Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[China Jones]

Another World's MacKenzie Cory is that type of character. I'm pretty sure a recast wouldn't have been able to play Mac with the same and warmth and charisma as Douglass Watson did.  

[Contessa Donatella]

Another good example of the problem "putting that theory into practice"! 

[SoapDope]

Selby Flats sounds similar to Yucca Flat where all the nuclear testing was done....LOL

Going back to the late 70's again....why was Janet Grey( Eve) kept on the show as long as she was ? Everyone in the youtube comments complain at how awful she was as an actress. They also kept Katie around for years even though she never had story. Lainie Marler other than being paralyzed and crushing on Ed never really had story and was on for about 3 years. 

[Khan]

My guess is that P&G had decided that GL's locale needed to be returned to the midwest in order to appeal more to viewers who lived in middle America.  After all, the only reason why the show's locale had been changed to Selby Flats, CA, in the first place was because production itself had been relocated to CA for a period of time in the '40's.  Otherwise, GL's locale might have remained Five Points forever.

I can see the sign now: "Welcome to Selby Flats - Ugly Name, Beautiful Town!".

[DRW50]

I don't think Janet is bad at all - she seems very quiet and intelligent to me when she isn't in the high drama moments (admittedly I have not seen any of the period where she is a leading lady). I think they probably kept her on as long as they did because Rita needed the support, and maybe because of her ties to Ross. She only lasted about a year without Rita, didn't she?

I didn't think Lainie was on that long. I thought she was on for a year or two and then written out, aside from a guest appearance when Jackie went to stay with her. 

Katie was probably kept on because viewers liked her - Denise Pence mentioned Katie and Floyd being the first comic relief characters GL had.

[Khan]

Another actor might have played Mac Cory either as an old, greedy letch or a domineering tyrant.

[Mona Kane Croft]

The first actor to play Mac (Robert Emhardt) did play him as a bit of an old  domineering tyrant.  But we didn't get to know his version of the character well enough to find out if he was also a letch.  LOL.

I believe it was probably Agnes Nixon who wanted to change the locale. By the mid-1960s nearly all the existing soaps were located in small fictional midwestern towns with little identification to a specific state.  So GL's California location may have seemed too exotic for Nixon to spin the kind of tales she wanted to tell.  And her later creations seem to support that she was more comfortable placing her soaps in small midwestern (or eastern) towns.  

And regarding "dealing with issues about living in an LA suburb" -- a couple of years ago on another message board or Facebook group, I asked if GL's California location was often reflected in the scripts. I was surprised when several posters responded, "yes".  They said scripts often mentioned things like the weather, traffic, and other issues that did reflect a California vibe. I wish I could remember more of the examples the other posters listed. But several agreed that California was not ignored on GL as just some benign locale unworthy of note.  Being very young in the mid-60s, although I did occasionally see episodes of GL, I wasn't paying attention to such specifics.  

Edited January 6, 2024 by Mona Kane Croft

[Khan]

I know that L.A. itself played a crucial role in the storyline where little Mike Bauer, upset about all the attention being given toward his newborn baby brother, "Billy," ran away from home.  IIRC, they searched for Mike in several, well-known parts of the city before finding him in (I think?) Griffith Park.

Edited January 6, 2024 by Khan

[kalbir]

This makes no sense to me. One would think P&G would be happy that one of their shows was CBS's highest-rated soap.

[SoapDope]

I usually skip most Eve scenes anyway, but youtube commenters rip her apart calling her mush mouth, stupid etc...they also bring up her bad hair do's and dye jobs. 

I like Katie OK.....Floyd I can only handle in small doses. The Lainie character was kind of a nothing burger. Maybe if they hired a spitfire actress, the character could have become a major character like Justin and Ross and drove story. 

[Khan]

You have to take what Bridget Dobson tells others with a tremendous grain of salt.  I love her and think she is a brilliant writer and person, but I'm also well aware that the lady has issues.

More than likely, P&G saw how the Dobsons had modernized GL and felt they could do the same for ATWT, regardless of where each soap placed in the ratings.

[Mona Kane Croft]

That's interesting.  I had no idea about that.  Do you (or anyone else) remember when "outdoor" sets were created in the studio, did they include set items like palm tress and other outdoorsy things that one might identify with southern California? 

[SoapDope]

That was what Bridget Dobson said in an interview I read online. I was puzzled by that too. It's like they were competing against themselves. She said P&G thought of ATWT as the tentpole show or something like that. 

Here is a sample of the interview:

 

Needless to say, P&G was happy to have GL the number one rated soap.  But there was a problem:  it was never anticipated that GL would or could be number one. ATWT was supposed to be #1 because of the way it was positioned in the line up, because of its time slot. It was to be the tent-pole, the lynch-pin. Years of research (and decades of storytelling) supported this.  Guiding Light was, at best, supposed to be #2, in part due to trickle-down ratings theory.  By bringing GL to #1 we had unwittingly sowed chaos in the corporate world.  And GL was #1 for months.  Executives were tearing their hair, but being careful not to let the Dobsons know of their concerns (except retrospectively).  We were popping champagne corks and they were drinking hemlock .  

[Franko]

I'm wondering if the preparation for and aftermath of the hour expansion had something to do with the number of less celebrated Dobsons era characters. Perhaps there was a "introduce them and we'll see if they'll end up mattering" approach. Of course, the problem is when you wind up with bloated ensembles, which happened to quite a few shows by the '80s. I'll never forget seeing that MASSIVE 1982 All My Children cast picture.

Edited January 6, 2024 by Franko

[Khan]

According to Wisner Washam's We Love Soaps interview, he wouldn't agree to stay with AMC when the network expanded it to an hour unless they agreed to double the number of sets and characters.

About the only story that Bridget Dobson has told that I believe to be 100% accurate is why her parents initially were reluctant to let her write for GH.  Dobson says the Hursleys wouldn't let her do it, because they thought she was a "party girl" and that her sister, Deborah, was more responsible than she.  That's probably true. 

Of course, when they finally gave her the chance and she (Bridget) proved she had inherited Frank and Doris' storytelling abilities, they probably were beside themselves.  Hence, their (alleged) reluctance to watch any of her and her husband's work.