Douglas Marland 1986 NYT Article

[Bright Eyes]

For me, I'd throw Henry Slesar in there, and actually would place him above them. But all three are certainly above Irna, Agnes and Bill, IMO.

[Khan]

I wasn't disagreeing with you, Sylph. I remember Lemay saying those words, too. I just can't believe he looks at Marland as having a darker vision of humanity than he. Not when you look at the stories he crafted in the Seventies for all of Steve Frame's self-serving, avaricious siblings.

But he didn't write for only one show. He also wrote for THE DOCTORS, SEARCH FOR TOMORROW, and his own creation, FRIENDS AND LOVERS. And yes, although network/sponsor interference is partly to blame for his stints on these other shows turning out so badly, the truth is, Marland has a slight edge over his mentor, b/c his track record (THE DOCTORS, GH, GL, ATWT, even LOVING) is more impressive.

[Sylph]

It was a Snark podcast? You need to remind me.

What you say is true (regarding Steve Frame). That came from Harding's own upbringing and childhood. However, when you look at his biography and all he went through (didn't his mother go mad and kill herself?, poverty, escape from home, sibling issues, death of his first wife Dorothy...) you begin to realise that the man had to have a really bright outlook or else...

Yes, I know. But precisely because of interference I don't really look at them as his shows.

[DeliaIrisFan]

I've wondered about that too - not having ever watched either of their shows at the time, but savoring every detail I can find about them after the fact. FWIW, I think it may have been Lemay's very gracious way of saying that Marland featured a lot more melodrama and mayhem on his shows than Lemay preferred. Didn't Lemay say that he didn't even like to have trials on his shows? It seems like when Marland was head writer, everyone was always attending each other's murder trials, the way friends in real life go to movies together or meet for drinks. Everyone was polite and cheerful on the surface, but it was kind of like Murder She Wrote cheerful (a show I loved).

I couldn't see a wholesome, hunky love interest for a legacy ingenue turning out to be a stalker and a serial killer on a Lemay show. I think if Harding Lemay wrote the Doug Cummings story, Doug would have turned out to just be a self-serving narcissist with Frannie intermittently being turned on by his dark side and growing weary of his heartless business practices. Then when they finally broke up, he would have had a long monologue about how he'll do whatever it takes to make sure he never goes back to being poor and having to bus tables in a trashy piano bar while some b-list diva sings the same treacly Gershwin number for the ten zillionth time - cut to Kim, feeling suffocated by her staid marriage to Bob and flashing back to her heyday singing Someone to Watch Over Me in New Orleans (moments before her plane goes down and she dies). Which is still arguably much darker than the Marland version, but...

[Sylph]

But I think we are missing the point here. Harding said Douglas as a person, not his shows, were darker. Very different. Lemay and Marland used to hang out, Marland being a frequent guest at his Fire Island mansion.

[EricMontreal22]

That's cuz Agnes Nixon, sorry Saint Aggie, is beyond brilliant In all honesty she has gotten some criticism--she never managed to pull Loving into clear focus even the periods (85-87, 1994--which I loved) when she was HW. She has gotten a LOT of flack in the soap press for never being very good with a murder mystery (even if some did bump the ratings, like Kingsley's murder--WHo Shot Will was McTavish of course and that was the first one they got really glowing reviews from--ironic), and many have hated her gothic stories which she seems to secretly love (ironic, Marland had the same prob with gothic stories)--I loved them though (well I haven't seen the famous Loving one with the villain who sells his soul to the devil LOL). But you guessed I would

I think too, maybe sometimes she can be a bit too soft--she didn't liek telling storylines that weren't full of hope--ie she didn't want to do a gay storyline early on when the network told her she could but she'd have to have at least as strong a presence and argument on the show against gays--she said she just didn't want to give that prejudice ANY screentime (hence the very ligth Devon lesbian storyline). It took her a long time to work out how to do an AIDS storyline as she was worried about doing a story for a disease that was uncurable. Of course in an era where people find soaps too lacking in hope, this isn't seen as such a bad thing.

I love her work--to me it's what soap opera is. But I don't think she was brilliant the way Lemay was. She took the genre and elements of Philips and elevated them--she made, at her best, soap opera art but it was STILL soap opera, the pulp fiction of tv. Lemay arguably (at least his top 3 years) elevated it beyond soap opera, if that makes sense. So while I'm not exactly offering any harsh criticism, I know she had her failings (like Bell, and prob most major soap figures she also liked to recycle storylines).

