Michael Malone at AW

[DRW50]

She was in L&O SVU a few years ago. She had a brief job on DAYS in 2000 but when she learned the role amounted to a dignitary who would have a few lines and then be killed in some homage to the Moldavian Massacre, she quit (I can't remember who took her place...I think Lesley-Anne Down).

That ferociousness was a big part of what made Rachel work as a character. You were truly terrified of Rachel when you crossed her.

[SFK]

She is definitely no shrinking violet. When the Museum of TV & Radio did their "Worlds Without End" exhibit, one of the symposiums was "Divas" with VW, Robin Strasser, and Kim Zimmer on the panel. I didn't go to that one, but on a later visit to the museum I watched the video of it. VW pretty much drove the entire interview, she was very energetic and outspoken. But unlike RS for example, I don't think VW ever got a rep for being difficult. Based on her own comments in interviews, sounds like VW got so fed up with the cycle of b.s. that she stopped giving a [!@#$%^&*] and approached the job more and more like work than art. I believe she in so many words said that she'd been kind of phoning it in for a while and after Douglass Watson's death, she pulled up her bootstraps and got back to work. That was sort of a wake-up call for her and she decided to approach the work with a little more integrity regardless of what material she was given.

[DRW50]

I guess you could say this about any show but I think with AW in particular it was the bonds between cast members + strength of actor personalities + fan loyalty towards those select personalities which kept the show from capsizing before it did. It was very much a family, and this was important on a show which did not bring in any successful new core families in its last 20 years of life. Instead viewers adopted the strays, like Cecile, Cass, Wallingford and Felicia, along with the more longstanding characters like Mac, Rachel, Ada, etc. I remember when Wally died and Linda Dano said she insisted on having Linda and Stephen Schnetzer address the audience, because the actors, not just the characters were sharing their grief with fans. That's one of my strongest memories of AW, actually.

[SFK]

Is that on YouTube Carl? I'd like to see that. All I seem to remember is an In Loving Memory card.

[DRW50]

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I always wondered why PGP forced Texas on GL, and didn't on AW? I mean, AW was the sister show that shared many actors in common with Texas, and AW, unlike GL, became more about friendship than family bonds towards the end, which Pam Long could do.

Perhaps Gail Kobe/Pamela K. Long would have been a better fit over at AW. Strange it didn't work out that way.

[SFK]

Thank you so much for that Carl.

[DRW50]

I wonder if they gave Pam and Gail the choice? Either that or they were more worried about GL since GL had had a sudden drop, whereas AW had been sliding down for about five years by that time.

I think a part of their talent did suit GL, it was the other part, the more out of control side, which was a bad fit for the show. In that sense they probably would have been better for AW. Maybe by then they already stopped caring about AW, who knows. It's a shame because aside from Vicky and Donna (and through Vicky, Marley), the show only ever worked in those last two decades through friendships and complicated love stories. That is very Pam Long.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Yeah, I think part of it was that they stopped caring about AW, despite constant interference.

PGP also had a much better working relationship with CBS than NBC, and I think Ed Trach REALLY preferred GL and ATWT over the other PGP soaps, and it showed. Under his watch as Executive In Charge of Production, he took very good care, for the most part, of those shows.

Though, 1994-1995 was a horrible time for all the PGP soaps. Ed Trach retired, Marland died, Nancy Curlee left daytime and JFP got more creative control at GL, and Swajeski was long gone at AW and JFP was about to switch over. As much as Swajeski's time at AW was a mixed bag, it was the last time AW had any consistent leadership.

[DRW50]

Yeah even thinking of 94-95 with those shows is a heartbreaker. That was the "end of innocence" for me. I was so upset by what ATWT and GL had become that I started watching other networks, which I hadn't done before, and started trying to find out more about who was in charge of the shows.

I remember how all the changes were supposed to be so good for those shows. Yeah...not so much.

[marlenadlc]

[DRW50]

I loved your columns back then, I used to read each one several times. I didn't always agree with you of course but even when I didn't, you usually expressed yourself in a way that didn't seem overly condescending, nasty or biased or desperate, like some of today's soap columnists, one or two in particular.

I miss those days of SPW. I keep forgetting it's even around these days.

Malone was a very talented writer but I think he needed a lot of help and sadly outside of his first OLTL run that didn't happen.

A few weeks ago we were also talking about your column on GL/McTavish 1996, the one about the hollow drum. And then when Agnes Nixon wrote to you about Erica taking Maria's baby.