Dack Rambo was a manly man, and his sexuality didn't change that. Cliff was positively effete in comparison to Steve.

My mother met Dack and Gillian Spencer back in the '80s and she thought Dack might have been gay. She didn't say that he was *flaming* (hate to use such terms) or anything, but there was a certain quality I suppose. Now, my granddad could never STAND Cliff Warner who he thought was an obnoxious whiney wimp. We were having lunch one day and he flipped to channel 9 instead of 7 and griped, "Oh sh!t..." when he saw Jack Abbott. My grandmother and I got a good laugh out of that one.

Edited January 13, 201015 yr by SFK

I know it was probably just the character, but when Dack was on Paper Dolls, his opening credits shot was him marching out of his limo, sunglasses, black leather gloves, coat over his shoulders. The whole thing was gayer than anything Steven Carrington could ever dream of.

This is interesting, because when I watch the AMC of those years, although I think the show is great, I do see how much is down to those fascinating female characters. I can imagine that so many of them leaving and having somewhat bland replacements (wasn't 1985-1986 the era of the Jenny doppleganger, and Hunter Tylo's character, and so on) might have caused a lull.

I was surprised at how willing she was to call out the P&G shows.

The Nina recasts (Heather Stamford and Barbara Kearns) were dreadful. Alice Haining, Marcy Walker's replacement, was a good actress, but she didn't click as Liza. The other actresses they brought on to compensate for the actresses leaving left something to be desired. They brought Sandy Gabriel back as Edna as an Opal "replacement," but she was no Dorothy Lyman. Carmen Thomas was brought on to be the new sweet young heroine when Kim Delaney left, but she was too sugary for words. Tasia Valenza was good as Dottie, but the show never really knew what to do with her past being a spoiler for Tad and Hillary.

A lot of people remember the early Babbin days as classic AMC, which is true for the most part. Many forget what happened from mid-1985 to mid-1986 during Babbin's run. It was one misfire after another (Angie/Jesse/Eugene triangle; Angie/Dr. Voight sexual harrassment; Cliff/Nina/Benny/Donna triangle; Tad and Dottie on the run from mobsters in NYC; Phoebe/Wade/Langley; Greg/Robin; Brooke romanced by daredevil Gilles St. Clair; Brooke finds her biological mother in a homeless shelter). Nothing really seemed to be clicking during this time frame, except the Jeremy/Erica romance, which introduced us to the remarkable Kate Collins. She carried that story IMO. When people talk about classic AMC, this isn't it. Jorn Winther returned to get the show going. He laid the groundwork for some great stuff, but he didn't get the ratings up and was axed.

Many forget what happened from mid-1985 to mid-1986 during Babbin's run.

Well... Actually... She left in January 1986. Which would make it 6 dreadful months and 3 solid years.

Jørn H. Winther was there for 3 months after her: January–March 1986.

What parts of those stories do you think made them misfires?

I remember reading about them in the anniversary book when I started watching AMC, and I thought some of them seemed like a big departure from some of what had gone on before.

Not long after I started watching, someone was talking to me about Brooke and her history and she went on about how bad the Gilles St. Clair story was, and the one about Brooke's mother. She called Brooke's mother "a lump." And of course the story about the woman Brooke thought was her mother being a drug dealer. I guess that was a few years earlier.

What stories did Winter set up?

Well... Actually... She left in January 1986. Which would make it 6 dreadful months and 3 solid years.

Jørn H. Winther was there for 3 months after her: January–March 1986.

Actually she left in August 86. Winther took over in September 86 and remained thru the end of May 1987, to be replaced by Steve Schenkel.

Not according to Toups' archives.

Perhaps they're wrong, but...

What parts of those stories do you think made them misfires?

I remember reading about them in the anniversary book when I started watching AMC, and I thought some of them seemed like a big departure from some of what had gone on before.

Not long after I started watching, someone was talking to me about Brooke and her history and she went on about how bad the Gilles St. Clair story was, and the one about Brooke's mother. She called Brooke's mother "a lump." And of course the story about the woman Brooke thought was her mother being a drug dealer. I guess that was a few years earlier.

What stories did Winter set up?

