OLTL/Agnes Nixon two New York Times pieces

[EricMontreal22]

Found these randomly, and wasn't sure where to post them but thought they'd be of interest (I've never seen the NYT review a soap before!):

Review/Television; Megan Truly Has (Sob!) Only One Live to Live

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR

Published: February 6, 1992

This tear-jerker cries out for towels, big, absorbent ones. Megan is dying this week on "One Life to Live," and as family and friends gather at her hospital bedside, the occasion is being used to provide a retrospective of the show. "Tell me everything about the old days," Megan weakly whispers. And every weekday from 2 to 3 P.M., the visitors do just that, telling her stories to keep her going, with help from a sprinkling of clips from the 6,000 episodes churned out since the show made its debut on ABC in July 1968.

Triggering this retro splurge was the decision of Jessica Tuck, the actress who plays Megan, to stretch her talents elsewhere, perhaps in prime time. How to get rid of her with maximum impact? Linda Gottlieb, executive producer, and Michael Malone, head writer -- a team who joined the show just in July -- decided to hit her with an immune-deficiency illness, in this instance lupus. The disease is not normally fatal, so kidney complications were added as plot insurance. Mix with the Scheherazade storytelling gimmick, and viewers get what the network hopes will be "an uplifting emotional journey." Welcome to daytime drama.

"One Life to Live" was created by the soap doyenne Agnes Nixon as an alternative to the WASP-dominated stories found on shows like NBC's "Another World," on which Miss Nixon had been head writer. Her new show, set in Llanview, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, reflected an ethnic and social diversity unusual for the genre in the 1960's. Viki, daughter of the local newspaper's publisher, married a working-class Irish-American Catholic named Joe Riley. Other important characters were Polish-American. Black characters were introduced; in 1979 Al Freeman Jr. became the first black actor to win a daytime Emmy for his role as the police captain Ed Hall.

Ratings have been erratic, probably to be expected with a show that could send nuns to do dangerous missionary work in Latin America or conclude one of its Gothic story lines with a masquerade party that lasted a month on the air. There has been a goodly share of casting problems. Early on, when an actor decided to leave, his character was badly burned in a fire. After plastic surgery, the bandages were removed and, voila!, the character was being played by the actor's brother. The ploy proved popular on other shows, not the least on "Dynasty."

Under the team of Gottlieb and Malone, "One Life to Live" has gone from 11th to 4th in the ratings. Ms. Gottlieb's background includes producing feature films ("Dirty Dancing") and television movies. Mr. Malone is a quite favorably reviewed novelist ("Foolscap"), said by one critic to possess an "underlying wicked humor barely masked by the steady hilarity on the surface." As for his connection with "One Life to Live," Mr. Malone, in an interview in The New York Times Book Review, said: "I think Dickens would have done it. I make up characters and there they are in the flesh. I have my own Shakespeare company." A bit of that underlying wicked humor, no doubt.

But back to poor Megan. Things don't look good. "She's septic," Dr. Larry Wolek (Michael Storm) says grimly. "Tell you what," says Viki (Erika Slezak), Megan's mother and, just three weeks ago, her kidney donor, "I'm going to tell you another story." Not content with recalling her own weddings and birthings, Viki, herself the victim of a split personality linked to some nasty pornography scandals, recalls memorable moments from others' lives.

One is the doctor's ("Had more than his share of sadness in life," Viki says), specifically that time he discovered his wife was a prostitute. In a tumultuous court scene, she screamed: "Why don't you punish me? I've been waiting so long to be punished. You want blood? You want me to say that I'm lower than the lowest scum?" The very dramatic, and heavily watched, scene won a 1980 daytime Emmy for Judith Light, who moved on to prime-time fortune with Tony Danza in "Who's the Boss?"

For most of this week, Megan's husband, Jake, has been trapped in a foreign prison with Andrew, a minister out of Yale Divinity School who, not so secretly, is also in love with Megan. Jake is blunt: "You wouldn't happen to have, uh, a thing for my wife?" Andrew, though, is too nice to provoke a scene. Both men will be back in Llanview, of course, in time to say goodbye to Megan tomorrow afternoon as just about everyone on the show gets an opportunity to let the tears flow freely. Although a week early, a Valentine card looms large. And, taking a cue from Heathcliff, Jake carries Megan to the hospital window, enabling her to see the tree they planted on their wedding day. The emotional journey hits pay dirt.

