All My Children Tribute Thread

[rlj]

HT ( I dont think she was going by Hunter back the) played Robin McCall , a new love interest for Greg and the character had a past with Tad., and then became involved with Matt Connelly (MT) Nina's Ex!

That AA actress in that clip is Vanessa Bell Galloway, who played Yvonne Caldwell a singer Jesse Hubbard was managing, and the character was an interloper in the Jesse/Angie marriage!

[DRW50]

She went by Deborah Moreheart.

I love how central Myrtle's boarding house was to the show for so many years. When was it last seen?

[Cheap21]

yes! Thats her! Had no clue she was on AMC

Edited December 9, 2011 by Cheap21

[Khan]

IIRC, Robin McCall (a name I love, by the way) was a con artist. Not only did they "test" her with Greg (then portrayed by Jack Armstrong) and Tad (in fact, wasn't she at least partly responsible for Tad and Hillary's breakup?), but yes, they did so with Michael Tylo's character, Matt Connolly, as well.

As Carl said, though, this was a rather shaky time for AMC, as many characters who'd been front-burner for so long were either being phased out (by death or simply leaving town) or shifted to the back-burner. AMC really wouldn't get back on its feet until 1989-90.

Vanessa Bell Calloway should be on Y&R right now, either as Yarmony's AA sponsor, or as Sofia's sister.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Khan

[Pine Charles]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7mqN4kWtQ4&feature=related

[DRW50]

Dates, courtesy Daytime TV.

Nick Benedict debuted as Phil Brent on 9/5/72.

[ellabelle]

^ SMG really rocked the bitter, angry Kendall. I remember watching her back in the day and waiting for her to whip out a weapon and start offing people.

I also often wondered if Kendall had some sort of deep dark secret or had experienced some sort of trauma that made her so bitter and angry because it really was out of proportion for what had happened in her life. Yes, she was adopted, and yeah, I get it that she felt abandoned by a mother who later became rich and famous, but if Kendall was such a fan of Erica's, she had to have been able to do basic math and see from Erica's bio + her adoption papers that Erica was 14 when she was born. I mean, at 14, it's not like parenting was a reasonable option, and it's not like Erica would have been given much of a say in the matter, not the way adoption was generally handled back then. I mean, at worst Kendall could have assumed that her birth mother was a teenage slut. Yet she was SO angry when she came to town, and she went out of her way to try to make Erica miserable. I also get her being curious about her birth father too, but once Erica told her she'd been raped, I still don't understand why she would have been remotely curious about Richard Fields. I remember him insisting that he'd never raped anyone, and that it was consensual. Hello - Kendall, your mother was 14, and he was a grown man!

I always felt like Kendall's anger was never really explained, and it would have made more sense if we'd found out that her adoptive parents were abusive or that she'd suffered some sort of severe trauma because of the adoption.

[DRW50]

You're right. I think it's some type of easily accepted cliche that any adopted child must be bitter and damaged.

In some ways I'm still surprised they got this story through. It's one of the most jolting and ugly stories ever for a leading heroine on a soap, especially since it wasn't something that went away after a few months. I wonder if that's one of the reasons why AMC seemed to forget Kendall for years after SMG left.

[DRW50]

[SFK]

I liked how the show touched upon Kendall's guilt feelings when Bill passed away. It was a brief and subtle way of driving home the point that Kendall's obsession with her birth parents made her lose sight of the love and support of her adoptive parents, which is all she ever knew. Too late now, but perhaps AMC could have found an interesting character and B-plot in one of Kendall's adoptive cousins who she grew up close to who decided to move to PV to be with her BFF cousin who was now entrenched in her life as THE Erica Kane's daughter... I'm reminded of Anna Nicole's toothless cousin who'd show up at Anna's door unannounced and Anna would turn her way because she was s beyond *that*, and the cousin just wanted to know the Vicki she grew up with.

[ellabelle]

SFK, on another board some of us were discussing ideas for plots for AMC 2.0 (before PP threw in the towel), and my idea was to have a teenage relative of Kendall's adoptive mother come live with her. I was envisioning that Alice Hart had taken in her niece after her own sister died, and was raising the child, but then Alice died and left guardianship of the girl to Kendall. Kendall and Zach would then get saddled with a teenage girl who on the surface was a total brat and hated Kendall for turning her back on Alice and the family who raised her, but who deep down was also suffering from the loss of not one but two mothers. I was picturing her totally hating Erica and Bianca and not wanting to live in PV at all, and yet Erica really relating to her because of the loss of her own mother. Kendall would have to deal with her guilt over abandoning her adoptive family, she and Zach could have great discussions over trying to figure out who you are, and it would give them both some insight into what they're likely going to face when Gabby grows up and realizes that her uncle is really her dad.

[Angela]

That video is why I had always liked Kendall even with SMG. Erica was just over the top cruel in the way she talked to her. She compared her to her evil father around five times in ONE episode.

I don't think that this is what AMC was doing here. Between Tad and Sam and Kendall, they've shown the many sides of adoption. A lot of kids are happy, a lot of kids carry an intense feeling of rejection no matter how great they were treated.

On a philosopical note, I think how your biological mother is during the pregnancy affects the unborn childs psyche. I can just look at my sisters kids and see there's truth to that. She was in emotional turmoil and violent during her first pregnancy and completely laid back during the other two. For completely understandable reasons, Erica was completely disconnected and unhappy during her pregnancy with Kendall. Rejection since the womb. On the more crafting notes, Kendall learned she was adopted when she was a teenager and Bill and Alice wouldn't admit it for anything. For Kendall that came off like it was something they really wanted to hide because something was wrong with her and her being adopted. It built on the feeling of not fitting in. Of course, it was probably that the parents thought of her as their own and just didn't want anything to come between that. Then Kendall met Erica and she was looking to finally fill that void she'd probably been born with but it really, really didn't work out.

I thought the entire Erica and Kendall story was very well crafted from beginning to end but if you just looked at it in the surface you missed a lot and just saw two royal bitches being selfish. I absolutely loved how long they allowed the often misguided anger to go on between them because you don't see that on soaps. It may have been misguided but it was coming from scars. It was coming from an understandable place.

That would have been interesting story to do. I had always felt it was long past due to bring back something from her past, be it her other mother or something like this - a cousin.

[SFK]

I love your idea ellabelle. Yeah, I've always been fond of the idea of tapping into less traditional family ties on a soap, e.g., cousins, aunts/uncles, opposed to long-lost twins or insta-siblings (which OLTL just *loves* to do... on the other hand, in the past the show gave us Viki's aunt Gwendolyn, cousins Richard and Powell). I think there's the potential for more shaded, psychological, character driven writing that way. I always find it interesting when I look at my own family, contrasting the way my mother and her siblings are to the way their different sets of first cousins are.

I really loved the original Kendall s/l the same way I loved OLTL's DID s/l. IMO, that type of dark family drama never gets old. It can certainly get ruined with a bunch of rewrites, but when done well, there's nothing like it. I would have kept more of Kendall's issues with Erica still bubbling just below the surface, even if in spite of herself. There came a point where it felt like Kendall had grown up with Erica forever, and sure, that *feels* nice, but maybe it would have been stronger dramatically if there were more unresolved issues there.

Edited December 9, 2011 by SFK

[Pine Charles]

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[ellabelle]

Yes, I agree, that would have been better. After a while, the dynamic became as if Erica had raised them both AND that Bianca and Kendall had grown up together. I know Bill and Alice showed Erica some photos they had of Kendall growing up, but it would have been nice to have Erica and Kendall looking at childhood photos of her together or talking more about her upbringing, or Kendall asking Erica if she'd ever picked out a name for her - and being upset when Erica hadn't because I really don't think she would have named the baby.

So much they could have done there but didn't.