Days: 45 years of days!

[jam6242]

Thanks Jason, I didn't remember that about Susan. I always thought it was funny that so many of Julie's ex-enemies & lovers/husbands attended the wedding. I guess Brooke was so bad that there was no way to work her in, but in hindsight it would have been awesome if they had!

[DRW50]

Didn't Deborah want to leave?

Are there are any couples or "supercouples" you think have been unfairly forgotten by fans?

[Bright Eyes]

Neil Curtis and Liz Chandler!

The Neil/Amanda/Greg triangle was a very popular triangle, I heard.

[saynotoursoap]

I could not agree more with everything jam6242 wrote. Wonderful post! The period of 1971-76 was my favourite of all the years I watched.

Permit me to clarify an often misunderstood plot. The incident with Eric and Susan has been distorted in soap opera reference books. They did not "have relations" in the park. As I remember the sequence, Julie had taken Scott Banning away from Susan as payback for what had happened years earlier between Susan, David Martin, and Julie. Julie gave up David Martin's child for adoption, and he had been adopted by the Bannings. David's wife Janet died, so Julie sued for custody and won because the judge felt that the child would be better off with his biological mother rather than a single adoptive father. Scott, desperate to have his son back, pursued Julie, and she married him to spite Susan. Susan was devastated by the turn of events. Upset, she went to a park to think about things, and there she met a dark-haired stranger.

The park scenes were deliberately played with ambiguity, with the stranger coming off mysterious and perhaps even dangerous. The scene faded to black without anything being shown. Soaps were so wonderful in that era because everything was left to the viewer's imagination. The writers kept you guessing instead of spoon-feeding the obvious the way they do now. The next time we saw Susan, she was disheveled and upset. Slowly the viewer began to piece together what had happened. When Susan discovered she was pregnant, she confirmed to Greg that she had been raped the night she went to the park, but some of the details were obscured. Greg stood by her, eventually proposing marriage.

Meanwhile, Greg learned that his brother Eric had been living Salem for months. Eric was a writer and was somewhat estranged from the family. Eric had a male roommate named Jeff, and it was implied that they were lovers. Eric set Greg straight that Jeff was there merely to help pay the rent. Greg and Eric worked to restore their fractured relationship. When Eric finally met his brother's girlfriend, he and Susan were both stunned. Susan and Eric kept what had happened between them a private matter, but Eric vehemently denied that he had raped Susan. As Susan was ready to give birth to the child that Eric secretly knew was his, he stayed close to the family, urging Greg not to marry her. Susan decided to give the child up for adoption as soon as she gave birth. Then Eric contracted pneumonia and became very ill. When he didn't respond to treatment, and thought he was dying, he gave his unpublished manuscript, which included details of meeting Susan in the park, to his mother.

Eric's manuscript told a very different story in which it was Susan who seduced him. Eric begged Susan to bring his infant daughter to him before he died. She did, and after seeing his daughter, Eric began to recover. Susan had confessed everything to Laura Horton. With Eric now recuperating, he finally admitted that he had fathered Susan's baby, but stood by his version of the story with Susan being the one who initiated their one night stand. Laura had a session with Eric, but afterward, she could not determine who was telling the truth about events. Susan agreed to Laura's suggestion of narcosynthesis to help uncover repressed memories from the night in the park. Laura gave Susan an injection of sodium pentathol. Susan began to have flashbacks of meeting Eric in the park, talking with him, and suggesting they go back to his apartment to listen to records. Dancing to music in his apartment, Susan asked Eric to take her to his bed, but after they made love, she looked into his eyes and suddenly saw the face of the deceased David Martin. Scott's rejection of her for Julie, which had precipitated her going to the park, caused painful memories of David's murder to rush to the surface. Unable to deal with the memories, Susan hastily threw on her clothes and ran from Eric's apartment in confusion.

Of course, that was not the end of the story. Greg and Eric's mother Ann, having read the manuscript of In His Brother's Shadow, blamed Susan for everything that was happening, particularly when Greg accidentally discovered that Eric was the father of Susan's baby. Greg thought that Eric had raped Susan and beat him unmercifully. Eric urged Susan to continue to let Greg think their affair was a rape, so that Greg would marry her and be a father to baby Annie. Feeling guilty, Susan had to confess the truth to Greg. Greg reacted very badly, and Ann encouraged him to have nothing to do with Susan. Ann tried to interest Greg in Julie, whose husband Scott had recently died. Naturally, Susan thought that Julie was once again attempting to thwart Susan's happiness, which made Greg even angier. Greg tried to get Julie to go to bed with him, but she refused. In a rare moment of generosity for her rival, Julie suggested that Greg give Susan another chance.

Days was such a wonderful soap opera in 1970's. The stories were so rich and dramatic, and I loved the focus on the psychological aspects of the characters. No matter how preposterous the situations may have been, viewers believed in 100% because the motivations of the characters was always clear and made sense.

[jam6242]

Thanks for filling in the gaps to this story! I knew there was more to it but couldn't remember it all. I so agree about knowing what the characters motivations were back then, and it made all the difference in the world. I'm sure it was invaluable to the actors, too. If you read interviews from the current Days cast, they have no idea why their characters are doing what they are doing. How can the audience be expected to understand and be empathetic?

[DRW50]

That's a fantastic summary.

Was Jeff ever seen again? And did the show ever imply to viewers that they were lovers or was it just other characters who thought this? Was this around the same time as they were telling the story about Mike thinking he was gay?

[jam6242]

Does anyone else remember Linda Patterson withholding medication from her husband Jim Phillips when he was in the hospital with a heart problem (similar to Bette Davis in "The Little Foxes" except Linda relented and didn't kill Jim)? I think this was another occasion when Linda was trying to pass Melissa off as Mickey's daughter & Jim was threatening to tell the truth. I could swear I saw this but can't find anyone else who remembers it.