The Tad/Dottie on the run was just silly, culminating with evil pimp/mobster Barton Crane trying to get ahold of some floppy disk with the names of his hookers' johns that Tad had supposedly stolen. It was hidden in the Martin home, and I remember Charlie and Hillary trying to decipher the disk. The Angie/Dr. Voight sexual harassment started out interesting enough (trivia: Dr. Voight was played by David Canary's real-life brother), and the show got all the usual kudos for being first-line in issue-oriented stories, but it somehow degenerated into a vehicle to desperately pimp Greg and Robin (Hunter Tylo, then known as Deborah Morehart). Robin figured out what Voight was up to (forgot the details) and he tried to strangle her on the roof of the hospital! Of course, the Benny/Nina romance was just awful. It's as if they had these expensive vets (Candi Earley, Vasili Bogazianos, Peter Bergman, and James Mitchell) sitting around with nothing to do, so they decided to put them in a story together. It was just silly and was thankfully ended abruptly.

Winther began laying the groundwork for the Cortlandt Manor story involving Palmer, Natalie, Ross, Ellen, and Julie that awaken the show and culminate in Ross's trial for raping Natalie in the Steve Schenkel years. He also hired Larkin Malloy, Robin Christopher, Rosa Nevin, and Susan Pratt. The show seemed much more character-driven than plot-driven under him too. One of the first things he did is promote Lorraine Broderick as co-HW with Wisner.

Not according to Toups' archives.

Perhaps they're wrong, but...

Honestly, I'm pretty sure those are wrong. I distinctly remember that era, and Jorn Winther definitely didn't join til the fall of 1986.

I remember reading about that story with the disks. Didn't Tad pick someone up hitchhiking, and the disk was in Joey's toy chest? Or not?

Thanks for all the information, this is fascinating stuff, and very detailed with a good mix of story and opinions.

Edited January 13, 201015 yr by CarlD2

The Tad/Dottie on the run was just silly, culminating with evil pimp/mobster Barton Crane trying to get ahold of some floppy disk with the names of his hookers' johns that Tad had supposedly stolen. It was hidden in the Martin home, and I remember Charlie and Hillary trying to decipher the disk. The Angie/Dr. Voight sexual harassment started out interesting enough (trivia: Dr. Voight was played by David Canary's real-life brother), and the show got all the usual kudos for being first-line in issue-oriented stories, but it somehow degenerated into a vehicle to desperately pimp Greg and Robin (Hunter Tylo, then known as Deborah Morehart). Robin figured out what Voight was up to (forgot the details) and he tried to strangle her on the roof of the hospital! Of course, the Benny/Nina romance was just awful. It's as if they had these expensive vets (Candi Earley, Vasili Bogazianos, Peter Bergman, and James Mitchell) sitting around with nothing to do, so they decided to put them in a story together. It was just silly and was thankfully ended abruptly.

Winther began laying the groundwork for the Cortlandt Manor story involving Palmer, Natalie, Ross, Ellen, and Julie that awaken the show and culminate in Ross's trial for raping Natalie in the Steve Schenkel years. He also hired Larkin Malloy, Robin Christopher, Rosa Nevin, and Susan Pratt. The show seemed much more character-driven than plot-driven under him too. One of the first things he did is promote Lorraine Broderick as co-HW with Wisner.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure those are wrong. I distinctly remember that era, and Jorn Winther definitely didn't join til the fall of 1986.

UGH! I had blocked out Nina/Benny and the gun in the wedding bouquet.

The Palmer/Natalie/Ross story was one of my all-time favorites. I'll never forget when Nat used Donna's name to go to a doctor in Center City to find out if she was pregnant (since back then Palmer's polo accident had still rendered him sterile and Ross would be the father) and she got the call from the clinic during her bridal shower. Donna took the call and then tried to mime to Natalie what they said and it was hilarious!

I remember reading about that story with the disks. Didn't Tad pick someone up hitchhiking, and the disk was in Joey's toy chest? Or not?

Thanks for all the information, this is fascinating stuff, and very detailed with a good mix of story and opinions.

Yup, Tad picked up a blonde chick who was working for Barton Crane and wanted the disk. Joey got his hands on it after Ruth kicked it under the couch while vacuuming. The only bright spot in that story was Dottie forgetting what her alias was and not responding when people were talking to her.

From NY Times:

Jacqueline T. Babbin, a television producer who won an Emmy Award for ''Sybil,'' a 1976 TV drama, died on Oct. 6 at her home in Kent, Conn. She was 80.

The cause was cancer, said Shirley E. Herz, her longtime friend and former publicist.

Ms. Babbin produced dozens of shows, but it was ''Sybil,'' the story of a woman whose harrowing childhood provoked multiple personality disorder, that earned an Emmy Award for outstanding drama or comedy special. The NBC show, which won a Peabody Award as well, received four Emmys, including one for Sally Field, who had the title role.

Ms. Babbin's career spanned nearly five decades and took her from producing for the theater to doing so for films and television.

