As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Soapsuds]

You are correct!  @j swift Simply Barbara came afterwards when Lucinda backstabbed her and took her company.....LOL

[Khan]

Honestly, there were so many companies floating through Oakdale at one point: BRO, Simply Barbara, Walsh AND Worldwide, M&A (for Montgomery & Associates?), Kingsley Malta, Cabot Motors, and wasn't Carolyn Crawford a "cereal heiress" or something?  And that's all off the top of my head.

 

As much as I loved Marland's work, I feel like he went a little crazy on the business stuff.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Khan

[j swift]

@Soapsuds @KhanWhat happened to the actual store once Barbara started designing?  Did Lisa buy it originally after her bookshop?

[P.J.]

Edited August 1, 2018 by P.J.

[P.J.]

You're getting businesses and fashion lines confused. Lisa and Babs were partners in the retail store, Fashions. Barbara's business was BRO and  labels were BRO and Simply Barbara. 

 

I don't think Lisa and Barbara dissolved their partnership in Fashions until the sh*** hit the fan about Babs having James kidnap Carly, Em and Rose.

 

Carly tried countless times to either design her own line or design for BRO. After Carly lost her baby, she left for Hong Kong to start Get Real, financed by Lisa. When Craig married Barb, he was also going behind her back to get try and her to accept some of Carly's designs. Then Carly convinced Ro to bankroll her while she was separated from Jack while pregnant with Sage. Then when Barb was designing crap, Paul hired her to ghost design for BRO. 

 

Poor Carly, she never got more than a taste of success before ending in disaster. Meanwhile, Jen took razor blades to jeans and was declared a SUCCESS. 

 

I don't recall either Brock or Darryl having anything to do with fashion. 

 

And no, at the end, Babs wasn't designing. I don't think she ever really did after the fire and kidnapping scandal.

[Brolden]

 

In the Paul/Emily/Barbara/Henry sequence in the finale episode, there was something about BRO though. I can't recall if they were dissolving the partnership or re-launching it...

[Mitch]

Yes, Lisa and Babs started Fashions after they both worked for Natalie doing costumes for that movie they filmed in Oakdale which was never mentioned again. James (financed? ) used it to first import jewels he stole from an Egyptian Tomb...(for real..this was a storyline the Dobs started..) then it was drugs...(after other writers took over and the Dobs had to go on with their material.)  Simply Barbara was Babs first line and we would so love making fun of that name in college...and the BRO after Lucy bought SB...they even had one scene where a character had to make it explicit to the audience...:"Oh, I get it,,the originals as opposed to Lucinda's knock offs." )

[j swift]

I feel like every soap boutique needs two things: (1) a magical dressing room where as soon as a customer enters people in the store can talk and nobody hears them, and (2) hat boxes; because every long shopping trip is always indicated by an abundance of hat boxes

[DramatistDreamer]

I remember Shannon mocking Barbara at the height of their feud (or Barbara's feud with Brian and Shannon) by calling it "Simply Babs".  That same year when Tom discovered that Barbara had fooled him (and Margo) into believing that he and Barbara had a ONS, Tom threatened to take out a full-page ad detailing "...what 'Simply Barbara' really means!"

 

Fashions was the boutique where Simply Barbara was often showcased but they sold other designer labels too, as Lisa once made a point of saying when she and Barbara were on the outs. 

 

Like others have stated, B.R.O. was a result of Lucinda usurping the company while Barbara was  in prison.

 

I know the business storylines could seem as though they overtook other stories but at least they weren't convoluted the way business stories on soaps would later be written.  Also, the idea of featuring many working women like Lisa, Lucinda, Barbara, Lyla, Margo and even Emma seemed well intended.  

[Mitch]

LOL..but remember, there was NO place in Oakdale anyone could gossip and not be overheard!  If I wrote a show I would have scene upon scene of people overhearing things for a day or two as on Ode to Marland!

 

 

During the start of the Babs/Tom/Margo thing when Marland just started writing Barbara argues with Tom about something Lisa wants to do.  Barbara defends Lisa , "Well maybe you should listen to her as she IS a business woman and your not!" and it was refreshing to see women stick up for another woman and show being an independent business woman as good. I also like the Babs/Lisa frenemy thing that went on until the end.

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

I remember Lisa having a book store, didn't she? I was very young at the time, late 70s, but I seem to recall she sold books and magazines before she started selling clothes. I guess they wanted things to be more glamorous for her, so they changed the nature of her business.

 

In the mid-80s Lisa seemed to move away from the fashion stuff (leaving Barbara to do that) when she began running the Argus newspaper with stepson Brian McColl. Then when Doug Marland took over as head writer, she was running a restaurant called the Mona Lisa.

