Guiding Light Discussion Thread

[Contessa Donatella]

So funny. Love being reminded. And he wrote GH as a scab for her!

[Sapounopera]

Kelly/Morgan/Josh could become the Scotty/Laura/Luke version he never got to write. With Luke dying at the end if I remember correctly.
Marland loved Geraldine Court, he even wanted her as Ann on Loving. In some ways Jennifer was a Lucinda type, but I suspect that he would want her to marry Mike and make them the couple Bob & Kim became on ATWT.
I doubt Don Stewart would want such a thing though.

Edited August 17, 2024 by Sapounopera

[DRW50]

So she turned down the Ann role? 

I would have liked to have seen Jennifer with some fire in her. 

I can see the comparisons between the two triangles now that you mention it, even if Morgan just wasn't interesting after the recast.

[Sapounopera]

I read that TPTB didn't want actors who were on another soap shortly before Loving. 

New Morgan was indeed very bland, another generic blonde girl. 

[DRW50]

Thanks. I suppose I can see their reasons but it's not as if Court was a huge part of GL. She would have done a decent job as Ann.

[Sapounopera]

I adore Geraldine Court, but I loved Shannon Eubanks's regal Ann lol.

[DRW50]

I haven't seen a lot of Eubanks. I've mostly seen Callan White, who is...fine.

[Mitch64]

Pam Long said in an interview that he had Monty's pic on the bottom of the toilet and she said, "Douglas, you need to let some things go!" She also said he would serve dinner in a velvet dinner jacket but would grab a rifle to shoot it off his patio..so DM was more interesting then we thought!

[DRW50]

I'd never heard the story about the rifle. Thanks.

He was clearly a very controlled writer as so much of this never bled onto the page (although I do think those last ATWT years seemed to reflect him).

[Mona Kane Croft]

This is another example of "it's nearly impossible to successfully replace a soap opera ingenue".  Think about all the failed attempts at replacing an ingenue -- Alice Frame, Tara Martin, Nina Courtlandt, Lily Walsh, Lily Winters, Mary Ryan (although Mary was not a traditional ingenue), and Morgan. There are more, but they aren't coming to mind. Either the original actress returns, or the character leaves the show.    

[Paul Raven]

They admitted at the time that they went for a pretty face over talent when recasting Morgan.

Really Jennifer Cooke bore no resemblance to Kristen Vigard in any way.

Morgan was not your generic blond ingenue but that's what they went for to chase the young demo.

[Contessa Donatella]

Mary Page Kellar

And, also when Betty Rea was looking for a Morgan she found Lisa Brown who she knew couldn't possibly be Morgan but she told herself someone is going to snap up this girl, so with no job for her she hired her anyway. 

Edited August 17, 2024 by Contessa Donatella

[DRW50]

Considering Kirsten was only on for a year, they could have managed (Y&R did with Lily, and ATWT managed to successfully replace Lucy Deakins), but they just went with a route that had nothing to do with what made the character work or what would impress viewers. I think they decided that Morgan was just the goody goody to Nola's baddie, when it hadn't been so simple.

And as was often the case with soaps, they didn't even know what the young demo would want to see. Cooke did get better toward the end, but for the time she was at the center of story, she was bland and forgettable. Even many of the young women cast in horror movies or T&A comedies of the era had more personality.

[Mona Kane Croft]

I believe you are correct both specifically and in a more general sense.  One of the biggest (perhaps THE biggest) mistakes soap operas made in the 1980s through 2000s was to ask the audience what they wanted, and then tried to give it to them.  The problem was/is, what the audience wants does not often make for compelling drama or convincing acting.  For example, the audience always wants the long-suffering romantic couple to find happiness.  Well, happiness on soap operas gets boring really fast.  The younger audience often says they want young beautiful characters, but that does not always lead to strong acting -- again, bad in the long-term.  So rather than asking the audience what they wanted to see, the genre should have found a way to measure what the audience will watch -- what they will find compelling.  

For example, when I was a teenager (in the mid-1970s) I was hooked on Another World.  I almost never missed an episode.  I was certainly addicted.  But on the other hand, I complained that the show was rather boring and nothing ever happened. I wanted AW to have normal soap opera plots like ATWT or AMC.  But, I was not hooked on ATWT or AMC, I was hooked on Another World -- a show that I thought was boring.  LOL.   So, I did not know what I would watch (or find compelling), I only knew what I thought I wanted.  Not sure I'm making sense.  

But my point is, asking the audience what they like or what they want is a very poor way to make decisions about a soap opera (or any form of art), in my opinion.  Successful soaps give the audience what they will watch, not what they say they want.  

Edited August 17, 2024 by Mona Kane Croft

[Mitch64]

I'm just thinking about Long and Marland being friends...or at least friendly. I did see them on a talk show and Marland was very complimentary and vice versa to her. But such different writers and I wonder did he ever ask her, "Uh, Reva Shayne over Nola Reardon, and what did you do to the Bauers and the reset of my creations..Vanessa is a dowdy housewife?"