Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

The Frank/Julie stuff was the only reason I kept watching! Along with the custody battle over Peter.

I think it was down to so many familiar faces leaving, poor replacements (Tangie, Lucy), and way too much Buzz. I also put a lot of blame on the mind-numbing Nick/Mindy/Alex stuff, which drove me away for long periods of time.

[KateW]

A couple of things to consider. When CBS cancelled Family Feud Challenge in September 1993, the 10 am ET time slot was given back to the affiliates. Not long after that, several CBS affiliates moved Guiding Light from 3 pm to 10 am. Also, in the fall of 1994, CBS lost the broadcasting rights to the NFL to Fox and several CBS stations in major markets switched to Fox (more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_affiliate_switches_of_1994 ); I'm not certain how the affiliate switches affected CBS Daytime though.

[soapfan770]

LOL I had loved the Julie/Hart/Bridget triangle and it was semi-interesting that Julie pretty much lost her marbles but I remember being bored quickly of it. It was Kanakaredes who made Frank and Eleni come alive, but once she left Frank and Eleni became boooooorrrring.

But yeah you're right Buzz, Lucy, and Tangie did eat the show. The second go around of Nick/Mindy was pretty bad, their second wedding was basically a very pale repeat of the far superior wedding that had just taken place two years before. I didn't like some of the petty stuff involving David either.

[DRW50]

What was going on with David? The breakup with Kat?

[soapfan770]

Yeah the break-up with Kat was pretty much an afterthought and was a let-down to me as they had became one of my favorite couples and was the possible verge of a triangle with Bridget(Kat didn't like David playing Bridget's hero very much!) and after all they went through she stayed abroad. David moved on with Gabriella but then Kat came back but they insulted and degraded Kat and we never saw her again. The David/Gabriella story was nothing too special, and I didn't like the abrupt sad ending to it either.

[DRW50]

I remember liking the Gabriela story at the time, and Gabriela herself, and Vivian's interference, but it was all over very quickly, Later I realized the story must have been unpopular, as SOD named her worst new character of the year. It was also clumsily obvious that by that time the P&G soaps were phasing out most of their black characters (I think at this time the only one who had story was boring Sid).

I have always wondered why they didn't just let David leave when Monti did. They clearly had zero story plans for him.

[DRW50]

October 1953 TV Radio Mirror

[soapfan770]

Amazing find Carl! Joe and Meta have struck me as like a 1950s supercouple of sorts. I do wonder why Meta wasn't given any additional children beside Chuckie.

Ah yes I forgot about Vivian's involvement. I wonder how Petronia Paley felt about playing Vivian, a character who got humiliated as a bad mother time and time again especially in the mid to late 90s. Must have been a stark difference from playing Quinn.

Poor David was recast by 1. an actor a good ten years older than Sharp 2. had made a career of playing token blacks on daytime, his most infamous role not yet had happened yet. They also ended up fumbling David and Bridget big time there in late '95.

I should note that I don't think all of 1994 was bad but its bad apples do stand out. ATWT also saw a sharp plunge in ratings in the spring of '94 but I have to wonder if that's more related to increased competition(and maybe some mediocrity there too).

[DRW50]

There was a late 95 interview with Petronia where she praised Rauch for his efforts at AW regarding black characters...of course, by the time he got to GL, the Grants were already basically done, although he could have made more of an effort if he wanted to (all he did was bring back David for years of non-stories until finally the character just vanished). I guess Vivian was a nice departure for Petronia, after playing noble Quinn, but I just hated how the character ended up.

I guess GL thought Meta should be aged up, since she was Kathy's stepmother, and Joe was older, but I think it would have given more story if they'd had her with a baby, Kathy being jealous, Bert feeling like Meta was her competition in the motherhood sweepstakes. Later on, the Bauer family friend Jane had a later-in-life pregnancy. That could have been Meta.

Around the time of Kathy's baby lies, there was an episode where Meta and Joe fought over Kathy being in a dream world and calling her daughter "Robin." Joe was sure this was her way of hanging on to her dead husband, Robert. Meta tried to convince him that Kathy was getting better, but he was angry with her, and told her after her own past she should be more aware. It was a nice, raw bit of conflict that I wasn't expecting.

Of course, he was right, and Kathy had a complete mental breakdown, culminating in a harrowing, ahead-of-its-time scene of the lights fading in and out as Kathy mistook the nurse for her mother and kept going back to her idyllic childhood with father, mother, and brother...and without evil Meta swooping in to get Joe. She kept rambling, in between her screams, about the merry month of May (the episode aired in May), 31 days hath September (her due date before going into premature labor), hearing robins, etc.

Robin being in her 30's by about 15 years after this was another Irna Phillips classic.

[DRW50]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl_kcEpK6IE

[DRW50]

August 1956 TV Radio Mirror.

