OLTL Tribute Thread

[Vee]

I thought Robin had the portrait these days. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe Ron sent it to her.

[janea4old]

Oh I found this information on the archived "Soap Opera Portraits" thread:
@SFK said:  "The portrait of Robin’s Dorian is intended to be a different portrait from the Nancy/Claire one commissioned by Victor (which replaced the portrait of his late wife, Eugenia)
Cassie had the Robin portrait commissioned as a gift to her mother after Dorian bought Marty’s house out from under her and had it renovated."

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I was probably mistaken.  I may have misunderstood a photo Carlivati had posted of himself with Robin's portrait -- I had somehow thought that he had it in his possession, but that may have been an assumption on my part.  You're right that Robin probably has it.

Edited January 30 by janea4old

[Marco Dane]

Was this the 45 minute ERA of OLTL?

 

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[TheyStartedOnSoaps]

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Tour of Robin's home in NY

[Contessa Donatella]

You know she moved last year, to Cleveland.

 

[janea4old]

Awesome! I see that this was Robin's home in NY, as she's packing up the portrait and some items to bring to the studio for the reboot, so this must've been filmed in 2013.

What a fun video! thanks for posting.
 

So then did Robin get the portrait back after the reboot finished?

[DRW50]

Viki probably would have been better off staying there.

Bauer is another good choice. I might say Leslie Charleson too.

Thanks for crediting Don Wallace as he's one of those writers whose contributions I tend to not know enough about. I see he stayed at OLTL through 1986 - that may be why the conversations start feeling more and more unnatural in the Rauch era after this point. Even in some of the duller parts of the early '80s you still have "real" moments. 

I see he moved to Loving for a few years, a show that needed many more natural conversations than it would have had in that period.

Your point about actors growing out of bad habits is another reminder of what we've lost in soaps - it's all such a grind now people can barely get beyond saying their lines at random points for random episodes. 

Yes. I think the first hour episode is the day Brian Kendall is run over.

Edited January 30 by DRW50

[Khan]

I think I read somewhere a long time ago that he wrote Karen Wolek's confession on the witness stand.

[Vee]

IIRC people were living in the carriage house (or some iteration of it set-wise) right to the end. I believe the last known occupants were yes, Rex and the Morascos.

Edited January 30 by Vee

[DRW50]

If Ron had truly loved his sad little wink winks, he should have had Tori burn it down with them inside (Shane could have gone to comics camp).

[Vee]

He went to the Phil Jimenez Art School, lest we forget (wink wink).

[vetsoapfan]

Yes. It had such a warm and peaceful feeling to it.

So was Theo Goetz, as the beloved Papa Bauer on TGL.

Most of the actors from the early years, whose commentary about the writers I've read, referred to Wallace with high praise. Fans often salute Patrick Mulcahey's dialogue for its wittiness; I cherished Wallace's scripts for their natural warmth and realism.

It's curious how Loving never really worked well; never jelled, despite the acknowledged pedigrees of TPTB involved. I could never get into it, no matter how many chances I gave it.

Yes, the depth and nuances of performances and direction seemed to fall by the wayside when time consideration and budgetary restraints started  to override all other factors. Nowadays, I'm astounded whenever any actor manages to pull off a truly beautiful performance, considering what they are up against.

While a few shows managed to do well in the 60-minute format, at least for a while under the right PTB, I think it was ultimately an unwise decision to expand them beyond 30 minutes a day. I wish Beyond The Gates were 30 minutes in length.

[DRW50]

I have a soft spot for Loving but I can't really disagree about how by-the-numbers the show could often seem (with some exceptions, mainly in the early/mid '90s).

I know Claire Labine stood by 30 minutes being the ideal format. I think she was right. There are few who can handle 60 minutes as writers or producers, and it's even more difficult today. In a world with increasingly short attention spans, 30 or 15 minutes are no-brainers to me.

Warm and realistic is a good way to put it. I don't know if I credit OLTL enough for that in these years. I think it's something the show missed (as all soaps missed) later on, especially once JFP came in.

[vetsoapfan]

I wanted to like it, I really did...but the show felt shallow, empty and predictable to me, even though I fully acknowledge that it had its moments.

I listened to and watched 15-minute soaps and loved them, but I was happy when they expanded to half an hour. Fifteen-minute broadcasts were so short; the 30-minute versions felt just right. I didn't care for the 45-minute OLTL and GH era, and of course, the 90-minute AW experiment was ludicrous.

