Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[alwaysAMC]

Now that I've seen the full Brent/Marian storyline from beginning to end, I went back to read Megan McTavish's "memoir" that got me into GL in the first place (!), and realized she got this wrong about Brent's 'death'. He didn't drown; yes, they were at the dock, but Brent and A-M were in a gun struggle and Brent ultimately gets shot, however he and his sister paid a doctor to call him deceased on the spot. He was never in the water, nor drowned. Her memory here is off, which makes me wonder about the authenticity of her other memories haha.

Face lifts are kinda fun, massive emotional breakdowns are not. The best
story I wrote on Guiding Light was the saga of Brent Lawrence/Marian
Crane - yes, Marian's name was my own small homage to the master of
suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. Brent/Marian was played by a brilliant young
actor, Frank Beaty. The story in brief was: Brent raped our young heroine
Lucy. Her fiancé, Alan-Michael, fought Brent to the death. Brent went into
deep water and drowned. Only not really. He came back to Springfield as
a dumpy, rather homely woman named Marian Crane. Obsessed with
Lucy, Brent/Marian got himself/herself hired as Lucy's assistant. He
tortured her at every opportunity. He also murdered several other people
along the way.

Frank was incredible in the role(s). It was one of those halcyon times I had
as a soap writer, where I couldn't wait to see my stuff on the screen every
day. We were taping the climax of the story - a big masked ball, from
which Brent was going to kidnap Lucy - when suddenly, right in the middle
of a scene, Frank went into a huge bi-polar episode. He became
incoherent, stripped off all his clothes, and ran screaming into the middle of
26th Street. He had to be subdued, and was carted off to Bellevue.
Frank ultimately got his disease under control with the proper medication,
though he was lost to GL forever.

[P.J.]

Jeanne and Christian are on for maybe 45 seconds. Chris kisses Van's hand. I'm only surprised Reva didn't push her way into the scene and dry hump him. 'Cause...well, she's Reva.

Oh, GOD, it's party after party and in one Vanessa's got these gaudy epaulets on her shoulders, which just wasn't Vanessa. Luckily, they kind of ditched the wardrobe and there weren't a lot of repeats on some of these outfits. The other Locher room I watched was with the costume designers, and at one point they said that sometimes they realized when characters had gone too far astray in their wardrobe, and they'd have to return to a look the audience was more familiar with for them. One specifically mentioned Vanessa, and he said he got thanked for making Vanessa Vanessa again, which I could only interpret as happening during the Matt era, when Vanessa was gushing about the joys of discovering chili dogs. RME.

I do think the fashion takes a nose-dive around the time MKA is there, but part of the issue was probably also that she was a little taller and not the typical size 0/2/4. 

[alwaysAMC]

Gosh, you're right, I mixed up nurse and doctor, my bad

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Ok yes, the "My Guiding Light" music is so good. I do go back and forth with the overall opening though, as it comes across as a sitcom to me, which I get would have been popular in that era. And honestly not something I was used to seeing on the ABC soaps that I watched in my youth, so it's different. I know Another World has a similar style opening with a great theme song and similar video clips in their opening. 

ATWT - ok yep, so it was that late. It's so hard to believe that show didn't have a more updated opening in the 90s. I think their first character opening was originally yellow-toned, but then went to a blue hue shortly after, which was much better. The opening that debuted when I was watching regularly in ~2007 was awful, I don't know what they were thinking with that one.

BTG is ok, I'm just thankful it's slower with the cast graphics. The GH opening from the past ~10 years is seizure-inducing with how fast and furious it is. Y&R has always been and hopefully will always be iconic. Not that I watch the show, but I try and keep up with the openings across the board because I'm just obsessed with TV show openings, especially soaps haha.

[P.J.]

There's something about the attachment you feel when you hear the theme music. I know some people love the Leaves opening (which is called something like Ritonelle...it's mainly strings) that ran during the Dobson era. The disco opening just feels foreign to me--like they tried to replicate nighttime drama openings (to my mind, Hawaii 5-0) and didn't understand that Mike holding a gun on someone or Nola screaming wasn't representative of what the show was about.

The first ATWT character one has a white background that's harsh looking. They changed the backing colors a couple of times, but they used that damn shot of Carly for like three years. Later, like '05-06 maybe, there was a silly one that made it look like the characters were emerging from fields of something, that made my eyes roll right out of my head. It never got as bad as GL's "hands" opening, which is better forgotten.

The BTG one convinces me there are different people in the roles, but I still have to think---"who is that now?"

[Mitch64]

I love how farmboy  Hart became a Guido with a thick New York accent. You could tell they never knew or cared what to do with Hart post MH, he was just a hunk of steroids to take off their shirt and have girls fight over him, but I never understood what Bridget, Dinah or Cassie saw in him..(besides the proverbial roll in the hay, now there is a 20 on the dresser get out.) The move from Hilliard to Grillo was really quick and I would like to know the story...was Moniz not liking him?

