Look into the past: August 1983

[Paul Raven]

Oh yes,Danny's thin voice and rockin' tude were always good for a laugh.Sad to say,but Lauren wasn't much better,although Tracey Bregman didn't claim to be a singer.

The rock concerts were lame,very much an adults view of what teens might think was hot.

Jazz was the brother of Tyrone(Phil Morris)He pined after Amy,but she only had eyes for his brother.Like many others,Jazz wasn't given a write off,he just faded from view.

Nathan began as a henchman named Kong,but again fell for Amy,who taught him to read,and he went on the straight and narrow.

Does anyone recall how Amy was written out?I have a vague memory of her suddenly re-appearing after many months offscreen and then just as quickly vanishing.

April's twin was Barbara,not Cindy.

i believe Maree Cheatham was still Stephanie at this point.

[dc11786]

I'd say Maree Cheatham was still playing Stephanie since Louise Shaffer's Rae is still listed in the synopses for August 1983. I don't believe Shaffer took over until 1984 after she was fired by Joe Hardy (?) at "Ryan's Hope." FrenchFan can correct me if I'm wrong, but I know Ellen Barrett was EP at "Search for Tomorrow" post-"Ryan's Hope" so I suspect she may have been part of the deal. "Search" became a bit "Ryan's"-lite with the McCleary clan, Big's, and various new hires with RH roots.

From what I've read and seen, I never bought Joe and Siobhan as the 'it' couple which is one of the reasons I'm sort of glad SoapNet stops where it does. Born comes off as sleazy and I never bought Siobhan taking him back after what he did. One of the soap magazines actually complimented Labine and Mayer for keeping Delia tied to the Ryans rather than branching her out. Her marriage to Roger didn't bother me, however the crap with Dan Fox and the dissolution of her marriage did. What utter bullsh#%#$! Roger and Delia fighting over ice cubes? Give me a break.

[quartermainefan]

I watched OLTL before 1983, and after 1983, but 1983 I was a freshman and too busy. Henry Slesar though is a legitimate candidate for best soap writer ever and I can't see how if he had a hand in it it could be so awful.

Reading those recaps I do remember on AMC Donna's baby dying. That was the first time I ever saw a fictional baby die I think, I felt really strange watching that. Now baby deaths are a dime a dozen on soaps. The whole Grant/Celia/Prometheus disc story was probably the most well constructed, best story from the go go 80s. It just blows modern GH out of the water with the way weeks and months would go by and the heroes and villains and plot elements remained consistent and at least intelligent by soap standards. There is an edited version of the entire thing on youtube in something like 800 clips.

Anyway back to Henry Slesar. You can take the best of his EoN stuff and it can go against anything any soap writer ever wrote. It was intelligent and asked that you pay attention, with motives and dangling plot elements picked up months later that suddenly turn out to be crucial.

[Paul Raven]

By the way Tom Ligon,best known as Lucas Prentiss on Y&R played Billy on Loving.Billy and Rita Mae were part of the original cast.

That time at AW was really the last gasp for the show.Ratings rose and the show was getting positive feedback.They brought back Jacquie Courtney as Alice,but then things fell part.

Losing Mary Page Keller as Sally and not returning the Matthews family in the wake of Alice's return were mistakes.

Look at just about every cancelled soap and the story is the same.Too many new characters at the expense of the core.If AW had have returned Iris,Dennis,maybe Mike or Marianne or Ricky Matthews to play against the Loves and McKinnons,maybe old and new fans would be intrigued.

I wonder if Pam Long and Gail Kobe had gone to AW,what would have happened?

[MarkH]

Cindy was just a random hooker, consort of Pam Warren's (Doug Davidson talks about this on Roger Newcomb's site yesterday)...but she had a chemistry with DD. She was the sweetest, most innocent hooker ever on daytime.

I liked Amber's "7 seconds to die" song debut at Indigo. But musical tastes are so splintered now, I feel it is best if they don't do the music.

I liked the concerns with Danny, only because they were so visually different from the rest of the show. They were a nice ""break". They were always a big "event" that got built up to.

