As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[NothinButAttitude]

Wow. Really? P&G would've been stupid to fire Julianne Moore as she was a catch and a bright spot for the show around that time. 

[DRW50]

 

I may be wrong but I thought I read it somewhere. Given the general decisions at P&G in those years I wouldn't be shocked. 

[NothinButAttitude]

 

The more people spill on here, they more I realize that P&G was a wreck starting from the 80s onwards. Just further solidifies that P&G was actively trying to destroy these shows with stupid decisions. 

[DRW50]

In some ways it's impressive that P&G let ATWT be pulled back from the brink and let Marland do as much as he wanted to do. I'm not being fair but so much of what I've seen of early '80s ATWT, up to about 1984 or so, is just a mess, a mess, and so alien to what the show should have been. Even what did work, like Tom and Margo, was full of overwrought musical montages and hysteria. That and the casting and focus on pieces of ass and "adventure" and so on are the first real signs of the ABC-ization of ATWT that would kill it in its last decade. 

[victoria foxton]

What i've seen of ATWT from the early 80's is a revolving door of newbies. The only things that worked were John and James rivalry, Tom and Margo and the Steve,Betsy,Craig and Diana quad.  ATWT does seem to stabilize under Susan Bedsow Horgan. ATWT was in nice shape for Doug to weave his magic for the next 8 years.

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Very true. I just hate how soaps each lost their individual identities by the mid 90s. Only Y&R and B&B would be the only shows to stick to their wheelhouse until about '05 where they skidded off the course and haven't recovered either. 

[P.J.]

 

 

Well....the thing is I don't exactly recall Tom/Frannie as being "close". I don't doubt over the years they were shown having a bro/sis bond...but Tom was out of Vietnam before Frannie was even born. He'd been married at least three times before she was a teen. He was protective of Frannie, and at the point you're talking about, he'd known Sabrina probably about a year. The other problem is that it's Scott Holmes, who a lot of the time, came off as cold and prissy in the role. The man rarely exuded warmth. But this is also Marland's Oakdale. So, I'm sure at some point, Sabrina was forgiven and accepted into the Hughes clan.

 

I don't think Babs "ruined" Frannie/Darryl. Darryl was a lying dawg in the first place. It's completely different situation, going after your sister's man and having a ONS that happens to show up in town years later. Besides, being told that truth wasn't going to stop Frannie. She already knew he was a married man with a crippled wife when she started crushing on the man. Caroline was barely cold in the ground before Darryl was proposing to Frannie.

 

I liked Frannie a lot. But sometimes she acted like the world owed her nothing but roses and rainbows. Yes, it's always better to tell the truth, and Babs' should've just told Hal from the beginning he wasn't Jen's father. But at the point Darryl came to town, Frannie expecting Babs to blow up her marriage to Hal to warn Frannie away from a douchebag liar seems a little much to expect.

 

Barbara's reaction to Sabrina was more than just about Seth. She had a hard time accepting that Bob and Kim had had an affair behind her mother Jennifer's back, and it resulted in a child. I can't recall if the affair was well-known factoid around town or not before Sabrina's arrival. And even if it was, it's one thing to kind of accept that "something" happened, and seeing the living proof that your mother was cheated on, kwim? Kim had really stepped in and become a second mother to Barbara (as well as Betsy and Frannie, for that matter), and it really kind of tore at the image Kim projected to the town by then.

 

I don't think there's any doubt ATWT had a hard time transitioning from the mold of soap opera they helped create to the "new" mold post GH-resurgence-Luke &Laura. But I think if you'd go back, most soaps would seem overwrought. I do think they particularly suffered under a string of bad HW's. Or if not "bad"---ones that didn't really fit ATWT, like the Dobsons.

[DRW50]

 

I thought Gregg's Tom and Julianne's Frannie had the more blatant bond, at least under Marland - she would call him "Tommy" and had a certain happiness and emotion for him that she often didn't have for others in her life. It wasn't quite there with Holmes, as you say, although they did sort of keep it going with Holmes and Mary Ellen Stuart. 

[DramatistDreamer]

 

My understanding was that Barbara disliked Sabrina because she was a constant reminder of Bob and Kim's perceived treachery toward Bob's estranged wife, Jennifer, Barbara's mother and Kim's sister. I wasn't watching back then (either I was a baby or not yet born)  but in the 87 episodes I watched I remember Barbara asking Lisa at Fashions "What about my Mother?!" when Lisa explained that Bob and Kim felt that they had to do right by Sabrina because she was their daughter.

On another occasion, Barbara snapped at Sabrina when Sabrina tried to give Barbara a compliment on her design talent and asked whether Barbara's mother was an artist too and Barbara replied "No!  My Mother was a nurse and I loved her very much!" and stormed off. Oh, the irony in Barbara naming her love child after her Mother!

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I don't think it had to do with Frannie at all, even though Frannie and Barbara were close. I don't remember seeing any scenes of Barbara confronting Sabrina. Maybe they're just missing from You Tube, but I haven't seen any. In fact, didn't Seth and Frannie's broken engagement coincide with Paul leaving Oakdale and staying with James at the Stewart Cabin? And James kept harrassing Barbara, who was forced to keep James' whereabouts a secret?  Barbara was pretty preoccupied at that point.  I remember recently seeing a scene where Barbara was at the hospital with a group of other people (maybe Lisa or Dusty and Lily? I don't remember who she was with) and they were talking about how sad Frannie and Seth's broken engagement was and even though Barbara seemed sympathetic, it struck me as odd that it hardly seemed to register with Barbara- my guess was that she was too very preoccupied with what was going on with Paul at that time.