Now, more to the point, where will Ms. Gottlieb and Mr. Malone be taking this oddly durable property? One Life to Live

Created by Agnes Nixon; David Pressman, Peter Miner and Jill Mitwell, directors; Michael Malone, head writer; produced by Charlotte Weil for ABC; Susan Bedsow Horgan and Leslie Kwartin, supervising producers; Linda Gottleib, executive producer. Weekdays at 2 P.M. on ABC. Viki Buchanan . . . Erika Slezak Dr. Larry Wolek . . . Michael Storm Megan Gordon Harrison . . . Jessica Tuck Dorian Lord . . . Elaine Princi Tina Roberts . . . Karen Witter Andrew Carpenter . . . Wortham Krimmer Bo Buchanan . . . Robert S. Woods Cassie Callison . . . Laura Bonarrigo Herb Callison . . . Anthony Call Asa Buchanan . . . Philip Carey Wanda Wolek . . . Marilyn Chris

Seminar Honors 'Queen' of Soap Operas

By LESLIE BENNETTS

Published: January 26, 1988

In the world of soap operas, Agnes Nixon is the reigning queen. She has had at least one show on the air every weekday, 52 weeks a year, for more than 30 years - and that's all original episodes, with no reruns. Three of ABC's current soaps are her creations: ''One Life To Live,'' which has been on the air for 20 years; ''All My Children,'' a veteran of 18 years; and one relative newcomer, ''Loving,'' which is five years old.

Not only is Mrs. Nixon a mainstay of daytime television, she is also widely credited as a leader in bringing social issues into the white-bread fantasy world of the soaps, introducing subjects that ranged from drug addiction and alcoholism to wife abuse and AIDS into her story lines.

This week the Museum of Broadcasting, 1 East 53d Street, is presenting a seminar series called ''Created by Agnes Nixon'' in which the writer will talk about her career, changes in the soaps over the years, and how the serials are created. The first of five discussions begins today at 5:30 P.M. An Unlikely Source of Intrigue

The ladylike Mrs. Nixon seems an unlikely source for all the steamy stories of passion run amok, dark secrets and terrible betrayals. Notwithstanding the endless tales of infidelity and divorce, abortion and illegitimacy, Mrs. Nixon is a diminutive, fragile-looking 60-year-old with wide china-blue eyes and perfectly coiffed pale blond hair who wears a cross on her neck, has been married to the same man for 36 years and has raised four children in a Main Line Philadelphia suburb.

While doing so, she also served as head writer on ''Guiding Light,'' co-creator of ''As the World Turns'' and head writer of ''Another World,'' among other programs. ''I haven't written every script, but they've been my shows,'' she said.

Indeed, ever since she landed her first job writing radio serial dialogue only three days after graduating from Northwestern, Mrs. Nixon hasn't stopped for breath. When she moved over to television, the primitive state of daytime drama suited her needs well as she bore four children in less than five years. ''Daytime television was a cottage industry at that time,'' she said. ''We mailed it in. I could do what I liked and still be there with the children.'' Modern Story Lines

Critics have always carped at the vision of America presented by the soaps, but Mrs. Nixon - a fierce defender of the genre - is proud of her role in educating the public about serious contemporary issues. A current story line on ''All My Children'' involves the wife of an intravenous drug user who shared a contaminated needle with an addict who then died of AIDS. The woman then discovered she too was infected with the AIDS virus.

Such plots used to be unthinkable. ''The first one I ever wanted to do was a story about the importance of women having Pap tests for the detection of uterine cancer,'' Mrs. Nixon recalled. The show was CBS's ''Guiding Light,'' and the network was appalled. When Mrs. Nixon persisted, CBS said she could do it as long as she avoided such words as cancer, uterus or hysterectomy.

