16 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

Re Alex North. Could Samantha have been posing as Marlena when Alex met and married her. Maybe Sam with her low self esteem and other issues felt more confident as Marlena-the more successful twin. Could that have worked with some tweaks?

Another idea-have a young woman turn up at some point turning out to be Samantha''s child-giving Marlena a surrogate daughter.

Both of those ideas would work too.  My thinking was instead of making Alex North a psychopath for no reason he could have blamed Marlena for Sam's death and at least had a reason for this crazy elaborate revenge plan.  Sam pretending to be Marlena would also be very in character though.

It also means that if Jessica Fallon came to Salem after college in 1980, she either would've been a 12-year-old nursing prodigy, or Marie would've had her at 15, neither of which fits the timeline.

Scotty Banning was born in 1978, making Julie a grandmother at 29 years old. 

Notably, Eli is listed as 45 in his wiki, which means that he was born the year before Scotty, which is almost possible since David and Val broke up in 1977.  But, retroactively, that means that Julie was a grandmother at 28.

I guess none of the Horton actresses on DAYS are particularly vain about their age, like Eileen Fulton?  Meanwhile, 60-year-old Roark Critchlow is playing 55-year-old Mike Horton.

Edited December 14, 20232 yr by j swift

6 hours ago, j swift said:

I guess none of the Horton actresses on DAYS are particularly vain about their age, like Eileen Fulton? 

I don't know if that was true. Susan Hayes:

“I was surprised when Julie’s son [David] went away to summer camp and was played by a 10-year-old and came home a 6-foot-4 blond and an unhappy adolescent with a sex life and pimples. That seemed very jarring. I’m used to it now, but I was hurt. The head writer explained to me that I was just being … that I didn’t want to be in an older category, but had to get used to it."

https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/icymi-susan-seaforth-hayes-interview/

 

21 hours ago, te. said:

To be fair, from what can be deciphered from sources it seems like they went the route of not specifying what war he was in instead of saying it was the Korean. I imagine that it might be what was said backstage rather than on-screen.

I'm still curious where you came up with this. Were you maybe not watching when it was shown? Because it was very clear - Korean War. The only way it wasn't weird, because it was weird, but we were watching M*A*S*H* at the time, I believe, and that was also the Korean War. And then as a nation we had a considerable pause before we had the Vietnam War appear in pop culture. 

And apropos of nothing any more than a lot of talk about JER & about Marlena, did folks know that Deidre has a new dog & that she named him Reilly? I want to see a pic but none has been forthcoming! 

2 hours ago, teplin said:

I don't know if that was true. Susan Hayes:

“I was surprised when Julie’s son [David] went away to summer camp and was played by a 10-year-old and came home a 6-foot-4 blond and an unhappy adolescent with a sex life and pimples. That seemed very jarring. I’m used to it now, but I was hurt. The head writer explained to me that I was just being … that I didn’t want to be in an older category, but had to get used to it."

https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/icymi-susan-seaforth-hayes-interview/

 

That's amusing.  Because I was wondering if it was SSH's mother Elizabeth Harrower that made her a grandmother at an early age.  But, according to the internet, she didn't start writing until 1979.

About Deidre Hall

https://thecliffedge.com/?p=10538

11 hours ago, j swift said:

I was trying to do the math from Alice's perspective, not withstanding SORASed grandkids, great grandkids and great great grankids.

Francis Reid was born in 1914, and was 96 when she died.  However, Alice Grayson Horton was born in 1911, according to her grave site. So, let's say Alice had Tommy and Addie when she was 20 (the median age of marriage for women in 1930 was 21.3).  If Tommy went to Korea at the end of the conflict in 1953, when most of the soldiers were captured, he would have been 36 when he reappeared in Salem in 1967, making Alice 54 when the series premiered, and 99 when she passed. 

She could've been 20 when she “popped out” Tommy and Addie.  Then, she had Micky the next year at 21. Bill was born she was 29.  And, she was 32 when she had Marie in 1943.

