DAYS: Behind the Scenes, Articles/Photos

[Contessa Donatella]

Thanks, beebs.

[Bright Eyes]

 

It was never a seduction. You don't know what you're talking about. That's why Bill Bell sent Bill Horton to prison. He even planned to have Bill get raped in prison, but higher ups wouldn't let him.

[Franko]

Yeah, Bill raping Laura was clearly depicted as a rape. The idea of it being a seduction apparently only came up twice: when Laura first claimed to a now-sober Bill that he failed to seduce her, then when she told what happened to Tom Horton.

 

Technically Bill went to jail for involuntary manslaughter involving Kitty Horton's death, but considering she planned to blackmail him about the rape, his sentence can be considered related to the earlier crime.

 

I think I've gotten the information correctly. If I missed anything, please let me know.

 

What I wouldn't mind seeing is the episodes after Bill got out of jail, where Laura realized the extent of his devotion and renewed her friendship before falling back in love with him. Talk about your acting and writing challenges!

 

Then again, Bill Bell was a skilled writer, who must have known the difference between playing all the beats and quitting when you're behind.

[vetsoapfan]

 

 

The genius of Bill Bell's writing was that the stories he told and the character motivations he created were often very adult, very ambiguous, very complicated. As a viewer who was watching the show when the Bill-Laura rape/seduction occurred, I'd say that to label it a simple case of straightforward rape doesn't quite capture the complex nuance of the situation. 

 

Bill and Laura had been in love first, but when circumstances drove them apart, Laura married Mickey, basically for comfort and security. She never loved Mickey with the same intense fire that she had had for Bill. When Bill came back to Salem, he and Laura were still hugely attracted to each other, longed for each other, but fought to control and suppress their feelings. Bill got drunk, cast his inhibitions aside, and made physical moves on Laura. She resisted, out of a sense of duty to Mickey and social mores, but it had been clear that she really wanted him too. Was it rape? Was it a case of Bill putting Laura in a situation where she had no choice but to give in to her acknowledged-but-socially-unacceptable desires? In the final analysis, Laura did say no, so Bill should have accepted her protests and stopped. Anything that happens after the word NO is not consensual in a clear-cut, right-and-wrong definitive sense. But human beings and human interaction are more ambiguous and complicated than that, and what viewers witnessed on screen left us with many conflicting questions and opinions. 

 

Remember in Gone With the Wind, when a drunken Rhett refused to let Scarlett turn him down, and over her protests, swooped her into his arms, carried her up the stairs,  and had his way with her? Was that rape? Was it "coerced seduction" of a woman who secretly wanted the act to happen? The audience has never been able to settle on an easy answer.

 

In short, the Bill-Laura business was a complicated mess, but at least William J. Bell made Bill suffer for many YEARS because of his actions.

 

From what I recall, Kitty Horton never tried to blackmail Bill over "rape," she threatened to tell Mickey that he was not Mike's biological father, a secret which neither Bill nor Laura wanted to come out.

 

 

[Franko]

Ah, my apologies. I was hoping you'd be able to shine some light on all of this.

[Contessa Donatella]

Can you remind me how Laura ended up with Mickey? What I remember so strongly is that Bill & Laura were madly in love with each other. And, the situation was that they were brothers.

 

You've done a good job of putting distance between the situation with Bill & Laura in the doctor's lounge one drunken night and Luke & Laura on the disco floor while RAGE played. Well said. And, partially why Laura was able to be with Bill again later & have Jennifer, etc.

 

What part of it came from Pat Falkin Smith?

Edited October 13, 2019 by Donna B
upper case j

[Contessa Donatella]

Corday's AUS interview seems to be lacking in some ways!

Days of Lour Lives, a theme

 

https://music.amazon.com/recently/purchased

[jam6242]

I believe Kitty somehow had a tape recording of Tom and Laura talking about Mickey being sterile.  She and Bill were arguing over that when she had her heart attack.  Bill kept silent about it during his trial because no one wanted Mickey to find out. 

 

Mickey and Laura had bonded while they were working on Susan Martin's insanity defense (for shooting her husband, David).  Bill was out of town at that time.

[Contessa Donatella]

Now that does sound familiar.

[vetsoapfan]

 

There's NO need to apologize. The situation, as played out on screen, was ambiguous and complicated enough for those of us who watched it. Only having synopses of the history to read makes the situation appear much more cut-and-dry than it actually was. Even Falken Smith, as Bell's assistant, later acknowledged that upon first reading Bell's story projection, she had been skeptical that a story which incorporated a complex, ambiguous and troublesome sexual scene between a drunken man and his brother's wife could ever turn out to be a beautiful love story. But she said she was wrong to have doubted Bill Bell. The daily EXECUTION of his story (the subtle performances by the actors, the directorial choices, carefully-worded dialogue which required viewers to fill in some blanks, ourselves) all contributed to the overall effect, tone, and ambiguity of the drama. I really, really, really miss the days of adult storytelling that required viewers to THINK, ANALYZE, and form our own opinions about controversial subject matter.

 

Kitty, whom the Horton family had been praising for having a lovely singing voice, set up a tape recorder in Tom's den to record

herself and listen to her own voice. While she was recording, she heard Alice, who had dropped a bowl in the other room, shriek. Kitty rushed out of the den to make sure Alice had not hurt herself, and while she was in the kitchen, Tom and Laura went into the den, closed the door, and began having a frank discussion about Mike's paternity: Bill, and not his sterile brother Mickey, was the true father of Laura's son Mike. Later, Kitty returned to the empty den and started to play back the song she had recorded. To her shock, she also heard Tom and Laura's discussion about Mike's paternity. Kitty thought Mickey and Mike had a right to know the truth, but of course Bill vehemently disagreed, and they were arguing about this when Kitty had a fatal heart attack. To his credit, Bill tried valiantly to save her (although his life would have been easier--and his secret would have been safe--if he had left her die), but to no avail. He ended up in prison, which is where he met Doug Williams, a con man at the time, who first decided to come to Salem to woo and marry Susan Martin, whom Bill had said was a lonely and very rich widow.

Edited October 13, 2019 by vetsoapfan

[Franko]

It all just sounds so rich and juicy! The kind of material an audience and a creative team can really dig into. Also, I'm loving that tidbit about Kitty's singing voice. How easily the pleasant can segue into the complex and tumultuous.

[Khan]

I wish TPTB would make these (and other) episodes from the past available online.  Even if you have to pay a subscription fee to watch classic DAYS, it's better than watching the dreck we're subjected to now.

[victoria foxton]

 

 

[vetsoapfan]

 

It was rich and juicy. And INTELLIGENT. Bell and Falken Smith never wrote down to the audience. They gave us complex and sophisticated ADULT drama because we demanded it and they knew we could handle it. How many decades has that kind of respect for the audience been missing from soaps? 

 

 

From 1966 to 1976, DAYS was a masterpiece. Classic soap. Must-see TV.

[Contessa Donatella]

WHAT?!!!!!