Thanks @Paul Raven for the KLG interview. I love her response to being asked if she's a star - "I'm just one of God's little creatures." That would be a meme today.

I agree with @Soaplovers that KLG was fine in the movie. She was aloof and weird but that fit the character. This was not a movie about women, to put it kindly. Maybe she didn't have as much charisma as she could have but that would have overshadowed Travolta. The movie is very complicated, and she suffered from it being bigger than anyone likely imagined - many ended up taking it as some kind of fun disco coming-of-age flick when it's actually about Tony realizing his entire upbringing has been a lie of racism, misogyny and repression. He does not realize until the end of the film that in order to survive he has to not be with Stephanie but become her - running away from the old world, the old life to a fragile but more open-eyed future. If they had kept the original scenes where he more forcefully gets into her apartment that murky message would have been even intact.

@EricMontreal22 I appreciated your writeup on the show, maybe more than if I had watched the episodes over myself, as I find a number of the leading characters at this time tough to take on a daily basis. I also think what you said about intertwining of many stories was beautifully stated and was something which AMC wore proudly through much of the '80s and '90s. Many of the stories were not the best but the tapestry makes the show, more than the periods when the show gets streamlined (or made into some Frons-shaped blob and whatever the hell was going on in 2001)

I saw a clip which had both Michael and Kendall, and it was incredibly disorienting.

Edited 13 hours ago13 hr by DRW50

I can't believe that Deidre Hall would play Tara if the show had moved to LA. That has to be a joke. I could see someone like Kate Mulgrew playing Tara if she were to return to daytime. In that 1995 episode KLG is a bit awkward and weird, but she was quirky in SNF. I wish more of her early Tara were available beyond the scatter of 1970 scenes from kinescopes. To Anyone who saw her back in the 70's, was she awkward during her original run?

My late mom was a huge fan of AMC, even watching it as a young teen when it first came on in January 1970... and the story that caught her attention was the Phil Brent paternity story with Ruth, his aunt, raising him as if he was her son while his aunt Amy was really his mother... but Amy didn't tell anyone including her current husband Linc. The reason being that there was a similar scandal within the family (when she found out about the Anton/Corvina story where Anton found out his older sister was really his mother.. she was happy that a soap covered that story since that was the family scandal).

She instantly loved Erica Kane and knew that as long as Susan Lucci wanted to stay.. the show would never write her character off.. and that turned out to be the case. Very few soap performers got the perks she did (being able to do tv movies, generous vacation times, etc).

When it came to Tara, my mom had her thoughts about all 4 Taras. She was excited to see KLG in Saturday Night Fever (It's an awesome movie and I'm glad it hasn't been canceled yet.. sure that will happen in 2027 because our society loves to crap on iconic movies when an anniversary comes up)... but she wasn't her favorite Tara. Nancy F (Tara #3) was her favorite Tara and loved her as Cecile years later. She said that Nancy made Tara both soft and also a little sexier than the previous Taras (She didn't recall Tara #2) while she thought Tara #4 smiled too much.

3 hours ago, SoapDope78 said:

I can't believe that Deidre Hall would play Tara if the show had moved to LA. That has to be a joke.

No way would Deidre Hall give up being The Face of DAYS to be a recast on another show, lol.

10 hours ago, DRW50 said:

@EricMontreal22 I appreciated your writeup on the show, maybe more than if I had watched the episodes over myself, as I find a number of the leading characters at this time tough to take on a daily basis. I also think what you said about intertwining of many stories was beautifully stated and was something which AMC wore proudly through much of the '80s and '90s. Many of the stories were not the best but the tapestry makes the show, more than the periods when the show gets streamlined (or made into some Frons-shaped blob and whatever the hell was going on in 2001)

I saw a clip which had both Michael and Kendall, and it was incredibly disorienting.

I actually had forgotten how key Kendall still was in these May 1995 episodes--we just had Laurel and Trevor's wedding where Kendall discovers her and convinces her not to do anything--and then Janet is "struck by lightning" but no one will believe Kendall at first. This was the storyline where originally Janet was going to try to bomb the wedding right? Or was that something else. As it was, she had a gun and Kendall implied Janet was actually going to try to kill some people but it was all very very vague what exactly was Janet's plan (especially with armed guards everywhere.) That said, it was nice, as it used to be, to see the interaction of a large group of the canvas at the wedding.