 

I agree with the poster who said that Tom was probably taking out his marital woes on Sabrina but when he first met her, he seemed mostly shocked and somewhat indifferent, oddly.  Tom, even when portrayed by Gregg Marx, seemed to have a close bond with Frannie and I think Scott Holmes portrayed that bond also when he took over the role. He did seem especially concerned and sympathetic to Frannie, not just after he found out Sabrina's part in the whole affair but also from the time Sabrina arrived he seemed concerned about what it meant for Frannie's sense of identity. That just from what I saw.

 

Also, I'm dubious about Julianne Moore's ever being fired. She was an Emmy award winning actress who was well liked by the rest of the cast and crew. If anything, I noticed that even during her last year, she seemed to want to cut back (perhaps to audition more?) on her workload. Perhaps by mutual agreement, she stopped playing Frannie and just portrayed Sabrina (Frannie was sent off to Boston to attend university), perhaps find the dual roles too much. And immediately after her departure from ATWT, you can see that she tried her hand at Prime Time TV, mainly TV movies and TV series for a few years before going full-throttle into movies.

 

I can't speak to the revolving door of early 80s ATWT but toward mid-end of the 80s, I think the actors were being noticed for their work (back when soapstars could still make their way to Primetime and Movies) and had a lot of other options and wanted to explore them. Margaret Colin, does Silk Stalkings after leaving. You had Marissa Tomei who was on a TV series less than two years after leaving ATWTs then after A Different World gets into the movies, soon winning an Oscar. You have Finn Carter doing movies soon after leaving, Craig Bryce on Prime Time TV shows like The Facts Of Life and Murphy Brown. Larry Bryggman always went from stage, to indie films back to the show before leaving for good. Benjamin Hendrickson also did indie films while he was on ATWT (although going into the 90s, with lower ratings, it became harder for soap actors to make it big as the soap brand was not the star-making or ratings juggernaut it once had been). Lots of soap actors from ATWT were exploring other opportunities, building from their success on the show. Gregg Marx I think just wanted to leave because the work got to be too much and he wanted to sing (he was in a Secret commercial that oddly enough, used to run during the time that "Tom" was in DC. So while everyone was wonder why Tom wasn't in Oakdale, we'd see "Tom" snuggling some woman on a Secret deodorant commercial day after day.

 

Edited November 7, 2016 by DramatistDreamer

[P.J.]

 

I don't mean to be dismissive of the relationship. And you're right...everything was more blatant under Marland. Family was always up in each other's business. For a long time, Frannie was the only sibling Tom had. Chuckie died in the early '70's. Lisa was supposedly hiding Scott, and Bob wasn't into fathering half the town like Hal, John or Victor Newman.

 

Re: Babs/Sabrina/Bob&Kim...I was kind of shocked to realize years afterward that Bab's mother Jennifer wasn't some kind of saint. Being too young to remember her in any way, I'd always relied on the way Kim and even Bob spoke about her to build an image of her. I guess that's silly, given that it was a soap opera, but realizing Bob and Jen weren't some version of soul mates kind of stunned me.

[DramatistDreamer]

Some time ago, I read that Melanie Smith (Emily #2) is a wellness coach. After the past 18 hours, I wonder whether she can do a group counselling session as a favor to some ATWT fans who need it. 

[Limenade]

 

Actually, Melanie did write something about it on her FB: 

 

(BTW, D-Dreamer:  sorry to miss your reply to me sometime ago on Billy Shank and Ashley Crow.  To the best of my knowledge, they are no longer together.)

Edited November 10, 2016 by Limenade

[DramatistDreamer]

Thanks @Limenade from what I saw on her professional website, she has endured some tough personal losses and it seems that overcoming her personal losses, along with the love for her son and the personal/profession choices that sprouted from that, that has given her a very philosophical holistic outlook.

I am not where she is in terms of current outlook, I don't know when or if I can get there but I do appreciate where her words are coming from. It sounds that she is struggling with the results as well but still hoping for good things to flow.

When I ventured on her FB page (I hadn't looked too deeply) I was struck by the fact that she appears to have kept in touch with Karina Arroyave (Bianca Marquez Walsh), I think she has kept in touch with quite a few of her ATWT colleagues and I think that's nice.

 

In terms of Ashley Crow and Bill Shanks, yes I read somewhere that they divorced a number of years ago, I think sometime in the late 90s? 

[Limenade]

^You're welcome. Hers was a hopeful prayer, but for many, the feelings are still too raw for it.  Incidentally, other ATWT alums, e.g. Margaret (Maggie) Reed (Shannon), did not take it so well, looking at her FB.  Incidentally, she has a major birthday coming up - she's turning 60 on 11/15!

 

On another note, if anyone's interested in Melanie's take on her time at ATWT (and in case no one had already mentioned it), I really enjoyed a podcast interview she did earlier this year: site: http://seincast.libsyn.com/seincast-interview-melanie-smith  The whole interview is a little over an hour on her career to date, but she spoke very positively about her time at ATWT during the beginning quarter of the hour - mentioning Doug Marland and referred to her cast-mates as "thespians," e.g. Larry Bryggman, Julianne Moore, Parker Posey, etc. 

 

See here for Bill Shanks bio, mentioning a spouse after Crow.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Limenade

[NothinButAttitude]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfij_GeZ3nE