Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

Bev at her best!

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[DRW50]

1992 Christmas party

[ClassicSoapsFan]

I gotta say that 1995 Christmas had some awkward moments. Roger inviting Hart over with Dinah there and Hart coming over to give Peter a present. Actually both awkward moments had to do with Hart. But I loved the clips of Bert/Charita Bauer and Ed looking at them about to tear up and Michelle saying "I love you, Dad" afterwards.

I might be wrong for saying this but the part where Josh is saying "WALK DAMMIT" makes me laugh. I know you are suppose to feel his frustration but that came off as hammy more than anything. But after that with Bert talking to him was so touching.

[DRW50]

August 1952 Radio TV Mirror

[DRW50]

into my last month, I really did forget completely, from time to time. It no longer mattered. There were more urgent things, more exciting things, to think about than that old wound. And Bill perked up correspondingly. I suppose several weeks went by without a single quarrel. We didn't even argue when he told me, one Thursday at breakfast, that he had to fly to San Francisco on business over the weekend.

"Short notice, Bill," I said. "is it something important?"

"Well, sure, or I wouldn't leave you alone right now. Um - I'll tell you about it when it's settled. I hate to go, Bert. Did the doctor really say it might be any time now?"

I smiled at his troubled face. "Really, I couldn't feel better. And if anything happens - even if I feel lonesome - I'll just call somebody to come over. Your sister Meta, maybe."

"Well..." Bill said uncertainly. "Be sure you call Meta, honey." He kissed me quickly and hurried off.

Such concern, I thought as I went about the morning routine. Such fatherly, husbandly concern. It was nice, though. Everything was nice, these days. The way the little house - and not so little, either, I thought proudly - shone and gleamed. All at once I began to laugh, realizing that I'd been talking busily out loud for the past five minutes. I would call Meta, I decided. Calm as you might be in the last few days, I guess you are never as calm as you think. I could use Meta's lovely face across the table, and her wonderful figure as an inspiration to get busy on my own the minute the baby was born.

As it turned out, it was lucky I did call her, for the very next morning I woke up feeling queer, and by afternoon, sitting in the living room watching the desk clock, we decided it was time to call the doctor and get me to the Selby Flats Hospital. The next thing, I was fully awake and Meta was leaning over me, whispering, "Bert? Bert! It's the most wonderful boy!"

Dimly I answered her smile, but I wasn't satisfied. The father, I thought hazily, ought to be the one...Then, behind Meta, I did see Bill, his eyes blazing with joy as he pushed her aside. But, even as I met his kiss, the small dissatisfaction remained. He should have been there all along. His should have been the first face I saw. Falling slowly, softly into sleep, the thought came with me. No matter what, Bill shouldn't have left me alone.

I woke up to a sunshiny new world, a room full of flowers, and an indescribable feeling of calm, but eager, expectancy. I remembered the dissatisfaction, but I no longer felt it. Who cared? What mattered was that the baby was fine - the recollections of the last few hours were creeping back now and I remembered the doctor's voice in the delivery room, making a satisfied comment to the nurse.

A perfect baby. Relief and gratitude flooded over me as, a little later, the nurse brought him in for feeding. In about twenty minutes, the nurse came back, took the sleeping baby, and left me a folded morning paper in his place. I was too drowsy to do more than glance at the front page. But after lunch I suddenly felt restless. How quickly one's strength came back! It was a miracle, really, the whole complex business...

I sighed, fidgeted, and took up the paper. From habit I turned to the theatrical page, and followed with mild interest the activities I felt I ought to keep up with for Bill's sake. The television and radio news. I glanced down the column and was about to turn the page when my eye picked up the name of Bill's agency. And then I read the paragraph in which it appeared...and gasped, and read it again, and then sat, stunned and numb, while my mind took it in. Instinct forced me to breathe deeply, to relax. But long after my heart slowed down and my face lost its furious warmth, my thoughts went clicking along in a tight, angry rhythm. So that was it. So that was why he went to San Francisco - why he couldn't be here when his son was born. Once again she was dividing him from us...

I took some trouble to be in good shape by the time Bill came in. I spent quite a time with a mirror and some make-up, because I'd learned long ago that a woman had to go into battle looking her best if she hoped to win. And this, I foresaw, was going to be quite a battle.

Nothing could have been more disarming than Bill's dazed happiness, or the armful of magazines and candy and flowers he spilled lavishly on the bed. He kissed me, and then stood back and shook his head.

