Y&R: Old Articles

[Broderick]

Y'all have hit about everything.  Expanding to an hour exposed every (hidden) weakness in Y&R's foundation, and magnified each of those faults. 

CBS & Screen Gems had allowed Bill Bell to write without outlines and long-term projections, because they trusted his instincts.   He told them, "I don't believe my show will work in the hour format," and suddenly they no longer trusted his instincts; they thought they knew better.  They basically told him, "We're going to an hour with or without you," and he reluctantly agreed to the change.  His screenwriting method (sitting down with his dialogue writer Kay Alden and jotting down an outline at 8:00 in the morning and then immediately writing the script) was fine for the 30-minute format, but he and Kay couldn't write an hour-long show that way.  So they brought in additional writers and stumbled, fumbled, with the very process that had made the show successful.

John Conboy understood the languid, sensual, visual appeal of Y&R.  But evidently his relationship with Bill Bell was somewhat strained and was on the verge of imploding; it couldn't have come at a worse time.  Also there was a fundamental "shallowness" to Conboy that probably no one suspected, because Bell's thoughtful writing was concealing it.  Conboy seemed to believe that writing was secondary to beauty -- just take the bras off the girls and have their breasts jiggle, and you've got yourself a success.  Put a boy in a pair of tight pants, and your ratings will increase.  He was a fool.  It was Bell's writing -- combined with Conboy's visuals -- that made Y&R so successful in the 1970s.  Separate those two things (the writing and the beauty) and the product became less than the sum of its parts.  We quickly saw that happen, right before our eyes, and the entire show unraveled.  It was only when Wes Kenney came along in 1982 that the problem was mitigated. 

Bill Bell was clever enough to realize that Y&R wasn't the Holy Grail of soaps.  It was a product that had benefited from the mistakes of its competitors.  One year Y&R was firmly in 9th place; the following year it was 3rd place.  Screen Gems and CBS cheered and lauded Y&R for its "wildfire ratings success".  There wasn't any wildfire success.  Other shows had expanded to an hour and then floundered, or they'd been given lousy time slots.  Y&R had shot up from #9 to #3 by merely being consistent -- holding its own -- while other shows toppled and failed.   Bell didn't have some "magic bullet", and he knew that; but his employers couldn't see the big picture.  

In my opinion, the Williams family WAS dropped in too quickly, and the Steve Williams character (probably envisioned by Bell as the "moral" son) came across as a sanctimonious jackass/yuppie who was VERY difficult to like; that particular character stymied the Williams family from Day One, damaging Peggy to an extent, and making the (already distasteful) cult storyline virtually unwatchable.  What actually did work was something completely unexpected -- the little "pseudo-family" created at Jonas's restaurant, where Paul, Andy, and Danny Romalotti all worked as waiters.  Those three guys even got their own "family" opening shot in the 1982 credits.  John Conboy proudly crowed, "We put three handsome young guys in white shirts and black pants, and our ratings immediately went up!"  Naw, it worked because Danny and Andy were orphaned characters, and Paul's real brother (Steve) was a disaster.  The audience could sense that the "real storyline" was among these three guys, and we responded to it.  The new core family that worked wasn't the Williams family itself, but the Paul/Andy/Danny relationship, and Bell worked it for years -- dropping Paul and Andy into a detective office with the charismatic Stephanie E. Williams, and casting Danny in the "little brother" role with Patty, then Traci and Lauren, then Cricket. 

It took a LOT of trial and error to find the things that worked, and the things that didn't.  When the show went to an hour, Bill Bell probably never DREAMED that the "pseudo-family" of Victor, Nikki, Kevin and Kay Chancellor would materialize and work, that Paul's actual "brothers" would be a recurring character played by President Ford's son and a kid spotted on "American Bandstand", but there it was and it worked, and these were the things that kept the show going in the right direction until the Abbotts could finally be stabilized as the "new" Brooks family.            

[will81]

Actually yeah you're right, in terms of story, looking at 1979 it does work, but you can see there was trouble ahead, even without the cast disruptions and the expansion, I think Bell was still going to have a rough 1980, maybe not as rough, but those other elements definitely caused more headaches.

Vanessa did take an interest in Stu, and I agree Bell should have pursued this and given Stu and Liz another road block instead of marrying them off.

I agree Lance should have hopped a plane to Paris for business and been presumed dead. Not sure I would have married Lorie and Lucas, but having her pursue him in her grief to hold on to the last piece of Lance (Brooks) would have raised the stakes as Leslie got her memory back. 

I think the cult story could have been more encompassing. You had Paul, Nikki, Peggy and Steve all tied up in it, they all had family/friends that could have been better utilised and I do think Bell could have sown more threads from the fall out of the cult moving into the Autumn. 