I liked Jazz. I guess he was a bit "Mr. T.". It was funny how Kong-->Nathan later became upstanding and taught Dru to read. And then, sadly, how he sleazed out at the end. Imagine if SON were around then, how we'd be HOWLING about the ruination of Nathan now!

Amy also just faded. She was one of my favorite young characters from that era, and I always was upset that they didn't keep her around and build a story around her. The actress, Stephanie Williams, was on Fame reruns 2 weeks ago...I really enjoyed seeing her. She was also later wasted on GH.

The Joe and Siobahn who are now on Soapnet intrigue me. Joe is played by this musical theater guy Richard Muenz. I thought he was remarkably hot. There were some beach scenes (real location shot) recently with Siobahn and Joe...and he really had the whole package. I wonder why they recast him with the oily Born (whom I have not liked in any role)?

Yes, I recalled that Ligon played Billy--but who played Rita Mae?

I just loved that time at AW. Indeed, the replacement of Mary Page Keller with Taylor Miller (whom I'd liked at AMC), and the introduction of Sharon Gabet's Brittany, marked the end for me. My time of active viewership was only a year or two...but the show went from great fun to ...

That's why I guess I'm not surprised Gary Tomlin is pulling off this miracle at DOOL. I saw that he could do great things at AMC. I remember the fanfare of Alice's return...but as I recall, she literally just faded away after a time.

Donna Love, Cecile de Poulignac (daytime's Abby Ewing), Sally Frame, Kathleen Mackinnon, Felicia Gallant, Jackee...such a wonderful mix of strong, quirky women...each one compelling. And with men like Cass and Catlin Ewing...it just made for a thoroughly engaging tale of action and romance, each and every day. I wonder if I'd still like it, or if was better written for my 18-year old self.

[DRW50]

The problem with keeping her tied to the Ryans is they quickly ran out of story. After she burned through Frank and Pat, there was nowhere else to go, and finally Delia began to branch out. To take her back to them, with the chasing after Frank again, with framing Faith for her hit and run (one of several ill-advised attempts to make ice princess Faith a central heroine after Mary's death), then with being reduced to losing the Crystal Palace and sitting around the Ryan home shrieking and being scammed and told off by such great moral figures as Roger over and over and over, occasionally threatening to move out but never going anywhere -- it was all just depressing, and repetitive and part of the quagmire which really hurt the show in 1981. Randall Edwards was horribly wasted, and from the little I've seen of Ilene's 1983 return, so was she.

[DRW50]

I still think they can do music. The show has a relatively limited audience who are likely to have somewhat similar tastes, there are certainly songs that appeal to everyone on some level. I liked Karen's song, although then she sang it about 20 times. I guess they no longer have the money to pay for music rights (can they use Sony's music catalogue)? They can be a little modern but it's not like they need to be Glee and have Daniel going around singing Baby Got Back...although that would be better than his storylines recently.

I was very annoyed by what happened to Nathan. They seemed to lose interest in the characters in the early 90s, which led to Purdee's departure, and then to Nathan Brooks being wasted. The last guy, who looked like a skunk, I didn't care for him at all. The cheating and AIDS story was well written but I think they shouldn't have killed him. That story was to me the beginning of the end for Olivia because after that she became all about being Dru's cold sister, Malcolm's cold wife/ex-wife.

I think they brought in a new Joe because there was a new Siobhan and also because they wanted to make Joe more hard-edged. Where I think they went wrong was they made him so hard, so smarmy, he screwed over so many characters (what he did to Jack was especially awful), and yet on some level they seemed to want us to feel sorry for him. It was an early preview of the type of writing that has hurt soaps a lot over the past years, making antiheroes and villains into the "good" guys. Add in that he had no real chemistry with Siobhan and that Siobhan lost most of her personality to become his armpiece, and it all just fizzled.

[MarkH]

What was the chronology of Siobhans? Was Helgenberger first? Last?

[DRW50]

Sarah Felder - Ann Gillepsie - Marg Helgenberger - Carrell Myers - Barbara Blackstock.

1978-80/80-82/82-86/86-87/88-89

[MarkH]

Oh wow...what does it say about me that I only remember the first and the third?

