Good Morning America's Feature on AMC's 40th anniversary

[xtr]

Here is a video from the other day where GMA and Cameron Mathison talked some about AMC's 40th anniversary. I enjoyed this feature and some of the clips shown from the past 40 years. I like seeing stuff like some of the early screentests with Mark Consuelos and Cameron. The video didn't quite match up with the audio, it seemed like it was out of sync, but you should be able to hear everything that's being said.

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9472588

[Jonathan]

Hey, that was a good piece. Thanks for sharing.

[SFK]

Yes, thanks for sharing. I wonder what things would be like if Gillian was still around. Cameron's just a few months older than AMC. Look at Phoebe with all that hair piled on top of her head! Kelly's face was so round and cute.

[EricMontreal22]

Thanks for that. So Susan was in episode 10, but got to stay home and watch a week before? Was the turn around to air very fast back then--I guess under a week? (I should pull out my trusty copy of All Her Children again but it might cause r Sinclair to do so many eye rolls his head bursts)

[SFK]

LOL! AN said OLTL was live in the beginning, and I didn't know that. I'm almost positive that AMC was never live, but live on tape. So they got it in the can and sent it right over to network I suppose. Not a lot of editing and post-production. Wow, if Susan only knew then how that job she was about to start would dramatically change her life forever. I imagine that I would be nervous/excited as hell watching the show I was about to be on unfold its very first week. Crazy. On I Love Lucci, Liza talked about how her mother almost skipped the audition because she was having a bad hair day (twenty years later Susan would launch her own haircare line). They joke from time to time about how different their *comfy situation* might be had she not gone.

[EricMontreal22]

When did AN say OLTL was live at first? I never knew that either--it couldn't have been for very long... Dark Shadows was never live... Live to tape I think was for the most part the standard for a while though.

It's prob good Susan didn't know hwo long the job would last--being a young wannabe actress I think it might be way too nervewracking and even off putting to think you'd be stuck on the same show for 40 years (brief sojourns to Dallas and bad tv movies aside )

[Jonathan]

I think Susan was implying that she didn't air until episode 10 but I'm sure had to show up to work on the first day of production. So she had the chance to watch episodes 1-9 featuring the other characters. Make sense? I was confused also by that.

[SFK]

Wow, just reading about a character like Erica making her debut on the second Friday cliffhanger, really makes me mourn that feeling of watching a brand new soap from day one.

In that Ellen Holly clip on Agnes' site that I mentioned in the other thread, Eric. Maybe she's mixing things up, but she talks about how they needed a light-skinned black actress STAT because they were about to start taping, and she corrects herself and says that they were still LIVE! then. I dunno.

[EricMontreal22]

But didn't she say she got to stay home and watch? Or implied it? Am I going crazy?

[EricMontreal22]

To answer my own question I guess they prob were only a week to air back then -- was just watching the second of the Paley Center interviews with Agnes on her website from around 1987 and even there she says they're usually between one and two weeks to air.