Blacks In Soaps or How To Be On a Daytime Drama For Years and Never Have a Real Storyline

[DeeeDee]

Classy.

[DeeeDee]

Doesn't AMC have a library?

[DeeeDee]

Doesn't AMC have a library or did they tape over like other soaps?

[DRW50]

I think they might have not mentioned her since they were mostly talking about the present soap climate -- she wasn't on OLTL at this time was she? I can't remember.

It does seem like the Grants had a fair amount of story there during the late 70s, moreso than most other soaps. I guess maybe once AMC started taking off ABC gave Agnes leeway. It wasn't until the mid-90s that AMC, hand in hand with the rest of the network, seemed to start phasing out black characters.

[EricMontreal22]

When AMC went to an hour in '77 part of the deal Agnes Nixon insisted on was they start saving the video tapes and not reusing them--I believe around this time ABC did the same with all their soaps. (Ryan's Hope has a complete library I think because Claire Labine and her co creator owned the show and decided to save them from the start). There are a handful of B&W kinescopes from before then of AMC--and I've heard rumour (but no actual data) that Agnes had kinescopes made of nearly every episode but they were largely destroyed in some fire--she did recently find two 1970 ones that are on her webpage.

But the Grants still had some major storyline post the videos being destroyed, so it's out there, just hasn't been shown in say a Soapnet special or clips episode, to my knowledge.

[EricMontreal22]

If you mean Ellen Holly i thought she stayed at OLTL basically till Rauch and her horrible exit? Wasn't she involved with the police chief shown there--Hall? But it really doesn't seem like she had much story at all after her initial infamous story (which I'd love to see...)

I think by then Agnes did have a lot more leeway to do the kinds of stories she wanted without ABC worrying (she talks about this in one of the Palye lecture videos on her website). It boggles the mind how all those TV execs haven't realized that the more they play it safe, the more they use focus groups, the more they dictate to writers what kinds of stories and what kinds of characters they can focus on--the more the shows have suffered ratings wise. Any idiot can see that. I guess it's hubris.

Yeah AMC I think did a steady and overall decent job with Black characters for most of its glory years anyway (certainly when I started watching the Fryes and all the characters connected to them were front and center constantly)--it wasn't till the show started to lose focus, like all the ABC soaps in the late 90s that when they would introduce Black characters they didn't really seem to know how to use them (some brief reprieves like Danielle for a little while and that kinda lame story with her creepy new step dad and Mimi returning, aside). Until Jesse and Angie's return anyway where now I think they do a consistantly solid job, but as others have said part of that is just comparing it to the other soaps at the moment.

[DRW50]

The late 90s was when AMC phased out the last of the Keefers and had little used Adrian and Tina, then no black characters at all for a while, aside from Laura's nurse. Then there was the flop Frankie recast, and a brief attempt at bringing the Fryes back. McTavish did seem to try to use black characters and bring in new black characters in her various stints as headwriter -- she's done that on most of her soaps, although some of the stories she gives them are shameful (especially at GL).

But at least AMC has gotten better at this in the last few years, even if the writing still isn't what it could be. It's beyond hope for OLTL or GH.

For some reason I thought she left for a while in the mid 70s and then when she came back in 79 or 80 they had the story with Jack Scott and with another man besides Ed.

[EricMontreal22]

She very well could have left... IMDB (which is hardly an authority) says:

One Life to Live" (1968) TV series .... Assistant District Attorney Clara "Carla" Grey Hall Scott (aka Carla Bonari) (1969-1980, 1983-1985) (unknown episodes)

Yeah McTavish made a number of botched attempts at bringing, as you said, back different Black characters in her last run. I don't really fully blame her for the fact few of them stuck around--in an interview for instance she made it clear she really wanted Livia Frye to become a major player again (and Lord knows any soap should be thrilled to have a talent like Tonya Pinkins on their show) but I think there were other forces there...

[DRW50]

I was watching a clip from 2005 where Tom told Jack he wanted to move back to Pine Valley -- having Tom and Livia in Pine Valley could have helped give the show a moral center at such an ugly time. It's a shame nothing came of that.