[DRW50]

happened at the office today. He wanted someone he could love as an equal - a partner he could team up with in the Battle of Manhattan.

"Together," Lynne explains, "we do the best we can. It isn't he alone doing the best he can, while I just do the housework. It's both of us. We each have our own existence, and each respects the other's privacy. This doesn't mean that we're less in love. It merely means that we don't intend to engulf each other."

If this sounds suspiciously like living apart, a visit to the Taylors in their comfortable Manhattan apartment offers quick reassurance. Obviously, no two people ever got more enjoyment out of "living apart" - together. Although you've come to get Lynne's story - and although Tom withdraws to a far corner of the living room determined not to interfere - it isn't possible. They're so much a team, you can't talk to one without involving the other. And Lynne's story wouldn't be complete, not without Tim's story, too...

"I'm a native New Yorker," Lynne starts out, waiting for the customary exclamation of surprise. It doesn't come. "But I was born right here in New York," she continues, and looks to Tim for help. And that's how the other half of the team gets involved. He knows, from his own experience, that a surprisingly large percentage of actors were born "right here in New York," and each thinks it's unusual.

And so, like a lot of other actresses, Lynne was born in New York City. Her father, Louis L. Rogers, is a stock broker. She studied art at the High School of Music and Art, developing a talent which was to come in handy for her role as the artist in The Guiding Light. "When the script called for Dick Grant to sit for his portrait," she recalls, "everyone was surprised that I could actually fill in the canvas myself."

At Queens College, however, the artist decided to become an actress. She majored in English, speech and dramatics, doing stock at the Provincetown Playhouse. She also managed to graduate magna cum laude. At Columbia University, Lynne started to work for her master's degree in Drama and Comparative Dramatic Literature. Transferring to the Yale Drama School, she was about to return for the second year when she landed the role of Myriam in Light of the World, based on the New Testament.

"After a year, the show was replaced by a quiz program," Lynne says it with a dead-pan expression - it's th e only comment she can think of. "That was 1950," she remembers. "Then CBS assigned me to be an actress-at-large on the Stork Club show. I was to be there just in case - you know, in case I were needed or some of the guests didn't show up."

A year later, CBS hired Tim to be a writer on the same show. "They wanted me," he says, "it would be a short job - only three or four weeks. I was to do a preliminary interview of the guests, then draw up a list of ten questions. These were copied on little pieces of paper and pasted to coffee pots for Sherman Billingsley to read off."

And that's where they met - in the famed Cub Room of the Stork Club. Not the real Cub Room, of course, but the television studio designed to look like it. "We said hello," Lynne recalls. "Both of us were left-handed - so there we were, with things in common." That was the start.

They had time to discover even more things in common, for Tim lasted thirteen weeks - a record for writers on the show. Then Igor Cassini, who conducts a similar television program, hired Tim to be a writer for him. Tim, in turn, hired Lynne to be "his Girl Friday." They worked together until the summer, when Cassini and Tim hied themselves to Europe to interview assorted celebrities.

In a way, Lynne didn't mind. Proximity had made them very close, but Tim seemed shy of marriage. She knew that the cure was to "give him a lot of freedom, make him miss you." It worked, too. Tim now confesses that he "wrote more to her" than he ever wrote for the show.

Professionally, however, that summer was "a bleak period" for Lynne. But then, after weeks of discouragement and making the rounds, it happened.

In this case, because Kermit Bloomgarden was the producer, Lynne thought she was trying out for a role in his stag production of "Autumn Garden." Instead, she found that she was auditioning for the road company of "Death of a Salesman."

But that was the same afternoon Tim's boat arrived from Europe. He was "really mad" when Lynne wasn't at the dock to meet him. They got together, however. Explanations were made. And they had a proper reunion. But they also had prolonged farewell. Lynne's contract called for one year with "Death of a Salesman."

By the time Lynne returned from her tour, Tim was ready with his proposal. Only they couldn't get married. They didn't have an apartment. And that's how they happened to have a June wedding. It wasn't sentiment. Once again, it was circumstance. It took them six months to find a place to live.

As it turned out, however, it was well worth the wait. Their apartment is only two-and-a-half rooms, but that's more than most New Yorkers dare hope for of heaven on earth. It's in an old, white brownstone off the lower part of Fifth Avenue. The rooms are enormous, with twelve-foot-high ceilings. There are fireplaces in both the living room and bedroom. And what's more - "Eugene O'Neill once lived here."

The wedding should have been romantic. They drove out to Greenwich, Connecticut, a lovely town where Tim had once worked as a reporter. But the Justice of the Peace was nervous. He had only married three couples before. Well, the bride and groom were nervous, too. They had never been married before at all.

Here Lynne was, promoting to "honor and obey" - as though her life were her own to do with as she pleased. She was an actress. It was enough being at the beck and call of producers without having a husband to obey as well. How could she possible handle two careers?