 

Did Lisa continue running the Mona Lisa after Marland died and other head writers took over in the 90s? In the episode someone posted about Nancy's death in 2010, they show Lisa running some business but it looked more like a coffee shop by that point, not a restaurant.

 

As for Barbara's fashion line, I think that happened around 1988 when Hank was introduced. The Bold and the Beautiful had premiered a short time earlier and probably had an influence on Marland doing this. It was suddenly in vogue for each soap to have a woman heading up a clothing line or fashionable business empire. Though was it very realistic that a woman who became as successful as Barbara did would continue to be headquartered out of a sleepy berg like Oakdale? Why would designers from New York come to a somewhat rural community in Illinois? Wouldn't it be the opposite, where someone with Barbara's talent would go to New York?

 

It was like Lucinda having this huge business that had contracts with international firms but yet she was still located in Oakdale U.S.A. and not a major industrial city.

[Khan]

Yes, Lisa did run a book store (with a hospital annex).  IIRC, Neil Wade opened the store sometime back in the '60's; then, after his death, Penny took it over.  At some point, the bookstore came under Lisa's control, although I know little-to-nothing about the specifics of how that transpired.

[DramatistDreamer]

If memory serves me correctly, Hank Elliott was a designer that Barbara lured away from Lucinda when she and Lucinda were competing. 

Walsh Enterprises was supposed to be a 'caretaker' for the Simply Barbara line when Barbara was in jail but Lucinda had arranged to hold onto Simply Barbara when Barbara went to jail, falsely accused of James Stenbeck's "murder" (Stenbeck, of course, was alive).  Lucinda wanted Barbara to work for her while WE held onto control of the company, which Barbara flat-out refused.  Furious that she couldn't get her design company back, Barbara started B.R.O.

 

Lucinda and Co. started to look for new designers and found Hank Elliott and contacted him about an interview.  Barbara discovered this and convinced Hank (a big admirer of her work), not to work for Lucinda.  

 

I can remember Barbara having fashion shows with her own Simply Barbara line at the Mona Lisa during the Tad Channing murder mystery in fall 1986.  While attending that fashion show, Frannie had a unsettling flashback to a fashion show for Simply Barbara that was held at Caroline's, the place that Doug Cummings owned that was named for his dead wife.  Mona Lisa by then was in the same space that had previously been Caroline's, which was early 1986, I think.

 

Barbara had her own line of clothing at least two years before Hank Elliott came on the scene.

Edited August 3, 2018 by DramatistDreamer

[Brolden]

 

I think the store (located in, or at least adjacent to, the 'Oldtown' set) was supposed to be Fashions. I only started watching around 2000, but I always understood that Lisa was simultaneously running Fashions, The Argus, the Mona Lisa and the Lakeview (let's not forget the Lakeview!).

 

I seem to recall the pre-Oldtown Fashions set lasting until around 2005. I think I remember Casey and Celia shopping there and I am positive that was the same set that was seen in the late 90s, around Holden & Lily's wedding. 

 

The Argus wasn't a major presence after the late 90s (when Tom worked there for a while). I remember at some point in the early 00's a press conference being held (about what I do not know) where representatives for the Argus, the City Times, the Intruder and WOAK were all present, but other than that, I have zero recollection of the Argus between 2000-2010.

 

I believe in the 2000 Chrismas episode when Penny returns, the Hugheses are supposed to be at the Mona Lisa (although the set is definitely different from the 80s Mona Lisa set). Actually, come to think of it, I remember a late 90s episode where Lisa hires Carly to clean the toilets... I could swear that was the same set. And wasn't that also the place where Brad revealed the truth to John about Parker being his child (during Hal & Barbara's engagement party, I think?). So it seems the set was aroudn quite a bit in the late 90s, although I don't remember seeing it after the 2000 Christmas episode.

 

As for the Lakeview, it was around until the show's finale of course (although down to just 1 small set, instead of different sets for different areas). I was never sure when the Lakeview was brought onto the show... was it a 90s addition?

[JarrodMFiresofLove]

 

I remember the Lakeview being featured when Marland was head writer.

 

Didn't Susan Stewart stay there when she came back to Oakdale? Probably a million other characters too.

 

As for the newspapers, Sheffer had a plot where Emily was running a paper before she married Hal. Was it the City Times? I don't remember the Argus being mentioned too much, if at all, in the 2000s.

 

It was a bit unrealistic that Lisa had all those businesses at the same time. It probably started because Fulton had so many guaranteed episodes per week and the writers could meet those guarantees but putting her in scenes showing someone to their table, or helping someone pick out a dress. Lisa usually had scenes with all the other characters, up through the late 90s.

Edited August 3, 2018 by JarrodMFiresofLove