As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Paul Raven]

Good point as this summary from 1965 hints at that

 Don reestablishes his on-again/off-again romance with Ellen, but Ellen is close to accepting David's wedding proposal.

David/Ellen was the biggest wedding the show had ever done so the writing must have leaned towards Ellen romancing Don b/c she felt she didn't deserve David after all she'd been through.

She and Don had always been close. This is something that could have been used in later years as Ellen comforts Don over Joyce for example and David gets jealous.

Instead David and Ellen became tentpoles. Ellen was even dropped at one point in 75.

 

[Mitch]

When David and Ellen broke off would have been the perfect time to bring back Don. Poor Mary could have died (she was always going into a coma anyway...) and Don comes back with Teddy (they could have brought back Wagner at that time and explained she was off taking car of things after Mary kicked) and starts a romance with Ellen..causing Bob and Nancy and Chris to not be happy. Instead, they had Ellen move into a swinging middle aged ladies apt with a bunch of nobodies and date a doctor who was a nobody and disappeared.

[Franko]

And didn't David date Linda Dano's character, Cynthia, for a minute?

[Soaplovers]

It's odd with how dowdy they dressed Ellen in the 70s..when by the mid 80s..she had a more youthful look again.

There were moments when Ellen would be fiesty..but it seemed like the show didn't know what to do with her.  I figured when David was killed off in 1991..that it would open up some new avenues to explore..alas not to be.

[Paul Raven]

Ellen was hard done by.

They didn't bring back her daughters, especially Dee who still had story potential, with only one marriage under her belt.

Unlike Annie who had 3 marriages and 4 children'.

Any or all of Ellen's quad grandkids could have been SORASED but no dice.

He fell for her when he had amnesia and was calling himself Donald Saunders.

Ellen was made frumpy to be believable as the mother of Sorased Dan. I think John Colenback was only a couple of years younger than Pat Bruder.

 

[Mona Kane Croft]

Doug Marland planned to give Ellen more interesting things to do, after David died.  Unfortunately Marland passed away before he got around to it.  There was a budding romance with Ralph Mitchell (who had returned), just at the end of Marland's run, but the next set of writers dropped it.  

[Mitch]

Yes...they had no chemistry...and but she had a daughter Karen, who caused trouble for dull as dirt Annie/Jeff and blackmailed James into marrying her (thus dumping Dee at the altar) and then got involved with John and fought Lucy over him. She was fun. Its too bad that they didn't find a Cynthia who HF had chemistry with to prolong the David/Ellen split, but to tell you the truth...HF was never going to light up the screen with chemistry as good of an actor HF was. 

 

Oh..the bun!!! But it was also the pained expression Ellen and dour David always had on their faces. When they "jazzed" (as my mom would say) Ellen up and let her smile she was pretty....though my Grandmother never bought it..."Look at dull old Ellen, trying to be cute with that long hair!"  The dour days must have been hell for Bruder to play.

 

No offense to the actor, but if the "hot" storyline was putting her with Ralph Mitchell after all these years and sitting in a corner, if I was Bruder I would have thrown the script up in the air!  I just wish someone had the balls to give Lisa back her claws..have her write an expose..."Murders Among Us" in the Argos, with Ellen's article..."Suburban Murderess"  Ellen then wakes up and goes and smacks Lisa down in the Hughes kitchen when they both invariably stop by for coffee in the morning...with Kim and Nancy pulling them apart. Maybe they could have brought Scott back and paired him with Dee..she had a taste for bad apples...

[MarlandFan]

The rapid aging of Ellen (from single gal to great-grandmother in 20 years!) meant that actress Patricia Bruder became a peripheral character by the early 1980s. Eileen Fulton was very smart to insist on a "no-Grandmother" clause in her contract throughout the 1970s.

[DramatistDreamer]

Even just letting her hair "be" in its natural wavy state, instead of trying to brush it straight and into that Little House On The Prairie bun made her look fresher and more youthful.

When I look at episodes on YouTube of how she was styled in the late 1970s and very early 1980s, it's unfortunate. That styling really made her look consistently dowdy.

[Bill Bauer]

 

The Lisa/Ellen feud went way back to when Ellen was trying to get custody of Dan. Lisa was very against what Ellen was doing and let her know it. It didn't help that Penny and Ellen were best friends and Penny couldn't stand Lisa either in those days. Then, the animosity got a lot deeper when Lisa had an affair with (and a baby by) Ellen's stepfather, Michael Shea. The affair turned Claire into a suicidal lush and pretty much destroyed her. Ellen never forgave Lisa for what she did to her mother. 

[TVFAN1144]

She looks good in this hairstyle 

[Mitch]

I just wish that someone would have done something more intense with their relationship..Marland was the only one to touch it (in a video from the Willows era David and Ellen are chucking that Lisa wanted to open a wine bar in the basement (very forward thinking of Lisa and actually a foreshadowing of what was to come) and that "Whatever Lisa puts her mind to she can do..." like they were the best of friends. If someone had helped turn my mom into a drunken lush I would have it out for them forever..and with Ellen and Lisa under Marland it was just like they annoyed each other.

I really wish they had brought back "Chuckie" with his dad still alive (hey if James could do it) and the old past would come to the fore. Scott Eldridge was too boring but I am sure Marland would have made Chuckie as politely dull.  At least, when Ellen and Lisa are having the spat about letting Emily stay at Lisa's Ellen could have spit out..."I wont let the same thing happen to Emily that happened to my mother!"

She looks great...and if you ever saw pictures of her husband when they were younger..he was handsome..and a doctor! Ole Ellen had something going on to keep that hottie!

 

[Soapsuds]

 

[MarlandFan]

I remember reading an interview with Fulton in 1992 after the Scott reveal. She mentioned that Marland had asked her about Chuckie's death and if it had happened offscreen. She told him "no", that the child's body and Lisa's grieving over the body had been portrayed onscreen.  So clearly Marland had considered bringing Chuckie back, but realized it would be a betrayal to the show's history. 

I agree about Scott being dull. When I first learned that Joe Breen had been cast as Scott, I was excited because of his great work on GL. But Scott (as written) was a wimpy sad sack who (obviously) had mother issues. Even back in 1992 it seemed very problematic that he should get sexually involved with his boss (Lucinda) and after that relationship ended, he moved right into a relationship with the doomed Neal. Then the actor began to physically change from his health issues -- and then he was replaced. And then Marland died.  Scott as a character (and as a long-lost brother to a core character) never caused the fireworks that he should have. And before any major correction could be made, Marland and the character were gone.  I liked the direction the new Scott took (as an unpredictable troublemaker portrayed by Doug Wert) but by then I had basically stopped watching the show.

[Mitch]

Yes, he asked her about Chuckie and Fulton said..."Nancy Hughes buried him, and whoever Nancy Hughes buries stays dead!" (if only other writers would listen to their actors like that.) However, I think their was wiggle room, and would have loved for Lisa's bad girl days would come back to haunt her. I always wanted the Dr. Shea history to be revisited as it must have been something..Lisa, Nancy Hughes pet, tearing apart her best friends marriage...

Yea, I cannot believe that a long lost son of Lisa' s could be so damn boring. I knew when we had this 30 something guy in a sweater living at home and saying "Grandmother" that it was already on the wrong path. I did like Wert's version (and his pecs) but it came at a bad time for the show and was not his fault. Like Reva, Lisa should have been confronted with a male version of herself on steroids...(well, not as loud as Jonathon I hope) and there we just got a bit of a younger version of Holmes Tom.