(I forgot about the storyline of Gloria leaving her mental health clinic to readjust with Pine Valley society and honestly how well it was handled, including Grace Kiefer being the one to welcome her back to Myrtle's and talking about her own difficulties readjusting to society. Honestly, while the various plots move faster than they would by the 2000s--which I appreciate--there still have been a number of genuinely well written scenes where characters just reflect on their feelings, another thing that at the time I guess I took for granted.

I remember in Christopher Schemering's soap Encyclopedia from the 1980s he said that one criticism some soap fans had about AMC was that there was tonal whiplash often going from story to story, but as you imply, I think that was a strength and it's nice to see they still managed that in the mid 90s. It also has the benefit of when you are tired of a storyline, there are enough stories in play that you know that any one episode (mostly) will not just focus on that story.

Random--it looks like they've already had to deal with replacing some music due to rights. While I was surprised to hear genuine pop songs in the background of the Insomnia Cafe scenes, there was an episode where they threw Laurel and Trevor a disco themed bachelor party. They had a dance sequence (where Alec is jealous because Matteo pulls Hayley to the floor and they connect through a dance) to one disco song which had the worst generic synth "boopy boop" type music but I swear muffled in the background I could hear Donna Summer singing Last Dance. And then after they say they're going to slow it down with Saturday Night Fever's How Deep Is Your Love--but instead all we hear is more generic synth "boopy boop" music, so... The only reason this interests me is that it means someone in charge of these streaming releases (or maybe it was done before for the foreign markets or something) has actually gone through the trouble of replacing licensed music and not just, say, muting it or something.

14 minutes ago, EricMontreal22 said:

I actually had forgotten how key Kendall still was in these May 1995 episodes--we just had Laurel and Trevor's wedding where Kendall discovers her and convinces her not to do anything--and then Janet is "struck by lightning" but no one will believe Kendall at first. This was the storyline where originally Janet was going to try to bomb the wedding right? Or was that something else. As it was, she had a gun and Kendall implied Janet was actually going to try to kill some people but it was all very very vague what exactly was Janet's plan (especially with armed guards everywhere.) That said, it was nice, as it used to be, to see the interaction of a large group of the canvas at the wedding.

(I forgot about the storyline of Gloria leaving her mental health clinic to readjust with Pine Valley society and honestly how well it was handled, including Grace Kiefer being the one to welcome her back to Myrtle's and talking about her own difficulties readjusting to society. Honestly, while the various plots move faster than they would by the 2000s--which I appreciate--there still have been a number of genuinely well written scenes where characters just reflect on their feelings, another thing that at the time I guess I took for granted.

I remember in Christopher Schemering's soap Encyclopedia from the 1980s he said that one criticism some soap fans had about AMC was that there was tonal whiplash often going from story to story, but as you imply, I think that was a strength and it's nice to see they still managed that in the mid 90s. It also has the benefit of when you are tired of a storyline, there are enough stories in play that you know that any one episode (mostly) will not just focus on that story.

I can see what he meant about tonal whiplash, but it works because you know you are watching a very large and complex group of characters. In later years, the balance was more difficult to find. McTavish was especially frustrating because I think she did get that element of AMC, but her tapestry was often incredibly depressing - by the end of each of her runs there was no joy to be found (I was taken aback at how dark even one of her 1995 episodes was, going from Dixie dealing with not being able to carry a child to a patient crying to Julia because he was dying of AIDS).

You're right, the original plan for Janet was the bomb.

I do appreciate the effort they made reintegrating Gloria into the canvas. I know Teresa Blake nearly left around late 1995/early 1996 due to not being used that much, but she ended up re-signing.

4 hours ago, Khan said:

No way would Deidre Hall give up being The Face of DAYS to be a recast on another show, lol.

Not to mention wondering how she would get along with Lucci. There's only room enough for one Queen Bee in that soap hive.

There were crazy stories too at one time that Hall would return to Y&R as a new character and supposedly Melody Thomas Scott wasn't having it.......LOL People were also joking Lucci would join Y&R as recast Julia Newman.

Re: 1995 AMC. During the Tara scenes I kept waiting for her to slip into her Brooklyn accent and say " Kelsey whatsa madder whichoooo".

