Douglas Marland interview

[DRW50]

Well, someone said Maureen left because she felt Holly had become too meek, so who knows. I know that there was speculation here that they would have put Holly and Ed back together if she'd stayed around.

Marland seemed to have a dividing line between neurotic, quiet women and OTT or calculating women, with only a few exceptions like Carrie and Jackie. I guess if there was a third way Holly might have been like Hillary or Maureen.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

One thing with Marland, I still don't understand why he made an Irish-American family like the Reardon's Protestant.

I hear that it was Long who reversed this and made them Catholic and had Bea reciting the Hail Mary when she came on. There's something bizarrely WASP-y about a lot of Marland's work, but that could have come from his childhood and personal experiences, and indeed, the PGP soaps were/are quite WASP-y regardless.

[DRW50]

Marland might have believed that being as non-controversial as possible was the way to truly make change, at least on the P&G soaps. GL and ATWT were reaching audiences which had no time for the in-your-face style of some other networks, although I'm sure they would have accepted a Catholic family.

Then again, his GL had a storyline about the women of Springfield being blackmailed over their visits to a sex therapist, so who knows.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I wonder if Long consciously made the decision to make the Reardon's Catholic, or was she that oblivious to the fact that they actually weren't and thought they were?

[DRW50]

Probably the latter.

I can see WASP-y casting in mind with Bea though. Lee Lawson always seems meek to me in the clips I've seen of her as Bea, like a safe version of Doris Belack. I wonder if she would have ended up as another Anna Craig recast if OLTL hadn't thrown in the towel with that character.

Did Mike Bauer have any storylines when Marland was headwriter?

And did Marland also mention Jim or Chelsea or were they invented later on? I know he mentioned a lot of Snyders years before they showed up.

[Mitch]

Jim was never mentioned, Long brought him on, (and wrote him out a year later when she just stopped writing for the Reardons.) Chelsea was a product of somebody around the time Munisteri was writing (Nola was always supposed to be the youngest.) I always thought that Bea was never hard enouugh for a woman who had to raise seven kids and open her house to borders. Marland did however, create H.B. and Billy Lewis, or he had Alan mention them all the time, it was long who created the characters..(H.B. was one of my favorite characters of all time..the rascally kind of hard ass, not the sage wise man he became later.) Long was so good at creating memorable characters but not so much on storylines and moving them forward.

Mike Bauer was used a lot, as he did not trust Alan at all.

[DRW50]

Thanks. I remember seeing Alan in a lot of clips but never knew if he had a story of his own at that time. I guess once Elizabeth left town that was that.

Long did a great job in that first year of creating new characters and of reshaping some existing characters like Vanessa and Josh (if only she'd used Trish more). The new Lewises, Beth, Lillian, Lujack, India, and to a lesser degree, Kyle. I think after that things started to get difficult, as there were a lot of people I did not entirely care for and I don't think fitted into the canvas, some of them I found very annoying, like Calla, or Kyle's mother, or some who just felt dropped in, like Simon. I don't think GL did a great job of creating new characters until sometime during Long's second tenure, and then when Curlee became headwriter. A lot of the mid/late 80s stuff is a waste, or saved by brilliant actors (Sonni/Solita, Will, Sarah, Hawk).

[Sapounopera]

Too bad that Marland's beautiful and classy Guiding Light would become the Reva show with characters like Kurt Corday, Kyle Sampson, Simon Hall, Jesse Matthews and all these people from the South yelling all the time..

I don't care if the ratings were good, GL was raped by the new people in charge.

[heffer]

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Roger's history was constantly thrown in his face by others during his second stint. I didn't see his history as being whitewashed at all. He was still the town pariah and by no means one of the most respected people in Springfield. Sure, he wasn't as outrageously evil as he was during the 70's, but there's only so much you could do with those types of villains. I think they did a great job of showcasing Roger's more human attributes during his second stint. He was still a villain, but he had other characteristics as well, and I thought he was better established as a core character on the show.

Holly and Roger's return, IMO, gave the show momentum and at least 5 years of constant creative growth afterwards. One of the most successful soap returns I've ever seen.

[DRW50]

Didn't they say for a while that he was not as out of control because of meditation or something? I remember his apartment having Far East touches.

I also wanted to ask about something I saw in a SOD from March 82. They say it's great to see Marilyn McIntire (probably not spelled right) back on soaps, as Maureen on GL. I never knew she played Maureen. How long was she in the role? Did she make it to air?

[heffer]

If they did (I don't remember) that was a pretty lame excuse for a character that was so evil. I remember the "saved by the CIA and made into a secret agent" thing when he first came back, but that part was wisely downplayed later on. I know I'm probably in the mass minority, but I really would have LOVED to have seen what Michael Zaslow would have done with the Alan Spaulding role, which he was reportedly originally contacted about when he came back. Of course, that would have robbed us of the great run he had as Roger.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

You know, I never actually got what was so bad about Daniel Pilon's Alan. He wasn't Chris Bernau, but I thought he was adequate from what I saw. I actually preferred him to the cartoon version Ron Raines later played.

Though, without Bernau, Alan just wasn't Alan. Likewise with Beverlee McKinsey and Alexandra.

[heffer]

Totally agree with you about Pilon. I personally thought he at least had some of Chris's mannerisms down perfectly. Problem was Alan was being written as a total villain at that point, in part to sacrifice the character at the alter of Roger Thorpe (the writers didn't want 2 similar characters on the show, so they switched their personas a bit). There probably was the foresight that it was near impossible to totally replace a character previously played by such an iconic actor (who was known at that time to be dying so as never to return).Ironically enough, the exact same problem they would have with Roger years later. They would try to turn Alan Michael (as played by Rick Hearst) into a "mini-Alan" (IMO somewhat unsuccessfully).

The problem with Ron Raines was when they first hired him he did RESEMBLE the character (similar in the face and haircut to Chris Bernau}. The writers were OK with portraying him as the "old Alan" initially. However, as time went by Ron bulked up, giving him a physically imposing stature that went totally against Bernau's slighter look. The writers turned Alan first into a blinded by lovesick puppydog with Annie, then back to a one dimensional villain similar as written for Pilon, ignoring his sympathetic qualities (not that Raines isn't a great actor).

[DRW50]

You forgot about Alan and the SAVE FIFTH STREET storyline...actually the idea of Reva and Alan together again made some sense but it quickly went to pieces. It became so easy for the show to write Alan as a cartoon, and Raines didn't help matters. The only one who sometimes gave Alan more layers was Rauch, although that wasn't saying much, but still better than some of the depths he was sent to later on.