I was able to find one article on Soapdish. Included since Stephen Nichols was a commentator: http://articles.latimes.com/1991-06-11/entertainment/ca-474_1_real-soap-opera

(And I'll share this on the Y&R board, too).

Gotta love Suzanne!

Re Mickey/John Clarke's age.I'm not sure how old Mickey was supposed to be in 65,but surely not 34.That's a problem with hiring an actor who is already older than his character.

Reading the Mickey story summaries,he fizzled out by the late 70's. The stories given to Mickey and Maggie - the wife beating neighbors.Janice /alcoholism and the surrogate were all poorly executed.And then there was the awful Mickey presumed dead/Don/Maggie fiasco.

Makes me wonder if in some ways it would have been better to drop Mickey and Maggie in 1980,and keep Bill as the older Horton,falling in love with someone but torn as his wife is in the sanitarium.

Not that Ed Mallory aged any better...

Gotta love Suzanne!

Re Mickey/John Clarke's age.I'm not sure how old Mickey was supposed to be in 65,but surely not 34.That's a problem with hiring an actor who is already older than his character.

Reading the Mickey story summaries,he fizzled out by the late 70's. The stories given to Mickey and Maggie - the wife beating neighbors.Janice /alcoholism and the surrogate were all poorly executed.And then there was the awful Mickey presumed dead/Don/Maggie fiasco.

Makes me wonder if in some ways it would have been better to drop Mickey and Maggie in 1980,and keep Bill as the older Horton,falling in love with someone but torn as his wife is in the sanitarium.

Not that Ed Mallory aged any better...

Thanks for posting Susan's heartfelt tribute to Suzanne. To tell the truth, Suzanne is the only reason I still watch Days.

Suzanne, Bill and Susan, Peggy McCay - all legends. I'd watch a show just about them and it would surely be more entertaining than anything on daytime now!!!

Edited June 8, 201510 yr by Days22

No offense to John Clarke, but I was always amazed at how his looks took Mickey from being in his 20's in the 1960's to his apparent 50's by the 1970's. No wonder his storylines dried out by the time the 1980's arrived.

I like John Clarke, but I think the Mickey-Maggie partnership was unfortunate for Suzanne Rogers, at least post-1980. DAYS prematurely aged her out of major storylines -- similar to what they did with Susan Hayes -- and I have to believe much of it was because Mickey was so dull and stodgy. The show should have followed up her Emmy win with more meaty material, but she basically just faded into the background. Personally, I would have been fine with Micky never escaping from Stephano's clutches and Maggie really moving ahead with Don.

Then again, if she had spun off in a non-Horton direction, she might not have had the staying power she did.

I actually remember reading -- it might've been in that Lorraine Zenka coffee table book -- that Mickey was 33 when the show started. That seems like a random thing to include if it wasn't said on-air or included in the initial bible/character bios. I think the narrative was that he was 33 and was a bachelor, always dating beautiful women and whatnot, until Laura captured his heart or whatever. I had never really thought about it much, but Maggie was definitely in like her early 20s when they got together, so there was a decent age difference there.

I do think if Maggie had been cut loose from the Horton fold in the early 80s, she would've gone the way of Liz, Don, Neil, and the like by the end of the decade. I guess her only chance at survival would have been if Melissa or Sarah had really taken off as solo characters and she'd gotten to stay around in the context of their mother (or if she'd had another kid by Don or someone who had done the same). But I don't think she would have become such a fixture the way she did in the 90s and 2000s -- she was a staple, even if she wasn't really given dramatic material.

I just checked the "Days" proposal, and in it, Addie is said to have been born in 1926, and Mickey is "two years her junior", so he was originally born in 1928. Although those dates may have been changed through the years. But in the first statements ever written about Mickey, he was born in 1928.

Edited June 9, 201510 yr by JAS0N47

I just checked the "Days" proposal, and in it, Addie is said to have been born in 1926, and Mickey is "two years her junior", so he was originally born in 1928. Although those dates may have been changed through the years. But in the first statements ever written about Mickey, he was born in 1928.

Oh wow. So he was at least originally conceived of as being in his mid-late 30s by the time the show premiered. Interesting.

Oh wow. So he was at least originally conceived of as being in his mid-late 30s by the time the show premiered. Interesting.

Not necessarily. The Irna Phillips lawsuit in the 1970's states that the trio initially created the program in 1961. The proposal is undated, but it could have been written in 1961, so then the birthdates would have been adjusted to later years when Days was eventually picked up as a series 4 years later.

Not necessarily. The Irna Phillips lawsuit in the 1970's states that the trio initially created the program in 1961. The proposal is undated, but it could have been written in 1961, so then the birthdates would have been adjusted to later years when Days was eventually picked up as a series 4 years later.

Oh, interesting! So the 33-34 estimate would be right on the ball, then. Thanks for the info.

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF MACDONALD CAREY BEING CAST AS TOM HORTON ON "DAYS"...

This week marks the 50th anniversary of Macdonald Carey being cast to play Dr. Tom Horton on "Days of Our Lives." Variety announced the casting news on page 7 of its June 14, 1965 issue:

Mac Carey To Star In Screen Gems' 'Lives' For NBC-TV

Macdonald Carey has been inked to star in Screen Gems' daytime series, "Days Of Our Lives", for NBC-TV. Co-created by Ted Corday and Irna Phillips, pilot is to start July 18 in NBC's Burbank studios. Corday is Screen Gems' director of daytime programming. Carey will play a professor of internal medicine.

Thanks for posting this, JASON!

Another from 1976:

Edited June 11, 201510 yr by jam6242