[EricMontreal22]

And McTavish had shown she liked to write for them in the past. I dunno I do think Fronsian interference was at its top around then (similarly McTavish had always loved writing for Brooke in the past--even if she gave her some awful stories, so the fact that Brooke had nothing to do and then disappeared I don't think was much her doing). Totally agreed about Tom and Livia giving the show a good moral center, something AMC always needs IMHO.

[DRW50]

A few people are putting up Tom/Livia clips and they're a great couple, the way they have these conversations and Livia talks about her past and her fears and her life, and Tom is there to listen and offer support without thinking of himself, it's such a breath of fresh air. You don't have that with a lot of soap couples today. What the hell would "Rylee" talk about if they ever got together? The time he almost hit her in the face?

I do blame Frons for a lot of AMC's biggest mistakes in recent years (although some of the Pratt stuff must have gone too far even for him or someone at ABC, since Pratt was fired). I know that Kriezman and Swajeski aren't great but I heard someone at DC or somewhere saying, "Oh Kriezman is bringing Rylee back" and I just thought, do you really think that's Kriezman's idea?

[EricMontreal22]

HAHA!!

No, I think, at least at this point, Kreizman/Swajeski under the ye of Broderick would know better than to push for Rylee again. Frons really just doesn't seem to *get* it. I will say one thing for him--he does seem to have an odd passion for the genre, but he really doesn't *get* it, or get fans anyway. And to their credit K/S have been--well up till now, much better than any writer since at least 2005 at at least giving the show balance and not forcing one storyline over the others... But we'll see

[All My Shadows]

Most of the Grants' heavy stuff falls in that period of AMC where we know the tapes are out there, but no one wants to do anything with them, and not enough people had VCRs for that stuff to just randomly pop up on YouTube. A lot of characters and some major storylines for longer-running characters are lost in the shuffle because of that. Ellen's triangle with Paul and Mark, Paul/Anne dealing with their baby dramas, Erica/Tom/Brooke, Erica/Nick, the last few years of the Phil/Tara/Chuck stuff, early Chuck/Donna, Myrtle's introduction, Billy Clyde's first stint and much of Estelle's stories, Cliff/Nina's initial storylines with Sybil, Palmer's introduction, etc. I wonder if the person who has all of that late 70s GH or the one with OLTL might have been taping AMC at that time.

[EricMontreal22]

Man I'd love to see....well all of that.

[DeliaIrisFan]

Speaking of Carla and Ed on OLTL and that last spurt real story that they had in the late 70s, I was surprised when reading those wonderful synopses that FrenchFan posted at the number of scenes between Ed and Judith Light's Karen at that time. It said they were practically the only two people in Llanview not to attend Carla's wedding to Jack Scott (I guess it was) and they went to a movie together. Was OLTL actually going there, or at least testing the waters? If they were, obviously they wimped out. That could have been incredible, though!

It makes sense, since Karen seemed to gravitate toward older, upstanding men who offered stability (only to get bored and get into trouble, of course). As police commissioner, Ed would have been even more of a pillar of the community and an emblem of law and order than Larry was, and what a classic soapy story it would have been for Karen to turn to Ed while genuinely trying to turn her life around and him to give her the benefit of the doubt, only for her to become more involved in criminal activity than ever before when she made that incredibly tragic decision to switch those babies. Ed would have grown suspicious as they got closer, but he probably would have convinced himself that Marco/Mario was the bad influence on Karen - only to discover eventually that it was actually Karen's idea. And the newly widowed Carla would have surely been jealous that Ed was getting involved with Karen, and she could have gotten wind that Karen and Marco were up to no good and set out to find the truth. Ellen Holly and Judith Light as rivals...my mind reels at the possibilities. That could have provided more than enough drama to fuel the baby switch story - which already (based on what I've seen in clips and heard about it) seems epic - without those bizarre interludes like Karen's story with Ivan Kipling that were seemingly thrown in to keep it going longer. As an added bonus, with Dorian on a mission to prove that Mario was really Marco and that he and Karen switched the babies (I don't know the whole back story there) she and Carla could have teamed up to expose Karen and Marco, plus Viki was Karen's friend...

That's all I can really add. Otherwise, yeah, it's a pretty shameful history of people of color on soaps and TV in general, then and now. It's depressing how little things have really changed.