AMC Tribute Thread

[Paul Raven]

Of course Megan comes out like the heroine. 

Aligning with Frons speaks volumes. I think the mindset is they would do anything short of a live execution for ratings gains under their watch. If a character is decimated or the show damaged down the line, they know they won't be around anyway to deal with it.

But a great read nonetheless. A refresh from the likes of MTS etc where everything is peaches and cream, with a little dose of 'I lost my temper one day on set, but my cat had just died...'

[Franko]

Two very quick digressions ...

1. I'm hoping to soon write a book about my former job (nine years as a reporter in southwest North Dakota), and have been waffling between a memoir or roman à clef. MMT kinda makes me want to go the burn-it-all-down, nuke-the-bridges route.

2. Can someone please pass the brain bleach so I can forget how Susan Keith is mentioned there?

[Vee]

Oh God I'd forgotten about that.

[Soaplovers]

I remember that fans were begging the show not to fire Robin, and it was after the way Janet handled her own defense when she was accused of killing Laurel so I'm sure Lorraine brainstormed how to save Robin's job.  Thank gosh she came up with the Witches of Eastwick plot of Janet/Erica/Skye hiding Kinder's body and gaslighting Marian.   It was a genius move. 

@KhanIn regards to Felicity, I think it was a case of a good actress, wrong show.   Felicity just oozed New York Upper East Side and it's why she did so well on Ryan's Hope, but she just never seemed to fit in on AMC.  I don't know what other soap she could have thrived on.. at least on the East Coast in the 80s/90s (maybe AW?)

Cady always seems too stuck on herself and a bit of a diva, so I can imagine she was unbearable behind the scenes.  Jean Carol, on the other hand, had admitted she felt stifled and that the show said they couldn't think of anything for her to do.. and she pointed out that she had a lot of ties on the show that could have been utilized... and I think she had said she went to talk to McTavish about her concerns and thought she was receptive (guess not if she got killed off shortly thereafter).

I had no idea that McTavish was approved as an interim writer after Pratt and before Kreizman/Swajeski... but I think Lorraine ended up doing it instead and it was so well written that it felt like whiplash once the inferior Kreizman/Swajeski took over from her.

In regards to Susan Lucci and her discomfort of younger actresses in the 90s vs how she was in the 80s (where she had lots of scenes with Jenny, Dottie, Julie, Cecily, and even a few with Robin) was due to her age.  When she was having scenes with the 80s ingenues, SL was in her 30s and early 40s so she hadn't been hit yet with a midlife crisis.  Also, by the 90s, ageism was even more apparent with actresses in their 40s and older then it was in the 80s.  Paired up with the fact that SL was in her mid 40s to early 50s during that time and it probably caused her insecurity that she could be replaced/upstaged by one of the younger women on the show. 

Oddly, when SL had her short hair cut in 1996/1997.. she looked younger and more youthful then she did when she had her longer hair.  Shame she didn't think to change her hair style in the 2000s to a shorter hair style (she had it cut shorter in the mid 80s and mid 90s.. that made her more youthful).

 

[Vee]

I think the reason I liked FLF is because she was indeed so very similar to Hillary B. Smith on OLTL, who she ended up subbing for. Never seen her again. 

[Contessa Donatella]

Have you by any chance read her memoir, Murdering My Youth? As things go, or have gone, for child actors, Cady's life was horrific. That she exists today as a grounded, functioning, literate, working actress & creator & director, is fairly miraculous. I think she would say it's all down to years of therapy. At any rate it is def interesting.

Below here, is a blog I wrote, years ago, right after I read this. It's more or less a fan review.