Interestingly, Addie would've been 17 when she had Stephen and 18 when she had Julie (since Julie was said to be 16 in the premiere episode), and 43 when she had Hope in 1974.

Which makes Marie 6 years older than Julie, and 30 years older than Hope.  So, Marie was 24 when she fell for Mark/Tommy and then left Salem

But, of course, the SORASing of David in 1975 screws up the whole timeline.  Because he was born in 1968 on screen, he went from 7 to 18 overnight.  Which means Alice was 64, and Julie was 26 with an 18-year-old son (although Susan Seaforth Hayes was 32 at the time).  So, I guess we can blame Pat Falken Smith for that one.

Thanks for the math  Let's go with that and we'll say to hell with any SORASing that comes into play. After all, Julie seemed to go from 16 in 1965 to late 30's by the mid 70's, and then her grandson was in his late teens by the late 80's. So weird how they aged up Susan Seaforth Hayes' perceived age so rapidly. 

1 hour ago, Donna L. Bridges said:

I'm still curious where you came up with this. Were you maybe not watching when it was shown? Because it was very clear - Korean War. The only way it wasn't weird, because it was weird, but we were watching M*A*S*H* at the time, I believe, and that was also the Korean War. And then as a nation we had a considerable pause before we had the Vietnam War appear in pop culture. 

And apropos of nothing any more than a lot of talk about JER & about Marlena, did folks know that Deidre has a new dog & that she named him Reilly? I want to see a pic but none has been forthcoming! 

I wasn't even born when it aired, but yeah, my impression was always that they handled it with more of a "don't mention what war" approach. Apparently not! It must've been something that filtered through considering they modified it later when they could mention the Vietnam war. It's my bad! But glad to have it clarified that they did mention it on air.

Edited December 14, 20232 yr by te.

18 minutes ago, te. said:

I wasn't even born when it aired, but yeah, my impression was always that they handled it with more of a "don't mention what war" approach. Apparently not! It must've been something that filtered through considering they modified it later when they could mention the Vietnam war. It's my bad! But glad to have it clarified that they did mention it on air.

Understood. Age is not apparent when messaging online. Since I am old as dirt, I watched a lot of the Bill Bell Salem writing. Even though AW is my favorite, it is really the Bill Bell Salem writing that hooked me forever more on soaps. Susan & Julie & David & poor baby Dickie is literally the first I remember. That's like Aug. 1976 I think. 

1 hour ago, Gray Bunny said:

So weird how they aged up Susan Seaforth Hayes' perceived age so rapidly. 

Agreed.

It seemed like Julie, and Doug too were victims of the youth movement at the time.

I remember when we were discussing that time period in this thread a while back, we saw that once Doug and Julie were married, as a couple they were pretty much backburnered. 

Until the whole Larry Atwood saga. 

13 hours ago, carolineg said:

If we needed to use Samantha again I would have changed the Alex North plot.  North fed Marlena all these ideas about being married when he was actually married to Samantha and bitter and vengeful about her death.  That would have easily solved so many issues with that story and not erased all of Marlena's marriages and been much more believable.  That also would have solved the issue of Deidre playing dual roles for an extended period and not retconned Sam's death either.

10 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Re Alex North. Could Samantha have been posing as Marlena when Alex met and married her. Maybe Sam with her low self esteem and other issues felt more confident as Marlena-the more successful twin. Could that have worked with some tweaks?

Another idea-have a young woman turn up at some point turning out to be Samantha''s child-giving Marlena a surrogate daughter.

10 hours ago, carolineg said:

Both of those ideas would work too.  My thinking was instead of making Alex North a psychopath for no reason he could have blamed Marlena for Sam's death and at least had a reason for this crazy elaborate revenge plan.  Sam pretending to be Marlena would also be very in character though.

First of all, @carolineg and @Paul Raven, I absolutely love your ideas on how you'd rewrite the Alex North story.  So much better than what JER concocted, lol.

I think I would've gone down an entirely different path with Alex.  In my scenario, Alex would be an abusive ex-boyfriend of Samantha's from Denver, who would be back in Marlena's life, but with an assumed name and new face (preferably not Wayne Northrop's).