[JAS0N47]

Re: Eric Peters.

John Lombardo played "Man in Park", who is listed as an extra on the July 23, 1971 episode. Nowadays, he'd at least be a U/5, since he interacted with Susan. Stanley Kamel then shows up as Eric on January 26, 1972.

Re: Doug & Julie's wedding.

To go along with the videos posted earlier in this thread, I've posted the September 30, 1976 and October 1, 1976 cast/set pages. For the 9/30/76 episode, the script lists the exact scenes in the flashback montage (usually just the episode #s are listed for flashbacks), so I thought some of you would enjoy seeing a list of what aired the day before the wedding: http://www.jason47.com/days/dougjuliewedding.html

[jam6242]

Thank you Jason! I think I would kill to see that "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" fantasy sequence!!!!!

[JAS0N47]

Bill Molloy played Jeff Michaels on January 8 and January 9, 1973. That's the only time Jeff was ever seen.

[saynotoursoap]

Yes, it happened, but not exactly as you remember it. Linda had returned to Salem to find Mickey married to Maggie. At this point, the summer of 1975, Mickey was calling himself Marty Hansen and still had amnesia from a stroke. Linda wanted to take Mickey away from Maggie. Mickey was starting to remember bits of his past as Mickey Horton, but he did not want to be Mickey, he wanted to remain Marty. Linda had an affair with Mickey many years before, and she felt that "Marty" would reject her because she was part of his life as Mickey. Laura had told Maggie about Mickey and Linda's affair, which made her leery of Linda, too. A cunning Linda agreed to a reconciliation with her ex-husband Jim Phillips, who was Julie's attorney. Linda used her remarriage to Jim as proof to Mickey and Maggie that she had no intention of coming between them. Linda used every trick in the book to befriend them, including nursing Maggie after she underwent an operation to reverse paralysis in her legs. Linda attempted to get close to Mike, and undermined Maggie's therapy with Laura. When Linda's daughter Melissa visited Maggie's farm, Linda noted Mickey/Marty's instant love for the young girl. Linda decided to exploit it by telling Mickey that he fathered Melissa. Jim discovered Linda's schemes and phoned her at the farm to tell her that he was coming to get Melissa and intended to tell Mickey the truth. On the way to the farm, Jim's car crashed. The accident left him with a severe head injury, and he was unable to speak. Linda knew that if he recovered, he would expose her lies. Linda began having fantasies in which she did things to make Jim die. This is what you remember. In one fantasy sequence, she smothered him with a pillow. Jim tried his best to speak, and when he could not, he wrote the words "Linda" and "leather" on a sheet of paper. Then Jim died from his head injuries. Linda obsessed about what Jim wrote, as she knew he was attempting to warn Mickey and Maggie about her. She suddenly realized that Jim was trying to write the word "letter". At the farm, Maggie went through a stack of unread mail and found a letter addressed to Mickey that Jim had mailed the day of his car accident. She too realized its significance, and worried about what the letter might contain, Maggie opened and read it. Jim had not only exposed Linda's lies, but he also told Mickey that neither Melissa nor Mike could be his biological children, because Mickey had always been sterile. Maggie was mortified by Jim's accusations. The story was so compelling, because it suddenly changed everything for Maggie. She realized that Linda was not really her friend, but had planned to steal Mickey/Marty all along. Maggie asked Laura to come to the farm and told her about Jim's letter. Laura had no choice but to confess to Maggie that Mike was actually Bill's child. They confronted Linda, and she delighted in the fact that she had both women over a barrel. Neither could do anything to her, because if they told Mickey the truth, it would destroy him, as well as Mike. Linda told Laura how much she had always despised her and then laughed in Maggie's face, warning her that Marty was slowly recovering his memory, and once he became Mickey Horton again, he would want a woman like Linda, not Maggie. Linda "bravely" told Marty that she thought her and Melissa's presence on the farm was upsetting Maggie, and they would be leaving to face life alone in Salem. Marty was enraged, blaming Maggie's insecurity for their departure, and he told Maggie that they could forget about adopting a child together because she might become jealous and insecure and decide to send that child away. Linda beamed triumphantly.

Linda, as played by Margaret Mason, was such a deliciously nasty character. She really was a piece of work, and unfortunately, her villainy is largely forgotten in the annals of soap history. Linda ranked right up there with some of the meanest villainesses in soapdom.

[saynotoursoap]

Jason, that is amazing! Where on earth are you getting exact dates and dayplayer information? Is it from a book? Also, do you know who played Carrie Spencer, Laura's mother, in 1975? The character appeared around May or June 1975 when Bill and Laura went to visit her in the sanitarium.

[Bright Eyes]

Was that child Janice Barnes or someone else?

That would be Gloria Manners.

[saynotoursoap]

As Jason wrote, Jeff was only seen in January 1973. His appearance was not supposed to make the audience think that Eric was gay, rather it reinforced the fact that Greg was quick to believe the worst about his brother, which led to Greg attacking Eric over the supposed rape of Susan. The story with Mike happened much later, in 1976.

[jam6242]

Thank you so much! I'm happy to know I didn't imagine the whole thing! I remembered that Jim died as the result of a car accident but for some reason I thought he had a heart problem, too. I'm probably getting that mixed up with the Bette Davis movie, lol! I remember when Linda was at the farm. Didn't Maggie later withhold the fact that she could finally walk from Mickey for a while because she was insecure about Linda (as well as Laura)? I loved Margaret Mason as Linda. She is probably my favorite villainess ever on Days. It's a shame that more people don't remember her. As you say, she was deliciously bad. But she could act as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth!