Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

You're probably right, but then he had some bad blood with GL too so I guess anywhere might have been dicey. 

I would have appreciated seeing what he did at AW, if he'd had better luck than Malone did when he tried to headwrite. I guess we would just have to put ourselves in a world where executives still let writers have some freedom.

[Khan]

I feel like P&G would have allowed Douglas Marland at least SOME creative latitude, if only because ATWT was still often ranking as high as #2 before his death.  But, as you've said, @DRW50, the entire daytime landscape was changing at that time, too.

[VelekaCarruthers]

Not sure if this episode has been previously posted but it's. new to me on YT. I was never a fan of Marland's stint at GL. 

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[alwaysAMC]

^Wow - the quality of that old episode is amazing!  I wish we had that quality for these 90s episodes.

[Mona Kane Croft]

Depending on what year Marland might have moved over to AW -- I'm fairly certain he would have strengthened the Cory family by making sure all of Mac's and Rachel's children were on the canvas (including Jamie, Iris, and Sandy); he would have reestablished the Matthews family as the core middle-class group -- probably starting with Russ (with a new wife and a few of his new off-spring) and Liz, later followed by Pat and her off-spring ; and he likely would have used a more focused version of the Frames or Perrinis as a working-class family.  Or perhaps Marland would have created a completely new working class-family. Who knows?  But it is certainly fun to speculate.   

Edited March 27 by Mona Kane Croft

[DRW50]

That's because it was put out on DVD about 12-13 years ago as part a Jennifer trial set.

[Maxim]

Thank you. I didn't know about this channel... the quality is really stunning. 

[Contessa Donatella]

Well, isn't it really that some writers get what they want & some do not?

[chrisml]

I went back and listened to Barbara Crampton's interview with Locher and she said that she was asked to audition for Mindy. She refused. Later, JFP called her up and offered her the role. Reading between the lines of what she did and did not say: it did not seem like a very happy time for her. She also did not seem to know much about GL in general as she thought it was still on the air as of the time the interview happened (2 yrs ago).

 

 

 

[P.J.]

Well, yikes. Honestly, while I don't dislike Crampton, she just never fit in to the Lewis family. GL would've been better off sticking with Hamilton through the climax with Eve, then take the time to recast. 

[chrisml]

I don't think I've ever seen an interview with a performer who was so detached from the character, the cast and the show she was a part of. It felt like Locher had to prompt her to remind her of details and then remind her that GL was not still on the air. She was clearer about her time on DAYS where she was only on for a year according to her. It was very obvious she had no affection at all for her time on Guiding Light even if she were too graceful to be direct about it.

She also thinks she was on for three years, but everything I've seen says she was on for two. Maybe she felt like it was three?

Edited March 28 by chrisml

[Soaplovers]

Oh god no.  AW was pretty decent in the late 80s and early 90s and I just don't think that show would have been a good fit for his often earnest and idealistic vision.  He tended to have trouble writing grey characters and that soap has so many grey characters.

I would have preferred to see him create his own 30 minute soap that he was developing and see what that would look like.

I'm glad he opted not to come back to GL after he threw his tantrum and quit in mid 1982... because he wasn't a good fit on that soap either.  He was basically coasting off the momentum provided by the far superior Dobsons.   The Dobsons I wish had ended up at AW after Santa Barbara had been axed because they would have had a field day writing Rachel, Paulina, Felicia, Donna, Iris, etc.

I think the only reason she did remember GL at all was because it exposed her to Horror movie conventions.   

She had it rough because she came in near the end of the Eva stalking Mindy story so that even though she had a right to be on guard with Eve and later Alex... because she hadn't played the early beats of the story.. viewers had trouble siding with her.

[Contessa Donatella]

The PGP SoapClassic collection that Roger Newcomb curated?

Talk about your really egregious errors! Not knowing the show is years off the air. 

[chrisml]

I vaguely remember the beginning of this. I think I was so annoyed by the writers turning Eve into another of JFP's desperate man hungry loonies that I didn't watch. I don't think I watched any of Crampton's tenure as Mindy so I have no opinion of her work. If I did see her as Mindy, my memory is as bad as hers. I have more memory of Hamilton's work.

[tonymidnight]

That particular period of GL - the Jennifer Richards trial - was very different from Marland's '82 GL.   You could feel Harding Lemay's touch as '81 GL is very much like Lemay's AW.  Lemay was part of the writing team during this period.