11 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

I can see what he meant about tonal whiplash, but it works because you know you are watching a very large and complex group of characters. In later years, the balance was more difficult to find. McTavish was especially frustrating because I think she did get that element of AMC, but her tapestry was often incredibly depressing - by the end of each of her runs there was no joy to be found (I was taken aback at how dark even one of her 1995 episodes was, going from Dixie dealing with not being able to carry a child to a patient crying to Julia because he was dying of AIDS).

You're right, the original plan for Janet was the bomb.

I do appreciate the effort they made reintegrating Gloria into the canvas. I know Teresa Blake nearly left around late 1995/early 1996 due to not being used that much, but she ended up re-signing.

Right--to be fair Schemering was a big fan of AMC but I think he was making a point of one criticism it did get. And I do think this is why certainly some of the older soap press seemed to be slow to warm to the show (if it happened at all.) That switch of styles even in one episode didn't seem to be "pure soap" the way they liked (I know he was also part of the 1970s "new soap" trend, but Bill Bell's tonal consistency seems to really concentrate this style.)

And you're right about McTavish and how even her first most successful run, with Nixon claiming "executive head writer" status, not only does she rely more on the outrageous storylines reportedly FMB felt were happening too often, but her writing increasingly becomes just heavy and dark all around--even in these May episodes, when many of her storylines are still playing out, you can see Corley and others (and he vaguely referred to this when I got to talk to him) trying to add more humour, etc. Like the dumb Cecily/Charlie internet storyline which suddenly starts up isn't good, but in small doses does help re-balance the show to more what you'd expect from AMC (and granted in this last batch of episodes did lead to a genuinely funny scene where Cecily was sure her mystery man was Jackson.)

Has this been posted before? This is audio from an AMC episode from October/November 1970.

https://www.tvobscurities.com/2025/07/audio-vault-all-my-children-excerpt-october-november-1970/

14 minutes ago, SoapDope78 said:

Has this been posted before? This is audio from an AMC episode from October/November 1970.

https://www.tvobscurities.com/2025/07/audio-vault-all-my-children-excerpt-october-november-1970/

This is great! I was watching live in those days, but AMC was in the middle of the day and I was a child, so I would have been in school and missed it. I could watch only in summers and on school vacation days. But yeah Susan and Karen's voices are unmistakable, even to someone slightly hearing impaired as I am.

Now if it had aired summer of 1970, I would have seen it live!

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by janea4old

In 1977, I was college-aged and competing in disco dance contests. But I went to see Saturday Night fever, not for the dancing but for Tara Martin!

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by janea4old

2 hours ago, EricMontreal22 said:

I actually had forgotten how key Kendall still was in these May 1995 episodes--we just had Laurel and Trevor's wedding where Kendall discovers her and convinces her not to do anything--and then Janet is "struck by lightning" but no one will believe Kendall at first. This was the storyline where originally Janet was going to try to bomb the wedding right? Or was that something else. As it was, she had a gun and Kendall implied Janet was actually going to try to kill some people but it was all very very vague what exactly was Janet's plan (especially with armed guards everywhere.) That said, it was nice, as it used to be, to see the interaction of a large group of the canvas at the wedding.

Yep, that's right. They had to change it last minute due to the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995.

Because it can't be said enough, I just really envy you right now getting to relive this era. I can't wait until I get to, but hopefully in a less chaotic way with the service haha.

1 hour ago, alwaysAMC said:

Yep, that's right. They had to change it last minute due to the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995.

Because it can't be said enough, I just really envy you right now getting to relive this era. I can't wait until I get to, but hopefully in a less chaotic way with the service haha.

Chaotic is right, although I think I have it figured out pretty easy at least till the end of this week lol I do wish I was savvy enough to save these--it's so great that we have episodes on Youtube, etc, but it really does make a difference to see a "broadcast quality clean" copies when watching. I wish I had the wherewithall to somehow save them.

Side note--I can't help to think the new writing team (well new HW anyway) are slightly mocking one of the least popular Kendall stories I remember as when Kendall shows up to the wedding everyone makes snide allusions to her "ceramic leopard" (including Kendall herself when she talks to Del about all the mistakes she's made.)