painted as heinous from early on. Marland was also gracious toward Pinter at ATWT (he was let go but Marland kept him on for over a year and gave him a strong exit storyline) and brought Beecroft in for a hugely important role at ATWT. I may be wrong but I don't think LePlat was ever brought in at ATWT under his watch. Andy's story also seemed to be truncated severely when you think of how he had been built up. Andy was supposed to be incredibly charismatic and have all sorts of power over many women in Springfield. We were meant to see softer sides of him when it came to his mother or Hope or whoever else. LePlat just could not do it. He was an extremely poor casting choice.

4 hours ago, DeeVee said:

Derek was a snore of a character from Day 1. Probably another case of not using the actor to his best advantage. Venton almost was cast in the Bruce Willis role on Moonlighting, so he must have had the ability to be funny and sexy. On GL he was never anythingbut dull as dishwater.

I like the bits I've seen of Derek. He's saddled with Hillary, but he has some quiet humor and personality - he reminds me of men from '30s comedies. He just never had a chance because he was mostly there to be the loser compared to (ugh) Tony.

Edited 40 minutes ago40 min by DRW50