That was 25 years ago, and since then Mrs. Nixon has churned out stories on lesbian love, venereal disease, teen-age prostitution and child abuse (carefully set in an upper-middle-class family to show that ''it can happen here''). Despite the luridness of some of the subjects, her approach is resolutely Pollyannaish; the thrust of ''problem'' stories is always the upbeat idea that help is available. Broad Impact on a Wide Audience

For a while Mrs. Nixon resisted doing a story on AIDS because the disease has no cure. ''But then when I read about those three children in Florida who were hemophiliacs who had to leave town, I realized we were going back to the days of witch-burning,'' she said. ''I decided I had to do it, and that the thing we could hope to cure was the ignorance and prejudice about people with AIDS.''

The potential impact of such messages is enormous. ''One Life To Live'' has an average daily audience of 8.8 million, ''All My Children'' nearly 8.9 million, and ''Loving'' has 4.8 million. Such dramas have been a perennial staple of daytime programming since the early days of television itself, but even the soap opera's future is looking less rosy as network audiences erode to competition from independent stations and cable channels and more and more women - still the primary audience for the soaps - have left home to join the work force. Every Day, Another World

Such trends notwithstanding, Mrs. Nixon is a staunch believer in the durability of soaps. ''This is the form of entertainment closest to real life, because it's open-ended and every day is a new episode,'' she said. ''We do 260 a year, with no repeats; the nighttime soaps do 26 originals and then go into reruns. Having 260 episodes, we are able to do many more stories and have a diversification that's interesting to the viewers. The continuity is appealing. It's very intimate; it's like very close friends -one's family, almost.''

Although she has four grown children and five grandchildren of her own, the world of the soaps is certainly Mrs. Nixon's family as well. These days she is playing more of a supervisory role than during the years when she churned out every script and story line herself, but she still works seven days a week and shows no sign of wanting to retire.

After all, there are so many characters whose fates depend on her. ''Even when I'm away, they're still my children,'' she said softly.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 26, 1988, on page C20 of the New York edition.

[SFK]

What a coincidence, I read that first article just last night when I was reading up on Linda Gottlieb.

I find it interesting that AN at first resisted an AIDS s/l because there is no cure. I'd think that she'd be more interested in writing Cindy's journey, but perhaps she feared that the audience wouldn't invest in the story because they already knew the sad ending. This was before the optimistic reports of folks living a decade and beyond on the cocktail.

[EricMontreal22]

She talks a lot about the AIDS story and elaborates on what you say in number two of the Paley Center videos on her website which of course is why this article was done--it's really interesting (they mention the Another World AIDS story then happening too and she says it's less specific and then someone in the audience speaks out--she's the medical adviso or AW!). But I think this is her philosophy--in the same interview she mentions that she thinks it's important to tell a homosexual story but (they're discussing the Devon one, the perosn in the audience seems mad it wasn't made longer) for her stories have to have an argument for and against and she doesn't want to pay homophobes the service of having someone on one of her shows argue against homosexuality.

[LoyaltoAMC]

Thanks for posting, Eric. The OLTL storyline at the time sounds godawful. Gottlieb/Malone have been praised to the hilt, but I just never thought it was justified. I found his writing pretentious. Was a huge, huge fan of the Paul Rauch/Peggy O'Shea/S. Michael Schnessel era, so maybe I'm biased. Now THAT was soap opera! Nobody did social stories like Agnes. In AMC's heyday, they were so well-told and not preachy and effortlessly woven into the fabric of the show. Teenage prostitution with Donna, spousal abuse with Kurt and Leora Sanders, bone marrow transplant with Molly Cudahy, drunk driving death with Laura Cudahy, coming out with Bianca, and the AIDS storyline with Cindy and Stuart...whatever issue Agnes decided to explore through the show was done with utmost sensitivity, intelligence and even some humor. The social issue stories and the way she told them was one of the main things I loved about this show.

