DAYS: Behind the Scenes, Articles/Photos

[victoria foxton]

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[vetsoapfan]

 

Thank you for that great article, Victoria. Nina Laemmle lasted a whopping six months at DAYS, and her tenure was a disaster. You'll notice that most of her new characters bombed with the audience, with only Liz Chandler, Jessica Blake and Joshua Fallon having any point. (Along with the eight newbies referred to in this article, Laemmle also created a young female character named Cassie Burns, who...meant nothing to anybody and then just left Salem.) The primetime TV series Laemmle is credited with? Pffft. If anything, her resume proves why she never should have been hired at Days to begin with. A couple of individual scripts for Marcus Welby and Zane Grey  don't prove that she could carry an ongoing series by herself. Rich Man Poor Man, Book One was a monster success, but when Laemmle took over for book two, the series plummeted right into the toilet and was axed. It was PAINFULLY tedious. The original TV miniseries of Little Women was also a huge hit, but when Laemmle took over the regular series, that also died a quick death. Three for the Road, Sarah, Born Free? All failures, and when she became story editor at Peyton Place, the show drifted out of focus and alienated the audience.

 

Meanwhile, thanks to this hack, we lost characters like Bill and Laura Horton!

Edited June 13, 2018 by vetsoapfan

[amybrickwallace]

 

I remember seeing the episode from 1981 where Doug and Julie remarried, and SR was indeed listed in the credits as Suzanne Rogers Groom. The episode was removed from YouTube ages ago - dang it!!! 😠

 

Did she ever work in soaps again? Re: Little Women...not that I am defending her, but when NBC made it a series, they had to make do without Susan Dey, Meredith Baxter (who at the time was committed to Family on ABC) and William Shatner. I don't recall who replaced them, but apparently they were not memorable. I don't think it had a good timeslot, either.

[vetsoapfan]

 

They lost about half the cast when the show became a weekly series, which definitely did not help, added to the newly-horrible writing.

[Paul Raven]

Days in 1980 definitely needed fresh blood as the cast was top heavy with actors/characters that had been on for years.

 

But to dump so many in such a short time and then front burner the newbies was a textbook example of how not to revamp.

[DRW50]

 

It's amazing how the most arrogant writers are often the least talented...

 

Was it Laemmle who did the Julie burns story? Oh wait - that was SSH's mother. Never mind. Did Laemmle bring in Renee and Lee?

 

Was Cassie the one that was involved with Chris?

 

It made me laugh that they predicted Mary being killed off because she was acting just like Charlotte on GL. It's a shame this was so obvious even a year before it happened. I wonder if anyone liked Fee in the role. The little I've seen was not good - she seemed to be like a prototype for Brenda Dickson's 1986-87 Jill (oddly enough Fee was more restrained when she temped for Brenda as Jill...).

Edited June 22, 2018 by DRW50

[jam6242]

I didn't like Fee at all as Mary.  She played her all wrong.  I wasn't sorry when Mary was murdered.

 

Leslie James is the character who was involved with Chris.  I don't remember Cassie being a major character.

[DRW50]

 

Thanks.

 

I would say maybe they should have had Fee come in as a recast of Linda Anderson, but I get the feeling that recast wasn't well-liked either.

[juppiter]

^lmao @ "A New Day Dawning for Days of Our Lives."

 

An earlier iteration of "The Plan to Save Days." They have literally been saving Days for an entire generation now.

[jam6242]

Recast Linda was one of the worst I've seen.  Didn't capture the essence of Linda, at all.  

[amybrickwallace]

 

One actor who did join the cast was AW alum David Ackroyd. He had guested a few times on Dallas as Gary Ewing, and had offers for two series come his way at the same time. One was for Little Women, and the other was for a Dallas spinoff. The rest is TV history. David Ackroyd chose Little Women, which was cancelled after only a handful of episodes had aired, and Ted Shackelford ended up playing Gary Ewing on Knots Landing for 14 years!!!

[vetsoapfan]

 

Yes, so many arrogant "writers" cannot write their way out of wet paper bags, although Harding Lamay was both arrogant and gifted, so there are exceptions.

 

Lee and Renee were introduced in 1979 and 1981, I believed, so Laemmle would not have created them, since she worked on the show in 1980.

 

Leslie James was Laemmle's creation who briefly got involved with Chris Kositchek. Cass ie dated Todd Chandler for a minute or two, as I recall, before the pointless character was dumped.

 

Fee was a dreadful recast in the role of Mary, as wrong for that role as Elaine Princi was as Linda Anderson. Yuck.

[DRW50]

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[carolineg]

 

I know this is from 2 years ago and no one cares, but I always thought they were going to make Eric gay/bisexual and just backed out.  I think there was some fan speculation at the time agreeing with that theory too.

 

Edited July 5, 2018 by carolineg

[jam6242]

Part of a recent interview that Robert Clary did for The Television Academy Foundation.

 

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