32 minutes ago, P.J. said:

Right? I guess Jessie being their daughter is just too easy. I suppose if I paid more attention to the Ross/Calla relationship, it would seem like there was some jeopardy there, but I can't stand that woman.

When Vanessa announced she had given birth to Ross' daughter, I immediately thought she was Jessie. It was too obvious, but when Dinah was revealed as their daughter, I figured Jessie was a mislead. I don't remember if Dinah showed up right before Vanessa's search or right after

I think Jessie was a red herring

If I recall correctly, Dinah had originally been adopted by Jessie's uncle and aunt (her father's sister).. but they were killed in a car accident and she got passed around to different families before working in the carny.

I think Dinah came onto the show in mid 1986 looking for her foster sister Dorie... who was being adopted by India.   While that was going on, Ross/Vanessa were looking for their daughter and they thought that Jessie was their real daughter (probably because of her father being the one that handled the adoption)... and I don't know how it came out that Dinah was their daughter.. or if she was meant to be the daughter.. or if one of the writing regime changes made it so.

25 minutes ago, bboy875 said:

When Vanessa announced she had given birth to Ross' daughter, I immediately thought she was Jessie. It was too obvious, but when Dinah was revealed as their daughter, I figured Jessie was a mislead. I don't remember if Dinah showed up right before Vanessa's search or right after

It's hard to determine when Vanessa started acting strange. Gatti debuted sometime between May 9th and June 19th, just on a quick survey of the credits. Vanessa goes to Grace's in July.

10 minutes ago, P.J. said:

It's hard to determine when Vanessa started acting strange. Gatti debuted sometime between May 9th and June 19th, just on a quick survey of the credits.

Thanks to all who helped fill in Dinah's origin. I found another source that said Gatti started June 1986, so me thinking she encountered GA's Phillip in one of her first scenes is obviously some kind of brain blip on my part.

It's hard to know what was intended because one writer may have planned for Dinah to be their daughter and another for it to be Jessie.

Is there any other character who went through more personality flips than Dinah? She starts as the tough runaway orphan with Gatti, then is recast with Paige Turco and becomes a sweet ingenue. Then she's written out and her personality changes AGAIN when she comes back. I believe she changed even more times after that. So weird.

More chapter summaries from Kim's book:

Chapter 11 - all about her leading men and husbands on the show. She mentions that Jordan Clarke had big soft lips, but would always eat a hamburger with onions for lunch, which didn’t bother Kim when kissing him but Maeve (Vanessa) wasn’t appreciative of it. Btw, Kim here spells Maeve’s last name wrong: Kincaid (yikes!). She said Justin Deas (Buzz) acted with so much passion in his kissing that it felt like being TKO’ed by Muhammad Ali (yikes). She talks about Reva’s romance with Kyle and how Larkin Malloy would always lock eyes with her before kisses that would send shivers up and down her spine. They filmed a bubble bath scene and the bubbles kept popping and exposing her body stocking, so in the interest of time and reshoots, she just took it off and went bare chested in the bath with Larkin. She said he never would have done anything inappropriate, so she felt comfortable doing it.

She goes into the whole Josh thing, where he was and will always be the love of Reva’s life. She talks about the history of the Lewis/Shayne families. She did say Billy was by far much better in bed and their relationship was all about having hot, steamy sex (from her perspective), which I thought was interesting. She said they likened the HB/Josh/Reva triangle as their Cat on a Hot Tin Roof storyline. She said any time you had a scene with Larry Gates (HB), if was gold.  She talks about Larry’s Emmy win after the story of a drugged Vanessa hit a pregnant Reva with her car and Reva suffered a miscarriage (with HB’s baby). This was during the time Josh left for Venezuela (Lewis oil fields) and met/married “a beautiful woman named Sonni”. She then talks about Ron Raines (Alan), saying he’s one of the nicest people she’s met and he always tried hard to play the ideal Alan Spaulding, but because he was so kind in real life, he found it difficult to play such a villainous character. He was so kind and remembered everyone’s birthday, and she really loved working with him. She said he was the only person she was nervous about slapping in a scene because she respected Ron that much, but when the time came to slap him, her nerves got the best of her and she accidentally hit him in the ear, and his ear was ringing for the next few days.

