Y&R: Old Articles

[soapfan770]

LOL @kalbir about Allison being a poor man’s version of Vanessa. I remember the first time I saw her watching a 1982 episode was I taken aback by how nasty Allison was however Katherine put her in her place when Allison was chastising Kay over her sex life to which Kay responded back “At least I had sex more than just one time” when Allison speculated that Nikki might as well be Katherine’s daughter. I don’t think Vanessa ever faced the pushback from another force. 
 

Allison at least did lose everything as didn’t Earl divorce her or at least leave her for good?

 

Any opinion on Mary Williams? I think she qualifies as a messy matriarch. Even though she didn’t have the money to scheme like other the women mentioned, she definitely was a nasty in your business you know what lol. 

 

[kalbir]

Mary Williams was messy in the sense that she attempted to control Paul's love life. Nobody was good enough for her #1 son.

[soapfan770]

So true. I wonder what the dynamics would have been for Steve and Patty had the characters lasted into the 80s and 90s as well. I could simply imagine her bossing around Patty to find a good man to settle down with and have lots kids lol. 

[YRfan23]

Jill did declare herself as the matriarch of the Chancellor family in today's show!

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[soapfan770]

 

As far as the 90’s go I think the last truly classic messy matriarch we were introduced to in the classic sense definitely would have been Lillie Belle Barber.

 

[kalbir]

@soapfan770 Agree, Lillie Belle Barber was the last of the messy matriarchs. One of the most powerful scenes on 1990s Y&R was the Dru/Lillie Belle confrontation where Dru learned she was the result of marital rape.

[will81]

Which is a shame as I don't feel Mary was like that at first. She had a different moral code to her son and clashed with him on it. It seems early on it was warranted and she was more pulling him into line for his bad behaviour and the way he treated women. Then she became one note and just annoying and acted as if only she should know who was best for Paul and how he should live his life. 

[Broderick]

Yep, her character was pretty much trashed when she became the one-note "comical" mother (who wasn't very comical).  

[kalbir]

I recently came across the 1997 book Worlds Without End: The Art and History of the Soap Opera. In the book Bill Bell comments on two pivotal events in Y&R history. I hope nobody minds that I quoted his comments in full.

On Taking Y&R to One Hour

"Once assured that Y&R was a runaway hit, CBS inevitably wanted to talk to me about an hour. I'll spare you the gruesome details, but after months of enormous pressure from the network and the affiliates, I somehow found myself committed to doing the hour show. What ultimately happened is that our ratings went down and it took us three years to become number one again.

 

How could this have happened? One reason is that when we went to an hour, we had a number of cast defections. The issue of performing in a one-hour show had not been part of their contracts. And some of our leading actors understandably felt that their popularity on Restless would open the door to fame and fortune in nighttime or films. Obviously we had to recast prime characters in our two core families, the Brooks and the Fosters. It was then that I decided if even one more actor from these families decided to leave the show, I'd have to do something radical.

 

A short time later, Jaime Lyn Bauer, who played Lauralee Brooks and was one of the very few original cast members remaining, came to me and said she was physically exhausted, which she was, and that she wasn't going to renew her contract when it was up in August. This was February.

 

There was no other answer. I had to replace what had been the core of our show since its inception. Two complete families. About eleven actors in all. But replace them with what?

 

As I studied the remaining cast, I realized I had two characters - Paul Williams, played by Doug Davidson, and Jack Abbott, played by Terry Lester - both of whom had a relatively insignificant presence on the show. They didn't have families. Hell, they didn't even have bedrooms. But these became the two characters I would build our two new families around. I remember the head of daytime for CBS advising me "with the strongest possible conviction" that I was making a grave mistake by replacing these families. There was a great risk, no question, but my conviction was that it could be even more disastrous if I didn't.

 

I immediately began establishing new families while interweaving the old. We made this transformation without losing so much as a share point. In fact, our ratings and share points kept building, with our two new families emerging as the dominant characters on the show.

 

This is where Victor Newman came into the picture."

 

On Victor Newman

"You are not going to believe this, but this character, who today is daytime's number one romantic lead, was to be a short-term noncontract role. It would last between eight to twelve weeks, at which time he was to be shot by his beautiful wife. In short, Victor Newman was in concept a despicable, contemptible, unfaithful wife abuser.

