Can someone PLEASE post clips from the Susan/Bob/Kim storyline, ESPECIALLY Susan/Kim rivalry clips.

You've probably already seen this but it's the only Kim/Susan scene I can really find.

I also get a strange thrill out of this scene as it's one of those where Bob is an a$$hole to Lisa! Usually he's very very patient with her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VceFx_CQqF8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P146v7U1kEw

Edited June 23, 201114 yr by CarlD2

Haven't seen it- off to watch now! Be sure & use the link feature on clips that cannot be embedded!

Thanks. I've never known how to do that. I just end up posting the link and then the video shows up.

0814ma on YouTube has a set of clips re: Bob confessing his affair to Kim. I wasn't an ATWT faithful but came across the scenes while looking up some GL stuff and enjoyed them, eg. Kim losing patience with Barbara, or Hal and Margo, John and Lucinda, Bob and Susan, iow lots of good stuff in the same ep.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAc7sNJIlZA

Thanks. It's funny I just watched those last week. I've been trying to make my way through ATWT from the earliest years on Youtube to up to about 1994 or 1995. I don't have the stomach for a lot of the show after that.

I think I could agree with this but I don't know where to put my finger on it. I'd say it was a time of transition as ATWT as the show had new characters like Evan, Connor, Edwina(LOL I miss her!), Linc, Rosanna plus all those involved in the never-ending Carolyn Crawford mystery. I think some elements changed too. Watching 1985-1988 eps even if the show had a dark atmosphere there was an air of whimsical fun about all of it. 1992 eps under Marland all seem like pure heavy drama.

Yes, whimsy is a good word. There's a certain lightness which is there even with very dark material (like everything with Josh/Iva/Lily - Lily ran away for a few months of fun). The lightness seems to have faded by the early 90's, and even the moments of hope are much more melancholy. Most of the characters have aged, lost some of their old cheesiness (like Duncan), and the younger characters like Courtney, Andy, and Paul, have their own struggles. The show also seems to become more and more earnest.

There's also more of a very harrowing type of emotional torment, which you can see in this nightmare/fantasy/flashback of Darryl's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPhZ9pvY0PQ&feature=related

This clip has the type of melancholy that I notice more and more in the early 90's stuff. Barclay and Angel Lange talk about moving on with their lives. They will, but you know they will never entirely be whole...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppu1HmfVcTY&feature=related

0814ma on YouTube has a set of clips re: Bob confessing his affair to Kim. I wasn't an ATWT faithful but came across the scenes while looking up some GL stuff and enjoyed them, eg. Kim losing patience with Barbara, or Hal and Margo, John and Lucinda, Bob and Susan, iow lots of good stuff in the same ep.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAc7sNJIlZA

I loved Tom's quote, "Well, nothing seems to be wrong with her back now." I wonder if the writers threw that in there as a joke or if they were as earnest as the material they produced and didn't get it.

I loved the days when the show revolved around Bob and Kim's house, and had everyone coming and going at all hours of the day and night, and calling,etc. Marland was great at having everyone be connected, even using a simple device as a phone call (and Marland's people were all calling each other constantly...) When the P & G shows dumped the concept of the action centering around one core family and home (Hughes and Bauers) they lost so much of what made them so special and really accessible. Anyone who watched for years and dropped it could get back in as everything was still centering around Bob and Kim and the Bauers...and the home sets gave new viewers a comforting intro to the show. The P & G shows became so cold after MADD.

Anyone who watched for years and dropped it could get back in as everything was still centering around Bob and Kim and the Bauers...and the home sets gave new viewers a comforting intro to the show. The P & G shows became so cold after MADD.

That's what drew me into the P&G soaps. It was so comforting to watch Bob make a Thanksgiving toast, and then in the summer, to see everyone out having a barbecue, with friends dropping by. There were no ugly feuds that couldn't be overlooked for those special days. It was a nice escape.

This is the type of thing soaps became so ashamed of.

My first exposure to soaps was on primetime (Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest) then Santa Barbara, so after all that glitz and glamor of the 1980s (which I never cared for), Ed Bauer and his bald patch, Maureen and her kitchen just bowled me over when I came across GL in the early 1990s. I couldn't get over how it could be so sophisticated and grounded at the same time, it really opened my eyes about what could be done on soaps. It also set the bar too high for the follow-up regimes and the other soaps to measure up but I'd rather focus on the good things.

I was never as taken with ATWT but in clips like that, I can recognize what I loved about GL--the sense of community, the variety and richness of interactions, the restraint in the performances.

Edited June 24, 201114 yr by scherra

That's what drew me into the P&G soaps. It was so comforting to watch Bob make a Thanksgiving toast, and then in the summer, to see everyone out having a barbecue, with friends dropping by. There were no ugly feuds that couldn't be overlooked for those special days. It was a nice escape.

This is the type of thing soaps became so ashamed of.

Which was stupid, as I remember reading the Bauer BBQ was always counted on to spike the ratings. Remember when E & B forgot the BBQ one year because of San Crud!!!

Oh. I'd forgotten they were dating at this time. It's just odd to me (the character relationship I mean, not the actors dating). I can never remember how long it was before John found out and if that affected his relationship with Iva.