Ok, in this chapter she talks about how baffling the transition was, going from the princess of San Cristobel to Amish Rebecca in Goshen. I’m glad she acknowledged that here!  She talks about her marriage to Jeffrey, which fans really enjoyed, but she thought it was over the top to have a post-menopausal woman get pregnant while having breast cancer.  She talks about the great benefits Bradley Cole held with the Red Cross and what a great musician he is.  Then Mark Dobies (Noah) who was a fantastic kisser with zero percent body fat. He made Kim work out with him for an hour every morning for awhile, which she needed but would have rather been gossiping in the makeup chairs instead.

She wouldn’t say who the best kisser is, because they were all unique and good in their own way, but she said the worst kisser was a man she auditioned with many years ago who shoved his tongue down her throat, which is so unprofessional. She wouldn’t say his name.  Love scenes were always so awkward to film, but the two best directors for these scenes were women: Irene Pace and JoAnne Sedwick. Bruce Barry shot them like he was working for the Playboy Channel and Kim was always surprised they were allowed on air.

She then talks about Tom Pelphrey (Jonathan Randall). They were a super couple that never swapped spit (because she’s his mom), but they were so dynamic together. Kim was getting bored with her role at the time, and they brought in Jonathan to spice things up. They auditioned 7 different guys for the role, but Tom was the one she didn’t like because she couldn’t get a rise or reaction out of him - no sign of softness or vulnerability. She told producers he was the only one she didn’t want to work with, but then the next day he was cast. She then learned the producers told him to freak her out during the audition, and that he did. He ended up being one of her best scene partners, and she felt so exciting and exhilarating onscreen with him - he was her perfect foil.

Chapter 12 - discusses being on talk shows, with Rosie being one of her favorites because Rosie loves Kim Zimmer. Kim and her daughter were selected for a basketball game during halftime of a WNBA game, but Kim was wearing a short skirt and thong that night and apparently flashed her butt to everyone at the Garden. When she did Rosie’s show the next time, the first thing Rosie said to her was “I saw your heinie”.

Then we get to Oprah and wow… Kim starts by saying being on the Oprah show would be a dream for anyone, but not particularly for her. She’s done Oprah twice, the first being on a panel with Robert Newman about power couples in daytime. It was uneventful and went off without a hitch. The second time was in the late 80s and featured the leading ladies of soaps from all three networks - Jeanne Cooper and Kim from CBS, Deidre Hall from NBC, and Susan Lucci, Robin Strasser, Jill Larson and Marcy Walker from ABC. Two segments went by and all the questions were getting directed to the ABC girls, with Jeanne piping in here and there (“because that’s who she is”). Kim got so upset that she wasn’t getting a question or attention that she finally walked off the stage and left the show. She said she felt more like an audience member so why be there. She was with her publicist backstage gearing up to leave when Oprah walked in and encouraged her to stay. Kim said no, she had no reason to be there and Oprah admitted to her that All My Children was her favorite soap and she couldn’t help but ask a lot of questions to them, but promised to ask Kim a question if she would come back. She apologized and owned her mistake. Apparently Kim said she saw Oprah in a new light at that moment, one where her lack of ego trumped Kim’s own ego. So, Kim went back and finished out the show and decided from there forward, she wouldn’t let her ego drive her judgment. She still said she doesn’t regret walking off the stage, but said “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”.  Oy vey!

23 minutes ago, alwaysAMC said:

She did say Billy was by far much better in bed and their relationship was all about having hot, steamy sex (from her perspective),

Huh?

I never got that impression from Billy and Reva. They always played to me like he had been Reva's consolation prize because she couldn't have Josh. (Don’t even get me started on the HB thing). 

30 minutes ago, alwaysAMC said:

she just took it off and went bare chested in the bath with Larkin. She said he never would have done anything inappropriate, so she felt comfortable doing it.

Confirmation? 😂

31 minutes ago, alwaysAMC said:

She then talks about Ron Raines (Alan), saying he’s one of the nicest people she’s met and he always tried hard to play the ideal Alan Spaulding, but because he was so kind in real life,

Was he on the show for so long because SHE liked him? O.K., I doubt she had THAT much power, but if by his own admission he couldn't act the part, why was he kept in the role for 15 years?

35 minutes ago, alwaysAMC said:

Kim got so upset that she wasn’t getting a question or attention that she finally walked off the stage and left the show. She said she felt more like an audience member so why be there.