In the 70s the traditional soap press and books didn't know what tomake of Nixon's shows--many books (like LaGuardia's several) go on about how jarring they found the humour and larger than life characters like Phoebe on her show, and seem to long for the P&G classic storytelling - I think there was some resentment too at how much insane press she suddenly got for her "relevent" shows.

But it's a style thing for me--I like and appreciate Bell but I can't love his work--I can love individual storylines or weeks of episodes and then the slowness, the over seriousness, etc, all starts to bore me. But I *get* why people LOVE his stuff.

Didn't someone JUST in the past week post a quote from Lemay where he said he thought Marland was very talented but said something about how he worked too much within his own rules, etc? It was kinda a backhanded complement I thought.

[EricMontreal22]

The fact that his later soap attempts were failures at best (not that he ever had any time to really do much) and that he apparently approved of JFP's lame OLTL when he was consultant for it, shouldn't replace what he did so brilliantly. I have to say, my soap holy grail would be to see the entire Lovers and Friends (it's too bad that he seemed so worn out by then that he didn't fight for the show--from his interviews he seems to have lost all interest in it).

Not sure i'd place Marland above Bell and Nixon though (I would Lemay--at least for what he did, not in overall legacy of course). I do wish (repeats myself) that I could see more of his cable soap New Day in Eden or find out ANY real info on it.

[EricMontreal22]

I dunno, I get the feeling Marland very much relished his control. I do suspect this was part of the problem with Nixon/Marland's Loving.

[EricMontreal22]

Yeah. That 1984 episode (and even the kidna lamepilot movie which has story by Nixon, scripted by Marland credit) actually feels to me like the mix worked--it feels both like 1970s AMC and Marland's ATWT (particularly the Wochek's or whomever--Marland's standard, in every thing he wroter, and some say something he got from Lemay's ATWT, poor but super close family clan). I wish more wouldleak online--I still think that 1984 episode under him on youtube is one of the best, "average" (ie no major story climax) 80s soap opera episodes I've seen.

So while I think his Loving seemed to work, I could see him leaving because, whether real orperceived, he was under Nixon's shadow.

He saw trials as a soap opera cliche to be avoided. Ironically when AW started to fall apart creatively (I guess right before the 90 min conversion) the soap press complained that it had endless court trials one after the other.

(I have half of the NYT 1980 piece on Marland at GL and the influence of Dallas and Knots on daytime typed out--I'll try to get the rest done).

[EricMontreal22]

Though Slesar flopped elsewhere--Somerset, OLTL... If you compared Slesar's 15 years at Edge to Agnes' first 15 at, well let's pick AMC obviously, and Bill's first 15 at Y&R and ONLY those eras, wouldhe still rank as high? Maybe actually

It'd be fun (though maybe pointless) to make a list of soap opera ranking/ratings for the writers. For instance, where would one put the Dobsons?

[EricMontreal22]

Agnes Nixon was to the 1800s serialized fiction of its day, Charles Dickens (campy caricature characters for humour, young if maybe bland lovers and heroines, social issues) and Lemay was Henry James. (no clue where to slot Bell into my analogy ) Like Dickens, at her best her work just worked on such an emotional, magical level--but you also see the gears turning sometimes with the forced coincidences, cliches, shoe horning of, well done but still done, social issues, etc

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I would have loved to see a Marland and Gordon Russell collaboration. Like Marland, Russell died unexpectedly, but unlike Marland, he never seems to get the credit he deserves for his groundbreaking work at OLTL. Perhaps, he would have gotten more credit had he written for more soaps and created a soap, like Marland did.

[EricMontreal22]

He was also my fave Dark Shadows writer--and of course a fave of Agnes Nixon (loved that she brought him up again in her last interview). I agree.

[DRW50]

I think if Gordon Russell doesn't get credit it is because that era of OLTL is not as known (aside from Judith Light's witness stand and the baby switch) and not referenced on today's OLTL. Today's OLTL basically seems to think the show started in 1987. Still, a lot of people seem to have fond memories of the Marco/Karen era. I still can't quite get over the audacity of having so much of your show become about the struggles of a prostitute and her pimp but it really paid off, and sadly, even at his worst, Marco didn't seem that much worse than the "heroes" of daytime today.

[EricMontreal22]

Schemering (someone I trust maybe too much) AND Waggert, out of the soap press, both seem to think it was the finest year of traditional soap opera, EVER.