Y&R: Old Articles

[LoveAllSoaps]

Love the old eps being shared here! 

 

Anyone have a link to the special one that was re-aired yesterday? 

 

EDIT: I found it . . . 

 

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Edited December 31, 2016 by LoveAllSoaps

[SoapDope]

One scene I noticed cut from the wedding was the when the Brooks girls are getting ready and Peggy say's that The Brooks girls are going to be the 4 hottest sisters at the wedding and Chris jokes " I bet the Brooks girls are going be the on 4 sisters at the wedding. They then all agree to get together the same next year to keep in touch. Then the Maestro arrives and Julia comes down and talks with Lorie. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

As a longtime viewer (I watched from the show's debut in 1973), the Brooks sisters' appearance was what I wanted to see again the most. I stopped watching Y&R on a daily basis after the original Brooks and Foster families were written out.

[SoapDope]

 I wish Bill Bell had found a way to keep ties to the Brooks family beyond the first 10 years. It seems like Y&R's first decade is long forgotten besides the Kay/Jill feud. I wish the writers would find a way to tie all 5 decades of the show together by bringing back some of the Brooks/Foster children. Brooks Prentiss should have been brought in when Lorie made an appearance in the early 2000's. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Yes, there are still ways to weave the show's original roots into the current canvas, but I doubt TPTB are interested. They probably think no one in the current audience cares about the distant past. 

[DRW50]

 

Given the shabby state of men on the canvas, the time would be ripe to bring in Brooks. I imagine Janice Lynde or JLB would be happy to make some appearances as well. 

 

It seems like Bill Bell only held on with the Brooks as long as he did because of JLB, which then upset her as I guess she had no idea he would fire the whole family if she left. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Yes, Brooks Prentiss could return as a young business rival of Victor's. Chuckie could be brought back too as Jill's nephew.

 

Both JL and JLB have said they would be open to returning, and it would be such a treat for longtime fans.

 

Soaps keep dumping new, irrelevant, and often short-term characters onto the canvas anyway, why not at least try to entice former viewers into watching again by giving us a few nods to the past?

[Soapsuds]

Didn't William J. Bell get rid of the Brooks because they weren't popular with the fans and not catching on ratings wise thus he created the Abbots and then eventually wrote off the Brooks?  I remember there was backlash when the Abbots became the new prominent citizens of GC.

[DRW50]

 

Aside from Lorie, all of the Brooks sisters had been recast (as had all the Foster siblings by that point). The recasts generally weren't that well-received and I guess Bell felt they were played out, aside from Jill.

 

[Soapsuds]

In the 84 show they are hard to recognize except for Lorie and one of the other sisters. Now did the previous sisters leave the roles or were they fired?  I personally loved the Brooks family.

[DRW50]

 

Janice Lynde and Trish Stewart left. I think Pamela Peters did as well, although she returned to the role. 

[vetsoapfan]

 

Janice Lynde had wanted out for a long time before she finally departed the series. In the press, she openly admitted in one interview, "There were times when I justed hated Leslie!" Years later, however, she admitted she had been young and very foolish during her run on Y&R, and that being cast as Leslie had afforded her the opportunity to play out some great material. Her replacement, Victoria Mallory, was beautiful and charming, and had a wonderful voice, but she never attained the level of popularity that Lynde had reached. Critics referred to Mallory's interpretation of Leslie as colorless. 

 

Trish Stewart also quit in order to try for primetime TV work. She offered to remain on the show without a contract until a suitable replacement could be found, but TPTB dropped her outright and replaced her as well. The "new" Chris, Lynne Topping, was a capable actress, but just not as popular with the viewers as Stewart had been.

 

Pamela Peters walked off the set in the middle of a scene once, and would disappear from the show for long stretches at a time (including when her character of Peggy was involved in a rape storyline). The show briefly replaced her with Patricia Everly who did not work out, and Peters returned for a bit until the entire Brooks family was phased out.

 

Bill Bell acknowledged in interviews that he would have kept the Brooks family around, until Jaime Lyn Bauer also decided to quit.  That was the last straw which made him decide to overhaul the show and eliminate many of the original core characters and replace them with the Abbott and Williams families, Victor Newman, etc., as the new focus.

 

As played by the original actors, the Brooks and Foster families were enormously popular and very beloved by the fans.

 

Edited January 1, 2017 by vetsoapfan

[SoapDope]

Janice Lynde said in an interview if she had it to do all over again, she would have never left the role of Leslie. Tom Hallick said the same thing about the role of Brad Elliot and said NBC courted him away from CBS and it was a huge mistake. William Gray Espy the original Snapper kind of hinted too that he was so young at the time and had a this thing about being bound to a show long term. Linda Dano said WEG was the same way with Another World. He would come in and after a few month felt stifled being in the same place all the time. When Espy returned in 2003, they said he was at home watching Y&R and saw Jim Houghton's (Greg # 1) name in the writers credits and called him up to chat.

[vetsoapfan]

 

The original cast of Y&R is not alone in letting their egos or thirst for stardom outside of soaps cloud their judgment. It's a shame that so many actors leave so many different TV series, never to find the fame they desire, particularly when the shows they left had given them such great material to play. Janice Lynde, Trish Stewart, Pamela Peters, Tom Hallick, William Gray Espy, and even Jaime Lyn Bauer have never done ANYTHING ELSE that allowed their talents to shine more than Y&R.

 

The first years of the show were pure gold with that cast!

[SoapDope]

 

I agree. They are now a footnote in soap history. The vast majority of today's Y&R audience are either too young or never saw those early days and characters. If you do find long term viewers, most didn't start watching till the mid-late 80's when the show's rating became huge. You'll be hard pressed to find a viewer who was watching in the 70's.