Guiding Light discussion thread

[DRW50]

I don't know. I know Chris left, due to illness, several months before he passed on...I think it may have been worse with Zimmerman because he had not come and gone, as Bernau had done several times. But then Zimmerman was a recast, and the role was successfully recast, with Tony Call, so who knows. I know that Alan was successfully recast too, but that was much later on (about 5 years), and the initial recast didn't seem very popular.

[soapfan770]

Ah thanks. The back to back deaths must have been rough especially with both Zimmermann and Getz being stars. The WOST site had ATWT closing credits from September 1972 with Getz, Don Stewart, Elissa Leeds, and Charita Bauer announcing GL's new time-slot, I wonder if that has made it to Youtube. Very bittersweet to listen to.

Actually I've always been mistaken about Bernau's death as I though it was the summer of '88 when according to the synopses I've read Alan just slipped out of town out of the blue only to be found several months later in Mexico(and played by Pilon) by Reva.

[SFK]

I remember that!

[soapfan770]

I'm glad you do because now I'm looking up and down for it to no avail unfortunately. I don't believe I've ever seen someone discuss their stage work coming out of a shower before.

[Paul Raven]

The faces of Ed Bauer. Mart Hulswit was very cute around this time.He didn't age well.i have to say.

Edited July 14, 2011 by Paul Raven

[DRW50]

I didn't realize Bob was on the show late enough to be on one of these magazines.

I thought Mart still looked pretty good even when he was fired, but I guess he did age quite a bit later on.

[Paul Raven]

Bob was on 66-69.

[Mitch]

How long did Gentry reprise the role under Rauch? I thought it was a smart move to bring back the original adult Ed since Simon wouldnt come back, I wonder why it didnt work? I do remember they had almost no story for him but in typical E & B fashion, little scenes they had hinted at something that could be interesting but they were caught up in their BIG Reva story, which was Faux Annie at that time. I remember a little scene during Abby's trial that they had Rick, Abby, Chele, Jesse and Ed all out to dinner at the Towers and then Alan walks in "A room full of Bauers, enough to destroy the appetite!" LOL...like old times briefly and alas, one of the last times we would see the entire Bauer Family on the show at that time have a together family scene. Never bought the Buzz/Alan fued, it should have always been Ed and Alan and the whole mob thing would have been more dramatic with Ed facing off with Carmen (I did like one scene when Simon came back and he is talking to Carmen warning her off Chele,"I learned a great many things on how to physcially torture the human body without leaving any marks, I think you should consider that before you ever think of coming near my daughter again." Good scene with a look of "I am NOT [!@#$%^&*] with him," on Carmen's smug face.

[DRW50]

I only remember him playing Ed for a few months in late 1997, although it could have been longer. He had the feud with Jesse and Jesse's father.

When I watch the few clips of the old days over again I really wish they'd found a way to keep Milette Alexander on the show. They obviously were pruning "old" characters, but Milette was quite beautiful, and she was a good mentor figure for troubled, younger female characters. I can see her trying to deal with out of control Nola, Reva, etc. TJ also could have had story with the age group Nola/Floyd/etc. and expanded to other groups.

Here's one of those "good luck seeing that on a soap today" scenes where Rita talks about faking it.

Edited July 14, 2011 by CarlD2

[Mitch]

Forgot about him and Jesse's dad having that thing. It was kind of a good story, Jesse's mom dies on Ed's table, and Ed donates Mo's heart to save Jesse, but in typical E & B, it just never came together. Its too bad that they had that really bad actor in the role of Jesse(I never had found him hot at all either) and they could have filled the family out with other siblings, etc to give SF a new blue collar family to unsurp the Coopers, (who had become way middle class,) just like the Coopers supplanted the Reardon's. A hot vixen sister for Jesse to go after Bill Lewis much like a young Nola, and much to the consternation of Vanessa, who would bring out Van's old snobbiness, cuasing problems for Matt, which could lead him into Beth's bed...that would have been more character motivated then what happened admist the clones and the Faux Annie's and the Nursery Rhyme stalker..(I actually like the both F Annie and Nursery Rhyme stalker.) Plus a young vixen from the wrong side of the tracks would make more sense then Drew, the Californian with that bad east coast accent, and that stupid record company storyline.

Love that while the soaps are more crass and sexual now, they would never deal with an issue like this. First of all, Rita would be way too old to have sex on a soap today, and doesnt everyone know that there is hot sex happening all the time and no one has bad sex and married couples dont ahve sex anyway??? The show was so polite in talking about something like this, I think if they did it today, Rita would be a 23 year old model who would yell out, "I can't get off with Ed!" to poor Sarah. Was this the Dobson's or Marland, who loved to explore female "frigidness," on GL, what with Amanda being that way (hilarious that she came back as Toby Poser's Malibu Madame which could have actually made sense if McTavish had a brain.)