I took for granted the quality of soaps back in the 1960s and '70s. Even today, there are some shows and writers I don't credit enough, like Sam Hall, Gordon Russell and Don Wallace of OLTL. I automatically sing the praises of greats like Phillips, Bell, Nixon, Lemay and Falken Smith, but am trying to remember the other writers who also did excellent work. I know I do not mention TEON's Henry Slesar enough, but he was a real genius who could do it all (mystery, suspense, romance, family conflict, comedy) with aplomb.

It's curious to note how daytime TV went from having such an abundance of talented scribes in its halcyon years, to a complete dearth of them today.

[EricMontreal22]

I'm back!

Of course I had to come here and see what the talk about these videos was, and chime in.  Full disclosure, I'm friends with Mike Poirier (we've traded various soap opera stuff for years--in my case mostly Agnes Nixon show related--scripts, bibles, story treatments, etc.)  I was glad he decided to finally release these public!

I have a lot of thoughts, of course, but it's great to see (I didn't realize 45 minute episodes actually ran a full 33 minutes without commercials.)  This is pretty much smack dab in the middle of my favourite era for the Agnes Nixon soaps and we have so little of it. 

It's interesting to watch these, ending in March 1977 and then watch the previously uploaded April and May 1977 episodes...  So much upheaval between April (the wedding of Larry and Karen) and May.  I have an article from a TV mag from that time about the "mini massacre" as they call it (I would upload it here but until I get my account back I can't.)  They mention how EP Doris Quinlan was fired with about a weekend's notice (as we know from the OLTL oral history book,) how the cast was complaining about slow and repetitive writing, and how major cast firings happened as soon as Joseph Stuart came in as EP (he had been one of the heads of ABC Daytime who hired him based on how highly regarded his run at The Doctors had been.) 

It seems funny to me that the writing was criticized though I know ratings weren't great at all despite the 45 minute gimmick (it probably didn't help that GH I think was still even lower rated and the whole gimmick was that people would watch both rather than switching networks.)  I just find it so... solid, but I'm prone to like anything Russell writes with Sam Hall (Hall's run after Russell's death in hindsight still had a lot of good stuff but that was when things were the show was already changing with the Buchanens who I *think* actually were all Hall's concept judging from his interview even though Russell was there.)  Quinlan says in the piece that the network also complained about the writing--she wondered why they then fired her but kept the writing team (the only change was Peggy O'Shea was added to the writing team but that might have had nothing to do with anything.)

BUT my point is watching that May episode is such a culture shock from the April one.  Nancy Pinkerton (the article confirms she was fired, presumably by Stuart who wanted to sex things up) being replaced by Claire Malis is such a change--and suddenly Dorian is HORNY and seems preoccupied with sex (trying to seduce her accountant.)  Farley Granger was fired as well, and the new Will Vernon is HORNY and suddenly is sexually fixated on Jenny, and just in the space of a month the show feels in many ways quite different despite the same writers.  Ultimately, these changes were probably a good thing (well, Pinkerton should have never been replaced) as it led to some great stuff in the next 2-3 years and a big rating bump (helped by AMC and the GH phenomenon) but it is a big change that's not talked about much (probably because the Rauch turnover 7 years later was a much bigger change)

As people have noticed Mitch has also uploaded 1973-74 clips of How to Survive a Marriage (which is fascinating and totally confirms the criticism of the episodes when Rosemary Pinz was on it, before they desperately tried to be more traditional soap, where it feels like a LOT of talk therapy.  Not a bad idea for a soap, but obviously not going to quickly get an audience) and the 1973 episodes of ATWT and GL which are fascinating to me.  Those are discussed in their own thread but still in the organ music era, it's fascinating how, for all their soapy goodness, at this stage they were *completely* in the style of how people (still) mock soaps.  Lots of coffee, lots of makeup, LOOOOONG internal monologues, and organ music. 

Watching them back to back with the OLTL from a few years later (granted, the Dobsons had come to P&G soaps by the mid 70s to shake things up) or even comparing these episodes to the 1970 AMC episodes and that one 1969 OLTL, you REALLY see why people found the Agnes Nixon soaps to be so revolutionary (remember that some soap press refused to CALL them soap operas as they didn't think they fit.)  I remember when I was researching my soap MA article there were several articles with the new college fanbase for these two shows (especially AMC) where they just said when they discovered them on tv they didn't even recognize them as soap operas.  The gap in style really is so noticeable (and wouldn't be ten years later.)