As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[DRW50]

has the most haunting music. And the lyrics...oh, those beautiful, sensitive, true-to-life lyrics...Those words touched me beyond belief.

"It seems to me I've been waiting to record such a song all of my life. That girl - that Gladys - she's a genius. There is no other word to describe her. Oh, you must meet her," she enthused. "I know you'll want to write a story about her life, her career, her amazing talent. Not only is she truly gifted, but she's so gorgeous."

"I do know Gladys Shelley," I told EIleen. "As a matter of fact, she told me about your record. It is as hauntingly lovely as you describe. I know it will make the charts."

"Do you think so?" she asked, and there was a dream in her voice and in her soft velvety brown eyes. "Oh, I hope you're right. Do you have ESP?"

I laughed. Then the phone rang. And the tears came. After Eileen had composed herself she told me about that call.

"It was from Danny, my husband," she said. "He told me they have banned I Wonder Who My Daddy Is in Augusta, Georgia. I still can't believe it!"

"Banned!" it was my turn to be incredulous.

"Yes, banned...as though it was some dirty old pornographic thing. It isn't. It's moving and touching and so true to life," Eileen defended her record. "I hope Gladys won't be hurt by the news. I don't know how to tell her. She's written songs - great hits - for some of the top recording stars. So many of them. And now this..."

"Maybe banning I Wonder Who My Daddy Is in Georgia is just what is needed to put the record on the map. Personally, I think Danny should give those program directors what-for for banning a song of such depth and sensitivity."

"He did tell them off," Eileen finally smiled. "They said the lyrics are suggestive."

"'Suggestive!' Danny hooted. 'What do you think As the World Turns is? Little Lord Fauntleroy! That series is the most popular soap in Georgia. Listen, my wife made her reputation as an outstanding actress in that series. She plays a girl who is far from an angel.'

"Oh, Danny defended my record. He's been on tour with it for several days. Every radio station he hit has been playing it four and five times a day. They love it. The listeners love it. Many call the station to ask where they can buy I Wonder Who My Daddy Is.

"Danny's been away for two whole days, and it feels like a year. I miss him so." The dream came back into her voice and her eyes. This was the same Eileen Fulton who plays the wicked Lisa Hughes in As the World Turns. If only her fans could see her now! Soft, feminine, beautifully "put together."

Eileen shares only one thing in common with Lisa. They are both ambitious. Eileen wants the world. So does Lisa. But they go about fulfilling their dreams in different ways. Lisa claws and scratches her way to reach her goal and doesn't care whom she steps on or hurts. Eileen is ladylike, proper, controlled.

"I want to do everything and be everything. I want to sing in night clubs - the top ones, which I have - make hit records and star in movies. I Wonder Who My Daddy Is could and should be a huge hit. It has all the elements for success. Danny believes in it; that's why we recorded it on his Nectar label; that's why he's out on the road promoting it.

"I'm going to join him as soon as I get some free time from As the World Turns. We're going to travel coast to coast. It't'll be like being on a honeymoon..."

"Have the stations in New York been playing I Wonder Who My Daddy Is?" I asked.

"Have they! I turned on WNEW this morning and believe me when I say my heart skipped a beat when they played my record. They raved about the music and the lyrics and even talked about me. In fact, all the New York radio stations have been playing it several times a day."

At that point I asked for permission to reprint the lyrics that were banned in Augusta, Ga. Eileen went to the phone and called Gladys Shelley. The sheet music is copyrighted on the Spiral Record Corp. So with Gladys' permission I am running the lyrics.

I WONDER WHO MY DADDY IS

I wonder who my daddy is...I wonder who...Is he the man...came by some-time, then went away? Is he the one who telephones and speaks so low? And mama's voice is shaky when she says hello. Is he the tall man...held me on his knee? Is he the short man...fixed my Christmas tree? My Grandma says he can't be found...He won't be back because he drowned. Yet every place I look in every face I see...It's on my mind. I've gotta find this part of me. Has he a car or own a bar...or fly the sky? I'll wonder who my Daddy is until I die...

The Weekly Variety (the showbiz bible), Record World, Billboard, Cashbox and other musical trade papers have given Eileen's record rave reviews. Disc jockeys throughout the country have been lauding its praises. Program directors re requesting Eileen to make personal appearances. The record, as they say in the trade, is making a lot of noise. And yet...I Wonder Who My Daddy Is was banned in Augusta.

You have read Gladys Shelley's lyrics. What do YOU think? Are the lyrics suggestive - dirty? Or touching?

