All My Children Tribute Thread

[danfling]

I doubt that any episodes are online from 1975 or 1976 with Robert Perault.

As I recall, when Mr. Perault came to the show as Jeff (returning from California), several of the characters mentioned that they did not know who he would react when he met Betsy Kinnecott because Betsy resembled Mary Kinnecott Martin, R. N. so much. (In actuality, the actresses Susan Blanchard and Carla Dragonini looked NOTHING alike).

With those mentions, it appeared to me that Mona was wanting to get Erica and Jeff back together. (I think that this was just after it was revealed that she and Mark were half-siblings, but Mark may have not been introduced yet.) I seem to remember that Jeff too was having good memories of their marriage.

There may be some episodes from the time that Erica was trying to get Jeff (James O'Sullivan) to testify in a tribunal in order to help her get that marriage annulled.

[amybrickwallace]

Thank you, danfling.

[ellabelle]

I could see Mona pushing Erica back toward Jeff in the late 70s. She would have thought he was a better option than Nick Davis.

[amybrickwallace]

Wasn't Nick Davis the original "bad boy" of AMC? He sounds like he was a fascinating character.

[DRW50]

Nick was an anti-hero, not a bad boy.

[amybrickwallace]

Kind of like in the Nick Bellini (TD) mold?

[DRW50]

Probably, although I think with Nick a lot of it was sins of the past/bad reputation ruining his present day, along with self-hatred or class envy or what have you.

[amybrickwallace]

Ahhhhh. Complex yet strong male characters - remember them? The people running soaps today sure don't!!

[ellabelle]

My understanding of Nick is that he was definitely a complicated anti-hero. He was the guy from the wrong side of the tracks who knocked up a girl and left town never knowing he had a son (Phil Brent). He made some money elsewhere and hoped to come back to Pine Valley and establish a business and reinvent himself as a member of decent society in PV. I believe that Mona had been his good friend in high school. He immediately rubbed a teenage Erica the wrong way by basically telling her what to do and to treat her mother better. He fell for Phoebe's daughter Ann Tyler, and Phoebe was of course, aghast that this social climber wanted to be with HER daughter.

I loved that TPTB brought Nick back over and over again, but I wish he'd been willing to stay longer. I loved his friendship with Mona. I thought he and Susan Lucci were fabulous to watch together, no matter what they were doing. There's a scene after Erica dumps Nick's grandson Charlie on what should have been their wedding day, when Nick comes to visit Erica, and they talk about her relationships. At one point, they full on kiss each other, and it's disturbing because she's just been engaged to his grandson and because that kiss is far hotter than anything Erica/Charlie did.

[allmc2008]

Wasn't he kinda like David Hayward?

[ellabelle]

^ Not really. They were both complicated and interesting characters, but I don't see David Hayward as a second coming of Nick Davis. David grew up in wealth and comfort, went to medical school and was by all accounts a brilliant doctor. Nick grew up poor, educated in the school of hard knocks. To the best of my knowledge, Nick was never portrayed as a villain in the way that David was in later years. They were both denied children who'd been born to them when they were much younger, but while Nick wanted to get to know Phil, I don't think he attempted to intervene in Phil's life the way David did with Babe. At least, not that I know of. I don't think Nick was quite the plotter and schemer that David was. I think Nick had an easier time letting go of people and past betrayals and heartache than David did.

If anything, you could argue that David was the second coming of Adam Chandler: wealthy, Machiavellian, a plotter and a schemer who would go to any lengths to protect his family or the people he loved like family, prone to obsession, a villain with just enough of a likable quality that kept him from being turned into a Michael Cambias or a Will Cortlandt.

[All My Shadows]

Nick, IMO, was that particular type of pained character who was always in agony over past regrets and mistakes. He rolled with the flow, but there was always that chip on his shoulder...deep down, though, he knew who'd put it there.

[amybrickwallace]

Today, they would write it as another mother/daughter squabbling over/bedding the same man - Erica and Mona vying for Nick. What you all have described sounds much more complicated yet plausible.

[Pine Charles]

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[amybrickwallace]

I never knew they had starred in a project before he came to AMC. Nice find.