Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[vetsoapfan]

January 25, 1937: The Guiding Light was born, and became the longest-running drama (so far) in broadcast history, thrilling audiences for decades (well, from 1937 to 1984, anyway, and then again in the early 1990s).

 

Ahh, the good old days.

[DAMfan]

Miss the Light 

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[zanereed]

 

Agreed. I miss it. I'm glad I have the Soap Classics DVDs, some DVD-Rs from trading, and YouTube to make up for that loss. In my opinion, it was really on fire in the mid to late 1970's with the Dobsons at the helm. It's too bad that not much of that era survives at all.

[vetsoapfan]

 

Me too. I miss the real TGL. Not what it became in its final years, but what it was for the first several decades of existence.

 

 

Yes, the Dobsons' best work was on this show. I would say that the audience was quite lucky with TGL; it had an amazingly long stretch of continuous quality storytelling, lasting into the early 1980s. It's too bad that a great deal of the awful final years survive, but many of the material from the halcyon years is lost. 

[DRW50]

 

I still miss GL. For me ATWT was the head and GL was the heart - probably why I kept trying with GL even though it deeply betrayed me as a fan in ways ATWT never quite did. 

 

I guess for Irna it was more the opposite, but she created something special in GL, and Agnes Nixon then went on to make the crude but likeable stereotypes into real people. 

 

Even today I still wish it could come back, I still think it would be viable. I know it's for the best it's gone and had a passable ending compared to many soaps in recent years, but I still feel like the characters are out there, wondering where we are. 

Edited January 27, 2017 by DRW50

[vetsoapfan]

 

Of all the cancelled soaps I have watched and loved, TGL is the one that had the firmest grasp on my heart, and the one I wish would come back. Yes, it's probably for the best that it is dead, because watching it get hacked to pieces over its final few decades was painful to endure, but in the right hands and structured well, I do fantasize about Springfield living on! I'd kill to see the Bauers having coffee in their kitchen again.

[Vee]

I think if CBS All Access is to succeed it could do well there just as other soaps could on Netflix, etc. The Degrassi model works and I've talked about how our soaps could easily adapt. The OLTL/AMC potential seasonal model is what Degrassi, etc. follow now. We've talked about how to continue it, too. GL is a unique and historical CBS brand.

[Mitch]

The actor who played Stefano on Days died in December, and yesterday they had a tribute for him, by having old footage of the actor in character in jail, while his various victims over the years come and confront him. At the end, after everyone is gathered and talking about what happens next, we see that he escaped his cell, as per usual (I would preferred they also have him leave a note per Hannibal Lecture "I have no intention of returning to call on all of you good people again, I trust you will do me the same honor..I am on to new horizons...as the Phoenix Always Rises!!!")

 

It was a nice tribute...do you think that GL could have done something like that with Roger/Zaz. a last confrontation with Holly, Blake, Ed, Alex and Alan? Then of course Roger has again escaped.

 

A what could have been if PG and MADD that freaking old cow, had some class and cared.

[zanereed]

They should have at least allowed Zaz to come back to film some final scenes with Holly and Blake. At the very least those two, at least to give some sort of closure to the character. I would have been fine for them to write in the ALS. I didn't even think Roger would need to escape Springfield. I think he could have died in real time, but still had an impact for years to come in Springfield, thanks in part to Roger's will which could have instigated tons of storylines.

 

The problem is that TGL is not a CBS brand, it's a Proctor & Gamble brand, and it seems like P & G has zero interest in doing anything with that brand. I'm guessing they don't/won't even care to ever license it.

[DRW50]

The other woman in this ad looks so familiar. Does anyone know who she is?

 

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[vetsoapfan]

Could it be Marian Mercer? The video is pretty fuzzy, but it sounds and looks like her.

[DRW50]

It does look a bit like her. I'm not sure though. I keep thinking she was on SFT for some reason...like maybe one of the Pattis. 

[Paul Raven]

Just reading that between 1987 and 88 GL's clearance rate went from 99% to 93% which directly impacted the ratings going from the 7's down to the 5s.

 

[NothinButAttitude]

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Yes, Bridget. Get Julie's ass together! Putting things into perspective, so odd now that Nola's niece was in a huge triangle much like she was. I wonder if the two laughed over this.

[Mitch]

I loved Bridget...I liked that she was a normal looking underdog with spunk and never the romantic heroine. I wonder what she and Rick would have been like together and she could have taken over Mo's place with a side of sass.  I hated when they regressed her and made Dinah the dullest and most annoying romantic heroine (I loved Moniz as the skinny bitch he played so well) and had Bridge contemplating plastic surgery..I remember her scene with Roger and Zaz played it against what they wrote and somehow he made Rog be fatherly and kind to her in that scene. You could tell both actors worked together to fight the writing in that scene.