20 hours ago, chrisml said:

re: Zimmer, Lucci and the Emmys. Lucci not winning at the Emmys did make the Daytime Emmys a media event. It's just maddening when you watch what she submitted and you know the actresses who were left off. A lot of her scenes/episodes are downright laughable. And to pretend that her material/acting is in the same league as Zimmer, Hubbard, Walker, Hall, Spencer, Strasser, etc. is insulting. 

I tend to agree with everyone about Lucci. I would just point one thing & that is that AMC spent a part of every single year doing an Emmy bait storyline for her. 

20 hours ago, chrisml said:

Zimmer and the pay cut: These are the same people (CBS and P&G) who had a meltdown when McKinsey left even though she fulfilled her contract. The same people who fired Zaslow.

 

20 hours ago, chrisml said:

Zimmer had every right to react the way she did, and they used the media to smear her. Yes, the media did partly blame Zimmer for casting changes and problems with the shows.

I literally have no idea what you mean about KZ having a right to her "reactions". In many ways both before & during this time, KZ's reactions were all over the place, or they were markedly selfish, also not good for the show. This is the woman who had her loyal fan group who she even bragged that if she was not on the show ONE DAY they called the studio & complained & on & on with that routine. 

Also I know that the soap press handled her with gloves on. If they had reported what they knew, OMG, we would still be hearing about it. 

So, I suggest that she does not fit at all with Beverlee or certainly not Zas. I fail to see how anyone smeared her. And, in fact, she was the cause of some of those problems that you mention. 

She ran her professional life in a certain way & the show & anyone in her way be dam*ed.

 

 

Edited June 23Jun 23 by Contessa Donatella

14 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

This talk of paycuts-starting with execs-seems the very reason Ellen was plucked out of nowhere to become EP. She was obviously a lot cheaper than someone with at least one EP credit behind them.

What was Ellen's trajectory?

When  did she first start directing and for how long? Did she have any other experience eg some sort of producer capacity before she took on EP?

Wheeler was a disaster! Show killer. She dabbled in producing GL but the mighty cryer ran from GL when Conboy became EP. Crybaby Wheeler couldn’t stand up to Conboy. 

9 hours ago, Mitch64 said:

They offered Ellen Parker the Bert role but she turned them down. I actually thought did a great job on playing Charita...she gave her that warm sense of humor that Charita played through everything (I think Bert was my fave matriarch as you know she could knock down a brown drink and tell a hilarious story) But I think I thought that episode was really good, despite Wheeler trying to use it to justify incest Jammi. 

I'm glad Parker declined. I really kinda hope she told them to go [!@#$%^&*] themselves, but I'm sure she's too professional for that.

The thing I find curious? That the EP who was floating the idea of renaming the damn show because someone hates that it's constantly referred to as the oldest show....then decides to highlight it's radio roots in a special episode.

32 minutes ago, P.J. said:

The thing I find curious? That the EP who was floating the idea of renaming the damn show because someone hates that it's constantly referred to as the oldest show....then decides to highlight it's radio roots in a special episode.

Was that documented?

37 minutes ago, P.J. said:

I'm glad Parker declined. I really kinda hope she told them to go [!@#$%^&*] themselves, but I'm sure she's too professional for that.

The thing I find curious? That the EP who was floating the idea of renaming the damn show because someone hates that it's constantly referred to as the oldest show....then decides to highlight it's radio roots in a special episode.

For whatever she supposedly tried about renaming the show, Wheeler did seem to try to tie in history as much as she could. Some felt a bit half-hearted but I still appreciated the idea (like the "hairy arms" opening and bringing in a relative of Reverend Ruthledge), and then she worked hard for so many returns in the show's last year. The last episode even had a montage of every opening.

Night and day to ATWT at this point. 

10 hours ago, Mitch64 said:

They offered Ellen Parker the Bert role but she turned them down. I actually thought did a great job on playing Charita...she gave her that warm sense of humor that Charita played through everything (I think Bert was my fave matriarch as you know she could knock down a brown drink and tell a hilarious story) But I think I thought that episode was really good, despite Wheeler trying to use it to justify incest Jammi. 

I respect Parker for declining. It would have reminded viewers too much of what they had lost and taken them out of the anniversary.

Edited June 24Jun 24 by DRW50

15 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

For whatever she supposedly tried about renaming the show, Wheeler did seem to try to tie in history as much as she could. Some felt a bit half-hearted but I still appreciated the idea (like the "hairy arms" opening and bringing in a relative of Reverend Ruthledge), and then she worked hard for so many returns in the show's last year. The last episode even had a montage of every opening.

Night and day to ATWT at this point. 

I respect Parker for declining. It would have reminded viewers too much of what they had lost and taken them out of the anniversary.

Can you repeat the new WeLoveSoaps url, please? And, Ellen Parker, class act.

 

4 hours ago, TEdgeofNight said:

Wheeler was a disaster! Show killer. She dabbled in producing GL but the mighty cryer ran from GL when Conboy became EP. Crybaby Wheeler couldn’t stand up to Conboy. 

Yes! She barely lasted during her first GL run. She ran back to ATWT for a year and a half as director.

 

I love that KZ stood her ground with TPTB. Great for her!

2 minutes ago, Contessa Donatella said:

Can you repeat the new WeLoveSoaps url, please? And, Ellen Parker, class act.

https://www.welovesoaps.tv/

41 minutes ago, Contessa Donatella said:

Was that documented?

Do we trust Kim or not?