SO unprofessional. Good grief.

The Larkin Malloy anecdote Kim Zimmer tells leaves me with a thought: If a man decided to take off his underwear in a love scene, can you imagine the outrage? It's not about Malloy doing or not doing something inappropriate. It's that you don't just take off your clothes during a love scene. 

Edited June 19Jun 19 by chrisml

36 minutes ago, chrisml said:

The Larkin Malloy anecdote Kim Zimmer tells leaves me with a thought: If a man decided to take off his underwear in a love scene, can you imagine the outrage? It's not about Malloy doing or not doing something inappropriate. It's that you don't just take off your clothes during a love scene. 

IIRC, Tony Geary used to do this. I can't remember if he told the women beforehand. 

I remember some wild rumors about an AMC actress in the mid '80s who insisted on filming her love scenes nude for the sake of realism.

I don't think that would ever fly today, what Kim did, but I suppose she asked Larkin and the crew/production beforehand. 

1 hour ago, DeeVee said:

Was he on the show for so long because SHE liked him? O.K., I doubt she had THAT much power, but if by his own admission he couldn't act the part, why was he kept in the role for 15 years?

I imagine he stayed as long as he did because he was easy to work with. It sure wasn't due to being suited for the role.

I can't see Billy as being Reva's best lover either. Maybe they burned up the sheets back in the day, but I can't recall Reva ever feeling any sexual attraction toward him from when she arrived in Springfield. She seemed to love him more like a brother.

@alwaysAMC Thanks for all the time you are taking on these summaries. I feel like any time you write these out I pop up with a dig about Kim, but these I mostly just enjoyed...and I appreciate her honesty about her behavior on Oprah. 

(I never even knew she was on Oprah)

Edited June 19Jun 19 by DRW50

Taking underwear off during love scenes??? Wtf.

9 hours ago, Soaplovers said:

I think Jessie was a red herring

If I recall correctly, Dinah had originally been adopted by Jessie's uncle and aunt (her father's sister).. but they were killed in a car accident and she got passed around to different families before working in the carny.

I think Dinah came onto the show in mid 1986 looking for her foster sister Dorie... who was being adopted by India.   While that was going on, Ross/Vanessa were looking for their daughter and they thought that Jessie was their real daughter (probably because of her father being the one that handled the adoption)... and I don't know how it came out that Dinah was their daughter.. or if she was meant to be the daughter.. or if one of the writing regime changes made it so.

Vanessa started looking for her daughter in July, in part because Grace would always send her a note that included a phrase like "everything was fine at home and away", and hadn't that year. Dinah is looking for her "sister", and I think they are both at Camp Cayoga, but she didn't realize it was her because the only way she could identify her was by a birthmark on the back of her neck. Ross isn't aware he has a daughter until October or so, when Vanessa's forced to tell him as he's going off to San Rios to help rescue Simon and Jessie (who's been shot) who I think went to rescue Alex (I don't have a clue why she's there, but she got sick).

I will say, for being such a secret....no one around town seems overly surprised Vanessa has an illegitimate child. Ross is angry for about half an episode. Henry seems angrier with Grace. And Billy seems angrier about the lie.

9 hours ago, DeeVee said:

Is there any other character who went through more personality flips than Dinah? She starts as the tough runaway orphan with Gatti, then is recast with Paige Turco and becomes a sweet ingenue. Then she's written out and her personality changes AGAIN when she comes back. I believe she changed even more times after that. So weird.

Not that I can recall. I'm sure part of it is the HW changes, although Dinah's initial reaction with Gatti is really, really cold. Turco is the outlier, but  I think that's a course correction by that regime, who might've been more interested in trying to make Ross/Vanessa work. Moniz and Tognoni are more in line.

This is from THE SURVIVAL OF SOAP OPERA: TRANSFORMATIONS FOR A NEW MEDIA ERA. Edited by Sam Ford, Abigail de Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington. University Press of Mississippi/Jackson. © 2011.

GL Relevance and Renewal in a Changing Genre by Patrick Erwin

Patrick Erwin is a freelance writer and journalist and author of the soap opera blog ‘A Thousand Other Worlds’ ( http://1000worlds.wordpress.com/). He has also written about soaps for the Marlena De Lacroix site ( http://www.marlenadelacroix.com/). While he watches a variety of daytime serial dramas airing today, he was a lifelong viewer of ‘Guiding Light’ and ‘As the World Turns.’