The Williams intro is interesting. In large part because it seems Doug Davidson was negotiating his contract and was MIA through Jan and Feb. Around the week of Jan 7, 1980 Carl is brought in on the Tony Baker case (This was the Nikki/Rose/Greg/Walter Addison story) the following week we meet Steve when he is hired by Stu as a reporter on the newspaper. The next week Steve meets with Greg about the case and mentions his father has given him a few leads on the case. Then nothing until early March when Paul pops back up and boom Paul is now Steve's brother and Carl's son. A couple weeks later Mary just appears and she is pregnant and then Patty comes along. At this point we have Carl solving crimes, Steve meeting Jill, Mary and her late in life pregnancy, Paul and April. It probably was a lot and none of it seems super interesting to be honest. 

[will81]

Yeah wow, that is a great recap. Makes total sense as to some of the behind the scenes stuff that was going on. Maybe 1980 was the time Conboy tried to oust Bell and take over. I do think Conboy had talent, but he was short sighted with Y&R and he came across as believing he was largely responsible for its success and that Bell was only a minor part of its success. I also heard when Conboy got Capitol he charged many of the sets for the new show to the Y&R budget and almost crippled Y&R. Not sure how true that is.

The Williams intro just seems disjointed and sudden in terms of linking all these random characters together and suddenly they are facing a family crises with Paul heading to the cult and Mary having a miscarriage and then April and baby Heather. It doesn't feel like Bell gave the family a chance to just exist for a bit. It was full steam ahead. Then brunette Patty runs upstairs one day in the middle of summer as Tammy Taylor and comes back down six months later as blonde Lilibet Stern, lol. 

I agree 80 - 82 feels like a period of trial and error. Even by early 82 as the Stevens are being packed up and shipped off, the show feels stronger. Conboy leaving and H. Wesley Kenney coming on definitely made a big difference. It has been stated Wesley sat down with Bell and basically gave him a laundry list of what was working and what wasn't and they whipped the show into shape pretty quickly after that. 

[Paul Raven]

Great responses,guys. I could discuss this era 4eva.

Thanx for the info on Paul/DD. Allen Fawcett (Kelly EON) was put on a retainer to take over as Paul if needed.

Imagine how things would have been had there been a new Paul along with a whole new family.

Maybe Bill would have waited a little longer to add more Williams while viewers got used to Fawcett.

Conboy was called 'the Ross Hunter of daytime' and like that famed producer, who when he worked with Douglas Sirk  created classic movies like Imitation of Life and All That Heaven Allows, but without Sirk his movies were glossy but shallow. Same with Conboy/Bell.

There were a lot of aimless characters and stories in those years.

Did Brock, formerly in love with Leslie have much interaction with her or was he too busy with Julia?

Eve arrived with a bang with the claim that Charles was Victor's son but then she floundered. Wasn't it established she had a thing with Derek in the past and Charles could be his?

Jill never saw Derek again? 

Paul seemed to keep hooking up with Nikki and declaring his love, but it fizzled out.

He really lucked out with Victor/Nikki as much of the other pairings were failures.

 

 

 

 

[will81]

Didn't know that about Allen, very interesting. Yeah that would have been a doozy to have basically a whole new family in town and not even the familiar face of DD to anchor it.

I think once Leslie got pregnant with Lance's baby, she and Brock had little or no interaction again. They didn't even have scene at Victor and Nikki's wedding. Nor did Julia and Brock (I don't think)

Yeah I was surprised that Eve rocks up, drops her bombshell, then moves in with Jill and spends more time undermining Liz and not so much time in the Julia/Victor orbit. I think in 1981 It is revealed that Eve and Derek had a past and he could be her son's father. Eve ignores this, it is too inconvenient for her, and with both seeking revenge on Victor they conspire together to make sure Julia finds out Victor had a vasectomy and I think shortly after this Derek is run out of town by Kay. Eve is there until Sep 81, but she barely appears through the summer before Victor pays her off to leave town. Margaret had to have heart surgery, but Bell had every intention of her returning once she recovered. 

When Bond was Jill she had a few scenes with Derek, begging him to leave Kay and give up on the money and was a minor part of the kidnapping plot, I am convinced though that Jill would have been a major part of that story with Suzanne being more a supporting if Brenda had stayed. I think once Jill moved on first with Steve and then with the Abbott's her only interaction with Derek was at Victor and Nikki's wedding in 1984

Bell definitely kept the Paul/Nikki thing in the background until Nikki/Victor became more a solid thing. Bell really did get lucky with MTS and Eric having the right chemistry. He definitely made them a focal point of the show and was smart to make them part of Lorie's last story too. Then having Terry and Eileen made the perfect quad. 