"Gosh, it's a funny feeling. Isn't it? They let me look at him, through the nursery window. I saw him - he's real. Bert, honestly, can you believe it?"

"Well, yes," I said. I folded my hands on the sheet. "I had him, remember? That makes it easier, when you've been right there with the event, as it were. Oh, thanks, for the flowers and candy and things."

"Don't thank me, Bert. Don't thank me for anything. There's nothing I -" he hesitated. "Sounds corny. But oh, Bert, do you feel the way I do, that everything is different as of now? We're different. We'll be better. Stronger. Smarter, too. I feel as if I could get hold of the moon, if it would do you and the baby any good to have it. We're going to have everything, Bert, and do everything and be everything...just for him."

I let him take my hand. For a minute I was really joined with him. He did love us. We were his family. No other feeling could ever be quite like that. Bill was ours. This other thing was outside, it didn't matter. But my hand stiffened of itself, and I drew it away. It did matter. I said quietly, "This is really your big weekend, isn't it? Two important events..."

"Two?" He frowned, and then he stiffened, too. "I get it. You've seen the paper, I take it? You know. I was going to tell you, Bert, just as soon as I - but I couldn't find the right words. I had a feeling it would be hard to get you to understand."

"But why?" I didn't feel angry, I wouldn't let myself. But my voice took on an edge that even I could hear, and it pleased me to see Bill wincing under it. "Why hard? Just because your agency has sold a program to an important sponsor? Just because it was you who sold it, who - gave birth to it, one might say? Just because it happens to be called The Woman Gloria, and happens to star a singer you thought you were in love with a few months ago? But it's nothing, Bill. Nothing at all. It hardly matters in the least that your own wife was so deluded she thought that woman was out of your life completely. Just explain it to me, I'll understand. I'll understand it was more important to go to San Francisco to sell this woman's show than to stay here when your baby was being born - to say nothing of your having anything to do with her at all, which I haven't words to say anything about..."

Bill held his hand. "Oh, brother," he said. "Here we go again."

I felt almost sorry for him. It was a hard spot to get out of. What could he say? The plain fact was that all the time I'd been foolishly congratulating myself on how well things were going, he'd been seeing that woman, working with her, planning this show and making her career an important part of his own...and I'd thought she was out of his life forever. The bitterness I'd believed dead came rushing back and engulfed me. I could feel it, all the old humiliation and horror.

And all the time Bill talked...It was business. Nothing but business. Gloria was a good singer, she had a special quality, he'd suddenly thought of her when the client started looking for something new...The agency was aglow because it looked as if Bill had something big...

"It could mean a vice-presidency for me, Bert. You'd like that? What different does it make how I get it, if I swear it's only business?"

"Why did it have to be you who developed the show?" I said. He explained all over again that it had just happened, that Gloria's husband, a theatrical agent named Sid Harper, had talked to him about the possibility of doing something on TV just at the right time...that Sid was really responsible for building the show.

"But they wouldn't have gotten the chance except for you."

"But it's a chance for me, too. If the show goes over, and the client seems to be crazy about it, well, it could mean really big things for me. I couldn't kick that kind of chance in the face," Bill argued. "Bert, believe me, as far as I'm concerned, she and the show are a property, a - a piece of merchandise."

There was a long silence in the hospital room, as I lay back, pretending to be exhausted but really very busy behind my closed eyelids. I did believe him; if I didn't, I'd be screaming my head off and didn't, I'd be screaming my head off and talking divorce, baby or no baby. So - why not give in, quit arguing? Things had been so nice, just these few weeks past, when we'd been friends - in my stupid innocence. Let us be friends again; why fight? I didn't feel friendly; I couldn't.

That slow rebirth of tenderness, of reaching toward Bill as it had been in the early days of our marriage, that was nipped in the bud. But what was the use of fighting and yelling? Somehow, sooner or later, I'd figure out a way to get that woman and her program out of my life...somehow. But, in the meantime, I couldn't afford to waste energy in arguments.

It was a truce. Warily at first, and then with slow relief, Bill saw that I wasn't going to rant and rave. It made all our dealings much pleasanter, of course, and my days at the hospital went by in dreamy, more or less contented preoccupation. There were only two flurries...one when I insisted on calling the baby Michael...the other when I asked for a television set in the room. Bill realized I wanted it so see just one show. But he had it set up, and I watched The Woman Gloria a couple of times. Program time coincided with one of Michael's feedings, so it got scant attention after my first look at it. I got a queer flash of satisfaction the evening Bill came in and saw Gloria yapping away on the screen, with me so busy with Michael I wasn't even glancing at her. "Glad you came in - you can turn that thing off," I said casually.

