All My Children Tribute Thread

[allmc2008]

St. Croix

St.Claire

Garland

Bankhead

Saxton

...Lord...?

[Jonathan]

 

 

The drop in quality happened when JHC took over and mis-managed the show.  At the end of its life, All My Children was like a poorly run factory manufacturing products sans quality control.

 

 

 

OMG, ya'll need a cold shower.  

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LOL.  Definitely not Lord.

Edited July 27, 2020 by Jonathan

[titan1978]

I loved Broderick as HW.  But I remember feeling that both Francesca James and Jean Dadario Burke were not as dynamic as EP.  Behr really produced an exceptional era of the show, from the revamped opening to tons of new and classic characters in excellent stories.  Her time lured me into the show.

[All My Shadows]

Idk why I didn’t realize the obvious change was from JDB to JHC. The show was still so lush and colorful in all of these 2002 clips, and in hindsight, it really balances out the not-so-great storytelling that was going on at the time (they are NOT my faves, but these Edmund/Maria videos are hiding all of the utter shite that was this era).

 

JHC’s show was either brown af or bright af. There was just no color, and I forget how lifeless the sets were until I see these from just a year earlier. Was it JHC who gave us the ugly brown Chandler “mansion” to replace the set with the dual staircase?

[Jonathan]

 

A lot of people had that feeling.  My guess is that Behr was a better leader overall and had the right balance of creative and managerial skills.  Remember, the EPs had to get story approval from the network.  Behr strikes me as an EP who went to bat for her writing team and was good at "selling" and persuading the network heads.

 

 

Yes.  She also gave us Fusion and ConFusion..... and the dance marathon that lasted 2 weeks on those sets!

 

 

I was a little surprised to learn that Broderick was HW for fewer years than MM.  Broderick had four stints as HW but cumulatively only served as HW 4-5 years.

Edited July 27, 2020 by Jonathan

[DaytimeFan]

 

In hindsight, AMC had a remarkably stable executive producing infrastructure in place and tended to promote from within for much of its run. I look at it as having four main EP era periods:

 

1. The originating period of 1970 - 1982 is the Agnes Nixon era where she was both EP and HW; 

 

2. The growth period of the balance of the 80s were dominated by Jackie Babbin who had been an ABC executive and was hand picked by Nixon, who was later succeeded by two short lived EPs, but both of whom were hired by Agnes Nixon as well;

 

3. The hitting its stride period which is the Behr era that lasted from 1989 - 1996, but which I'd argue extended to 2003 through Francesca James and Jean Dadario Burke who both came up through the AMC ranks and were promoted from within;

 

4. The network interference era where Brian Frons installed EPs of his choosing at all three of the ABC soaps with Julie Hanan Carruthers at AMC. Julie had a long history at GH and PC, and it's somewhat odd that she was placed on AMC when she had a 9 year run between GH and PC in lesser producer roles. You'd have thought she was a natural fit for GH, but at the time JFP was there and it seems Frons wanted to reward Carruthers, with whom he worked with at Santa Barbara. The blessing was that Julie was well liked by the AMC cast and their set was, by in large, a peaceful one. She did a very poor job of policing the creative direction of the show, but under the Frons era, Jesus H. Christ himself would have been powerless. 

 

 

 

[Jonathan]

 

Very true @DaytimeFan.  All the past EPs prior to JHC were homegrown.  JHC was an outsider and when she was installed as EP, I had a feeling things were going to go downhill.  My gut feeling is that JHC was trying to just keep her job, telling everyone (actors, writers, BF) what they wanted to hear.  I loathe managers who do that.

 

I just re-read this article with Marcy Walker where she had it on good authority that JFP was coming over to AMC (I believe this was right after JDB was fired).  I don't know if she would have been good or bad for AMC.  JFP had a knack for raising the demo ratings, but to what or whose expense?

 

 

Behr came back as VP overseeing all three ABC shows, so this is true.  It's too bad her position was phased out.  She would've been so much better than Frons.

Edited July 27, 2020 by Jonathan

[DaytimeFan]

 

JFP would have been a disaster at AMC. She had been a destructive element at OLTL from a morale perspective, and she decimated GH creatively, in the long run, sidelining so many vets. 

 

She would have struggled with the tone of the show a great deal and also would have struggled with Agnes Nixon's presence.