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Blog 238 Cady McClain memoir

MURDERING MY YOUTH: a Memoir by Cady McClain

©April 15, 2014 271 pages

For a fan of Cady McClain’s like me this book is hard to read. Cady truly had a terrible childhood. Her family of origin was nightmarish. It was her parents, her older sister and herself. Her mother and father were alcoholics who had no decent boundaries. They were as random as people with undiagnosed mental problems can be. Everything was high drama with them. They paraded around naked and both took showers with the two girls when they were much too old for that. The fought and made up until they finally divorced. I found myself worrying about ‘poor little Cady’ . Even after the divorce her mother Dana was obsessed with everything bad about her father. And, money, well they rarely had enough. Cady was a child actor and began doing commercials, TV shows and plays at a young age and she just never stopped; she’s still a wonderful actress today, playing Jennifer Horton Deveraux on DAYS OF OUR LIVES. She took tap and acting lessons. Her mother was regularly playing the role of the child forcing Cady and Annie to behave as the adults. Cady’s father molested her. People in show business did, too. And, they spent her money on themselves which is against the law! At least Cady knew they were spending it instead of letting it be an investment for her future in a special account for it. People who had their parents do that in secret don’t find out that the money is gone until it’s time for them to tap into to go to college. Well, that is one example of how it could’ve been worse, I guess.

When she was 18 she told her agent that she wanted to do a soap. GUIDING LIGHT was an audition that she did not book. [Another child actor, Beth Ehlers got the part of Harley Cooper.] Cady was better and more prepared for the next audition, the part of Dixie on ALL MY CHILDREN. And, she got that one and signed a two year contract and became an Emmy winning actress on the show. She was the breadwinner yet again but this time with a steady gig. Her mother reacted to her new found success by becoming a SHOPPER. Her need for McClain’s money knew no limits. Eventually Cady rented a house in Connecticut for her mother to live in with her visiting instead of living with her mother, while Cady lived in a studio apartment very near the AMC studio in Manhattan.

McClain adored Michael E. Knight and loved the romance between her as Dixie and him as Tad the Cad. She had a terrible experience with an extreme haircut taking her from her long wavy tresses to a super short ‘do that made her not recognize herself!

Eventually she got into therapy after finding a therapist where she could talk and talk and talk, scream and cry, etc. She tried out multiple 12-step programs which all made her feel like she finally fit in somewhere besides just at work. She was drinking too much and misusing alcohol. She had an eating disorder that involved laxatives and enemas to keep her thin. She was the Adult Child of an Alcoholic including having hyper vigilance where she was constantly uber-aware of what might be about to happen when the [!@#$%^&*] would regularly hit the fan. She decided she was one quarter alcoholic since her mother had started her drinking tequila at 11 or 12; one quarter ACOA; one quarter food abuser; and one quarter drug abuser (with laxatives as her drug of choice.) She also had a totally screwed up sex life and attitude toward love and attraction. In AA she found many people who like her had been brought up around madness. Cady had trouble with self-esteem since the treatment she had received during most of her life pushed her to think that she didn’t deserve any better. And, more than once she thought about suicide.

At 24, with a year and a half left on her contract, she thought about leaving the show even though the only places she felt she truly belonged were at work and at her 12-step meetings. At that point she tried to talk to her mother about her burnout. Her mother’s solution was for her to stay with the show and buy her mother a house, Doing that was followed by SHOPPING again and redecorating madly. Of late her mother had been battling cancer. She was hospitalized again and the cancer had progressed throughout most of her body. They took her home. She always had said she was dying and apparently she really was.

At the show Cady was working five days a week. The producer she had turned to thought she was doing her a favor providing her livelihood and some place to fit in and be away from the domestic issues. “Finally. Finally she is going to die and the nightmare will stop. Please, God, please let her die soon. Yes, that is what Cady thought at the time. And, then, Dana did die, with her two daughters on each side of her hospital bed that they had gotten to put into her house.

Cady was only 25 and totally unprepared to face the grief she had. Dana had so totally dominated her life that he dying left a hole, a void instead of presenting the freedom she had longed for and expected. Annie and Cady saw their father and the woman he was married to after a 14 year total absence. The reunion did not go well. Later, when his new wife threw him out, he contacted Cady, apparently out of the blue, and asked her for money. She refused him and cut him out of her life completely. He has since died, too.

The last of her book deals with her trying to define freedom and self-worth. She’s made so much progress and she is apparently deliriously happy and fulfilled with her husband [Jon Lindstrom] and their two dogs. She’s glad that she wrote the book and doing so helped her on her own continuous journey.

I can highly recommend this book, complete with happy ending, to any fan of Cady’s and any fan of memoirs, in general.