Y&R: Old Articles

[SoapDope]

1979 commercial with Erin Gray & Peter Bergman.

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[allmc2008]

In the vault I posted the Bill Bell interview titled: "Just Plain Bill" from 1973. He says that he hates melodrama and that he feels business storylines would be boring LOL

[will81]

I believe he is collecting old broadcast tapes from local tv stations that are dumping them, not from personal home collections. Some soaps end up in that lot, but seem to be rare. I think there is someone with a bunch somewhere, but if they haven't digitized them or are not storing them properly, chances are they are deteriorating.

I do believe the vault clips from 82 - 88 were full episodes that were edited down. In other words I do no think someone was watching and pressing pause and not recording the full shows as there were scenes out of order, so they were copies made from full episodes. If we could figure out the original source, maybe they still have them. 

[Broderick]

I bet "Just Plain Bill" hated wasting an entire day with that reporter, though he managed to score a martini and a bloody Mary by early afternoon.   Bill Bell had to be under a lot of pressure in 1973 --- writing breakdowns for Days of Our Lives and the entire 30-minute script for Y&R -- plus he was evidently monitoring several other daytime shows as well.   And then to have a reporter waste such a big chunk of his day.   Bet he ending up spending that entire night on his IBM Selectric having Snapper lay something pretty heavy on Chris.    

[ltm1997]

I wondered myself if the vault clips from 82-88 were from full episodes that were edited down. It would be amazing if we could find the person that originally taped them and they still had the original tapes! I’m certain there is soooo much great material to be seen that didn’t end up in the edits.

Well “mysterious taper”, if you’re out there and reading this, please consider finding, digitizing, and sharing the original tapes! It would be so much appreciated!

[asafi]

Hey

So here in Israel we watch the July 2018 episodes.. and I don't understand what just happened. in a matter of a few episodes, We lost Hillary!!! why???? did the actress wanted to leave the show? was she fired? Why killing a pregnant woman? it seems she and Dr. Nate had this love-hate relationship.. but in a second.. they killed her character. too sad 

[BoldRestless]

My best guess, from talking to people who made compilations like this, is that they did transfer the clips onto a new tape, but then reused the original tape that had the full episodes, because tapes were expensive back then. I am so puzzled at how difficult it is to find episodes of a popular soap like Y&R when there is so much available of other shows. Part of it is Sony being aggressive, but even if they don't show up on YouTube, you would think at least they would be around on tape and DVD trading sites.

 

@AlexGrimaldi

Thanks, your posts are full of great info! I had wondered why the show changed its name to Amarsi. Focusing on the Sheila stories, while she was popular on Beautiful, was a good idea, I'm sorry it didn't work out. It all sounds so political. I always thought Y&R's glamour and emotion would appeal to Italians, as it so clearly connected with the French audience.

One thing I don't understand is why the Tina Turner song instead of Nadia's Theme! It was ok, but doesn't feel like classic Y&R.

I wish I had saved my grandfather's old magazines. I don't remember the names, only that the soap summaries were all on one page, on the last page of the magazine.

Was your channel RestlessDuncan? It is so nice to connect with the original uploader of these clips after all these years. I would absolutely love seeing whatever you have. I just went through and uploaded the 80s/90s Italian I had in the Vault. I have some from 2000s but haven't yet figured out the dates and most likely we have them in English already.

I uploaded a full episode 1990-05-22
clips from 1984, 1986, 1990, and 1993
Time jump (salto temporale) 1986-1989
I hope I've dated them correctly, someone can let me know if I'm wrong. Interestingly you have some clips, in Italian, of the aftermath of Paul shooting Michael, which we don't have in English (if I'm not mistaken). I think you had also uploaded clips about Nina and David but only a few seconds downloaded, and I always wished I would find the original uploader again.