Yeah, it ended his relationship with her. Which at the time struck me as really ironic, since it was about the only lie she ever told on the show. My guess is their relationship lasted a year, give or take. I think she was even pregnant with their son MJ when he broke it off.

It was a really odd hook up---he'd been with her mother, and married to her worst enemy. Marland usually stuck to the "opposites attract" theory, and in some ways John and Iva were too alike---both kind of morose sticks in the mud.

At the time of the Aaron paternity story, was there anyone you sided with or didn't side with? At the time I remember always sympathizing with Iva, but then I didn't watch every day.

Doesn't it seem like there's a big change, stylistically, in ATWT starting around 1991 or so?

By the time everything came out, I was definitely on Iva's side. Here she had sacrificed to raise this child who Julie really couldn't (saving Holden from a lot of misery, given his new marriage to Lily and the strain the family was already under given the Holden/Caleb feud after the ONS with Julie). It related to her issues so beautifully---having been adopted herself and not being able to raise Lily.

Iva had always been the one who got kicked in the teeth---she got shipped to Henry and Elizabeth's when money was tight, to get raped by Josh. She has to co-mother Lily with a woman who hates her. She has to "accept" her family forgiving Josh, to points (like her being in Meg's wedding party) that it's ridiculous. She loses Kirk to Ellie. Even Emma was very upset with her when the relationship with John came about.

So she spends a year or more rearranging her life to care for Holden's kid, loses John, at one point is raising two toddlers on her own, and when it all hits the fan, Holden basically walks in, demands his kid and she's just expected to hand him over without a word. (At the time, Holden was kind of an emotionless SOB, thanks to losing half his brain...)

I don't know if it was a stylistic change...but for a while, Marland's writing was really dark and heavy. You had the Crawford murder going on, Angel's incest story playing out, Lily got blown up, Hal was supposedly shot dead undercover, James was running around town....the bad thing (at times) about Marland was he wouldn't arbitrarily "happy things up" if it didn't fit the characters or story. He didn't really do camp, other than with Shannon. There was comedy, but it came in moments, not entire arcs.

Which was stupid, as I remember reading the Bauer BBQ was always counted on to spike the ratings. Remember when E & B forgot the BBQ one year because of San Crud!!!

I remember the 4th of July Hughes BBQ did well in the ratings. It was the time when the paternity of Aaron was being revealed. It had huge ratings.

TV Radio Mirror September 1960.

While I am posting Matt P. Smith's write-ups on short lived soaps from the 50s, here is Smith's extensive essay on ATWT he wrote. The last sentence makes me sad:

premiered

April 2, 1956

last telecast

still airing today

setting

Oakdale, Illinois

created by

Irna Phillips w/Agnes Nixon

network

CBS

production company

Procter & Gamble Productions

broadcast history

Mon-Fri

1:30pm - 2pm

(4/2/56-11/28/75)

1:30pm - 2:30pm

(12/1/75-2/1/80)

2pm - 3pm

(2/4/80-6/5/81)

1:30pm - 2:30pm

(6/8/81-3/20/87)

2pm - 3pm

(3/23/87-present)

After a swift stream of soap operas, this was the first soap opera that CBS had premiered in almost a year and a half. Also, after the premiere of The Edge of Night later that day, it would be another 4 years before CBS would premiere another soap.

For years, creator Irna Phillips wanted to write a 30-minute soap. She had originally proposed merging the successful The Guiding Light (which she had created for radio in 1937) and the successful Search for Tomorrow (created by Roy Winsor), both Procter & Gamble soaps, into one 30-minute super soap. Both P&G and CBS balked at that idea. The established belief at the time was that 15 minutes of angsty soap opera was about as much as the audience could stand from one show. Irna was not convinced of this and began to develop a new soap opera that would run for 30 minutes a day with the help of her long-time protégé and fellow soap writer Agnes Nixon (Nixon had already been the first head writer of Search and had been writing episodes of TGL). CBS agreed to air the soap, but there was some disagreement over when to air it.

It would’ve seemed that the 1:00pm – 1:30pm time slot would have been ideal (putting ATWT immediately after TGL which, at the time, was the most popular soap on the air), but CBS hadn’t had the least bit of success scheduling that time slot (CBS’s most recent effort there was The Jack Paar Show which was performing dismally and would leave the air in May 1956). In fact, most affiliates didn’t even air CBS programming during that time period because it was the time that they aired local programming and news. Instead, Irna wanted ATWT to air in the late afternoon after the popular The Secret Storm. CBS, however, unconvinced of the series’ potential success, opted to go with The Edge of Night (which was also scheduled to premiere the same day in the 30-minute format) for that time slot. Edge was definitely CBS’s clear favorite due to its crime/mystery theme (and connection to the long-running radio series Perry Mason). Instead, ATWT regulated to the 1:30pm – 2:00pm slot – a time slot that was pretty much considered a sure death for the series. After all, since most affiliates were airing local programming from 1:00pm – 1:30pm, ratings for the 1:30pm slot were traditionally low. It was a commonly held belief that no one was tuning back in for the network offerings at that time. However, Irna did hold a bit of power and, knowing the already held tradition of canceling unsuccessful soaps quickly, persuaded CBS to give her new series a solid 2-year commitment. It would be all the time she needed to change the face of daytime.