 

[Planet Soap]

I liked Scott but I agree that he wasn't a strong charachter on his own without the Sheila/Lauren drama.

Who do you supposed would have been a better man for them to fight over? Perhaps Paul as the actual baby daddy, then him suing Lauren for child custody after her affair with Brad, then that feeding direcly in to her reignited feud with Tracy?

In watching some early 80s episodes...I'm sure this was discussed at nauseum, but but what exactly led to the Brooks and Fosters being phased out?

Edited January 9, 2022 by ironlion

[Khan]

From what I've read, what led to Bill Bell phasing out the Brookses and Fosters was the constant need to recast core characters as the original actors quit -- a merry-go-round which sped up once the show expanded to 60 minutes, something that many within the cast, who were already being overworked, resisted.  According to Bell himself -- and this might be the truth, or just hyperbole on his part -- he had resolved at one point that if one more actor decided to leave the show, he would retool the show completely.  Subsequently, when Jaime Lyn Bauer (Lorie) informed him that she was leaving at the end of her contract, that pretty much sealed the fates for the rest of the existing Brookses and Fosters (save, of course, Jill, whom Bell ultimately transitioned into the Abbotts).

[Broderick]

I believe it's hyperbole.  Bell is oversimplifying what happened, or he's misremembering.  I know he's said that 1,000 times, but it's not what we saw occur on-screen. 

I think it's more like this.  Bill Bell to Kay Alden:  "You know, Kay, that damn Dennis Cole SUCKS as Lance.  Yes, he was a matinee idol of sorts, but he's simply no good as Lance.  I've learned my lesson from this.  I'm not doing any more major recasts of my little pets.  If my two favorite little Sweet Babies -- David Hasselhoff and Jaime Lyn Bauer --  decide to leave the show, I'm not recasting those two roles.  I'll just write those two characters out, and anyone connected with them can either SINK or SWIM on their own merits."  Sure enough, David Hasselhoff and Jaime Lyn Bauer left permanently, within four or five months of each other.  And sure enough, he didn't recast the parts.  And sure enough, everyone around them was given the opportunity to sink or swim. 

Jill Foster SWAM, by virtue of being in a new storyline that held a great deal of potential.  Greg Foster SANK, as neither Wings Hauser nor Howard McGillan had been terribly effective, going all the way back to like 1978.  Chris Brooks SANK, because Bill Bell held her head under the water and drowned her.  (He clearly couldn't foresee separating her character from the Snapper character, though he clearly toyed with the idea of doing it for a few weeks.)  Peggy Brooks SANK, because she was always just the Kid Sister of the others and not a leading lady in her own right.  (Plus that dreadful Steve Williams character and that tasteless cult storyline dragged her way down.)  Leslie Brooks SANK, because although Victoria Mallory was a capable actress and a good musician, her character had been tied too closely to Lorie for her to survive on her own.  (But Bell tried his best -- in the new opening credits for 1982, he even gave Victoria Mallory and Robert Laurence the "anchor position" as the show's "leads", but they couldn't carry their own storyline, which of course wasn't an especially GOOD storyline anyhow. It was just doomed.)  Tom Ligon (Lucas) SANK because he was a casualty of the Lance recast and Jaime Lyn Bauer's exit; plus he'd been victimized by a pair of wretched storylines.  First, he was stuck in that San Leandro mess with Sebastian Crowne (a dud), Jerry Lacy (a dud) and "Pris" (a dud), and then when he finally came up for air, he was given the thankless job of being the insufferable villain in the Vanessa Prentiss suicide.  "You killed my mother, Lorie, and you're going to PAY for it."  The audience knew what happened to Vanessa, and we knew Lucas was wrong in his assumptions, but he said stated his flimsy case ten thousand times, and it was awful.  (If we'd seen Vanessa's suicide occur from Lucas's standpoint -- instead of from Lauralee's standpoint -- and if we'd only learned the truth of how Vanessa died via flashback during Lorie's trial, perhaps we'd have been more sympathetic to Lucas's point of view during the arrest and the trial.  But we knew he was wrong from the get-go, he was strident as hell about it, and it just made him unlikable.)

That's a complicated explanation for what happened to the various characters in the Brooks/Foster orbit, but I believe that's what actually occurred, and Bill Bell merely oversimplified it by saying, "I wrote them all out when Snapper and Lorie left."  It's easier to say it that way.          

[will81]

I think Scott was the right character because it was never about the man. I think Paul and Lauren would never have had the issues between them post-Sheila that Lauren and Scott did. I can't see Paul ever suing Lauren for custody of a child. Even in 1992 I don't think Paul wanted to be a father. Peter Barton had just enough chemistry with both women and was never distracting enough to take focus away from Lauren and Sheila.