[Khan]

Of course, it was all designed to give Jessica Tuck an extraordinary send-off, but...yeah, the story was weak. (I won't even go into the parts where Andrew's war games w/ the dictator of Jaba City in order to secure Jake's release. That stuff was straight outta Chuck Norris, lol.) As Michael Malone revealed in an interview several years ago, once the story was wrapped up, Agnes Nixon personally called and asked him, "Now what happens?". Once Megan had died, and Jake had left the show, there wasn't any more story to tell.

[Carolyn1980]

I loved OLTL during Rauch's first years there, from 1985-1987, but by the time 1988 rolled around, and we had time-traveling, the MaryAnn murder trial with characters pulling off latex masks to reveal they were other characters, a 6ft plus Patrick London getting plastic surgery to look exactly like the 5-foot something Bo, and then the godawful Eterna story....well....even I was done with him by then, lol. I'll never forget legendary soap critic Chris Schemering's scathing 1988 review of OLTL in SOD. (One of his comments was on the time-travel storyline where Blaize Buchanan went from 1888 to 1988; when she first spotted a television in 1988, she screamed, prompting Schemering to write, "What was she watching? One Life to Live?"

It was a memorable critique, and quite brutal, but very funny....and all too true. I wish Schemmering, who died of AIDS before Gottlieb restored the show to its former glory, could've seen OLTL rescusitated to the masterpiece it became during her years there, 1991-1995. It was truly too good to be called a "soap opera."

[Leia]

You guys are tough. I loved that story.

[Doyen]

I agree that the Rauch years was OLTL's best era.  It was a fun, colorful, stylish, juicy, vigorous period for the show.  Malone's (and now Carlivati's) attempts to interject social politics into the drama have always been pretentious, heavy-handed, one-sided and agenda based.  I would give to have those 1985-1989 years back.

[SFK]

To me, it would be best if they found a happy medium. The show flip-flops between periods of heavy issue-orientedness and zany and cartoonish, or when both are going on at the same time, you feel like you're watching two different shows from scene to scene. Gottlieb/Bedsoe-Horgan with the DID/Todd's paternity, et cetera, imo managed to be both out there and intelligent. That's the era I look back on most fondly, though my childhood memories of splashy '80s OLTL were pretty damn fun.

[EricMontreal22]

I didn't start watching OLTL regularly till about a year later when the Billy Douglas story happened--but I do think to be fair Malone was learning as he worked--and (while some will never like his storytelling style) no one can argue he didn't learn from his mistakes and move on (with the help of Gottlieb and Griffith, by the time they both left and it was just Malone with that endless Irish Gangster story in 1996 I have no excuses ). Agnes apparently helped him a lot--well guided him by pointing out things like this and its valid--but he was a novelist with no background in soaps (just before that him and Gottlieb had tried and then quickly aborted their plans for quick independant story arcs with new characters--liekt he spousal abuse one Vicki was involved in with the actor from Body Double).

That said I've seen teh whole actual week of Megan's death--Malone said he structured it the wya he did partly because when he was boning up on OLTL's past and watching days worth of clips he realized OLTL had never had a clips episode and he wanted to remind (or teach to others new to the show) the viewers of the rich past the serial had. The way clips were integrated all week long WAS IMHO very well done and the actual final scenes between Megan and Jake are, I'm embarassed to admit, heartbreaking even to myself with next to no actual first hand experience with the character.

[EricMontreal22]

I agree--that 90s era for me is what I grew up watching, what got me onto the soap and what (though I've started to recognize it wasn't all as perfect as I remembered) I feel the show should and could be. The Rauch era when it tried to be the Dallas of daytime less so but if I grew up with the show then that might be different. Still I think that's also true to the 60s and 70s era (under Nixon and Gordon Russell--I almost typed Gordon Rayfield ARGH lol) They had social issues, etc, and a myriad of characters with different socio-economic backgrounds, but they did have their larger than life comic characters with some of the Woleks, etc, and even Agnes in her Paley Center interviews mentions making some storylines more over the top than others--like the one where Vicki's being gaslighted by her secretary into thinking Nicki's back.