Alex, or whatever he was known as back then, disappeared years ago under mysterious circumstances.  Except, those circumstances wouldn't be all that mysterious for too much longer, as we would learn (through newly created flashbacks of Marlena's, featuring younger versions of herself and Sam) that Samantha killed Alex (or believed she did) to protect Marlena, whom the boyfriend had attacked while Marlena was trying to keep him from hurting Samantha again; and then convinced Marlena to help her dispose of his body.  Subsequently, Samantha fled to California to pursue her acting career, while Marlena took the job that brought her to Salem for the first time, with neither sister ever learning that the boyfriend, in fact, survived his injuries.

4 minutes ago, Khan said:

First of all, @carolineg and @Paul Raven, I absolutely love your ideas on how you'd rewrite the Alex North story.  So much better than what JER concocted, lol.

I think I would've gone down an entirely different path with Alex.  In my scenario, Alex would be an abusive ex-boyfriend of Samantha's from Denver, who would be back in Marlena's life, but with an assumed name and new face (preferably not Wayne Northrop's).

Alex, or whatever he was known as back then, disappeared years ago under mysterious circumstances.  Except, those circumstances wouldn't be all that mysterious for too much longer, as we would learn (through newly created flashbacks of Marlena's, featuring younger versions of herself and Sam) that Samantha killed Alex (or believed she did) to protect Marlena, whom the boyfriend had attacked while Marlena was trying to keep him from hurting Samantha again; and then convinced Marlena to help her dispose of his body.  Subsequently, Samantha fled to California to pursue her acting career, while Marlena took the job that brought her to Salem for the first time, with neither sister ever learning that the boyfriend, in fact, survived his injuries.

It goes without saying that Alex North as we knew him, could hardly have been worse, but gee, who knew he could be so much better?!!! 

Alex having been married to Sam and then going after Marlena for revenge makes sense. I like it. 

1 hour ago, Khan said:

First of all, @carolineg and @Paul Raven, I absolutely love your ideas on how you'd rewrite the Alex North story.  So much better than what JER concocted, lol.

I think I would've gone down an entirely different path with Alex.  In my scenario, Alex would be an abusive ex-boyfriend of Samantha's from Denver, who would be back in Marlena's life, but with an assumed name and new face (preferably not Wayne Northrop's).

Alex, or whatever he was known as back then, disappeared years ago under mysterious circumstances.  Except, those circumstances wouldn't be all that mysterious for too much longer, as we would learn (through newly created flashbacks of Marlena's, featuring younger versions of herself and Sam) that Samantha killed Alex (or believed she did) to protect Marlena, whom the boyfriend had attacked while Marlena was trying to keep him from hurting Samantha again; and then convinced Marlena to help her dispose of his body.  Subsequently, Samantha fled to California to pursue her acting career, while Marlena took the job that brought her to Salem for the first time, with neither sister ever learning that the boyfriend, in fact, survived his injuries.

Great idea too!

I always thought it was strange that the show did so little with Sam.  Not even bringing her back to life, but she never had any exes or children that popped out of the woodwork like you said.  I think for a number of years Andrea Hall probably would have returned for a short arc and instead we got the first Hattie plot that just went nowhere.  And then Deidre doing whatever she was doing with Hattie after that.

3 hours ago, carolineg said:

I always thought it was strange that the show did so little with Sam.  Not even bringing her back to life, but she never had any exes or children that popped out of the woodwork like you said.

Now there (Samantha's long-lost child) was an opportunity to introduce an African-American character with ties to one of the main families on DAYS.  They could have said that Samantha got pregnant by a black man - perhaps, an O.J. Simpson-type, who was a successful professional athlete-turned-actor - but gave up the baby, because of her career, and because she was afraid her family never would accept a half-black grandchild.

Even better, they could have revealed that Samantha turned to prostitution when her acting career had stalled, and that her child was fathered by one of her johns.

Edited December 14, 20232 yr by Khan