Anyway, Rita is smoking hot with that rack and that sexy smokey voice. Funny, I also found MH kind of sexy in a regular guy with some beef on him way. He looks like he could be Charita's kid. Actually found him hotter then Simon. I know that Long wanted her to come back during the Roger is alive thing, which would have been great, hooking her up with the Alan at the time instead of dumb Nadine.

Sara I could see writing out, they had plenty of older women supporting the young, like Bert and Bea, there can be too many listening ears on a soap.

[DRW50]

I think the problem I had with just Bert and Bea as ears is that you can't talk to them fully. Bert, because you have too much respect for her and are intimidated by her (I can't see Rita talking to her about sex), and Bea because, well, frankly, every time I see Bea I find her to be so very silly and squeaky that it's hard for me to believe she raised 6 kids on her own. Sara would have been a good contrast to Bert.

Lenore Kasdorf was one of the hottest women ever on daytime. My father, who rarely watches any soap, remembers her because of how good looking she was. She was also such an understated actress. She fit in perfectly with the Dobson-era, but I actually think Pam Long would have done a great job with her too. She seems like a Long-style character.

It was the Dobsons who had a lot of the sexual frigidity stories - Amanda, Rita.

I was going to ask you if you remember Maureen spending any time with Nola in Nola's last year on the show? I was watching some "Quola" clips of that last year, or last 6 months anyway, and Maureen never appears once, even in family scenes with Bea, Jim, Tony, Annabelle, and Nola. I guess she must have been at Hillary's funeral but that was more because of her Bauer ties.

When Quint and Nola were leaving, did you feel like their exit was depressing? To me, having them leave based on Nola needing to commit to her husband, no matter what, even if it means giving everything else up, takes away from the mystery and fun of their earlier years. It also unwittingly sets up the broken and bitter Nola we saw later on. Then they brought Floyd in, clearly just to show he was going nuts over killing Andy Ferris. It's so depressing seeing him unable to even say goodbye to his daughter. At the time did you think Floyd was in love with Beth or that it made sense that he killed Andy?

I see Katie in some of these. Did she disappear after Floyd left or before?

[Mitch]

Nola didn't get much screen time her last year on the show at all, so I can see her not getting a lot of time with Maureen. It was stupid too, why pull Fletcher and Claire of all people into the cabin mystery and not nosy, looking for adventure and a good time Nola? I think that it was stupid and depressing to have a character like Nola leave like that. Plus, having Floyd, be the killer was just a throw off, (its like they had a mystery but didnt have a killer planned out) especially to have yet someone else be in love with Beth, when he never really had a scene with her. The show was starting to fall apart at that time, I actually think it was the weakest it was ever until Wheeler and Kriezman, with Charita sick then dying, and Simon, Stewart, the Hillary actress, Newman and Aleksander and Brown etc, all leaving, either of their own will or being fired, the sudden emergence of the Reva show, and the Lewise/Shaynes obscuring the Bauers and the Reardons and an upbrupt change of tone.

[DRW50]

I was reading an August 1986 SOD and they said Hope would be returning, but people should know she'd be different, so I guess that meant recast and personality change. But that never happened. Did they have a writer change? Was there any hint at that time of Hope coming back?

A Digest from around the time Roxy was on the way to Springfield said she was going to be paired with Phillip. That never happened, from what I have read, but were there were any hints of this onscreen?

[SamanthaKitCat]

Aleksander left in 1984 because he wanted to try Hollywood.

There was a Gail Kobe interview in a GL 50th Anniversary article in a 1987 SOD. She mentioned that Peter Simon chose to leave and they had to recast. That they told Charita when she was ill that if she ever wanted to work, they would have work for her. And that they would try to make her as comfortable as possible on the set.

She lumped Stewart, Marsha Clark (Hillary), and Elvera Roussel in the "disagreed over the direction of their character" group. However, in a "Where are they now" article in SOD from years ago, Don Stewart states that he left GL to spend more time with his daughters. That he had gotten burnt out and that there had been days when he never saw the daylight. The issue's cover features Don Stewart and other actors from that article.

Before he left, GL had: 1)the Bauer BBQ, 2) Reva's slut of Springfield speech at Billy and Vanessa's party, 3) the hospital hostage standoff with Darcy, and 4)the Founder's Day party all within a few months. So, there is a chance that he was nervous about possibly having to do more long-hours event shoots. After all, if he had stayed, Mike possibly would have defended Lujack. They were putting him in scenes with Bev before he left. They seemed to be possibly playing with the idea of a Mike, Lillian, Alexandra triangle. It could have been a combination of disagreeing over story and wanting to spend more time with his kids.