 

Behr's role wasn't really phased out - she was. There were other VP's in the daytime division at ABC reporting to Frons, and I have zero doubt that she and Frons would not have seen things the same way. It was a fatal error on the part of ABC to hire Frons as President of ABC Daytime, rather than promote Behr. Behr would have excelled.

 

Meanwhile, Frons failed upward all the way to his own termination years later, after he'd cancelled OLTL and AMC.

 

To quote Susan Lucci: "Brian Frons has what, for me, is that fatal combination of ignorance and arrogance."

[Jonathan]

 

Well, JFP did improve the lighting at OLTL. 

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You're probably right.  I shudder to think what JFP would have done to All My Children.  I mean she did kill off Maureen Bauer, right?  Good Lord, she probably would've killed off Erica, Adam, and Brooke!

[namkcuR]

Yeah, I've been watching those "Wildwind Chronicles" YT clips as well, and I noticed the same thing while watching the 2002/03 Maria return storyline - that it felt a lot different than the show would by as early as late 2003 when the Bianca/Babe baby switch started.

 

In hindsight, 2002/03 was a time of transition.  These Maria/Edmund/Brooke clips feel like 90s AMC, but at the same time, on the periphery, there are characters like Kendall, Ryan, Zach, Aidan, etc, some of whom would become cornerstone characters of the show's last decade, early-ish in their runs.

 

By 2004, you had SORASED JR and Jamie on canvas, along with Babe, while Brooke was backburnered(and ultimately written out), and Edmund/Maria were torn apart for no reason before Edmund was killed off and Maria left again.  All of a sudden, all of the old-school vets other than Erica/Tad/Adam/maybe Jack/David(on-and-off) were marginalized and Kendall/Bianca/JR/Jaimie/Babe/Ryan/Greenlee/Zach/Aidan/eventually SORASED Amanda/etc were upfront.

 

It wasn't all bad post-2003, and I remember a good deal of it fondly, but it was definitely a different show.

Edited July 27, 2020 by namkcuR

[All My Shadows]

The canvas felt so thoroughly utilized throughout the first 18 or so months of the Carruthers/McTavish run (well, putting the starting point at when McTavish returned). Even before the baby switch, which pulled in almost everyone, there seemed to be so many different characters on each day, and so many relationships were showcased. Brooke, of course, was the biggest absence, and I will never understand why she was cast aside so dismissively.

To me, the show looked better in the Burke/Culliton era, but it was a better show during the first year or so of Carruthers/McTavish.

Re: JFP. Lol. Like DaytimeFan said, one thing AMC had going for it was EPs who were perfectly content with producing All My Children with no strong desire to turn it into something else. Behr, James, and Burke were clearly passionate about soap opera and all of its conventions. JHC was passionate about not stepping on toes and keeping the show running. Phelps seems to be passionate about courting attention and glory at any cost.

[Jonathan]

 

What I hated about McTavish's writing is that she re-wrote history so that characters were instantly related to each other e.g. Greenlee and Jackson, being one example.  McTavish bragged about weaving characters and their stories together but it was often forced and not organic.  

 

 

I didn't mind the Culliton era.  I've been quite entertained watching past episodes on YouTube.  The show was much better when Culliton was writing than when Pratt or Kreizman / Swajeski wrote the show.

 

 

Looking back, this bothered me a bit.  Everyone was instantly in Bianca's business.  McTavish was too into her umbrella stories, which I don't think was always necessary.

 

I enjoyed the 80s soaps when there was an "A" story and "B" story and once A concluded B took center stage.  Occasionally, stories would cross but they did so organically when it made sense.

Edited July 27, 2020 by Jonathan

[John]

Ginger Smith was a great Choice for EP in 2013 under Prospect Park

[Jonathan]

 

Agree.  Again, a homegrown choice.  She captured that small town feel of Pine Valley.  In listening to one of her podcast interviews, you could tell she was passionate about the show.

[LeClerc]

It's a shame Ginger Smith was never promoted to EP (on ABC). She was AMC's Frank Valentini (in terms of working their way up the production ranks). 

 

Listening to Lorraine Broderick talk about how the writers' room used to work at AMC, where there was not really any hierarchy and everyone was free to pitch ideas and they would stop to watch that day's episode so they could see what was/wasn't working and maybe see something percolating between actors they hadn't expected...if only the network had just left a writing team of Broderick and people like Hal Corley and Fred Johnson alone, with Smith as EP....