All My Children Tribute Thread

[Pine Charles]

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Edited May 19, 2015 by Pine Charles

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[danfling]

The way that the character of Tom Cudahy was introduced is that Little Phillip had been kidnapped. Tom was a young man just wandering though Pine Valley. Someway, he was able to learn about this kidnapping. (I think that he was perhaps a guest in the same motel that the kidnapper was.) He was able to rescue Little Phillip.

He was then treated like royality by the Tyler and the Martin families. At first, I assumed that Tom was being introduced as a new romantic partner for Tara. Then, he became interested in Erica, and I thought that maybe Tara and Erica would have a fued. But this did not happen. Tom announced that he was using his football retirement money to open a restaurant that would be a more casual place than The Chateau. He and Erica fell in love. (I believe with all my heart that Tom is Erica's true love.) She, for a while, even opened a disco in the rear of the building which housed The Goal Post (named derived from Tom's football days).

Back to the kidnapper, I am not even sure it this kidnapper was even shown onscreen.

Brian Lima was playing Little Phillip at the time. I think that Karen Gorney had returned to the show as Tara. I think that this was following the departure of Stephanie Braxton.

[SFK]

Naylon probably tore the floor up at discos all over Manhattan in the '80s. He's also in the infamous clip of Jennifer Holliday singing I Want to Be Where You Are on GL.

BTW, Eugene is Tom Wright aka James "The Jackhammer" Shakar from Troop Beverly Hills.

[Franko]

I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to end a tense situation by just saying, "Now, Daddy, shake the man's hand and let's be on our way."

[SFK]

Haha, YES!

[allmc2008]

An Erica/Tara/Tom triangle would have been good, IMO.

[slick jones]

Ruth Warrick articles :

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19780603&id=mvZVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4-EDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5746,846535&hl=en

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=799&dat=19630510&id=eZJPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mVEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5714,3702846&hl=en

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1734&dat=19760319&id=33EcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=dFEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5563,2149207&hl=en

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1916&dat=19800616&id=zucgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OG4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1741,2513445&hl=en

[slick jones]

Eileen Herlie story:https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19761213&id=fcswAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nQUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4497,3200003&hl=en

[amybrickwallace]

In 1992, People profiled James "Uncle Porkchop" Kiberd and his wife, Susan Keith:

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20113007,00.html

June 29, 1992
Vol. 37
No. 25

Romance in Sudsville

By Karen S. Schneider

Love Was in the Stars for All My Children's James Kiberd and Loving's Susan Keith—but First It Was in the Script


LATE ONE AUGUST NIGHT 1983 ON THE Manhattan set of ABC's newly created soap opera, Loving, leading man James Kiberd was engaged in a passionate kiss with beautiful blonde No. 17—the last contestant in the day's audition for his character's Ms. Right. "They're all fine except her," Kiberd told the producers after the actress left. "I don't like her."

Sound like a story line for a daytime drama? It soon became one. Despite Kiberd's protestations, Susan Keith was hired as Shana Sloane Vochek, the temperamental lawyer she plays today. (In 1985, though, Kiberd, now 37, left the show, and since 1989 has played cantankerous detective Trevor Dillon on ABC's All My Children.) For months when the camera taped, the couple kissed, but when it stopped, they glared. "I thought he was just like his character—blunt, a chauvinist pig and inarticulate," says Keith, 32. "He was mean to me for the longest time."

"You were mean to me too," shoots back James, nibbling cold cuts in the kitchen of their three-story restored Victorian house in Westchester County, on the Hudson River north of New York City.

But love, like organ music in the afternoon, overwhelmed the dissonance. In less than a year, the sniping had turned to after-hours heart-to-hearts, and before long the couple's on-air smooches were looking suspiciously sincere. "There was one scene at a fashion show," recalls Loving producer Barbara Duggan, "where he just grabbed her and kissed her, and everyone in the studio went, 'Whew!' "

In September 1985, during an emotional Loving goodbye scene, Kiberd ditched the scripted "Shana, I can't marry you." Instead, as the stunned crew looked on, he ad-libbed, "Susan, will you marry me?" As the cameramen prepared to retape the scene, recalls Keith, "I started laughing. I mean, he didn't have a ring. No flowers. No kneepads." Replies Kiberd: "But my shoes were tied...and my zipper was up."

Friends questioned the union. Keith, from rural Crystal Lake, Ill., the daughter of a grocery-chain supervisor and a clerical worker, was a self-described "nice Midwestern girl"; Kiberd, son of an architect and a landscaper from Providence, was "a wild man," says Keith, known for "getting down on all fours in hallways and barking. People would take me aside and say, 'Are you sure about what you're doing?' "

Six years later, the answer, say both, remains an emphatic yes. "It's been heaven ever since," claims Kiberd. Well, OK—not ever since. "He leaves drawers open and runs red lights," complains Keith. "Turning red, honey," corrects her spouse. Playful banter aside, the couple's only source of real concern has been their difficulty having children. "I'm losing hope," says Susan, who last year had two pregnancies end in miscarriages. "Last night I saw an ad for EPT home pregnancy test. I put the blanket over my head." Adds Kiberd softly: "It's been very painful."

Yet between their soap lives and their own lives—curling up to watch Roseanne, touring art galleries and communing with their rottweiler, Omen, and their Siamese cat, Caliban—they have neither the time nor inclination to dwell on sadness. Nor, in Kiberd's case, on the rowdy life that used to be. "I never thought I could be faithful," says Kiberd, glancing tenderly at his wife, "but she's the doll of dolls."

KAREN S. SCHNEIDER
MARIA EFTIMIADES in Westchester


Contributors:
Maria Eftimiades.

Edited May 17, 2015 by amybrickwallace

[TimWil]

I mentioned on the AW thread that my ex was in a Broadway play with Canadian actress Linda Thorson. During that show's run she was up for a role on AMC which never materialized, that of Opal's sister Ruby. When working AMC as an extra a few years later I asked a casting assistant about Ruby and she told me the storyline was Opal looking her up in NYC when she found out she'd married a rich man. Ruby was going to have a fake British accent, Opal was going to spend a few months there as her live-in housekeeper and together they would try to find a non-violent way to bump the rich husband off. For some reason they decided on a different storyline for Opal (they probably wanted to keep her in Pine Valley) so they never got as far as initial readings for it.

Edited May 18, 2015 by TimWil

[danfling]

Ruby and her husband could have easily come to Pine Valley.

[Khan]

Better yet, Ruby could have been inspired to pay Opal to seduce her husband in order to net herself a hefty divorce settlement -- with the big twist being, of course, Opal and her brother-in-law developing genuine feelings for each other.

[amybrickwallace]

Franko - YES!!!! "Can I have your autograph?" "Not on that thing!"

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