All My Children Tribute Thread

[Khan]

LOL!!

But seriously.  It is kind of a shame how they gave Bobby Martin the Chuck Cunningham/Judy Winslow treatment.  He could've been a wonderful "older brother" figure to Charlie and Tad.

Edited January 13 by Khan

[Vee]

Reminds me of how when we all shared alternate AMC cliffhanger ideas over a decade ago, my little flourish for the end was to have a little urchin child appear at the Corinth PD just down the highway named "Bobby" with other identifying indicators suggesting he was somehow Bobby Martin, or a descendant lol. With some spooky drawings of a burning black house, kicking off another typically Agnes gothic mystery. But I guess that would've been too Edge of Night.

[TheyStartedOnSoaps]

There was a scene with Opal (Jill Larson) while in the Martin attic, Opal discovered a skeleton with a pair of skiis and the name "Bobby" appearing in a name tag. Later, Tad referred to a skeleton as a Halloween party as his brother.

When All My Children was wrapping up - Sarah Michelle Geller pitched a story idea to TPTB when she asked to do a cameo (as Alicia Minshew was playing Kendall)

"I can come down from the attic with Bobby Martin; I can be his ski bunny wife," Gellar teased.

Edited January 13 by TheyStartedOnSoaps

[Vee]

I remember!

[DRW50]

I would have preferred that to the cliffhanger they used. 

[Franko]

Speaking of SMG, my headcanon is that here she's the daughter or granddaughter of Mrs. Johnson, Carol Burnett's first cameo character from 1976.

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Edited January 14 by Franko

[Khan]

I'm with @DRW50: I would've preferred that over the cliffhanger we did get, lol.

For years, I thought there were two ways to explain Bobby's absence.  One way would've been to reveal that Bobby, along with several other boys, was murdered while at camp (which is where Bobby supposedly went to, and not on some skiing vacay) and that his murder was so shocking for the family that they never talked about it (or him) anymore.  The other would've been to say that Bobby struggled so much to adjust to life without his mom, Helen, that Joe thought it would be best for him to live with Helen's relatives in California.

[DRW50]

I like those ideas. The one where he was dead could have played into Tad's own return from the dead - what if someone claiming to be Bobby shows up years later and they struggle with whether to believe him or not because as far as they know he was murdered as a child? 

[Khan]

That reminds me of an old TV movie - produced by Paulette Breen, aka Claudette Montgomery #1 - starring Kate Jackson and Rick(y) Schroeder, with Schroeder portraying the young man who claimed to be Jackson's character's son, who had been abducted many years before.  The title escapes me at the moment, but I do remember it coming out at the climax that Schroeder's character, in fact, had been abducted by the same people who had abducted Jackson's son; and that her son actually had died while he was still a boy.  (I also remember Jackson's character watching what appeared an actual clip from early '80's ATWT on her TV, lol).

[DRW50]

Of course, Schroeder would be bad news...

That movie sounds interesting. 

[All My Shadows]

Ted Brent dies near the end of June 1970, a week or so after Amy leaves town, which is a week or so after her confrontation with Phil in the episode that’s been posted. So that whole leg of the Phil’s parentage storyline took about five months to play out before it turned to Phil’s rebellion. It’s really surprising to think that he would end up getting married to Erica after all of this considering she really blew that whole thing up. I wonder what the audience thought when they got together in ‘75. Surely by that point, the feeling had to be that those days were long gone for both characters.

We still have nothing at all of Nick Benedict’s Phil. Hatch only stayed on for two years compared to Benedict’s five, but Hatch remains *the* Phil in my head because we have so much of him to watch.

These two episodes also highlight just how many times they made adjustments to the opening titles in those first few months.

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^^^all of those are just from the five months Rosemary Prinz was on. That last one would end up being the one that took us to December 1989, once they took Rosemary’s part out.

[Paul Raven]

Wonder why the opening kept changing? it wasn't like a drastic thing-just a font/design tweak.

Someone had time on their hands.

Linc, Ann and Kate were all recast.

Ann twice before they settled on Judith Barcroft. Judith was popular on AW. Did Agnes lure her over. Or had Judith left AW and was then approached by Agnes, who had created her character on AW?

There were 3 Lincs before the character was dropped in 71 for a couple of years and Peter White took on the role.

And 2 Kates in the first year until Kay campbell agreed to play the role -again an actress Agnes had written for on TGL.

Jeff was also recast and Bobby dropped.

A lot of changes in the early days.

[Soaplovers]

Back then, shows weren't afraid to drop an actor if they weren't working.

Agnes made the right call it sounds like with recasting Ann, Linc, Chuck, and Jeff...and dropping Bobby.

Though I would have bought Bobby back later on once Jeff and Tara's stories were completed in the mid to late 70s.

[Vee]

I will say this: Original(?) Linc, James Karen, is one of the greatest movie character actors of all time. Even if you don't know his name you've seen him in something (Poltergeist, Wall Street, The China Syndrome, Return of the Living Dead, you name it). If he couldn't do the job it had to do with the taping schedule.

Edited January 14 by Vee

[Paul Raven]

Re James Karen. I think I read that he came across as too old. He was about 9 years younger than his onscreen mother (Ruth Warrick) and wasn't convincing as her son.

Certainly nothing to do with his acting.