In terms of phasing out of original families. Bell hardly had to try since actors were constantly leaving. Bell preferred to keep original cast members as much as possible and didn't love recasts for his characters. Between 1975 - 1980 Bell lost almost his entire original week one cast.

80 - 82 was not much better. David Hasselhoff wanted out, Wings Hauser left and unfortunately Howard McGillan wasn't working out. With Snapper gone it was harder to justify Chris staying. Pam Peters left for the second time, and the big one was Jaime Lyn Bauer wanting to leave. After that you have Jill and Leslie left. I think Bell wanted to keep Leslie, but it didn't work out and she was shipped off. 

More than anything the show simply stopped recasting. The only original characters Bell really axed in 1982 were Leslie, Chris and Greg. Every other character was simply not recast when the actor chose to leave. The only other characters he got rid of from the original cast were Stu in 1983 and Liz in 1985. 

[Khan]

Granted, I never knew Bill Bell, but I could see him saying as much, lol.

I've often wondered whether John Conboy had considerable influence over the casting and recasting and whether it was that influence that caused so many recasts to be so godawful.  I mean, Brian Kerwin, Wings Hauser and Howard McGillin as nuGreg?  In what universe?

RE: Scott/Lauren/Sheila -- How long were Scott and Lauren married before Sheila arrived on the scene?  I wasn't watching then, so I have no idea, but I wonder if Sheila was created BECAUSE it was becoming evident that Scott and Lauren's relationship was becoming a snooze-fest.

It's not that I think Howard McGillin is a bad actor.  Far from it.  But, speaking as someone who is familiar with Greg Foster, I just think he was/is all wrong for the character.

IMO, he would've been much more suitable as a Brock recast.  I could see him having a good mother/son chemistry with Jeanne Cooper's Kay.

[will81]

Bell wanted John McCook back and they asked him around the end of 1980 to return and he said no. It was between Troy Donahue and Dennis Cole. So they were going for a certain type for sure. I do blame Conboy for that one. Conboy definitely had a big hand in the casting. 

Lauren and Scott were married at the tail end of December 1989. Sheila rocks up around May 1990 and I think she sleeps with Scott pretty soon after she turned up. At this point Lauren and Scott were 'taking a break' because their marriage was already in trouble. So yeah I don't think Bell ever had much interest in having Lauren and Scott work. 

[Khan]

IOW: the rivalry with Sheila was always the game plan.  Lauren's marriage (to Scott) was just Bell laying groundwork.

Gosh, I miss the days when the writers would plan ahead.  Even if the story was predictable, you still watched, because you trusted they were "going somewhere."  Besides, as TPTB have apparently forgotten, it wasn't WHAT happened next that mattered, but WHEN.

And Bill never even bothered to explain what had happened to Stuart either, did he?  Not even in '84, when the Brooks girls returned for Victor and Nikki's first wedding.  I think it was just assumed that he and Liz had split, and that he was living away from Genoa City.  And I think it was only when Theo was revealed to be his grandson that we learned that he had, in fact, passed away (which I thought was a mistake, but whatevs).

Edited January 9, 2022 by Khan

[will81]

Bell certainly was fond of giving Lauren unhinged characters to deal with. I don't know if Sheila was always the game plan, but I don't think Bell ever saw Lauren and Scott as a long term couple. None of it was end game style writing and yeah the trouble kicked off pretty quickly. 

Bell never explained Stu's absence even when Liz returned in 1986 after Jill was shot. One of the many characters that vanished into thin air. I believe Liz was living with Snapper and Chris in 1986 and so yeah it was probably assumed Liz and Stu were separated. 

[Khan]

In a way, Stuart's post-Genoa City years are kind of a blank slate. 

Maybe Stuart married again.  Maybe he had another family.  If I were HW, I'd reveal that he had two sons: one, who's very driven; and one, who's a total cad.  And maybe his daughters have very strained relationships with their half-siblings, not just because of the age gap, but because they've always regarded their second stepmom as a gold-digger and beneath the family's standards.

It'd be a good way to reintroduce the Brookses by having those sons arrive in GC and shake things up for the Abbotts and Newmans, too.

[Paul Raven]

When Jill needed the money to pay off her blackmailer(Esther/Kay) she rocked up at the Foster house and there was Liz on the sofa mending  and telling Jill that she doesn't have any money to lend her.

It was as though Stuart never existed.

Re Allen Fawcwtt, he mentioned the Y&R situation in an SOD interview and I couldn't figure out at first what character he was referring to.

Looking back at 80/81 there was really story after story that didn't work. That transition was very rocky.

Now it's always pretty much 'Bill created the Williams and Abbotts and the show transitioned smoothly'