She was born in Manhattan on July 26, 1921, and graduated from Smith College in 1941. After several years working on Broadway productions, including ''A Streetcar Named Desire,'' she rose through the television ranks and became one of the first women head producers. She, in turn, hired many other women.

She produced several network television series, including ''Armstrong Circle Theater'' and ''DuPont Show of the Week.'' She also produced live television adaptations of ''The Human Voice'' (starring Ingrid Bergman), ''The Philadelphia Story,'' ''Miracle on 34th Street,'' ''The Bells of St. Mary's'' and ''The Scarlet Pimpernel.''

In 1968, Ms. Babbin established her own production company, Clovis. Under that banner, she produced CBS's ''Children's Hour'' in 1969 and won a Peabody Award for ''J.T.,'' one of its installments. Ms. Babbin also produced CBS's ''Beacon Hill,'' a short-lived but critically acclaimed 1975 series about a rich Boston family and its servants that resembled the British series ''Upstairs, Downstairs.''

Soon after ''Beacon Hill,'' Ms. Babbin became vice president of novels and mini-series at ABC. She produced ''All My Children'' from 1982 to 1986 and ''Loving'' from 1990 until her retirement a year later.

During her retirement she published two mystery novels, ''Prime Time Corpse'' (which was later renamed ''Bloody Special'') and ''Bloody Soaps.'' She was working on her third book, ''Bloody Networks,'' at her death.

Ms. Babbin's marriage in the late 1940's to Alan Shayne, a former president of Warner Brothers Television, ended in divorce. No immediate family members survive.

Photo: Jacqueline T. Babbin in her office in 1983, with her cat, Bonkers. (Jack Manning/The New York Times)

My 2 cents on Babbin: I remember reading that article when it first came out. I liked the antiquated dialogue and the long "boring" scenes before Babbin showed up. I remember one of the mags summing up AMC pre-Babbin as "a great show...that moves at a snail's pace." There was such a sense of class and even majesty about the show under Jorn Winther's first go-around that I think was lost a bit when they modernized the dialogue and sped stories along. It seemed smart and literate under Winther. Before Babbin, there also seemed to be an emphasis of character over plot, which seemed to totally reverse itself with Babbin. I rewatched some of the early Babbin shows from 83. They were really good, so much better than the crap we have today...but you could tell that it was becoming more about plot and using characters solely as plot devices. Of course Babbin came to AMC just around time Agnes began concentrating on creating Loving and gave more power to Wisner Washam. My guess is that if Agnes had been more involved during the Babbin era, she would've had the power to push for more character-driven stuff. Wisner was a good writer, but maybe he didn't have the power at ABC to go over Babbin's head about the types of stories he wanted to tell. Besides being more and more plot-driven, the there didn't seem to be any long-term planning. Wisner is quoted in Jean Rouverel's(sp?) book on soap writing from around this era as saying that the show doesn't project storylines beyond six weeks. The ratings and quality really began to suffer in 1985 after the Zack Grayson murder mystery ended. SOD called AMC the most disappointing show of 1985 with silly, inane stories that went nowhere. Of course it didn't help things that AMC lost a many of its popular leading ladies in quick succession from 83-85 (Dorothy Lyman, Kim Delaney, Marcy Walker, Taylor Miller, Gillian Spencer). And many of the vets that were left were pushed to the backburner for the teens during this time. All in all, I think Babbin may have gone overboard and fixed too much that wasn't broken in her attempt to modernize the show.

Great thoughts. I have to say I've only managed to see some episodes from the Winther era (the huge amount of episodes out ther really begins in early Babbin) but I'm not sure I quite get what they mean by antiquated dialogue--certainly the early Tad/Liza stuff doesn't make me think of that. It's also funny you comment on how slow the show was--in the late 70s soap books like LaGuardia's he comments on it and One Lfebeing significantly faster paces than not only the P&G shows but Days and Y&R as well (of course we all know how slow Bell's stories were--one of their strengths probably). But I guess by the early 80s with other shows following the Monty GH model maybe AMC was looking slow in comparison.

Like you say maybe Agnes' leaving played a pat with ratings slipping by '86 and her exit, and as yo say more plot based work (Agnes helped create Loving but she didn't go on to headwrite it till Marland left after his year contract or so when she was there as HW till '86 I believe). I know the stories Babbin mentions as helping them go to number 1 were some Agnes takes credit for--she talks about why she had Jenny and Jesse run off to New York for instance at length in her Paley interviews.

It;'s also interesting that most modern soap writing likes to think that AMC more or less got away without doing silly GH influenced changes the way to some extent nearly all the other soaps did--at ABC obviously with OLTL. But it seems obvious to me some of these changes were made to follow the GH model more--that said they did seem to manage to keep it within the existing style of the show better than other shows often did.