"You don't want to see it? I mean -" Bill blushed, and snapped off the set quickly.

I smiled secretly over Michael's dark fuzzy head. "When you've seen it once, you've seen it, haven't you? There's nothing earth-shaking to watch for. Besides, I can't bother with anything else when Michael's around."

"Bert..." Bill hesitated. "Look, are you sure about the name? I mean - I'd sort of counted on his being Bill, Jr. Maybe Michael could be his middle name, if you like it so much." It was a plea, but I didn't let him see I knew. I had made up my mind.

"No. I gave it plenty of thought, Bill. The night you were in San Francisco it sort of came to me." I almost believed it myself, it was such a just punishment for his not being with me when he should have been. "Michael, that's what I kept thinking that night. I had no one to talk it over with, so..."

Bill flushed. "Punishing me, Bert, for something you agreed at the time I couldn't avoid? That's kind of petty, isn't it?"

"You don't think I'd be petty about a thing as important as our child's name, the one he's going to carry for the rest of his life?" I glanced away from Bill's accusing eyes. They were saying altogether too clearly: Come off it, Bert, you know what you're doing. You know you're getting back at me, and it is petty, it is mean.

The day I was allowed to leave the hospital came at last. I was terribly eager to get Michael into his own room and start making him at home there. Bill told me to call the office as soon as I knew exactly what time we'd be ready to leave, and he'd come pick us up, and Meta assured me she'd have everything ready. Bill and his secretary were both away from their desks when I called. Nurse Holt got us ready so early that there was nothing for me to do but hang around, a superfluous graduate mother, on that busy floor. Besides, there was the timing - I had to get home for Michael's next feeding or we'd be held up for hours. Anyway, there was plenty of reason for me just to get dressed, get the desk downstairs to call me a cab, and simply take Michael home myself. Plenty of good, honest reasons...except that, when Bill came storming into the house, later that afternoon, and I saw the glare of incredulous fury he gave me, I felt a stab of satisfaction that told me plainer than words what me real reason had been. A touch of shame went with it, when I realized how hurt Bill was...but I was being hurt all along, wasn't I, as long as that program was flaunted at me every evening?

"Sh-you'll wake Mike," I whispered.

"Wake Mike! I'll tear the place down," Bill said, but caught himself in the act of slamming the door and closed it quietly. "Where is he? Can I go up? Bert, I just don't get you. How could you - never mind, I want to see my son first."

He was up there so long I almost went after him, but I decided to wait and give him time to calm down. He strode in after a while and made himself a drink without offering me one, and only after he had done away with half of it did he trust himself to speak.

"Of all the rotten tricks, Bert. I wouldn't have thought it even of you." He spoke quietly, but the glass was shaking in his hand. Again I felt a vague shame, but my own sense of what was right stiffened me.

"It wasn't a trick, if you mean my coming home alone - "

"You knew what it meant to me. You know how I've been waiting all week long, planning just how it would be - how I'd roll out the red carpet, how I'd go with trumpets and drums to escort my family home. My family." Bitterness edged his voice. "How would you cheat me like this? It'll never come again, this one moment - and now I haven't had it. I haven't brought my son home."

"Well, I did call, Bill. But you weren't there, and it was getting sort of late, and really can you tell me what point there was in my hanging around - "

"Don't give me that, it makes me sick," Bill flung at me. "Excuses, double-talk, treating me like a fifth wheel. What goes on, anyway? And let me tell you another thing. I don't like this stuff about sh-sh, you'll wake the baby. If you think I'm going to put myself on a schedule and wait around to see my son as if I were one of the peasants getting his annual chance to see the squire, you're crazy. By golly he's my son, and he's going to be part of my life and I'm going to be a darn great big part of his, and if you think - "

"What have you got to complain about, Bill Bauer? After all, all I've got is this house and my baby to keep my life exciting. Aren't you being a little bit selfish to want to cut me out? After all, you've got plenty of important things to keep busy with. All your work at the agency, all those big deals with television shows and important clients..."

There was a pause. Bill stared down into his glass, finished it off, and slapped it down on a table. Silently I picked it up and polished away with my handkerchief the damp ring it left. After a while he said very quietly, "So that's it. I was fooling myself all along. i knew it. You were never big enough to mean what you said - "

"What I said? What did I say?" I challenged him. "Did I ever say I could just put it out of my mind, all this stuff with that woman? Do you think any woman could? You're not that dumb, Bill, not even you. How would you feel if there were some man who'd wanted to marry me, and I still kept him hanging around?..."