To the first fifth (50) readers who send us their reaction - good or bad - TV Radio TALK will gift you with a FREE record of I Wonder Who My Daddy Is.

Send your letter to <address>

Your letters, I know, will cheer up Eileen.

by Louise Walton

[DRW50]

I was reading a Donna Wandrey interview from her ATWT run (I guess it would have been done in late spring 1972) and she says that Barbara was dating Tom, but had feelings for his father. Had you ever heard that before? It's tough to picture Barbara/Bob. I wonder if that's one of the reasons Irna Phillips wrote her out (did Irna write her out?). Imagine a story where Jennifer's sister and daughter were in love with her husband.

[P.J.]

^^^My mom actually said that out of the blue one day, but that's the only place I've ever heard it.

[DRW50]

Well your mother and Donna Wandrey sound right to me. I just wish I knew more about it. It's so hard to imagine that ever happening with CZP. I'm very glad Sheffer never knew about this storyline...

[Mitch]

That Fulton story is hilarious. Seems to be a good old publicity stunt, I love her crying on the phone as one goofy town "banned," her song. Isn't that the Fortunato who took off with a good deal of Fultons' money? The lyrics are hilarious "My grandma says he wont be found cause he drowned!"

Eww, Babs and Bob????I am glad they never referenced that and left it as a father/daughter relationship.

[DRW50]

January 1968 TV Radio Mirror

[DRW50]

industrial real estate. After a year of living with Gay's folks, Konrad managed to save enough to move his family to a Manhattan apartment. At last he could be near the theaters and audition for everything - holding fast to his steady part-time job as salesman.

"We moved into a 'floor-through' apartment," Konrad recently recalled. He leaned back in his swivel chair comfortably slumping. "Sounds impressive but it was a railroad apartment on 91st Street. It wasn't our ideal, but it was big and cheap.

"In all this time I heard nothing from my father, then when he saw me on Secret Storm, he began to think perhaps I was getting somewhere. I'll admit, there were times when I wondered if I had made a mistake, because that job selling real estate was my only source of steady income."

He chuckled, shaking his head, laughing at himself. "As a matter of fact, it was only a few months ago that I finally did give it up. Unlike some actors, my family comes first, above all else. If I were unable to make a good income, support my family, I would give up acting."

Until recently, those lean years were the only time Konrad would allow Gay to work - he just doesn't believe in working wives. But he realized he was doing her a great injustice by not allowing her to follow her desire, as he had followed his. Gay is a film director. "She is of inestimable value, critically, to me, and a great idea person," beams Konrad. Sh e proved this recently by directing an education film with new concepts and new techniques. The Ford Foundation acclaimed the film, Where Time Is A River, as the finest of its kind.

Konrad gave his desk a knuckle-rap. "Knock wood, so far everything has worked out for me. So far - " he added with no small amount of uncertainty. "In this business you're on top one day and out of the running the next. You've got to be better than good in this field because there's always somebody clambering right behind you up that golden ladder.

"By now I'm accustomed to pressure. I've certainly known enough of it.

"When I left my secure position in Dad's firm, the mental conflict was tremendous. I knew how opposed my parents were. My fears of failure were like prison bars - making my choice was like breaking out of jail. I knew I might not make it as an actor, particularly with no background for it. Failing would be rather like getting caught, you know, and having to go home and serve time.

"My father seemed to forget he chose his profession. When I went to him and said I didn't feel like I belonged nin the automotive world - he took it as some sort of personal defeat."

Super K admits he could understand his father's opposition. To decide to act was not something a 24-year-old man with a family was supposed to do? "Papa M" made no bones about how he felt. "It was madness, I guess, but I had to do it."

Listening to Konrad, watching his expressive face, one could actually see the tension mounting as he nervously pounded pencil to desk. "Today, I'm glad I had the courage to do it, but there were times..."

They went through plenty of tight-pocket tension the first people of years in New York and with the coming of their second daughter, Leslie, Gay had to resign her position as assistant to the director of the Russian Institution at Columbia University. But, as with all rainy days, the sun finally broke through. Konrad took a big change and produced an off-Broadway show, A Man's Man, in which he also starred. The show did well.

Broadway began opening its doors to the heretofore unknown and he played in Luther, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, 13 Daughters. A long list of off-Broadway shows followed. He again tried his producing wings, doing the long-running An Evening's Frost off-Broadway. Then television beckoned. He did Another World, Look Up And Live, Secret Storm, and many others. There is also a low-budget movie he made last January, produced in Australia, Long Journey Into Darkness. It will premiere in Australia and be shown in the States early in '68.

