Guiding Light discussion thread

[Paul Raven]

Carl,i was referring to Bill's first death in 68.

Browne had to write around Pat Falken Smith's short stint,which in turn came about after Marland leaving suddenly so there was a lot of turmoil.

From SOD synopses at the time it seemed like the show concentrated on one or two stories and everything else was filler.

[DRW50]

Was Irna still involved in any writing decisions by 1968?

I know that from some Margie Impert interview you deduced that they had to kill Bill off quickly because Ed Bryce bought out his contract.

[Mitch]

Disagree with you about the Bauers under Marland, they were very much front and center. Mike had his own stories being Mr. Law and Order and chasing after Roger's trail and then butting heads with Alan, being involved with Elizabeth, Amanda, Morgan and whatever Amanda's boring mother was, etc. Bert was THE matriach of the town (Bea didnt come close) Ed became involved with Maureen and got a step son in Kelly, etc. The Reardons were first introduced as just Bea and Nola, and then Tony and later Maureen (who became involved with Ed..) They actually were brought at a much slower rate then the Snyders were on ATWT and they had a stronger connection to the Bauers then the Snyders ever did to the Hughes family.

We never know if Marland planned on bringing H.B and Billy to the show, but Josh he definatley put on canvas. I think the uproar about the Lewis family was that they simply took over the whole damn show, and they were such, at first glance a rip off of Dallas, etc. (and I love me original recipe H.B. that "old coot"!!) and then we had Kyle and his hooker mom, etc.

What I think was the real problem was not as much the intro of the Lewis but the whole change of tone of the show, Long's first couple of years was warm and old school GL even with the intro of the new characters. After the summer of 84 the show got darker and colder and nastier. Phillip's recast was not only wrong but written as a cold amoral ahole, with no more interactions with Rick and Mindy, the show focused exculisivley on Reva and her big ass 80s shoulder pads, the Lewis family (Van stood around like a dish mop and let Billy dominate) and the addition to Reva's sister Roxie, who yes, was a ex-whore. Then we had the record producer and Infinity crap (which may or may not have been Long.) The death of Charita which was preceded by the exit of both Mike, Hope and Hillary really made the show into a new unpleasent show. I have no doubt they would not have killed Hillary if they new Charita was that sick but she would have stil been gone (and she was a weird character anyway, played by that butch actress.)

But I do agree that Long's version of the show and her writing was much warmer and in a way, a better fit then Marland's icy tone. That is why I dont know where things went wrong and have to agree with you that it must have been the network. Long's work up to the fall of 84 was my favorite era of GL, all the families were equally prominent and bounced off of each other, familes were strong as were realistic friendships. I do know that she planned on having Bert and H.B. together, which would have been great, but because of her illness paired him with Reva (my fave of Reva's couplings, Josh and Kyle who, give me that old coot!) and on her second tenure planned on bringing back Aunt Meta, but I think it was derailed with her Reva obsession and she gave her a mother...(The Sara actress would have made a great Aunt Meta.) etc.

[Mitch]

Do agree never like Bea...she should have been much more like Rachel's mom on AW, a tough old bird. Disagree on Tony Reardon, played by total hottie GB, but then I may just remember him mostly from Long's time, where he was a nice, smart, tough but loving (and very sexy) guy. Still feel that her Harley and Frank were ripoffs of Nola and Tony.

Which brings up a good point, Long was probably one of the best soap writers when it came to the men on the show. The guys were real, and masculine and strong and vunerable and conflicted at the same time. They actually had friendships with other men which was real (the Phllip/Rick friendship is one of the most realistic examples of two guys who grew up together and love each I have really seen on any TV show, but there was the Ed/Ross, Billy/Hamp, etc.) They were not just props for the females to bounce off of. I think Marland was one of the worst writers for men in soaps, they were either, boring uptight good guys ( the recast Tom Hughes) cold manipulative busineess men, (invariably changed by the love of a woman, and turned into boring heroes, i.e Ross Marler) or gay fanstasy pin up j/o material, (Holden and the endless stable boys, guys in tight jeans, thing.)

I have always said my dream team up would have been Marland and Long, he would have brought a love for history, complex storytelling, and stories that made sense while she would have brought the warmth, sex, humor and occaisonally OTT that he lacked.