For more on our good old George Pilgrim, read "Unscripted" where he makes a cameo appearance as Sumner Redstone's much younger mistresses side piece. When you read about him you could imagine that Pilgrim was writing his own dialogue as obnoxious J.  There is NO way he was a product of Nola and Quint.

[P.J.]

I'm not sure they ever had a clear vision on Hart. Other than being the only real instrument that could make Roger pay for his actions.

[P.J.]

I have had a semi-obsession with end credits. Back in the early '90's, I would copy ATWT's cast list. That was fascinating (at the time) because they were listed by length of time on the show. And in the '00's I would keep track of the scriptwriters/directors.

Now I catch GL's and realize how many names stayed with P&G for years in different capacities. And I obsess over Maeve's credits, whether it's Vanessa Chamberlain or Lewis. I just caught an episode during the Infinity story where she's back to Chamberlain. I swear, someone in the production office (or whoever handled updating the credits) loved the sound of the name Chamberlain and were determined not to let it die.

[DeeVee]

The uploaded videos from 1985 are reaching the point where I started watching GL regularly again, so a few final thoughts:

Damn, Claire gave birth to one giant baby. Yeah, there's limits by law how old a baby can be on a set, but that baby was enormous! She could lift her head and was already smiling and laughing. Has anyone checked if Michelle was actually fathered by a space alien?

I'm sorry, I mean B.B. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the writers room when they realized that was a mistake. Why did it never occur to anyone to make up a more fashionable middle name for Bert and use that to name one of her descendants?

The Infinity story--of course, they were trying to compete with GH. But if you're going to do stuff like this at least take the time to create an interesting and genuinely menacing villain, not some twerp who looks like his biggest crime is cheating on the squash court. (I love how several characters protested that Infinity isn't a criminal organization, it's just a business organization you can never leave and who kill people who get in their way. Guys, that's a criminal organization).

I do think it's kind of cool that Suzette and Jackson, two very selfish and self-centered characters, got the chance to be heroic. (Jackson chanting a mantra to himself to fool the villains that he was hypnotized was hilarious, though). And David did get to tell Kyle he loved him before he kicked it. So sad. I was rooting for those two kids.

All of this dovetailing into Kurt and Mindy's wedding for November sweeps. Oh, that wedding. The 1980s really 1980s with that wedding. Mindy using the ransom money she found to pay for it was so perfectly in character I had admire it. Phillip offering to give her Spaulding Foundation money was also perfectly in character. What's a little fraud between friends?

I have to say it again: I can't believe how much time and money was invested in these two storylines centered on two romantic couples, one that would be literally blown up within a few episodes, and the other that would also be literally blown up a relatively short time later. IMO, this was one of GL's biggest problems during this time period. I can forgive a stinker storyline or two, but not the way they built up and then trashed romantic couples even when the audience liked them.

Something else occured to me watching these episodes: is it my imagination, or was Ross practically sidelined through most of this year? He's running Spaulding, but the stories were almost entirely centered on Lujack/Beth, the Lewis clan, and the hospital. I almost forgot about him until Calla was vamping him at the wedding. I'm really glad that JVD was able to survive that much story neglect and eventually come back as a major player.

 

Edited 19 hours ago by DeeVee

[alwaysAMC]

That is so true, there's a nostalgic attachment pinned to each, based on where you were in life and how you felt about the show (for me anyway). I did like the Leaves opening, which I only knew about a few months ago when I checked out all of GL's openings once I started my watch.

This is so random, but the one thing about that first ATWT cast opening, and the many subsequent updates of that version, was the fast drum beat part towards the end that skips through 3 characters way too quickly that you can't even take in who they are (like GH's current one). It's actually the trio between Carly and Holden.  I always felt like those poor characters got the shaft haha.

The silly one you're talking about was the one I referenced that I also hated - where they're in like the fields and it has two characters, one in the back and one in the forefront, with random windmills and barns in the background haha.  Such a bad version.

I can't think off top of my head which opening you're referring to for GL and the "hands" - I'll have to go find it!

 

I'd always watch AMC's end credits growing up, but I never got obsessed with them like all the openings. I did start paying attention to the GL end credits during my current watch and I always found it interesting that many times, they'd promote the feedback line where you could call and rant/rave about current storylines for $0.99 

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 And then the man's voice over would tell where the fashions/outfits and jewelry were all from. Such a sign of the times haha. 

I do love to watch the end credits when they show the character and actor names though. It helps me see who is currently on contract, and then watching the order of the character pictures and what's changed. 