"Let's not go into it, Bert, huh?" The anger had quieted. Bill seemed more thoughtful now than anything else. He was turning something over in his mind. Into the silence, Meta's voice came from the kitchen, saying, unemotionally, "Dinner is served, if anyone cares."

Everything considered, it was a pleasant dinner in the end. Bill's effort to put aside his anger was so evident that I felt it would be smart of me to meet him halfway. There was Meta to consider, too; she was hardly a stranger, but still you don't want a third party in on all your quarrels. And then, anyway, there was Michael. His tiny presence sleeping away upstairs made everything else trivial. Both Bill and I relaxed, as the evening went on, in making plans for him, in wondering what he'd be like, in sneaking up to peer in at him, marveling. I felt so good when we went to bed that I handsomely offered to let Bill give him a nickname, since he disliked the name Michael.

"It's not that I dislike it, it's just that I wanted - oh, well, never mind that. Let's see. What did that nurse use to call him? Butch. I like that pretty well."

Butch. If that wasn't just like a man. Still...it was a small concession. I'd keep calling him Michael, and Bill could have Butch for his own.

Yes, things settled down. For the next few days, apart from Bill's rather frowning thoughtfulness, the Bauer house was everything a new infant's home ought to be, complete with doting aunt in the shape of Meta...But I knew Bill was as conscious as I that there was an open question still unsettled. I didn't know, yet, what I could do about it, but while that show went on, and while Bill was such a big factor in it, I just couldn't relax and act happy about everything.

One afternoon Bill came home early, went up to look at Michael - he always called it "playing with Butch," though, of course, the baby was too young to be played with, really - and came down again with an expression of such obvious determination that I simply stopped preparing dinner and said, "Well, come on, let's have it. I can see there's something on your mind."

Bill cleared his throat. "I don't like to bring it up, but one of us has to - "

"If it's about Gloria - person me, I mean The Woman Gloria, as on television - don't spare my feelings, Bill. You don't think it's far from my mind whether or not I talk about it, I hope."

"That's just it," Bill said. He opened the icebox, peered into it, and closed it again without getting interested in any of its contents. "I had to do something, Bert. The strain was just getting too much for me. So I - well, I've been working something out at the office and I think I've put it over. It looks pretty set that Gloria's program may go network very shortly."

I eyed him. "Well? Do you want me to write her a letter of congratulation?"

He flushed. "Please, Bert. I'm trying to explain that I've done something for you, to make you more - more - well, anyway, the point is, if it does, it'll probably mean everyone on the show goes to New York, and the show will come from there."

"Oh, Bill!" I turned away, to hide the sudden quivering of my lips. I suppose it was the measure of how far apart we'd come that I wouldn't let my husband see me crying, but something stiff and unyielding inside me kept me from showing him any softness. "That would be fine with me," I said. I added firmly, "It'll be best for everyone. You'll see - especially for you."

"It makes no different to me if it comes from New Zealand," Bill snapped. "Only I can't go on the way we've been, Bert. You're all tied up with Butch, never any time for me - sleeping in his room on that cot -"

"It's because I don't want to disturb you when I get up to feed him at night, I told you that."

"And I don't believe you. Why, even Meta's more part of this family than I am. Do you realize that? Anytime I sneak in to see my son I get dirty looks from the two of you as if I were going in to cast an evil spell -" He stopped, drew a deep breath, and went on, "Enough of that. I get the message. Things aren't going to be right around here until I shed this TV show. So okay. Bert..." He came over and forced me to look at him. "Do you see now that I'll do - anything I can to keep everything right for us? Do you believe me?"

With Bill's serious blue eyes so close, and his thin, worried face almost touching mine, I couldn't remain cold. I put my hand against his cheek, and the warmth of the gesture startled both of us. To me it was like an electric shock, for even as I touched his face it came to me how dreadfully long it had been since I had shown Bill any tenderness, or allowed him to be sweet to me. And yet I loved him; I still loved him, and I didn't really want to make him as unhappy as he'd been...I slipped my arms round his neck and kissed him. Bill and I were coming so dangerously close to having nothing, together...it musn't go that far.

He rubbed his cheek against mine, and sighed. "Oh, Bert. Let's try to be happy. We have so much."

[DRW50]

I typed out some of it as it was only a partial page and more difficult to scan. The last page was full page.