I also had this clip of Melody and Eric at the awards show. They do a pretty decent job speaking Italian! In his book, Eric talked about meeting Berlusconi, being invited to his restaurant and having dinner with AC Milan, an honor because Eric was a national champion in soccer/calcio.

 

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Those schedules are crazy indeed! 8-15 minutes a day!? There is almost no point in that. I guess it is not worth bothering to find recaps then. I am going to save your posts, this is really good history in case I need to refer to it later. The Radio Corriere site had day by day summaries of Sentieri (GL), which is convenient because it's a time period not really covered by other sources. Sentieri must have been really popular because I see a lot about it online even now. At least for Y&R we already have the German and French daily recaps starting January 1986. What would be incredible would be to find daily Italian recaps covering the US airdates before 1986, but I doubt they exist.

Those clippings are so great! I will take a better look at those later and see if I have anything to add (all of mine would be from the Radio Corriere site, nothing original).

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by BoldRestless

[Paul Raven]

In a 1966 Variety ad, Irna Phillips and Bill Bell advertise a soap in development 'The Innocent Years'.

So did Bill just use that title later for Y&R, or did the 1966 proposal have some elements of Y&R ??

 

[Broderick]

Good question.  I'm guessing he just recycled the title of a soap that never happened.  His 1972 prep-work on Y&R seemed to happen rather quickly, and in a backwards fashion.  First, he got the greenlight to go ahead with his project, and only then did he begin working on his bible and character outlines, which evidently underwent several major revisions before making it to the screen.  

[ltm1997]

That would be such a shame if they reused the tape with the full episodes, but I understand why they would with tapes being as expensive as they were. As far as the difficulty to find episodes of Y&R from the early 80's, I'm as puzzled as you are, especially for the early 80's (1983, specifically). There are plenty of episodes from that year concerning other soaps, especially on this site (https://soapoperas.webs.com/) (get a load of how much GH there is from 1980-84 and of AW and GL). It just makes no sense to me why we can't find more. I'm partial to 1983 because it's one of my two favorite years of the show (the other is 1979, just from reading synopses, hearing audio, and seeing some video). I sometimes wonder if there really is anyone out there that taped from 1979-1981 and 1983 that still has the full episodes.

 

[will81]

Y&R was hitting #1 sporadically throughout 1979. It was a race between AMC and Y&R to second place for the 79-80 season (GH was always going to be first overall) only once the show went to an hour did the ratings drop and AMC took over, I think Y&R dropped to 5th by Feb 80. I say this as it make me think someone out there was taping the show in 79. Y&R would have had an overall rating in the 9's had it not slipped in the last few months of that season, meaning it had a big audience. Whether those tapes still exist, not sure.

Also there are Peer to Peer sites where you can literally find the entire primetime line up of original broadcasts for all three major networks starting in the 70's and countless hours of 80's MTV exists. Some people are tv archivists and I am certain soaps, which were hitting their zenith in popularity in the late 70's and early 80's must have been preserved by someone out there. 

[BoldRestless]

Wow, that definitely makes me think the soaps are out there. Unfortunately I think a lot of these people are either not interested in soaps or think they are already uploaded somewhere. Whenever I have attempted to interact with people who upload VHS on YT or on the reddit VHS page they always seem to think there is already a catalogue with all the soap episodes available. There was someone who posted commercials only from a 1987 episode (which we later got in German) and I asked them to upload the full episode on archive and they were surprised that it wasn't already out there (and alas never did upload it).

[will81]

True, also we have to accept that many people who were old enough to have a VCR in the 70's and who would have taped a soap might have passed away and their family simply junked the tapes or sold them for re-use to someone who had no interest in soaps. 

I bet there is someone out there. Like the guy in NYC who filmed all the broadway shows from the 50's onwards and has so much rare footage in his personal collection that even archives don't have. 

[blueberrywaffle]

I think she left on her own because of contract negotiations. >.<

[asafi]

it was very cruel to kill her like this.. pregnant and engaged to Devon. and I loved her character! I don't get it