As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[wonderwoman1951]

not true! read the article:

http://anotherworldhomepage.com/creation.htm

[TVFAN1144]

Very interesting article.  Thank you 

[Contessa Donatella]

Hey! What am I, chopped liver?! That was the link in my post & the article I referred you to!!! But, see, I told you it was fascinating. 

[SoapDope]

Leslie Denniston (Carolyn Crawford) aka...Mrs. Don Hastings in a commercial for Joy.

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Jenny O'Hara (ex Thelma) for Joy

 

Edited August 6, 2023 by SoapDope

[SamandWillowFan]

I’m making a slap compilation for Lily. Did she have any memorable slaps in the 80s or 90s? It’s impossible to find recaps of ATWT from the 80s and early 90s.

[NothinButAttitude]

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[SoapDope]

I think the Mom in the bathing is Marie Masters (Susan). It is marked 1970's, but someone in the comments dated this ad to 1969. 

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[P.J.]

This is so GREAT. Babs was an honest to goodness bitch. And it doesn't even feature Lucinda or Emily. 

Edited August 8, 2023 by P.J.

[SamandWillowFan]

Did they address over the years that John Dixon raped Kim?

[NothinButAttitude]

This is for long-term ATWT fans who watched the shows in the 80s (I was born in the late 80s, so I only watched the show originally from the 90s onward with my grandma), why did so many fans hate the shift of Barbara around this time? I know a lot of longterm fans hated Barbara being made a bad girl.

I feel like the shift in her attitude made sense. James gaslit and tried to kill her. Gunner left her to die. Brian broke up with her. She felt jilted by men. I think it made sense that she decided to wound the opposite sex after being wounded by them for so long. And busting up Tom/Margo made sense too as Tom was initial safe choice before she jilted him for James. It didn't probably help that the one that got away went on to find happiness with the woman that was James' mistress at one time. I get that folks felt that Babs was friends with Margo but it made sense. 

[Soapsuds]

That was vintage Barbara. The show was so good at that time and the ratings reflected it too.

Barbara vs Margo(HBS version) was golden.

[DramatistDreamer]

You might be asking the wrong crowd. I don’t know a single person who didn’t enjoy the character during this time, even those who loved to hate Barbara. It was such an intriguing shift in character and looking back at these episodes (I was a kid at the time 80s bad byotch Barbara was in her prime) as a writer, I really appreciate how the writing allowed the character to organically shift to a vixen from a put upon quasi heroine who had been victimized one too many times. And since the 1980s were known as the decade of decadence, Barbara as the well coiffed fashion designer (as Margo once quipped “Not a hair out of place”) selling clothes that were out of reach to all but the rich ladies and boldly mixing business with pleasure personified ‘80s excess to perfection. It was a timely character turnabout.

That frenemie to rivals dynamic could have lasted longer than it did had HBS stayed on. There were a lot of coming and goings during the 1980s, so many that it’s a wonder the storytelling managed to sustain such a high quality so consistently during the decade.

[Mitch64]

If only we knew how good we had it at the time. Look at vicious Babs and compare her with campy, nutcase OTT Sheffer Babs and the character regression exemplified the show.  Marland Babs...fun, and sometimes a campy delight but with depth and motivation ( I love how she is always treated as on of the Hughes family and her true fear of having Bob and Kim and Lisa find out her shenanigans) to...Cartoon Babs jumping out of courtroom windows (how she became a comic super villainous who knows) unscathed and with no real meaty scenes with her family. 

As soon as HBS left and dour Dolan took over for Margo, she was no match for Glam Bitchy Babs. 

 

[DramatistDreamer]

I don’t think any viewers at that time could have imagined or predicted that these shows would start to deteriorate the way they eventually did. Even as actors left, part of me imagined that most would eventually return somehow. Of course, I didn’t keep up with the bts stuff back then, so I usually had no clue until the announcer would say something like “…the role of * will now be played by *…” Those actors were getting so many outside opportunities to do primetime shows and movies, it really must have thrown the show off somewhat when roles had to be recasted in the middle of an ongoing storyline. 
And I guess, with the recasting of Margo, it was probably decided that it would be easier to take the character in a different direction. It’s a shame because after the departure of Margaret Colin, the show was lucky that HBS worked out so well, especially once they paired her with Gregg Marx. Only to lose Marx and then eventually HBS.

By the mid to late 90s it would have been logical to evolve the Barbara Ryan character again but not into that slapstick mess that they had her doing in the early 00s. They lost the entire plot there.

[NothinButAttitude]

I don't think it was anyone here. It might've been when I was on SOC, but I know a forum I posted on (at one point) recalled the time and felt it was "out of character" for Barbara. As aforementioned, I think her dissent into evil made sense. If you keep losing in love, anyone would become jaded overtime. 

It was one of the few times I feel from watching soaps where you saw a heroine transition to antiheroine (I wouldn't call her a villain) and it made perfect sense. We'd only be so lucky if soaps nowadays could transition a character from one side of the spectrum to another.