[MichaelGL]

Actually around the time this episode had aired it had been announced that Rauch was leaving. Rauch had spent much of the last half of 2002 tightening up the production values of Guiding Light; giving the show a new opening, a few new sets, and improving the lighting. By Christmas 2002, the show was pretty good looking.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

The DVD thread got me thinking about how many different and diverse eras GL's had, and how hard it must be selecting episodes to best represent the show across so many different eras.

I think what sets GL apart was enough though it was prone to many reinventions, was the fact that GL always seemed to keep a lot of its core values in tact across many of the rapid changes it was subjected to.

Unlike say ATWT, I think GL was more about community than core families per se. As long as the show had some type of community atmosphere, it could withstand whatever you threw at it, which is why I think it lasted so long.

Shows like OLTL and DAYS were also prone to constant reinventions, but unlike GL, I don't think those shows ever really kept much of their core values through it all. They kind of just went in the direction that seemed popular at the time.

[DRW50]

I agree with you - I also think GL usually excelled at writing for complex female characters who were often battling themselves as much as they were the usual cliches of finding a man, pregnancy, etc. And they had very rich dialogue and complicated relationships between characters. There's a certain basic familiarity which makes you care. I think the only time I was very alienated from that and didn't see it was in the Conboy years, and Jonathan's yelling years.

[DRW50]

73-74 Daily TV Serials

[DRW50]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_KUvVccDHs

[juppiter]

Anyone see Beth Chamberlin on SVU a couple weeks ago? She was really good, and the episode in general was one of the best in years IMO.

[DRW50]

I stopped watching that show a long time ago but I heard she was good in it. Daytime Confidential wrote it up.

[ghfan89]

TV Guide From August 1997:

HE'S DOWN BUT NOT OUT

By Michael Logan

Here's one of the wilder soap developments in memory: Guiding Light's

Michael Zaslow (Roger), who has been kept off the show for months due

to a debilitating undiagnosed illness, has been making plans to return

to work--in his old role on One Life to Live!

But fans of the beloved, Emmy-winning star shouldn't get

excited. Just as OLTL was expecting Zaslow's name on the dotted line,

his agents nixed the gig.

Zaslow caused the GL audience great concern early this year when he

began to show signs of trouble -- weight loss, slurred speech, and

facial dis-figurement that suggested he may have suffered a stroke.

For weeks he gamely remained in the role as doctors put him through a

variety of tests, but his continued deterioration became impossible to

overlook. In April, GL's production company, Procter & Gamble, asked

him to take a 13-week hiatus to focus on getting better. They replaced

him with soap vet Dennis Parlato, announcing to the press that they

fully expected Zaslow to return.

Though neither Zaslow nor his agents will comment, the star is

report-edly furious with P&G and is claiming he was fired. On June 23,

he filed a grievance with his union, the American Fed-eration of

Television & Radio Artists.

We did not fire him," says P&G day-time chief Mickey Dwyer-Dobbin. "We

asked him to take a sabbatical and, dur-ing this time, we have been

paying him a small stipend." She says that Zaslow asked to have

his disability written into the show.

But Dwyer-Dobbin says: "Roger is a powerful, active, sexual,

multicolored villain. That's who we need him to be on the GL canvas.

We do not need a wizened little old man. And that's what he would have

to play in his condition. It really hurts me to have to say that, but

all I can do is wish Michael all the best. My heart truly goes out to

him."

The actor, who may be gearing up for a whopper lawsuit and looking to

prove that he's employable, sent word to OLTL that he is eager to

work. On July 17, he met with the show's executive producer, Maxine

Levin-son, and head writer, Claire Labine, who admits they were

reduced to tears during the emotion-packed powwow. They offered him a

three-day stint as David Renaldi, the character he played from 1983 -

86. (To explain Zaslow's condition, they planned to reveal that

Renaldi had been injured in an avalanche.) Labine, who wanted Zaslow

on-air September 1, says: "We were very moved by Michael's courage and

forthrightness and his willingness to do this role." Adds Levinson:

"He feels he can be inspiring, and we quite agree."

Why Zaslow's agents killed the deal is a mystery. At one point they

told OLTL they weren't sure if he is contractually free to take the

job. But P&G has no objections. Says Dwyer-Dobbin: "We're not going to

stop him if he wants to do this ."

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Ugh, just ugh...

Maybe she has a point and no one would want to see Roger in such a debilitating state, but after all his years of service and importance to the show, they just tossed him out like garbage.

Edited December 31, 2011 by Y&RWorldTurner