Elvera may have had an issue with Hope's alcoholism storyline.

Lisa Brown had a baby in 1984. Her real life son, James, played her son on the show. So, she would have been on maternity leave for part of that year. Years ago, I read in a book or a soap magazine (SOD or SOW) that Doug Marland had approached Lisa while she was still on GL and told her that he had created an ATWT character for her and asked her if she would be interested. Of course, she was.

Tony and Annabelle were frontburner throughout most of 1984. They may have just been giving the actors/characters a break, when Greg Beecroft announced that he planned to leave the show. Pam Long said in that 2009 podcast interview that she had wished that Greg and Lisa had stayed. But, that it was their choice to leave.

Jim Reardon was a Pam Long character.

Katie Parker - there was a news blurb in a summer 1984 SOD issue that the actress was planning on leaving GL in September. However, she was around to do Christmas 1984 scenes. Maybe they asked her to stick around for awhile longer to have her character be there for Floyd.

Floyd - He didn't intend on killing Andy. He just wanted to use the gun to scare Andy into confessing. But, when the lights went out, he was startled, and the gun had a hair-trigger. So, it was more an accident or manslaughter. 2nd degree at worst. He could have been brought back at a later time. He was trying to find a way to clear Lujack, without confessing himself. When Lujack was on the run, Floyd panicked. He was worried about what could happen to Beth and Lujack, and decided to try and force India to write a confession saying that she had killed Andy.

Phillip - He didn't hire Andy to "blow up" Lujack's club. He hired Andy to sabotage it. He thought Andy would just create building code violations to prevent it from opening. When he found out that Andy had rigged a gas explosion he was horrified and furious. He decked Andy and ran off in an attempt to stop it and/or warn people. After Phillip took Beth to Cedars, he told Andy, "This wasn't a war, the stakes weren't that high!" He also refused to pay Andy (which resulted in the infamous blackmail tape that various people were looking for).

Ross - during the Pam Long years - Had the relationship with Trish. The various battles with Alan (and later Roger). Was a parental figure to Phillip (and later Samantha). Helped Alex find Lujack. Was named President of Spaulding Enterprises. Gave Gina a place to live for awhile. Calla was brought on for him. Had to deal with the idea that his daughter was dating the son of his worst enemy (At that time it was Dinah dating A-M). Then later on, he dated Nadine and Holly.

Rick and A-M were two popular characters that were heavily developed/co-developed by Pam Long. So, I disagree with those that say that she didn't do anything to strengthen the Bauer family. She created their personalities, if not the actual characters themselves. Plus, she created a new Bauer in Michelle.

She tied both Rick and Johnny to Roxie. In 1985, they had Ed, Mo, Fletcher, and Claire down in a war zone. With Ed sleeping with Claire. Mo and Fletcher had a radio show together. Ed was accused of murder. Fletcher helped clear him. Mo found out about the affair. Rick was dealing with his relationship with Roxie, her disappearance, medical school, etc. Michelle was born. Mo was trying to deal with it all. etc.

In 1989 - Ed and Mo fought over Fletcher. There were some great scenes between those three from around A-M and Harley's wedding. They referenced the past (from 1985) in the scenes. Ed and Mo broke up. Ed got involved with Holly. Roger returned. Mo became friends with Roger which shocked Ed. Ed and Mo got back together. There was the conclusion to the big Rick/Phillip/Meredith story and the aftermath. Months later, Rick had to deal with his best friend seemingly going off the deep end, only to discover that Beth was actually still alive. Got involved with Ray (1989 or 1990), Chelsea's friend and eventual stalker.

The Bauers were the "fun" core family under Long (and maybe also under Curlee and Demorest). Partly because of MOL's and Peter Simon's ability to do comedic scenes. As well as, all those Bauer BBQs. The focus group that found Mo "boring" may not have found the Long era Mo boring.

Jay Hammer's character heavily interacted with the Bauer and Reardon families for his first two years on the show. To me, that points to her valuing those characters to some degree.

[rcsnj]

Lisa Brown left Guiding Light around April 1985, a good six months before Marland took over as head writer of World Turns. I believe Marland was still at Loving at that time, so I'm not so sure about the mag's claim that Marland had created the ATWT role for her while she was still on Light. Also, Nola gave birth to AJ in May. Brown was back on screen in late June when the show introduced the Jonathan Brooks character. The cottage mystery was only about a month old so the show could have integrated Nola into that plot.