[saynotoursoap]

Paul, I am not sure which writer(s) disposed of Bill. Although family members watched TGL, I did not. The NBC soaps were my shows in the late 60s, and I preferred CBS' house soaps over the P&G ones. I became interested in ATWT in 1972. GL was something I watched very sporadically from 1974-76. It became a regular program for me in 1977. Although it was the last of the venerable P&G soaps to capture my attention; ironically, it became my favorite and the only one I watched consistently until its demise.

The story with Bill was confusing. I knew that he had been "killed off" in 1969. When he returned, the story began with the arrival of Hillary. Hillary was Hillary Kincaid. She referred to her mother and stepfather, who lived in Vancouver. Simultaenously, the Bauers began to reference their late patriarch Bill. When he had been mentioned three times in the space of a week or two, it was obvious to me where the story was leading.

Hillary had a close relationship with her stepfather Bill Moray, because he had married her mother when Hillary was still a child. I believe that it was stated that Bill had been gone for ten years (though it was eight in real time). Hillary's biological father Victor Kincaid had been killed shortly before Simone married Bill, and Hillary attached herself to her new stepfather, who was very loving and kind. For a few weeks, Bill was shown on camera in phone calls with Hillary, but Ed Bryce had a beard, and he was always shot at an angle or shadowed so that the audience could not fully see his face, which was another giveaway as to his identity.

After Bill had been revealed to the audience, Mike flew to Vancouver to confront him, because at that point, the circumstances of how he came to be alive after the plane crash and why he did not contact the family had not been disclosed. The Dobsons played every aspect of it as a mystery, which totally hooked me. If my memory is not failing me, the eventual explanation was that Bill had never been on the Alaskan airline. The Dobsons somewhat retconned history by having it turn out that Bill and Hillary's mother Simone had been lovers for many years. Bill was leading a double life with two families. He used the Alaskan trip as an excuse to spend time with Simone and their family. When the plane crash was announced, Bill saw an opportunity to close his unhappy life in Springfield and stay with the family that made him happiest. Having not watched GL in the 60s and 70s, I did not notice how the plot might have been implausible due to established history (did Bill really have two families and also carry on with Maggie Scott?).

But, the story did not end there. Bill had not been completely honest, even in his confession to Mike. It was later revealed that Bill had accidentally killed Victor Kincaid. Kincaid knew about the affair, that Bill had fathered Hillary, and that he had another family in America. He used that to blackmail Bill, and in a physical confrontation, Kincaid fell, hit his head, and died. Bill was to go on trial for murder, but as the result of intensely negative viewer reaction, the story was truncated. Discrepancies were noted in the autopsy report that contradicted Bill's account of the death. Kincaid had actually been murdered by someone else. Hillary learned that Bill loved her so much because he was her real father. It was at that point that she had her name legally changed to Bauer, and Bill left town.

[DRW50]

I never knew about HB and Bert. That would have been interesting, especially since Bert was one of those soap heroines who never really had another relationship after her husband's death.

[DRW50]

Thank you, saynotoursoap, for the recap of Bill's story. All I know about it is that Bill revealed his identity, accidentally, at some man of the year awards ceremony for Mike.

I honestly don't understand why viewers had such a negative reaction, based on what I know of Bill and Bert's marriage. I guess you had to be there.

I love all this talk about the show's history from you and Mitch - it sounds like it must have been so riveting to watch at the time, good and bad.

This episode has been around over and over but not sure if the full version has been put up before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9fbiNAGq0I

[rlj]

Who was in charge when Amanda came back in 87? That Amanda was cool as well, and I liked her short hair and her playing the paino again.

[saynotoursoap]

I agree, Carl, but as I stated, I was not a fan in the 50s and 60s; therefore, I did not possess the same emotional investment that others did. As a relative newcomer to Springfield, I enjoyed the story very much and was unhappy to see it end. It was all about the Bauers. What other soap had a 60ish matriarch caught up in a triangle between her presumed dead bigamist husband, and her new interest, a 60ish doctor? It was great.