And Tim, reaching in his pocket for the wedding ring, felt that he was giving up his freedom forever. With this ring, he would be chained to those two-and-a-half rooms - in sickness and in health, till death do us part.

It wasn't death that parted them. Once again, it was circumstance. They were married on June 7,1953. On June 30th, Lynne had to leave for the Lakeside Theater in Putnam, Connecticut, where she had a ten-week contract.

The Taylors can tell the story now, laughing at their early doubts. Lynne has proven she can handle two careers with equal success - both as Lynne Rogers on television and as Mrs. Tim Taylor in private life. As for Tim, sitting beside her on the sofa- he's been in those same two=and-a-half rooms for three years now, without once looking for the nearest exit.

"And we owe it all to that ten-week separation," Lynne says. "It was the best thing that could have happened to us."

It gave us time to think things over," Tim adds. "I know I'd be there in the apartment. I'd be conscious of things - a perfume bottle, a summer dress among the clothes in the closet - things I took for granted. Then, all of a sudden, I'd realize: Someone else lives here, too."

Lynne describes these ten weeks as "sort of a limbo period." It gave her a chance to "go into marriage kind of gradually." For example, she suddenly realized that a married woman doesn't go out with other men. She wasn't forbidden to do so. It just came over her that she didn't want to. It had more meaning, she found, seeing the one man she was married to rather than the many men who were just friends.

It was the same with cooking. Suddenly, she realized that she wanted to cook for Tim. She started collecting cook books. "And once she made her mind up to it," Tim admits, "she became good at it."

As a team, they also found that they could help each other. Tim, who periodically makes a round of the night clubs for his weekly column, declares that Lynne is "better than a tape recorder."

Tim, in turn, helps Lynne by cueing her in her parts. But, more important, he has built up her self-confidence. It seems incredible that anyone as pretty as Lynne, from insecurity. Her face is heart-shaped, with the look of a happy Valentine. Her auburn hair fairly cries out for color television. But the forehead! It's dangerously high for an ingenue. Not that being bright is any handicap for an actress, but Lynne looks every bit as intelligent as she is.

Tim has made her understand that youth alone has been her handicap. She has a poise and intelligence far beyond her years. Just right for a leading lady, but not for an ingenue. And one day, Tim predicts, Lynne will graduate into stardom.

A glance at the record proves that Tim is right. In her five seasons of stock, Lynne has played such unusual roles as the heroines in "Bell, Book and Candle," "A Streetcar Named Desire, "Dark of the Moon," and "The Sea Gull." And last January, when she became Marie Wallace on The Guiding Light, she was taking on the difficult role of a young artist who suddenly found herself going blind.

But, most of all, they have helped each other by "just being there." "Home," says Tim, "is where you can be who you are." But it's one thing being yourself, it's quite another being by yourself. It's nice to have someone to make plans with. Speaking of plans, Lynne says: "We'd like to go to Europe and we'd like to have a family."

It's also nice to have someone to play chess with. And, when you glance at the chess set, sitting on top of a handsome mosaic table, Lynne suddenly laughs. That table was almost the occasion of their one and only fight.

"That's my contribution to the do-it-yourself craze," Lynne explains. "I made it all myself, and gave it to Tim last Christmas as a present, I did all the work at a friend's house. Every day, I'd be out for a couple of hours, trying to get it done in time. And then I got sore. He wasn't the least bit concerned about where I was disappearing every day. Not once did he ask me where I'd been!"

But Tim was merely sticking to the team rule, to respect each other's privacy. As Lynne now understands: "This doesn't mean that we're less in love." It has made them more in love than ever.

[Vee]

I'm not sure where else to put this, and I apologize if I'm repeating something - I downloaded Kim Zimmer's book for my Android, and she has a great number of GL anecdotes in there. The most notable was a barely-veiled blind item that I think confirms some of the Beth Ehlers rumors that have been going around for years.

[DRW50]

I hadn't heard this, so thanks for telling us.

What was the blind item?

I have a hard time with Beth Ehlers, as she was a major reason I got hooked on GL. I really wasn't fond of what she became in her last decade on GL. Then there were those comments about JR Martinez I'd rather forget.

[Khan]

I've read the book. Basically, KZ says BE (or her "co-star") had a habit of falling in love w/ her love interests off-screen as well as on, ending both her marriages in the process. Depending on how you read into things, she and Rob Bogue (Mallet #2) were supposed to leave their respective spouses for each other, except Bogue got cold feet and stayed w/ his wife (that is, until he fell for Mandy Bruno, who was the last actor to portray Marina). That created a sort of dark cloud which hovered over the entire production until BE's eventual departure.

What really got me, though, was KZ's mention of the female co-star who was found one morning duct-taped to the door of one of the production offices. ;-)

Edited August 7, 2011 by Khan