All My Children Tribute Thread

[Khan]

Seriously, Erica, give me one good reason why making a baby with this hunk was impossible. Go ahead. I'm waiting.

[Cheap21]

Nope, certainly not that

[ellabelle]

I know, right? I only "knew" Tom from 1990 onward, and I wasn't overly impressed. But dear God, that man was HOT back in the day! No wonder SL speaks so fondly of him and of their honeymoon location shoot!

[All My Shadows]

Tom/Erica :wub: What if she ended up pregnant even though she was secretly on the pills? They could have been recalled or something. Josh should have been the child of Tom and Erica, damn it.

[ellabelle]

Another "what if" I'd pondered: SL was hugely pregnant during the scene where Tom finds Erica's birth control pills. Erica was off the show for several months in early 1980 when Susan had her son. What if the pills were faulty and Erica was in one of those "I didn't know I was pregnant" situations and realized it once she got out to California to try her hand at acting? Erica supposedly went off to a fat farm in Phoenix or something after she failed as an actress, but maybe that was her cover story. She had the baby (Josh) prematurely, and was told it was stillborn because Greg wanted the baby for himself. When Erica came back from SL's maternity leave, Tom had gotten closer to Brooke, and Erica was trying to win him back. If she really wanted him back, it would make sense for her to avoid telling him that they'd had a baby who died - he'd have never forgiven her for keeping that a secret or for not coming back to PV as soon as she knew she was pregnant.

That would have been a far more workable story than the un-abortion. And we know Tom was alive and well SOMEWHERE because we law Livia whenever someone needed a lawyer other than Jack. Didn't they spend some time living in DC? Or am I remembering that wrong?

Plus SL at least had some chemistry with Dick Schoberg. The Erica/Jeff pairing circa 2006 was devoid of all chemistry.

[Khan]

To this day, I have no idea why Susan Lucci didn't click with John James. Nor can I figure out why she didn't click with Jack Scalia. Those two pairings seemed like no-brainers to me.

[ellabelle]

SL and John James played a married couple in a TV movie in the late 80s, "Haunted by her Past." It's super lame. Finola Hughes played SL's ancestor who appeared in ghost form throughout the movie. When I realized they'd done a film together - and that I could watch it online via amazon - I downloaded it, thinking perhaps they'd been stellar together in that movie and that's why he was cast as Jeff Martin. Um, no. In that movie, they make Jeff and Erica look like wild, hot passionate lovers. :/ I mean, I get that John James did bear some slight resemblance to Charles Frank and Ray McDonnell, but really, he was just not good as Jeff. That movie should have been a huge red flag to AMC's casting director. If you KNOW someone doesn't connect well on-screen with your lead actress, why cast him?

Her not clicking with Jack Scalia I attributed mainly to the fact that their characters did not have a believable romance. Chris Stamp was the type of guy who would have been great with someone like Krystal, or maybe Anna for a hot fling. To me it was just not believable that Erica would seriously consider marrying someone who referred to her dressing up in a fur stole as "puttin' the dog on." I just.. no. No way, no how. I don't know how much of that was the writers and how much of that was Scalia, but it just did not work with the Erica Kane we'd all watched for 30 years. I could see Erica having a secret fling with Chris for the hell of it or because she was bored or whatever and perhaps coming to care for him, but I think she'd ultimately realize that they just aren't meant to be together. FWIW, I think she DID know that, but for whatever stupid reason wasn't willing to just come right out and SAY that. It was easier to cheat on him with Jack and let Jack force them apart the way he did with a lot of her relationships.

[danfling]

I don't remember that Tom and Livia were in Washington, D. C., but it may have been that way.

I do know that Paul Martin re-located to Washington, D. C. after he left Pine Valley.

[ellabelle]

Paul Martin was way before my time. Where DID Tom and Livia go? Did they just vanish into Pine Valley and were there but not on-screen? Or did they actually leave town for a while? I also seem to recall the actress who played Livia being upset about the pairing with Tom - she wanted Livia to have a fling with Jack instead, or at least that's what I remember reading at the time.

[Pine Charles]

Them going to D.C. does sound vaguely familiar....or maybe it was Philadelphia....? I know it was somewhere on the East Coast.

[Khan]

That's because Jack was a front-burner character, and Tom wasn't. If they paired her Livia with RS's Tom, she feared, she would be effectively shoved to the back burner. Which is what happened, I guess, although I didn't exactly shed tears over her departure.

[Cheap21]

I only knew Tom starting from the early 90s but I always found him to be boring. What was he doing in the 80s after his marriage to Brooke up till he paired up with Livia?

[Jonathan]

I believe Tom and Livia lived in DC for a while. I know at one point she was a judge in Center City, and then came back to Pine Valley as a lawyer.

[DRW50]

He was married to Skye, which ended when she was comatose after terrorizing AIDS-suffering Cindy Chandler. Then he got involved with Barbara, which ended after she had a baby with Travis.

[Pine Charles]

They -- Travis & Barbara -- had the baby (I believe Sean, right?) so he could be a bone marrow donor to Molly. Travis was married to Erica at the time and Tom to Barbara. I think that happened in 1990.