Lovers and Friends/For Richer For Poorer Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

I guess I was thinking of Virginia Dwyer, as Lemay detailed her not being courteous enough to Hugh Marlowe in scenes - he also did the same with Val Dufour. I guess I wonder if on a show like L&F, if it would have helped if someone had been a bit of a spotlight hog and jumped out at viewers.

Daytime TV Stars had surprisingly detailed and incisive soap critiques in the mid/late 70s. It's a bit startling to read now. SOD tended to move more and more away from criticism and in the last ten years or more has just had Carolyn Hinsey to sort of pretend to be critical. But it's amazing sometimes reading even SOD and seeing them be so openly critical or in some cases, like the Diva columns, nasty. I guess TPTB in daytime began to believe that soap magazines being negative affected the ratings (I doubt it did). I wonder if the Internet, which was often described as mean or negative by soap magazines in the late 90s, had an impact on their tone.

[BuckyB12]

Sorry, I meant to get back to this discussion earlier.

As to the soap press in the 1970s, Daytime TV was the old established mag and SOD the upstart, but I think they were all fairly independent. The magazines each had their own staff that provided all the editorial material. SOD's synposes were written by staff writers as they watched the shows, so the events of July 1977 didn't appear until the September 1977 issue (I think), given the editorial turnaround. Nowadays, the synopsis info comes directly from the shows so that the issue on the stands is recounting the stories from the same week. There were no spoilers back then either, so the mags were not at all directly dependent on the shows for material. If someone had tried cutting off a magazine because they didn't like a review (as Corday threatened some years back) the magazine had twice as many shows to cover as today, so one less wouldn't have made much difference (and the producers knew it).

I hadn't been watching soaps all that long in January 1977, so I can't really say who should have been cast, but I'm thinking of people like Kathy Glass (who was already at OLTL, but was known for Return to PP) or Paulette Breen, or other "names" from the soaps that had been cancelled in 1974 or '75 that the audience might have wanted to see again. Maybe they should have spent some money to hire someone away from one of the other shows. I can understand not wanting to use anyone from Somerset (so Audrey Landers was out, though she was the right age) but they surely had options that they chose not to take in their quest for unknown "theater" actors instead of "stars."

I see there are a few people here who were watching in the earlier 70s and who could probably come up with more names of people who should have been considered.

[DRW50]

I wonder how Nancy Barrett would have been - some of her later Dark Shadows characters, like Carolyn Loomis, screamed Lemay.

Or they could have brought in for FRFP Maeve Maguire after Edge of Night fired her. That would have received some publicity and Maeve was such a striking presence, she could have been perfect for the type of show they wanted.

[DRW50]

October 78 Digest recap.

[DRW50]

Also in this issue, some cast members at a party Mayor Ed Koch threw for New York's daytime community.

Edited April 12, 2011 by CarlD2

[EricMontreal22]

It's great after all these years to be able to put faces to names. How random that the mayor gave soap stars a party though...

[DRW50]

I'll post the whole article at some point - it's kind of sad though remembering when New York had so many soaps.

Here is the November 1978 recap. It's a nice surprise to see who played Paco.

[teplin]

Thanks for continuing to post background material on this thread, Carl! My local NBC affiliate didn't carry L&F/R4P, so I've always been curious about them. All I really knew before your postings was that Mac & Rachel made a crossover to one of them, and many of the actors eventually showed up on AW. Now, what do you mean about the actor playing Paco being a nice surprise? Is Chu Chu Malave someone I should know? (I love his name!)

[DRW50]

Not really, I just remember reading about Paco in FrenchFan's synopses and thinking it was rare for a show to have Hispanic characters at this time (the only other soap that did was Ryan's Hope), and I wondered who played him. I always misplace by copy of Soap Opera Encyclopedia and was too lazy to really look online. So when I saw a photo and his name in the Digest it answered for me.

I have one or two more articles somewhere and hopefully someone else has more. Like you I have never seen this and wish I could.

[DRW50]

From the 1978/1979 Daylight TV Yearbook.

[DRW50]

[SFK]

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure Laurinda Barrett is a noticeably seen extra in Working Girl. The scene where Melanie first attends the cocktail party wearing Sigourney's gear.

Laurinda and PPW

[DRW50]

Laurinda looks like a Tripod.

[SFK]

LOL! Sorry... that site must not have a lot of 'width. First result:

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1T4ACAW_enUS299US300&q=laurinda%20barrett%20pamela%20payton%20wright&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1001&bih=364

[DRW50]

Wow, she doesn't look that much different. Too bad she didn't do more soaps. I'd love to see her acting with Pamela. Hell I'd love to see Pamela on anything at this point.

So were they both in Working Girl?