I do wish they'd had her make a few appearances, just as a bone to older viewers at a time when history has been ripped away. I would have brought Kelsey back and had Tara make a few appearances. I really hate what they did to the Martin family over the last ten years.

I do wonder why none of the other Taras worked out either. Was it miscasting, bad material...?

It's weird though how Jeff and Tara both got lost and then they, randomly, brought Jeff back, yet gave him poor stuff and then banished him again.

I wonder if they asked Charles Frank back or if they didn't bother. I don't remember what he was like at the 25th anniversary but when I see the old photos of him from his AMC days I think he is one of the most gorgeous men I can remember on a soap.

Totally agreed with all you said (and while I thought the last Jeff wasn't a great actor/character fit it was too bad that they seemed excited to bring him on and then suddenly the story was dropped--he didn't even get an exit scene). Charles Frank, I'm nearly positive on this, has retired from acting--sometime around 2000 or so, as I remember reading a blurb online about him. Def a good looking man.

If I can find where I put it I will also post some little "original AMC cast reunion" from around 1980, with a lot of the actors who had moved on to LA, like that first Chuck Tyler, I can never remember how long he stayed around.

I didn't check directly but I assume somewhere around 75-76.

Yeah, it's 76.

It does seem that right around 75-76 was really when AMC came into its own--it's when, besides THAT BOOK, you started reading about it becoming a huge campus phenomenon, etc. The first coupel of years the soap press still didn't really seem to knwo what to make of it.

Did AMC have any ratings decline when they were going through the late 70s transition? It's strange when I think about it because many of their most popular characters were being phased out or written out in the late 70s, new characters were coming in, taking up a lot of the show...like the magazine, the back cover is a very pretty color photo of Paul and Anne. Yet they were both either gone or close to gone by around 1981.

Oh the glamour! Mary Fickett has her own hairdryer! Those soap stars need to be brought down a peg or two with their fancy airs and graces...

The transition seemed smooth as viewers took to Cliff and Nina immediately.I wonder if the story would have been as popular had Cliff been Jeff Martin as originally planned? I think the ratings held up as GH,AMC and OLTL were the top 3 shows at this time.Days was in the doldrums and ATWT was still regrouping.

I can check my books, but from what I remember the ratings only climbed during the transition... I know that before it many credited AMC for helping to bring the other ABC soaps up rating wise (i guess this was aroudn the time GH and OLTL were 45 mins?)--opf course AMC did a week of hour episodes already in 1976 I believe.

What was the week of episodes about?

Ha she goes into detail about it in All He.... ahem I mean THAT BOOK. Basically it was done because they were moving Ryan's Hope's timeslot with AMC's I believe and wanted to make AMC's audience get used to the new time--and watching the full hour to watch RH too. Agnes of course says that she has agreed to it only this once and it's NOT a test to see if they can make the show an hour--and she mentions that she timed a bunch of major stories to all culminate during that week. On the weekend I can check to see if she says what they are--I think she might.

As for the blonde woman could that be Margo's daughter Claudette?

That's Margo. The guy is Dan Hamilton, not sure who he played. The blonde is Paulette Breen - she was Claudette (who killed Eddie or whoever), wasn't she?

Claudette Montgomery? Jack's long-lost cousin? I still don't know why they didn't tie the two characters together. Her and Erica were rivals back in the day, no?

So Karen Gorney was fired as Tara the second time around?

Do you think any of the Tara recasts filled her shoes?

By second time do you mean the 90s?

No. I meant her return in the 70s, after Stephanie Braxton left. I was reading in a magazine from back then that she got the call about Saturday Night Fever not long after she'd been let go from AMC.