Currently, in '96, Vanessa is labeled as "Vanessa Chamberlain Reardon". My favorite is Blake's - she's labeled "C. Blake Thorpe Marler" and it takes up the whole screen haha.

[P.J.]

I said it before---Guiding Light is probably the soap that most clung to family names. I mean, the only reason to even think about naming that child Bert B(whatever) is that you've been writing all night, you start shooting in two minutes, and someone inserted it as a joke and the wrong rewrite got sent out to the actors. 

As much as I criticize Infinity, the fallout from the shooting is what sweeps is all about. The moment when Rick and Phillip know Mindy could spend that money--OMG. Billy's ready to lock himself away, Sally tears Reva a new piehole, Ed's performing life-saving surgery and Lujack bein' all Lujack.

I actually like that cop--I think his name is Saunders? He was a rarity, a cop who wasn't dumb.

Listening to that Locher room with Krista and Mark Lewis, I think Kurt would've lasted longer, had Mark not had an out in his contract to do a play. As Mark explained, a new EP came on, didn't want him to do the play and kinda warned him that he might not have a job to come back to. Mark did it anyway (he had friends backing the play) and sure enough, they killed Kurt off. In the long run, I don't think they had a lot of story to do with Kurt and Mindy, who hadn't gone through much before getting that extravaganza. But it did seem to be short sighted to kill him off that soon.

Ross wasn't driving story in '85, that's for sure. He had defended Lujack in the Andy Ferris murder, and he rides herd on Phillip as India tries sinking her claws into him. He did send Trish off to Europe, and he defends Billy and Mindy. But yeah--sometimes they just "forgot" about Ross until someone needed a lawyer. While there was always a fight around Spaulding, it was hitting a dry spell in terms of people connected to it to interact with.

[DRW50]

They should have paired him with Suzette, or Suzanne, whatever. Jerry and Frances Fisher feel like a natural duo.

[P.J.]

The good thing about those ATWT openings is that they rotated the characters. The flaw in the Hold on to Love opening is that it was so stagnant, and rarely if ever changed. That ATWT version had at least three different versions, and sometimes you got the opening, sometimes you got the clean up spot, and sometimes you got the short dot-dot-dot spots. 

Ugh..the hands opening was about 2007 and was the actors putting their hands in a circle (I was waiting for them to yell "go team!") as a poem was recited. It looks like fifth grade media students came up with it.

See---no one wants you to forget Vanessa's a Chamberlain. It was so embedded in the character, it never quite sounded right to leave out her maiden name. And if she wasn't reminding people she was a Chamberlain and not to be trifled with, other characters would throw it out there. Once (and I think it's during the Slut of Springfield debacle) Alex says something like "poor Vanessa--she's still a Chamberlain at heart after all".  Although I can't recall her ever being credited as Vanessa Chamberlain Lewis. And thank God we never had to contemplate "Vanessa Reade". I swear half the time that marriage fell through was that someone shivered at the thought at having ten characters a day say "Vanessa Reade".

I'd have to check on if they used C. Blake Thorpe a lot. 

I 

Anyone would've been better than Calla.

[Robluvthebeach]

Frances Fisher said on The Locher Room interview that she really did not remember her time on GL since it was so short (she was talking more about Edge of Night)-but she did mention that she went out with Vincent (Lujack!).  I think he also dated Kristi Ferrell (Roxie) around this time as well

Edited 16 hours ago by Robluvthebeach

[alwaysAMC]

Oh gosh, yes, I remember seeing this one now and you're right, awful.

Here is a great compilation of all the GL openings. Some versions of course had multiple iterations with different characters, so I still look outside this video to find more. 

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Anyone able to tell me who the shirtless guy is at the 6:47 mark? He was in the '95 version for a good bit, but I could never figure out who he was. I thought maybe Carrol, but I didn't think he was a contract player or on that long.

The 2002-2003 version with Joan Collins is pretty bad too. It looks cheap and the characters fly by way too quickly, especially when you've got 2-3 in each.

2003-2005 isn't bad.  The 2005-2007 opening reminds me way too much of OLTL.

[DeeVee]

I just don't understand the attitude of these EPs. You HAVE to know most of the young actors are going to take at least one hiatus from soaps to do other things. Most won't become big stars and will likely return to soaps. If they're popular, why would you cut them off like that to the detriment of your show?

I wasn't fan of Mindy with Kurt, but again, if you build up a couple this much while taking away screen time from other, more popular characters, just to trash them within a few months, HOW is that good for your show in the long run? CRAZY.

YES!

Yes, again. Watching her introduction, it reminded me how much the character grated on me back then. 

It's not the actress' fault. She was fine on Texas. Just a poorly conceived character. 

!!!! Please tell me VI wasn't the same age as Lujack, LOL.