She was surprised GL won best show and best writing Emmys in 2007, because she didn’t understand the kudos for their show. When 2008 came, Ellen had the idea of renaming the show “The New Guiding Light” and start the first episode as “Episode 1”, which Kim thought was distasteful and erasing their legacy. Apparently some of the GL execs hated when people mentioned how old GL was, and thankfully P&G said absolutely not to Ellen’s idea and the idea was nixed. But, Ellen still got her idea of a new opening approved and Kim refers to it as “…the one with a bunch of hairy-ass arms reaching and grabbing at other hairy-ass arms! With a series of voice-overs uttering the famous line ‘There is a destiny…’”.

 

5 hours ago, Contessa Donatella said:

I tend to agree with everyone about Lucci. I would just point one thing & that is that AMC spent a part of every single year doing an Emmy bait storyline for her. 

Can you imagine being an ABC exec and having Debbi bleepin' Morgan in your cast, and somehow having to throw your weight around to either a) keep pushing for an emmy bait story for Lucci or b) pulling whatever strings there were to keep Lucci getting nom'd for twenty straight years?

I'm sorry---even if Lucci were Meryl Streep (or fill in with your favorite actress) no one gets nominated every year. Not even Slezak.

All of this talk about Ellen Wheeler makes me a bit sad. She was such a good actress. When she came back to AW as Marley, she wiped Jensen Buchanan off the screen. Don't know what happened to her. I get the desperation and the "let's throw everyone at the wall and see what sticks" mentality at that point in GL's status but her decisions never made me want to return as a viewer. Quite the opposite. As someone who never worshipped at the altar of Pelphrey or Cole, the last few years were intolerable to me when I would see what little I did.

I will say Nicole Forrester and Beth Chamberlain were robbed of Emmys. I judged those categories for goldderby when they were still doing that, and they were far and away the best. I'm glad Jeanne Cooper won a competitive Emmy before she died (although I thought her reel was mediocre).  I thought Julie Pinson was actively awful in her submission, but that's the way it goes in the supporting actress category often.

11 hours ago, Mitch64 said:

They offered Ellen Parker the Bert role but she turned them down.

WOW. I can't believe they had the chutzpah to ask her. Good for her telling them to pound sand. (Figuratively, if not explicitly).

 

 

43 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

For whatever she supposedly tried about renaming the show, Wheeler did seem to try to tie in history as much as she could. Some felt a bit half-hearted but I still appreciated the idea (like the "hairy arms" opening and bringing in a relative of Reverend Ruthledge), and then she worked hard for so many returns in the show's last year. The last episode even had a montage of every opening.

Night and day to ATWT at this point. 

I respect Parker for declining. It would have reminded viewers too much of what they had lost and taken them out of the anniversary.

Our disagreement about ATWT aside, ---a fair number of her returns I didn't give a flying fig about---DAM, Pelphrey, St Alban, PAS. I won't argue against the cameos, but I thought they could've been handled better.

I actually would've tried harder to watch the entire episode if Parker had been on. I really can't get through five minutes of it before my eyes threaten to roll out of my head.

10 minutes ago, P.J. said:

Can you imagine being an ABC exec and having Debbi bleepin' Morgan in your cast, and somehow having to throw your weight around to either a) keep pushing for an emmy bait story for Lucci or b) pulling whatever strings there were to keep Lucci getting nom'd for twenty straight years?

I'm sorry---even if Lucci were Meryl Streep (or fill in with your favorite actress) no one gets nominated every year. Not even Slezak.

Problem is she didn't always submit Emmy bait storylines. She (or usually her husband) would often submit reels where she would play the romantic heroine. If you've seen any of her t.v. movies, that's the quality of what she would often submit. It was nothing stuff. It was only towards the end of her Emmy run where she submitted more substantial work. I remember when she submitted scenes with Mona's death (Erica's mother) that a mainstream journalist commented that she laughed at her scenes.

As much as people might have detested the clone storyline (and I am agnostic as I didn't watch much), Zimmer submitted work that was emotional and meant something. It was not just nonsense fluff. That's what annoys me about Lucci. Lucci made the Daytime Emmys, but she simply did not have the material most years. 

Just now, chrisml said:

Problem is she didn't always submit Emmy bait storylines. She (or usually her husband) would often submit reels where she would play the romantic heroine. If you've seen any of her t.v. movies, that's the quality of what she would often submit. It was nothing stuff. It was only towards the end of her Emmy run where she submitted more substantial work. I remember when she submitted scenes with Mona's death (Erica's mother) that a mainstream journalist commented that she laughed at her scenes.

As much as people might have detested the clone storyline (and I am agnostic as I didn't watch much), Zimmer submitted work that was emotional and meant something. It was not just nonsense fluff. That's what annoys me about Lucci. Lucci made the Daytime Emmys, but she simply did not have the material most years. 

I think the Emmy Lucci won that year may have been her most deserved time of winning, if it was for the Bianca intervention episode. 

2 minutes ago, P.J. said:

Our disagreement about ATWT aside, ---a fair number of her returns I didn't give a flying fig about---DAM, Pelphrey, St Alban, PAS. I won't argue against the cameos, but I thought they could've been handled better.

None of those would have been on my immediate list either for returns but I thought they were low-key and didn't have the smugness some pet returns can have. 

The cameos I appreciated were more the longtime cast of previous eras, even if I wish they'd had more to do.

21 minutes ago, P.J. said:

When 2008 came, Ellen had the idea of renaming the show “The New Guiding Light” and start the first episode as “Episode 1”, which Kim thought was distasteful and erasing their legacy. Apparently some of the GL execs hated when people mentioned how old GL was, and thankfully P&G said absolutely not to Ellen’s idea and the idea was nixed.

Another attempt to save the show, desperately looking for that magic bullet. This was definitely not it. I don't even know why you would want to give up the "oldest show" mantle. It's not like being "young" helped the newer soaps survive.