Bill and Bert always shared such a complex relationship. Remember, in the beginning Bert was portrayed as somewhat of a shrew and nagger. Her criticism and discontent helped precipitate Bill's alcoholism.She was not the warm, fuzzy matriarch in that era. Reuniting them in the 70s could have carried the story for years with thousands of different complications, particularly since Bill betrayed the family in a way that cut to the bone. Imagine all the scenes they could have written for Charita as she experienced an array of emotions. That would have carried over to the remainder of the family. I recall that Ed was furious that he was the last to be told, and Mike had confided Bill's return to Rita months before. This caused Ed to fall off the wagon and could have a created a huge rift between brothers, similar to the one they had in the 60s. And how would each of them react to Hillary, a lovely girl who was an innocent victim? There was so much more to mine from it. I remember one interesting plot development that arose was the fact that when Bill was presumed dead in the accident, Bert received a death benefit from his insurance company and used that money to pay off the mortgage on their home. When Bill returned in 1977, the insurance company discovered what had happened, and they wanted Bert to pay back the full amount. Of course, she did not have the money. Before the plot wrapped, Bill came up with the cash for her, but it is one small example of how ingenious writers could have devised numerous complications with very strong emotional reactions. It is too bad we never had the opportunity to find out. I suppose many viewers simply could not tolerate warm, infallible, grandmotherly Bert being subjected to something as tawdry as bigamy

[DRW50]

Here's an Ed Bryce interview from an August 78 Digest.

[saynotoursoap]

In the autumn of 1982, Amanda and Mark went to Spain on business. There were Spaulding employees on an offshore oil rig, with a storm headed their way. Mark and Amanda thought they could get the jet there to collect them, but the storm picked up speed and trapped them all. This was an odd story. In my memory, it lasted for weeks, but perhaps it was only seven or eight episodes. What stands out is Kathleen Cullen's performance. I had never cared much for Amanda, particularly under Marland. The Dobsons created her as a sheltered and easily manipulated young woman. Doug changed her into a bitter, vindicative, neurotic, who severely tested my patience.

When Pat Falken Smith took over, the tone changed. However, she and Marland were very different writers. Marland had a stock of character types and situations that were perfectly suited for his storytelling, but not for for Smith's, and she didn't seem to know what to do with anything. I thought her work was excellent on Days and GH, because those serials lent themselves to her style. Her work at GL was similar to her equally disastrous work at Ryan's Hope, because both of those shows were out of her element.

With the oil rig story, though, something worked. Amanda became the caregiver and the comforter. She disregarded her inhibitions and fears and allowed herself to open up to Mark Evans, who was her stepfather. It was a very low-key event, despite the element of danger. Unlike today's soaps, where the rig would have caught fire and blown up or been hit by a tidal wave or stormed by terrorists, PFS wrote a very gentle story about two people discovering one another, and to their chagrin, falling deeply into an unexpected and very forbidden love. I thought that Amanda became a fully realized character at that point. Stronger, more confident, and a woman instead of a little girl or a victim. And, it added an interesting dynamic to the story because Jennifer had spent years attempting to gain Amanda's love and acceptance, and now Amanda had done something for which Jennifer might not be able to forgive her.

[DRW50]

That sounds like a great set of scenes. I'm sorry the show didn't do more with Kathleen Cullen's talents - she is one of those actresses who could play such a range of emotions in a subtle way, but you know exactly what she is thinking.

I do wonder if he didn't quite know what to do with the character - didn't he inherit the story of her being Alan's daughter, or did he come up with that?

The stalker story which is online is something I enjoy watching but I can't say it's a hallmark of writing or acting (the late ClassicGL went on about how hilariously campy Jennifer's brother was). That seems to be a peak of some type of Amanda bitchery.

I'm surprised at how long Eve lasted. I guess she was on for, what, a year, a year and a half, after Rita left? Even before Rita left it doesn't sound like she had a ton of story. Eve also seems to have had few ties, besides Rita of course, Ben, and Ross. I wonder why they kept her at the charity shop and didn't have her as a nurse or something along those lines.

[DRW50]

Was Falken Smith the one who created Company, and had the ballet dancer story for Tony?

I wonder if they should have kept Mark around.

[saynotoursoap]

Thanks for this article, Carl. I had not read this. Considering Ed Bryce's apparent ambivalence toward the story, I wonder if this also played a part in the story being resolved so quickly. I had never really considered it before, but it was quite bold for the Dobsons to create a story in which Bill's actions were indefensible. It was unusual for that era, but then again, the Dobsons were unusual writers.

[Mitch]

This was also the start of turning Van into something other then Tracy Quatermaine of GL. Everyone was gone and reporters rush the Spaulding Offices and Van is told she has to make a statement for the company (I know, kind of stupid that an international conglomerate wouldnt have an entire P.R. Staff on crisis managment, but this was Spaudling, which seemed to have no jobs but "Vice Presidents," and CEO and about three people worked there.) Anyway a reporter asks Van how she can feel for all of the women who lost husbands and family members to the tradegy since she is rich, and an executive, and Van looks at the camera and says, "Because I am a woman too."