Quote

Maureen Garrett returned to the show and was overwhelmingly negative: “You do not see the other actors. There are no rehearsals, no monitors on which to watch the action. Actors are led from hair to make up to a kind of holding pen. Then they’re guided through the maze of pieces of sets to their spot (…) There’s no director, no time, no spontaneity. If this is what has to be done to save the form, I think there’s room for debate about trying to preserve the process, too. You can’t really create connections or foster ” ‘chemistry’ without the work.”

ME: I do not think Patrick meant to judge this as unfair negativity. This entire essay was written from a particular point of view. A handful of people were invited to "tour" the new production model, ask questions, take notes & write up what they saw, heard & experienced. So, he was rapidfire describing what was happening & then some select reaction/s. And, I think he did a good job.

BTW, this is an excellent book. It's in the Internet Archive but only borrowable to  someone with "print disabilities" ... whatever that is. Amazon has a used paperback for $21.50-ish & kindle version for $30 & a new HB for $60. I wonder if people's local libraries would have it in either print or e-edition. The Internet Archive gives an excellent overview of all the different contributors & what their essays were about. 

9 hours ago, alwaysAMC said:

More chapter summaries from Kim's book:

Chapter 11 - all about her leading men and husbands on the show. She mentions that Jordan Clarke had big soft lips, but would always eat a hamburger with onions for lunch, which didn’t bother Kim when kissing him but Maeve (Vanessa) wasn’t appreciative of it. Btw, Kim here spells Maeve’s last name wrong: Kincaid (yikes!). 

She goes into the whole Josh thing, where he was and will always be the love of Reva’s life. She talks about the history of the Lewis/Shayne families. She did say Billy was by far much better in bed and their relationship was all about having hot, steamy sex (from her perspective), which I thought was interesting. 

 She talks about her marriage to Jeffrey, which fans really enjoyed, 

 

Kim got so upset that she wasn’t getting a question or attention that she finally walked off the stage and left the show. 

DAMN.....the onion story is about Jordan/Maeve! I don't recall where or when I first heard that story, but I'd always assumed it was Michael/Lisa.

I don't think Kim's take on Billy/Reva is surprising. At least in the respect that it was more a physical thing than a love match. When HB confronts Reva about Alan paying her to bust up Billy and Van, she even admits that she married Billy for the Lewis name and money. And I've always thought that what stuck in Billy's craw over the years (and why he took so much crap from her in their "friendship") was that he knew Reva never loved him, and that he kept trying to prove to her she should have.

But Billy better than Josh in bed? Yeah, I buy that.

Fans enjoyed Jeffrey/Reva? GTFOH.

Honestly, I don't blame Kim for her reaction to Oprah. It was unprofessional of Oprah to show her bias, and frankly, nothing was more annoying than those damn bait shows and NOT hearing from the person you were interested in hearing. If Oprah had wanted to do a AMC lovefest, she should've just had AMC actors.  And I'd love to hear Strasser reaction to being somewhat ignored.

Tony did do that at GH, and he probably wasn't the only one. Another classic example of It Was a Different Time.

About OPRAH & her pro-AMC bias, totally agree, 100% co-sign, I was always p.o'd at the way Oprah ignored every other show. I mean, GMAB! Reva was right. It's funny how like an experience Beverlee relates but another talk show host. And, it was Charita Bauer who left mad.

 

2 minutes ago, P.J. said:

Honestly, I don't blame Kim for her reaction to Oprah. It was unprofessional of Oprah to show her bias, and frankly, nothing was more annoying than those damn bait shows and NOT hearing from the person you were interested in hearing. If Oprah had wanted to do a AMC lovefest, she should've just had AMC actors.  And I'd love to hear Strasser reaction to being somewhat ignored.

I think her FEELINGS were 100% valid. She had every right to be upset and angry.  Oprah was also being totally unprofessional. She should not have been fangirling over the ABC people.

The way she handled it was wrong, though. Not just unprofessional, but kind of childish.

What she should have done was gotten the attention of the producer (who was also not doing their job) during one of the breaks and complained. That would have solved the issue without histrionics.