[DRW50]

The other three weren't around that long anyway, and some of them were badly miscast (Ann Gillepsie). Barbara Blackstock went on to give a very weird performance as Carolyn in the remake of Dark Shadows. Ann I think played Donna's mother on 90210.

[alphanguy74]

The concerts were lame in a way.... but whenever Maitland was singing all cheesiness disappeared. Bregman's voice was pretty weak, but either Bill Bell cast those two with a specific purpose, or he just lucked out. Because the dyanmic worked perfectly. Traci and Lauren's rivalry was so great becase the two were equally matched. Lauren had confidence and the hot body, but Traci has the nice personality and TEN TIMES the voice. The weird thing is... when you heard Damian in "Joseph" the SOB COULD SING... if he just opened his damn throat! In the rock concerts, he was always singing in this "forced whisper" and it drove me NUTS. He had the cutest little ass, though.

[dc11786]

Sleasar also did a respectable job at "Capitol." From the synopses I've read, Sleasar's tenure was probably the show at it's best at mixing drama, intrigue, and romance. It's possible he just didn't do well in the hour format.

I would argue it isn't too many new characters at the expense of the core, but rather too many characters not incorporated into the core. Even if they had brought those characters back, if they weren't incorporated into the then present canvas it would be just as bad as introducing a completely new character.

Muenz and Feldman were wonderful as Siobhan and Joe. If theres was the only Joe & Siobhan plot, I would love the story even though the whole story is basically written off as Siobhan's inability to get past her love for brother-in-law Jack. I liked Muenz too as he played Joe as conflicted the only problem I had was he and Robert Finnocoli (Pat Ryan) looked exactly alike. I'd confuse them all the time.

Pamela Blair played Rita Mae. Blair appeared on "Ryan's Hope" as Elizabeth Ryan, one of Barry's ex-wives. Around the same time, Lauren Marie Taylor (Stacey, Loving) appeared as the actress who replaced Kim in the play's "Lady's Night."

Tomlin's work as a headwriter is featured in the synopses for "Search for Tomorrow." This was such a good time for the show. I think most people just fell in line with Thaao Penghlis' mantra about being a "Passions" producer. I loved this because Tomlin's presence on "Days of our Lives" predated Penghlis', which he conveniently overlooked.

Everyone has their opinion, I didn't mind Delia under Kristen, but couldn't stand Edwards' Delia for the most part. Edwards played the role like an idiot, which is odd since Edwards would occassionally play her as smarter than she was.

I LOVED Faith and the hit-and-run. "Who's Sorry Now?" I love how it all played out at the engagement party. 1980-1981 is one of my favorite periods for "Ryan's Hope."

In fairness, Barbara Blackburn (the final Siobhan) arrived in November and the show ended in January. Ann Gillepsie was on from January until December 1981. Myers' Siobhan was the socialite mobster wife I believe. She was the one caught between Joe and Max Dubujak and the show was essential "Mobster's Hope."

[SFK]

Sarah Felder has made quite a career for herself as a voice and speech teacher and coach for prestigious theatres and acting programs across the country.

Does anyone remember the character Pamela Thatcher (Ellen Barber) from RH? I was reading that Ellen temped for Robin Strasser on OLTL, just wondering if anyone remembers her and if they could "see" that.

[DRW50]

Delia basically was an annoying idiot for most of this timeframe. There was no real vulnerability or complexity to her, as there had been when Ilene had the role earlier. When Randall got material which gave her more opportunities, like getting the Crystal Palace and the relationship with Barry, she rose to the occasion. When she didn't, she tended to fall back on shrieing.

A good scene, but I don't know if the story was worth it. I definitely don't think Frank/Faith were worth it, or to constantly push this actress who was generally quite cold. Sometimes the writing for Faith almost seemed design to make her unbearable -- like when she was drunk and misdiagnosed Little John, almost killing him, and somehow, she was the victim in the story. I'm not sure if Karen Gowdy had any chemistry with any of her leading men, at least in the 1978-1981 episodes. They never really seemed to get her abilities. She was much more suited for a b!tch role (as we got with the alcoholism story, or when she was so vile to Jill because Frank dumped her) than for a leading lady role.

He was the one who wrote the story about Jo being kidnapped by John Glover, right? He seems to have more respect for vets than most soap producers.