Back to his hometown

Not only is Konrad "in" at CBS but he's coming "out" soon as a full-fledged Broadway producer. This show, George M., a musical based on the life of George M. Cohan, starring Joel Grey. It's scheduled for Broadway sometime in February. And - the tryout will be in Detroit - his hometown - at the Fisher Theatre in January.

Surely Matthaei Sr. will give his second son a second consideration and the respect he is due for going after and getting what he believed in - since Frederick Matthaei once upon a time did the very same thing.

Konrad's piercing blue eyes have a look that tells you he'll never turn his back on his so no matter what road he chooses to travel. Konrad Jr. is a handsome infant favoring his dad in looks. He has already been tagged Baby K as opposed to Super...

The Mattheai family spends Monday through Friday in Manhattan, where Leslie and Marcy attend private schools. Weekends they are in the country,. Marcy, who dreams of being an actress, is already a model for Bonwit Teller. Leslie wants to be a ballerina or a nurse. Both girls are fiercely proud of their dad. Leslie giggles and glows whenever he's recognized and often stirs up Pop's ire by humming as they stroll along the street, "Here's Roy McGuire." Yes, Konrad's girls, both of them, are his biggest fans.

That golden ladder Konrad mentioned is very much in his thoughts but Super K has got what it takes to scale the heights.

[Paul Raven]

Interesting that he was brought back as Grant 5 years later, before being replaced. Surely he would still be recognized as Roy?

[DRW50]

August 1961 TV Radio Mirror

[DRW50]

have been the same, whatever work I did."

She does admit that being an actress may have strengthened this attitude. At sixteen, during vacation between high school and college, she went into summer stock as an apprentice, was quickly graduated to ingenue leads ,and went on the road, instead of entering college in the fall. She played the lead role of Corliss in "Kiss and Tell." She later did road shows, half-a-dozen Broadway and off-Broadway plays, a great deal of nighttime TV drama. She says, in retrospect, "For fourteen years, I have been an actress. I have examined other people's emotions. Their ways of living, their relationships to one another. I have recreated these emotions, and to some extent, they became mine. This has been bound to make a difference in me."

At twenty, Rosemary was married to a man - a few years older than she - who is now a successful stage director. They were very much in love. Six years later, she asked for a trial separation, and about one year later, they were divorced. Yet she still says of her marriage, "It takes two to break up a marriage. And it takes a set of circumstances. I am tremendously fond of my ex-husband. You don't love for six years, and sever the bonds lightly. But loving someone isn't necessarily remaining in love. A young girl doesn't always understand this."

In Rosemary's opinion, a young girl may be inclined to marry for the wrong reasons. She says, "The security of marriage itself my have a certain meaning for her, rather than the person she chooses. Every girl has her own conception of what the marriage should be, into which she tries to make everything else fit.So many young wives do everything wrong. The husband becomes unhappy and the wife is also unhappy.

"A young girl sees life in romantic fantasies," Rosemary continues. "She makes a situation seem what she wants it to be. But it won't be like that in reality. A time arrives when she must come to grips with her marriage as it is. When she must find areas of compromise, if that is possible. Everything she has read in novels and stories, and seen in movies and television, may have helped to perpetuate the fantasy. This makes it even more difficult."

Rosemary stresses the importance of strong, enduring friendships with her own sex and with men. Based on mutual liking and understanding, mutual respect for each other's individuality. "What is living but relating to other people?" she asks. "Giving and taking. Forming warm, deep, mature friendships."

It amuses her now to look back on the first months after her divorce. "I went through a period of what could only be called 'delayed adolescence.' I felt it was a wasted evening if I didn't have a cocktail date, a theater date, a date to go out afterwards. But after a while, the dates all turned out to be more or less alike - only the names were different. The cast changed, you might say, but the play remained the same. There were other things, more productive things, I wanted to do with my time. I suppose I had to get all that out of my system before I learned better."

The great problem with men, as she sees it - at least with those she meets , and she meets a great many - is that some are too giving and some not enough. "There is either the sweet, kind, loving person who very soon lets you step all over him - and a strong woman doesn't like that at all. Or there is the man so egocentric that he thinks only of himself. This kind of man usually expects the woman to become subject to him, to the point of negating her own identity."

Many women feel "trapped" in marriage, she believes. But many could be happier, if circumstances were changed even a little. The potential is there, if only there were the right conditions. She tells about one of her friends who found such an outlet. "The first four years of her marriage were extremely difficult. Her husband worked at night, she had a couple of babies, and she was just there at home, alone, most of the time. Her house was chaotic. She complained about the endless round of cooking and cleaning. Although he couldn't really help any of this - any more than she could - she quarreled with her husband a great deal.