[EricMontreal22]

From all I've read and seen I think I'd agree with you--that was around the time the vastly underated Peggy O'Shea left right? I know OLTL had done some wacky stuff before (a remote controlled Larry was either very early Rauch or pre Rauch) but I think it did get too campy and lost view of its past (a diverse group of characters interacting, etc) too much. If it had continued in that style but without the writing and producing talent we could have seen OLTL's death in the 90s (pre Malone viewers were tuning out in droves) as a campy, irelevent mess.

From all I've read I do think the end of Russell's era was probably the greatest for the show--I wish I could see more from then. I know Schemering said the week surrounding Judith Light's confession were the greatest week of soap ever. I didn't realize the man died of AIDS--I knew he died of a tragic suicide but actually I didn't make the connection though in hindsight I could have. So sad--he really is my fave soap writer--even the brief but insightful comments littered throughout his soap Encyclopedia are spot on. He also liked OLTL under Rauch early on a lot, so to write out against what it had been speaks volumes--is the review or any of his other SOD reviews online?

[LoyaltoAMC]

The Paul Rauch years were for the most part electric. Yes, it started to get out of hand around 1988 with Schnessel's over the top stories, but I gotta tell you that OLTL from 1985-1988 was ABC's most exciting and entertaining show. AMC was meandering a bit, GH was just repetitive, RH was winding down, and Loving just wasn't working on any level. It was just a fun show. I know Gottlieb/Malone tried to bring the show back to Agnes's original vision, but again, I found Malone's writing too pretentious for words. The ratings were never great during the Malone/Gottlieb era, not that ratings always reflect quality of course. By the way,I think Rauch gets a really bad rap among soap fans. Yes, he's probably totally egotistical and chauvinistic and narcissistic to the nth degree, and I think fans have somehow projected these qualities onto his work and deemed him a lousy producer. He did great things at AW (Lemay, a tough cookie, has lauded him on many occasions) and helped to totally reinvigorate OLTL. GL was uneven under him, but it was the writing that was problematic more than anything else. And I believe he really did try to save SB. Yes, he tried to mainstream the show, which I know many thought was a terrible idea, but that was the only way it could've survived. It never would've made it if it continued as the niche show it had become. Yeah, Y&R sucks, but again that's the godawful writing of HS and MAB, but I don't see any drastic decrease in production quality, especially given the show's budget issues. No, he's not perfect, but who is? And no, I'm not Paul Rauch's assistant LOL.

[EricMontreal22]

While I dig the Malone/Griffith/Gottlieb years far more than you--I can still appreciate and agree with everything you say--if that makes sense. Particularly when they brought Nicki back (wow a time when they didn'thaul Vicki's alters out every 3 years!) OLTL really did seem to be onto something and I know it started to rate above AMC which, as you say, was starting to meander a bit. Re ratings--no Malone's OLTL wasn't a huge ratings hit but it did do significantly better than the end of Rauch's run (especially the bizarre brief era with DePriest writing), and got people talking abou tthe show again--it essentially did what ABC hoped it would do (though I'm sure they woulda liked a huge ratings spike too).

And I agree with you re Rauch though it has always fascinated me how different his visions for AW and OLTL were.

[LoyaltoAMC]

Eric, totally agree with you that Gordon Russell's OLTL was the best era of all time. Everything just came together so organically culminating in Karen's confession at Viki's trial. I probably started watching the show around 1977 as a kid, probably a little after I started getting into AMC. My earliest memory of OLTL was a scene between Jamison Parker (Brad) and Kathy Glass (Jenny). I had a major crush on Jamison, but that's a whole other story. Even as a kid I remember thinking how well written the show was. When did Russell's era end? The show really began to gradually fall apart after the trial, with the Marco/Mario stuff, Pat/twin sister Maggie, the Buchanan/Ralston infestation, the ridiculous stories they wrote for Karen (the circus, ugh!), Ivan Kipling's chip implant, and that whole convoluted Jenny/Katrina baby switch stuff. Did Russell write any of that? Or more likely Sam Hall? I know the Corrington's wrote for a bit before Peggy O'Shea in the early 80s, but am just wondering how much of this Russell wrote. Now that I think about it, much of the post-trial stuff was probably Sam Hall, since I know his wife Grayson came on as Euphemia Ralston.