Edited January 14, 201015 yr by EricMontreal22

Dack Rambo was a manly man, and his sexuality didn't change that. Cliff was positively effete in comparison to Steve.

Nono I definitely agree! Sorry if I wasn't clear, I just found it ironic that at the time people probably assumed because he was so masculine that he was perfectly straight (it was just a random thought at 3am--I really shouldn't post so late lol) While Babbin was in the industry so may have been more "in the know" even in '83 (well even now) a lot of general audience would probably find it surprising that to "butch" up a show they'd hire a man who was sleeping with other men.

Edited January 14, 201015 yr by EricMontreal22

Great thoughts. I have to say I've only managed to see some episodes from the Winther era (the huge amount of episodes out ther really begins in early Babbin) but I'm not sure I quite get what they mean by antiquated dialogue--certainly the early Tad/Liza stuff doesn't make me think of that. It's also funny you comment on how slow the show was--in the late 70s soap books like LaGuardia's he comments on it and One Lfebeing significantly faster paces than not only the P&G shows but Days and Y&R as well (of course we all know how slow Bell's stories were--one of their strengths probably). But I guess by the early 80s with other shows following the Monty GH model maybe AMC was looking slow in comparison.

Like you say maybe Agnes' leaving played a pat with ratings slipping by '86 and her exit, and as yo say more plot based work (Agnes helped create Loving but she didn't go on to headwrite it till Marland left after his year contract or so when she was there as HW till '86 I believe). I know the stories Babbin mentions as helping them go to number 1 were some Agnes takes credit for--she talks about why she had Jenny and Jesse run off to New York for instance at length in her Paley interviews.

It;'s also interesting that most modern soap writing likes to think that AMC more or less got away without doing silly GH influenced changes the way to some extent nearly all the other soaps did--at ABC obviously with OLTL. But it seems obvious to me some of these changes were made to follow the GH model more--that said they did seem to manage to keep it within the existing style of the show better than other shows often did.

Actually I think Days was more responsible for AMC's quicker pace. If I'm not mistaken it really began to pick up steam with the Salem Strangler storyline, which must've been around 82, and then with its incredibly popular early supercouples (Roman/Marlena, Bo/Hope). Days was AMC's time slot competitor in many markets, and still is, and I think it began to encroach on AMC's HH ratings and demos. So I think the change at AMC was more in response to Days than to GH. True that they did their best to keep these changes within the confines of the show and not alter the structure much. The only major actors that Babbin fired when she first came aboard were John Danelle (Frank Grant) and Kate Dezina (Estelle Sago). And she bumped Hugh Franklin (Dr. Charles Tyler) to recurring. The show pretty much stayed in tact structurally for most of her run.

I'm not sure how much Agnes's work on early Loving took her away from AMC, but I remember Larry Lau making a comment around the time they had Sheila/faux Jenny on that Agnes had left the show for a bit to concentrate on Loving and that he and the actors noticed right off the bat that the quality of the writing had declined.

Also note that during Babbin's early years, AMC backstage was plagued with a huge coke problem. A lot of the young actors were using and evidently it began to affect their performances. I was only about 13/14 at the time, so I was oblivious to the fact that the drug problem behind the scenes was manifesting itself onscreen. Supposedly on the remote shoot aboard a yacht for Tony and Jenny's engagement party, one young actress (I'm thinking Delaney) got so high that she fell overboard and was knocked unconscious. It got so bad at one point that Babbin had to gather the cast together and warn them that anyone caught using would be fired. Peter Bergman has mentioned this in past interviews.

Also note that during Babbin's early years, AMC backstage was plagued with a huge coke problem. A lot of the young actors were using and evidently it began to affect their performances. I was only about 13/14 at the time, so I was oblivious to the fact that the drug problem behind the scenes was manifesting itself onscreen. Supposedly on the remote shoot aboard a yacht for Tony and Jenny's engagement party, one young actress (I'm thinking Delaney) got so high that she fell overboard and was knocked unconscious. It got so bad at one point that Babbin had to gather the cast together and warn them that anyone caught using would be fired. Peter Bergman has mentioned this in past interviews.

That's crazy. I love coke backstage hell stories, like what happened at SNL and with Square Pegs.

Why did she bump Hugh Franklin to recurring? Illness?

Frank Grant was the father or husband to one of the black characters on the show before Jesse and Angie, right? What were their names? Nancy...? She was Jesse's aunt?

Edited January 14, 201015 yr by CarlD2