"After a while they moved into a development where a community theater began to flourish. As much for an outlet for her frustrations as for the work itself, she started to help. She had a baby-sitter, occasionally at first, but as her interest grew and her mood became happier, her husband helped her to get out more. She built sets, became stage manager, acted in some of the plays. The result was that she became a better housewife, because she had to put herself on schedule. Now her relationship with her husband is happier, the home is well organized and she is more contented. It required energy to get started. She had to give herself a push. But it did change her world."

Giving one's self a push is something with which Rosemary herself is quite familiar. she does it every day on a schedule that would appall many women. When she is on the show - and frequently she is on every day of the week - she arrives at the studio at 7:30 in the morning. She leaves at 5:30, after rehearsals for the next day. There may be as many as forty pages of dialogue to learn at night. She takes classes in "body movement" - for the coordination and sense of rhythm required by every actor. She studies voice. She attends drama workshop for professionals. She is studying French, and taking some college courses she missed when she went on the road as an actress instead of entering college.

She finds time to be a gourmet cook. "Part of the whole picture of me is a strong domestic streak. I love to cook, to bake, to experiment with new recipes. My kitchen is always well-stocked and I get a tremendous satisfaction when people enjoy a meal at my home." She loves music, studied piano. Her father was a brilliant concert cellist who worked under the baton of the great Toscanini and, later, in the Firestone orchestra. "Music is a part of me. My home is always filled with it."

"Home" is now a small mid-town New York apartment near the East River. Living room, bedroom, dining area, kitchen and bath. "Furnished in a way that expresses my diversifed interests. The living room is Oriental in feeling. Low pieces, in various lovely woods. Upholstery of rough-textured fabrics. All of it expressing the career side of me. The painting s and many of the ornaments have tremendous meaning for me. Some I have bought, some have been gifts, some of the pictures and the etchings are the work of friends.

"The bedroom is a very feminine room, all in blue and white, expressing another side of me. A scrolled, white chaise longue, a white desk and table. To me, a home means the privacy and dignity I need."

Like Penny Baker, the girl she plays so eloquently in As the World Turns, Rosemary Prinz feels she has learned that every experience contains a needed lesson. And that out of those experiences emerges a new maturity.

"I couldn't play Penny at all if I didn't try to play her honestly. I try to invest her with the things I believe in, within the framework of the way she is conceived by the creator and writer of the show, Irna Phillips. Irna has a fantastic talent for what I call 'intuiting.' She has the gift of sensing things about people.about people. If the actor brings something to the part, she will expand that and develop it. It makes the show wonderful to work in.

"The character of Penny is honest, but she is not a priggish person at all. She is courageous, not afraid of life. She has loved, but disappointment has never made her bitter. She is strong, yet she is very feminine. She is vulnerable - as all women are - but, when her trust has been misplaced, she can say, 'That happened, and now I have to go on to something else.'"

Like Penny, Rosemary has learned that to live means to change constantly. "During the past five years there has been an enormous change in me. During the next five, there will be more. There has been pain. There has been the effort to go back - to the dates, to the flowers delivered every day, to the excitement of adolescence. But this could never satisfy a woman of any depth for any length of time.

"So now I am in the next stage of my life. I don't know what is ahead for me - any more than Penny knows what is ahead for her. Perhaps I shall marry again - when I meet a man who understands the basic needs of all these different women who are part of me."

All these different women, all these many facets that Rosemary Prinz can call upon and re-create to make her acting honest and impressive.

[soapfan770]

So who was Dana McFarland and what was her story with Bob? Did they really get engaged?

[DRW50]

I was reading a Digest best/worst issue for 1993 and they praise Martha Byrne as best female comeback. I can understand that - her return was pretty good. I did laugh when they said that Lily had been a happy and free spirit until Martha had left in 1989. I don't remember MB's Lily EVER being all that free, much less happy, for most of her first run.

[P.J.]

Well, Heather Rattray clearly played a darker, more bitter Lily.

[DRW50]

I agree (at least the first year or so), but it was odd to me they gave the impression Lily was a happy and free person before Rattray. She had some happy times, here and there, but usually she was in tears, upset, everyone was telling her what a hard time she was having, etc.

ATWT's other mentions for that year were best limited run character (Neal), most confusing plot (Kingsley/Malta), best daughter (Emily), most boring quad (Hutch/Debbie/Evan/Rosanna), and best bickering (Kirk/Lucinda).

[P.J.]

It's funny Em getting a best daughter mention. It must have been in that sweet spot between Em donating the egg and trying to shag Larry.