Jump to content

Guiding Light Discussion Thread


Paul Raven

Recommended Posts

  • Members

I was looking through a few old Digests, and one from 1987 mentioned Krista Tesreau and Vincent Irizarry being on an ABC show called Circus that had been picked up, which meant Krista would be leaving GL. That never aired, and Krista didn't leave until a few years later. What happened?

One from 1991 talked about how Kimberly Simms leaving was officially claimed to be based on her wanting to go, but actually they pushed her out because she was taking too long to make up her mind about staying. That sounds like the JFP of that era. While that can work out in some cases, it led to some horrible Mindy recasts, and a weakening of the show at a time when there were already so many new faces.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 17.3k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

  • Members

McTavish's GL was so weird..on one hand really exciting (LOVED Brent/Marion) but disjointed and really, really weird (HATED Folly as they used to call them but I really hated Jay Hammer as Fletch...that pic is so him, starring straight at the camera he used to walk over Garret's lines all the time.)

That was really the make or break of GL and point of no return to its eventual cancellation. If MCtrash had gotten someone like Aunt Meta in earlier to consolidate the show again, got us out of 7th Street and Buzz mania and not cartooned everyone out we could have repaired the damage that JFP's later years and ego did to the show.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I'd love to see more of the Jennifer Richards stuff from 1980. When she was on trial for killing Lucille Wexler and it came out that Alan Spaulding was Amanda's father and Jennifer was her mother. The best I could find on youtube was an Emmy Awards clip when Doug Marland won the Emmy for Best Writing based on the episode submission where Jennifer admits to killing Lucille instead of the secret of Amanda's parentage coming out. Great stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I'd like to see more of that too. It's probably the story which is available that I'd want to see the most, along with the full Carrie storyline. I have an interview with Rita Lloyd from around this time I will post sometime.

Mitch, I agree with you that McTavish was probably make or break for GL -- on the one hand, the ratings did go up for a while, and if that hadn't happened then there's a good chance GL would have been canceled. But by the time she was fired the show was a living hell. Looking back it's actually surprising GL managed to survive that...I guess this was when CBS/P&G still cared. Then Rauch revived the show before the long, slide downward.

I do wonder if McTavish helped create the initial plans for Meta. She had already come in by the time Laibson was going.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

The ratings probably went up as the last few months of JFP were total [!@#$%^&*] so anything looked better. Also, those last months had the show staggering and it had no energy. McT did bring a great deal of energy to the show, and there was always something happening. I suppose if she had a stronger producer she could have been kept reigned in. Brent was a great "umbrella," story, but as soon as that was over the show lost all its energy. She had extremely bad judgement (the Downs story going to Folly, it would have worked with Frank and Eleni, who had nothing to do..) the reversal of Roger to a maniac, the reversal of Holly having any feeling for Rog, Reva chasing after Buzzard begging him to schtump her, Alan and Alex having an almost incestual weird thing going, Michelle chasing after her own cousin, (by adoption) Michelle forgetting that Nola was her aunt (calling her Mrs. Chamberlin) or that Vanessa was her mom;s best friend and married to her cousin (calling Van"Mrs. Reardon," ) and of course, the black incest plot which ended with one of the few strong male black characters shooting himself to frame Alan. After Brent all we had was the battle for Reva and 5th Street (BORING) and Lonatrat...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   1 member




  • Recent Posts

    • Thanks for honoring Ruth Buzzi. She was a treasure. I'm glad DAYS let her have some fun. I remember Imogene Coca complaining about ATWT just giving her a drab guest part.
    • It's such a delicious set of circumstances that I'm actually a little surprised that I can't think of ones that exactly match. I've just got a couple of close but no cigars (the reveal wasn't public, like when Alexis told Dominique at her and Garrett's engagement party that Garrett lied about being married; or the revealer didn't come up with the idea of the party). Maybe I need to think some more about it.
    • Not too shabby, making her mark in only six episodes. There's a project for the soap historians -- characters with the least episodes/most impact.
    • Which could make sense , except that we have seen Mariah function for years w/o any real residue pain from her upbringing. Josh decides to randomly make it a thing, when a good writer might foreshadow that for months. It's not like he's just arrived at the show. He's been there for years . Everything seems to be thought out only a few weeks ahead. It's like Phyllis all freaky from being kidnapped when she has done a million other things that didn't seem to bother her at all.
    • Unrelated, sort of, but he looks absolutely nothing like Amanda Setton or Dominic Zamprogna so it's kind of hilarious they decided to make Gio their kid.  It's very clear this was not the original origin story for Gio when they cast him. He is a very handsome guy though. 
    • I tend to agree, although going back to OLTL, Frank has so often cast guys who are meant to be attractive yet come across as cold and dead, I'm surprised he managed to get one who has a bit of a pulse.
    • For all I care, the boy can parade around in a g-string.  It won't make this show suck any less.
    • AMC was about a decade later so things may have changed by then, although maybe they never approached her anyway. She joined Santa Barbara in 1985, when they didn't seem interested in bringing back Hope. SB ended in late 1992, so JFP could have asked her back, but I doubt she did. For as much as JFP clearly had some use for Rick Hearst given that she hired him on GH and kept him around as often as she could, I don't think she ever used Alan-Michael well. I can't see Elvera as Delia, but she could have worked well as Faith - she had a glimpse of a strong personality alongside warmth, which only one Faith ever managed (Catherine Hicks).
    • IIRC, FC reruns aired for awhile on Lifetime, way before the network became the Women in Peril Channel, lol.
    • PAM!! YES!!! You have jogged my memory. She worked at Cedars. She's mentioned in a write-up of Tim's history in the show. It says she was a nurse, but I seem to remember she was a secretary at Cedars, working for either Ed or Sarah. (It's almost 50 years ago, so I definitely could be wrong). I'm certain she was an unwed mother. I recall reading an interview with the actress, Maureen Silliman (I looked it up, that's her correct name, LOL). She started on the show just before the Dobsons started writing it. She was shocked to get a script that said her character had been pregnant since she hit town. I remember a scene where she told Tim she was going to leave SF for a better job for her daughter's sake (really, I think she was upset he was serious about Rita). I don't remember them getting married and leaving town, but according to "Who's Who in Springfield" that's how the characters were written out. Mattson did All My Children for several years, so she might have been persuadable. Here's an interesting factoid I recently learned on these message boards: Elvera Roussel was in the running to play Delia on RH when the show first hit the air. How wild is it that Mattson played Delia for a while? (Though from what I saw of her performance, she was miscast). It's hard to know if Roussel would have been a good Delia. You'd think she would have been better suited to playing Faith Coleridge, but who knows? She didn't get to show a whole lot of range as Hope.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy