Members Adam Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 Does anyone have the AMC 25th Anniversary book? Its such a treasure. My mom has it, and recently she was in a thrift store and found another copy for $3 and gave it to me to have when I move out. I wish they'd publish a new one, but unlikely these days with the interest so low in soaps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted January 11, 2011 Author Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 You can always find classic soap books at the library. I found so many of them. The only one I never found there and had to order through a bookstore was Schemering's soap encyclopedia. I have that somewhere. It was one of the things which got me into AMC. So many wonderful pictures, summaries, interviews with actors, and they even included dialogue of key scenes. Whatever happened to Gary Warner? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Adam Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 Good question, I am not too sure. Hopefully he is still with us. Yes, I have gotten soap books out of the library in the past. The AMC book was very well done. 25 years of storyline in a condensed, easy to read summary. I loved reading it (and still do from time to time) but it also depresses me to read those summaries from the golden era when I wasn't even born yet. I really hope the medium survives in someway. I'd yearn for the networks to release all those old episodes on some sort of online resource e.g youtube. I know we have select episodes, but I would one day hope that entire library can be at any fan's fingertips. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EricMontreal22 Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 He did do the OLTL one 3 years later--not sure if he's done anything else since (I wanted to say he did the recently OLTL trivia book but I think that was Waggert). The book is great--and yeah you can find it cheap--I think I got a new copy from Amazon marketplace for 25 cents plus shipping or something bizarre. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SFK Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 I got the 25th anniversary book Christmas of '94 as sort of a gag gift but of course I treasure it. It went into a second printing which was on cheaper, thicker paper. I really think it's perfect as is as Carl was saying the other day, it's almost best left alone with the parade of crap that came during the next decade and beyond. But flipping through the book for the first time and seeing photos of characters who at that point I'd only heard about from my mother (Linc, Ann, Kitty) was an awesome experience. I have the OLTL book too which is also great but it doesn't quite capture the same magic. I think what did that for me was Laguardia's Soap World where I was blown away by the pics of Gillian Spencer, Ernest Graves, Shepperd Strudwick, Nancy Pinkerton, and Claire Malis. I found it at the library at the height of the DID s/l and my fascination with the Lord saga so it was really a treat. Those Phoebe Tyler confessions are a lot of fun, it's great that RW was given so many pages to just share. What a life she had. There probably was no better era to be a soap star. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted January 11, 2011 Author Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 I have the OLTL book too somewhere, along with the AMC book. I mostly remember thinking the OLTL book was huge, much bigger than the GH and AMC books. I'm not sure if it is or not or if that was just my memory at the time, but it was interesting to me because OLTL is generally seen as not being as invested in by ABC as GH or AMC. Perhaps they made the book bigger because by this time every soap had published an anniversary book and they thought they needed to make more of an effort? I thought the book was fine, but by then I already knew some of OLTL's history thanks to Daytime to Remember, and reading the OLTL History Pages online, so I wasn't completely blind, as I was reading through the AMC book. I think something else which helped the AMC book is that it was the first, and fresher. SOD did that back then for her and for the Hayes - I wish they'd do something like that now, especially since there are less soaps to recap. It's nice to get to hear her talk so much about her life and experiences. She seemed to embrace being a soap star and meeting so many wonderful people. Everything about her seems to come alive, even all these years later. I have one or two others but don't want to post them all too fast. I don't know how long she had that for; I guess a few years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EricMontreal22 Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 That was very close to my reaction. I remember when I was first into AMC--well after a year or so of watching so late '92 I was so naive--and wanted desperately to know more about the history of the show. I remember I wrote ABC asking if I could buy a video tape of the first episode (it didn't seem to cross my mind that a) they wouldn't sell me a random video and they didn't have it anyway--I got a nice reply though), and then started getting soap books from the library--most of them (all of them probably) being pretty out of date with the first edition of Schemering's Encyclopedia from 1984 being the best. That's also when I first got All Her Children (aka the book Sylph has forbidden me from ever bringing up on here again ) and I remember at first I was confused by all these characters and names (including the Tylers I admit--I had seen some of Phoebe but didn't know her full name) and families no longer there. Around that time, I got a special soap magazine--one given out at Christmas as a bonus type thing--that was devoted to the History of the Soaps and just had full on recaps from the start--which helped me with Loving and One Life too (though I remember finding it hard going reading wise--as they jammed as much as possible into a small space so you just get name after name after name lol). It wasn't till the anniversary book that I really got photographs, a more detailed plkot summary (though even at the eage of 14 I was pissed off it didn't have a list of past headwriters). But it really was a godsend (I did tape the incredible 25th anniversary week shows which I still think were the best anniversary for any soap--just SO many character returns--prob 3/4s of which at the time I had no idea who they were lol). Of course about 2 years later i started going online, and even in the usenet newsgroup days finding out history on the shows--and then Daytime to Reemember aired which ALMOST made me forgive City being canceled just to see episodes I never thought I'd get to see. (Things sure have changed in the youtube era). And then the OLTL book came out--actually around this time Waggert's new Soap Encyclopedia (which liberally borrows from Schemering's) as well as his AMC trivia book (it was odd that the OLTL didn't come out till 2 years back). The reason the OLTL book is much bigger was it was on the then new ABC/Disney publishing label, Hyperion--the AMC and GH ones were earlier and weren't (apparently the AMC one actually was on the NYT non-fiction best seller list for a brief while). Somehow I lost the AMC book but not the OLTL one in a move and had to buy a new copy online a few years back, but they're definitely a must even for the casual fan (I'd pick up the ones done around the same time for the other soaps, even though I don't watch much, too if I found them cheap). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SFK Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 Indeed, I almost mentioned that the OLTL book is thicker when I brought up the second printing of the AMC book (which is thick like the OLTL one given the cheaper paper). I happen to have them both right here and while the AMC pages are glossier, it is only 285 pages compared to OLTL's 417. I guess those extra five years packed a lot more information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted January 11, 2011 Author Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 I never knew that about the OLTL book and Hyperion. That's interesting. I guess OLTL came out tops by default. But it's a good book so who cares. I remember those. I think the same people who did Daytime TV must have done those? When did Daytime TV end anyway? I have some sort of tribute they did to AW right before it ended, for the 35th anniversary (there was no mention of cancellation because I guess it was written up months in advance). I remember, I think I got the 1991 history of soaps, poring over all those pages. Remember it would be page after page of text and then most pages would have one smallish black and white photo. One I remember the most would be ATWT Justin Deas and Margaret Colin, Justin Deas in his Speedo. It was so confusing going over these many years and there was so much to learn, and yet so much you would never really understand because it was just words on a page. There were also a few occasions where characters would no longer be mentioned and I would read over and over trying to figure out where they went. For years I thought Leslie Brooks' last appearance on Y&R was stepping out of a shower, pregnant, with Lorie shocked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SFK Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 Eric, I agree, Daytime to Remember was really the best consolation for a soap cancellation ever, and I loved The City and REALLY hated to see it go! I also found All Her Children on the same shelf when I found Soap World and though I checked it out I admit to skimming it and not giving it the read it deserved. I'll have to pick it up again someday soon. Although I have a couple of his plays, I still have to get my hands on Lemay's Eight Years in Another World. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SFK Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 I recycled the bulk of the soap magazines we amassed but I held on to those bonus Daytime TV* ones that would come in the mail (AMC, AW, Soap Opera Millenium). I also held on to a '95 SOW that has a great cover of Jean Randolph (shadowed by digitized Viki "becoming" her) and Dorian (Robin Strasser looks SO good in this photoshoot) in a wedding dress (forced to marry David, HA!, what a lame running bit that would turn into). I also believe it was SOW that produced this "Best of"/superlatives yearbook thing that has tons of great pics. *Not sure about their history, but my mom had a SOD subscription and they'd show up randomly as bonus magazines. I wonder if the magazine was just operating as a periodical special edition at that point? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DRW50 Posted January 11, 2011 Author Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 By the time I started reading SPW more regularly they had moved away from some of the more artistic stuff (aside from their "special" issues, like quoting songs and poetry for their Beautiful People issue each year), but it was fascinating when I had their 10th anniversary issue and they showed some photo shoots of the past. There was one of various soap women at a slumber party, another, which I think had Eva La Rue and SMG among others, of women as Barbie dolls - or they might have been in the one where stars were dressed in 50s fashions, I'm not sure -, one with Linda Dano and Carmen Duncan doing Baby Jane. I have one of Kelly Ripa, Rachel Miner, Alla Korot and RPG "down on the farm," wearing fall fashions in hay bales. WHo knew at the time Alla and RPG would both be on AMC... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EricMontreal22 Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 Don't they not even fully cover the early years on OLTL though? Like 1968-1973 or something? I should check. I guess both my copies of the AMC one are the original printing. To be fair the text is much smaller in the AMC book (I'd love to know where they got some of the colour photos which seem to be scanned from VHS of early AMC years from...) I believe the AMC book (with GH's not long after) was the first coffee table book for a soap--and within five years I think they all got one (well not Loving/The City of course I prob woulda been the only person to buy a copy of that.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EricMontreal22 Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 Lemay's book is harder to find, but All Her Children can be picked up in decent quality from amazon marketplace for a pittance (It goes without saying I think it's essential--but I remember even my mom, who casually watched AMC with me but had zero interest in the history or anything, picked it up once and read it cover to cover, commenting on how well it was written--I guess for fans and non fans alike). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members EricMontreal22 Posted January 11, 2011 Members Share Posted January 11, 2011 Right I had another one with a red cover that I think was for AMC's 25th anniversary (it had a contest to win a signed script but I didn't win ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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