 

When I saw Eric Braeden's first performance - the voice, the power, the inner strength - I knew immediately that I didn't want to lose this man. He was exactly what the show needed. Not the hateful man we saw on-screen, but the man he could and would become over time.

 

The first thing was to get Eric under contract, but he didn't want to go under contract. He was very uneasy about television, the daytime serial, the people he worked with, the producers. This was a whole other world for Eric. And Eric is a cautious man.

 

Over time, Eric became more comfortable with the medium, and more trusting with the producers, and agreed to sign a contract. If memory serves, it was for six months. I immediately changed my story in the hope of salvaging this character.  The rest is history."

[DramatistDreamer]

Thanks for posting this @kalbir. I knew some of, but not all of this.

Bell took a calculated risk with how built the Williams and the Abbott families, but he used two characters, though marginal, who had been imbedded in the fabric of the show's canvas. It wasn't like the Rosales family where they had one minor character for a few months, then brought on his family, then basically switched him out for his brother as a major character. That was so weird. It seemed as if Bell gave the viewers a bit of a breather with Paul and Jack becoming more prominent. If it really is true that Y&R lost no market share after basically dismantling the Brooks and Foster families, then I guess that speaks to how the changes were received overall by the viewers, they may have been disappointed but they obviously kept watching. Also, the storytelling was so much more methodical back then. Characters had to prove highly popular before landing magazine covers and photospreads in soap publications. It's not like when the Rosales were posing for photospreads when nobody even knew who half the characters were. 

It seemed as if that family was introduced with lightning speed. 

Edited December 4, 2021 by DramatistDreamer

[Forever8]

The Rosales' had potential in my opinion. But like you said they were introduced very quickly and to vary degrees of success. I also wished instead of Mia being Rey's ex-wife she could've been their sister who like Jill scarified her own life to help take care of her family as their mother worked to provide for the family. And decided to finally go after what she wanted which could've included fame, money, power, and more importantly love. 

[Paul Raven]

This is interesting to me as the only cast members who left were Brenda Dickson (Jill) and John McCook (Lance).

Everyone else stayed on.

David Hasselhoff went recurring? Was Lynne Topping put on recurring because of this?

Pam Peters (Peggy) was brought back.

So it was hardly a cast decimation. More like business as usual.

Kay Alden has spoken about the expansion time and said it was very stressful.

I think some of the turmoil was brought about by Bill's reluctance and resistance to the 1 hour format.

It's not as though Y&R was the first show to expand- other shows had moved to 60 min quite smoothly.

[will81]

Yeah David was recurring, but from what I can tell he would show up once every couple months for a few eps and then vanish again

Lynn refused this deal and walked and did not return until Mar 81 with David and they both left again the following year. I think she last appeared around June 1980, but had been absent due to her pregnancy/maternity leave prior to this. So Chris was not really around much that year.

Brenda left, John left. I'd say Beau had given his notice early on in 1980, since he was gone by Sep. JLB wanted to leave in 1980 but agreed to stay, I think Bell knew he wasn't going to have her for much longer. JLB was also pregnant in 1980 and being wheeled onto the set and eventually was ordered to go on bed rest and that probably put a hold on her story for that year, then she was off screen for a few months. Wesley Ann Pfenning came in as JLB went on maternity leave early. JLB left around July and returned around late Sep or early Oct. This pushed back the Leslie amnesia story as well since Lorie was sent to New York with Brooks on a book tour.

It sounds like Bell is condensing the 80 - 82 period together. Not just talking about 1980 and the exact period when the show went to an hour. If you read the synopsis for that period, it is a bit of a mess. I am obsessed with that period of the show to be honest. Nothing really seems to work and you can feel the struggle. I'd say the cast turn around during that two year period was never matched again, at least not during Bell's time on the show. 

[DramatistDreamer]

So, from what I'm reading, it seems as the turmoil took place behind the scenes, while all was pretty calm on the ratings front?

[yrfan1983]

^ Not "calm" exactly... YR dropped from the top of the ratings in '80 to the middle of the pack, and didn't climb back up til '83, so I'm sure the CBS execs weren't thrilled.

One other issue post-1 hour transition was John McCook... IIRC he left in Feb '80, but called it a hiatus and left Bill Bell hanging as to whether he would return. He wound up only coming back for a ep or two in May '80 and that was it.  That's why BB had to pivot to find Lorie a new love interest, and brought on Nick Benedict, but that didn't wind up clicking either.