All My Children Tribute Thread

[Khan]

ICAM!!

[EricMontreal22]

Watch it Jonathan

Who is this Rosanna woman??  Lucci holds her own with great dignity and knows her stuff--mentioning Tonya's Tony wins, etc--but never mind how rude the final question is "It's time!!" Jesus Christ.  She also doesn't seem to know anything about this play, let alone how theatre works.

Edited March 14 by EricMontreal22

[EricMontreal22]

Where do you think she did her worst?  After AMC, ABC seemed to move her to OLTL for a bit, which was in a terrible era at the end of the Rauch era (but from what I've seen, she didn't do much to help or hinder, either way, as a co-HW.)  She did go to Sunset Beach and I remember thinking her period on that show was its best, but it's obviously a very different soap from AMC.

McTavish's ridiculously hateful soap memoir draft, Tap Dancing in the Cuisinart, would give some credence to that, though of course it's hard to read in it from an objective perspective (she says that Felicia Minei Behr hated the idea of a Pine Valley hurricane claiming that the network wouldn't give them the money to pull it off, and that hurricanes wouldn't hit the East coast in December anyway, until brilliant McTavish did some research and contacted the network execs and proved FMB wrong and ABC insisted on it, and it led to, in McTavish's words, AMC's best moment of all time.  I mean I did like a lot of that storyline, but no wonder FMB fired McTavish months later...)

[Vee]

Oh, now you have to tell us more about this.

[EricMontreal22]

Send me a message and I'll dish...  It's ridiculous (and for some reason in the Agnes Nixon archives at Northwestern)

[Contessa Donatella]

AW for the gruesome, onscreen murder of Frankie Frame by serial killer Fax Neuman. Frankie was the much beloved core family member, legacy character, wife, mother, & she was selected for this by a focus group. Frankie was akin to GL's Maureen Bauer. Both Jill Phelps "design". 

[Maxim]

Up to July 17th, 1989.

What the hell is going on here... This is borderline horror movie now. I'm scared.

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[Soaplovers]

Her worst was the 2nd stint of AW. 

However, she did a load of good during her brief stints on The Doctors, AMC, and Sunset Beach... and from what I understand, her stint at Days in the early 80s was also interesting.

But I liked her stint at AMC because she made some changes that made sense such as moving Skye out of the Erica/Travis/Jackson orbit.  She broke up Barbara/Tad and paired him with Dixie and put her back into the Erica/Travis/Jackson orbit.  She also made Natalie less of a victim and closer to her original 1985 version of the character in terms of her relationship with Jeremy.  And she started the process of writing Nico/Cecily off the show, and @Maximwrote some other interesting things for Erica/Mona in the 2nd half of 1989 before Agnes returns as head-writer.

[Contessa Donatella]

I see that you are familiar with "Maggie the Beast" in Bay City. Of course, the serial killer she wrote during her first tenure at AW was IMO actually quite good. But, as you say & as I have already posted here, not so for her second & last tenure at AW. 

But, it's true that she could write some things that were interesting & not appalling.

See my new post in the Retro topic.

[Jonathan]

Yes sir. 

I'm dying to read this now. I may to make my way to Evanston.

[Contessa Donatella]

I disagree. I think McTavish's best at AMC was the crossover. At first I admit I hated that they were holding me hostage. It was impossible to follow without watching both AMC & OLTL. And, frankly, it went on forever. But, it was worth it. I mean, what can you say, when you've got two very pregnant women, a helicopter, a crash in the woods, two babies are born but only one lives ... and so on. Bianca & Babe were both on their A-game. Paul Cramer was okay. No idea what Malone & Griffith were doing, but McT was solid. 

[Jonathan]

I enjoyed the crossover as well. However, I felt that reuniting Bianca and Miranda happened too soon. I think Miranda should have remained on OLTL for a few more years. While that would have made Bianca unhappy in the short term, it could have created more storytelling opportunities down the line—similar to how Erica and Adam’s first divorce was later revealed to be invalid and revisited years later.

[Contessa Donatella]

Now, your ideas, while interesting, probably would've killed me. There was just no way I could watch both AMC & OLTL for that long, not with all the other soaps I was following. 

[Vee]

Nnnope! You have no idea how annoyed OLTL audiences were to be roped into that baby switch lol. It took over half the show. The only good drama was when the truth came out amongst themselves with Kevin and Kelly Buchanan and Victor/Todd playing the angles, and that was in summer '04. The rest of the time we were marking the seconds and waiting for the AMC guest stars to get out.

Edited March 14 by Vee

[EricMontreal22]

I think this was completely true--as a fan of both shows.  AMC was going through a sorta (?) better-than-it-had-been stage, but OLTL was at a low point, so...

From McTavish's own words:

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