Irna created and wrote CBS especially for television unlike earlier soap offerings that were either old radio soaps moved to TV or were based on radio soap conventions. Also, instead of including twice as many characters and storylines in the 30-minute soap as would have been in the 15-minute soap, she didn’t. Instead, Irna used the extra time to explore ever facet and nuance of a story. It was ATWT that brought about the endless discussions over cups of coffee where characters would sit and discuss the problems of their friends and family as well as their own problems. ATWT also pioneered the tactic of the long single shot of a character reacting to a statement or event before cutting to commercial. And, in addition to traditional soap problems, ATWT allowed characters to experience real life. Scenes would be allotted to discussions of everyday events. Thanks to ATWT, we got to know each and every single character intimately – their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their opinions on the events happening around them. In fact, so much discussion was going on that the plotlines moved very little. Truthfully, though, in those early years, there was only one true storyline – the extramarital affair of prominent attorney Jim Lowell with Edith Hughes and the effect that affair had on both the Hughes and Lowell families.

This brings us, of course, to one of the more evident influences of ATWT – the two family set-up. Before ATWT, soaps typically focused on a single heroine (like Search for Tomorrow’s Joanne, Love of Life’s Vanessa, or Valiant Lady’s Helen) or a single family (like One Man's Family’s Barbours, The Brighter Day’s Dennises, or The Secret Storm’s Ameses). ATWT, instead, focused on two – one middle class and easily relatable to for the audience (in this case, the Hughes family) and one wealthy and extremely troubled (in this case, the Lowell family). This ATWT influence can be easily seen in later series Another World (with the 2 branches of the Matthews family), The Young & the Restless (the wealthy Brooks family and the poor Foster family and, later, with the wealthy Abbott family and the middle class Williams family), All My Children (rich Tyler family, middle class Martin family), and The Bold & the Beautiful (rich Forrester family, middle class Logan family).

But, despite all of Irna’s innovations, CBS must have felt rather smug when Edge soared in the ratings right out of the gate while ATWT barely broke out with a whimper. Ratings were dismal! For the 1956-1957 season, ATWT was last in the ratings for all soaps. But Irna had her 2-year commitment and she had faith in her show. Then, slowly, something started to happen – ratings started to inch up. True, it was slow, at first, but then ATWT caught fire. Viewers had gradually gotten to know the residents of Oakdale (ATWT’s setting) and they’d become like family and viewers just had to know what would happen to their TV friends next. By 1958, ATWT had risen like a rocket to #1 – a position it would hold every year for the next 20 years. Irna had a hit. And she had vindication.

So successful were ATWT and TEON that every single soap that premiered after them would be at least 30-minutes long (in fact, the 1st soap to premiere after ATWT & TEON was NBC’s 30-minute Kitty Foyle). Then gradually, the 15-minute soaps seemed out of step and they began to stretch out to 30-minutes (Love of Life was the first 15-minute soap to expand to 30-minutes in the Spring of 1958, The Brighter Day and The Secret Storm followed in 1962). Later, ATWT would become the first CBS soap to expand to an hour in 1975. It should also be noted that ATWT aired LIVE every single day until 1975 when it expanded.

ATWT was a powerhouse. The only thing ABC would schedule against it were re-runs of prime-time series. NBC pitted the game show Let's Make a Deal against it for most of the 1960s and while it did well in the ratings, it couldn’t match the monster numbers ATWT had. NBC’s only attempt at scheduling a soap against ATWT (until Days of our Lives expanded to 60-minutes in 1975) was Hidden Faces which died in a matter of months in the mid-1960s.

Another note-worthy point about ATWT is the immense behind-the-scenes talent that helped to carry the show through its first decade. Agnes Nixon helped create the show and served as a writer on it before being moved to TGL as head writer when Irna handed over that show to her so that she could focus exclusively on ATWT. Agnes’s TGL tenure would be credited as one of the golden periods of the show and she would later have a successful tenure at Another World, saving it from cancellation, before creating her own soaps One Life to Live, All My Children, and Loving. Another long-time writer for ATWT throughout the 1950s and 1960s was Bill Bell who would later help Irna create Another World and would have a successful run on Days of our Lives as head writer before creating his own successful soaps The Young & the Restless and The Bold & the Beautiful. One of ATWT longest-running producers and directors was Ted Corday (his backstage fights with Irna are the things of legend) who went on to create the short-lived Morning Star before creating the successful Days of our Lives with Irna and Alan Chase. So, if you think about it, of all ten soaps currently on the air, SEVEN of them can be linked directly back to Irna Phillips’s influence.

Ratings began to slip in the late 1970s (the youth-movement of ABC began to dig into ATWT’s ratings and ATWT began to be viewed as out-dated), but the series staged many come-backs throughout the years with varying degrees of success and popularity (most notably, the late 1980s era of Douglas Marland as head writer). But the show has survived. Today, two things are certain – the Hughes family is still in Oakdale and the world still turns.