OLTL Tribute Thread

[allmc2008]

I am not too familiar with OLTL. What is the difference of characterization between Clint Richie's Clint and JvD's Clint?

[DRW50]

It's like comparing Charles Ingalls to Charles Manson.

[saynotoursoap]

Yes. Ivan performed surgery on Karen, but could not go through with killing her. However, after the surgery when Karen slipped in and out of consciousness, she started mumbling about Ivan's murder attempts. Ivan forced Faith to steal a drug from Larry that would kill Karen and evaporate from her system before autopsy. Ivan injected the drug into her I.V., but as you recall, the plan went awry. Ivan and Faith skipped Llanview when the jig was up.

There was proof of Edwina's parentage, and Richard Abbott considered publishing it in The Banner, but ultimately, he decided against it.

[oltl1]

I believe I read once that Gordon Russell was set to leave One Life and was headed to GH when he passed. Is this true or am I thinking of something else??? If true, what do you think he would have done with Gh at that time? Would there even have been a Luke and Laura as we know them today?

[DRW50]

Yes that was true.

No idea what he would have done at GH. I don't think he would have given them the big OTT stories that helped make them (Luke and Laura) so famous, so who knows what might have been. I guess his GH would have been much more nuanced.

[oltl1]

Wow that was quick! Thanks for the clarification Carl but do you happen to know if it was ABC's choice to move Russell or his own. If ABC's. do you know if they had a replacement in mind for OLTL?

[DRW50]

There are others here who are best qualified to answer this, but I think they may have just been planning to do what they already did (Sam Hall and whoever else). But that may be wrong. I know it's been discussed here before in more detail.

[saynotoursoap]

ABC decided to move Gordon Russell over to General Hospital. Pat Falken Smith and Gloria Monty hated one another, and Smith wanted out of her contract. ABC was willing to let her go only if they could replace her with a suitable headwriter. Russell was selected, and he agreed to leave One Life to Live, but before the move could occur, Russell was diagnosed with cancer. In the end, he wrote for neither GH nor OLTL and, sadly, died shortly thereafter.

I loved Gordon Russell, in my opinion, a far superior writer to his partner Sam Hall. Perhaps Hall was a superb writer, too, but he harbored such contempt for soap opera it no doubt affected his work. Russell might have despised soap opera, as well, but if he did, it did not affect his skills as a storyteller.

Smith stayed with GH until September 1981. Gloria Monty made nasty comments after the WGA strike, and Smith struck back in the press calling her a Nazi gestapo and some other choice names. ABC relented and let PFS out of her contract. She went back to Days and whipped that ailing soap back into shape immediately.

Edited February 24, 2013 by saynotoursoap

[DRW50]

Did Gordon and Hall get along? I think they were at Dark Shadows together too, although some of the DS writing was almost anti-soap.

[saynotoursoap]

I believe so, yes. Otherwise I'm sure Gordon would not have hired him to work at OLTL. In all the contact I have had with soap performers and personnel, I have never heard a single negative thing about Russell. By all accounts he was a beloved headwriter. Even crusty old Phil Carey cited him as the show's best headwriter.

Interestingly, Ralph Ellis had been Gordon's writing partner at one point. They did Flame in the Wind together, as well as co-headwriting The Doctors.

[DRW50]

Thanks. I asked mostly because most of the interviews I've seen with Hall focused on his conflicts (like with Irna Phillips, among others), so I wasn't sure if he had conflict with many he worked with.

What happened during Russell's tenure on The Doctors?

[saynotoursoap]

.

I do not know. It was before my time, which contrary to popular belief does exist!

[oltl1]

Thanks guys for the all info. It sounds like the behind the scenes stuff at ABC was just as good as the stuff on tv at the time. This would have marked the beginning of a string of headwriters for the show that would eventually lead to Rauch coming in as EP and really changing the show for ever. I only wonder why Peggy O`Shea and Sam Hall bounced in and out as head writers during this time before O`Shea finally kept the spot for 4 years?

[MissLlanviewPA]

Gabrielle, Blair, Alex and Lindsay. My girls!

I was 13 when this aired, and I actually remember watching it.

Oh, and Max & Gabrielle. Well, that's just great.

[danfling]

Some of this may be repititous, but I wanted to say:

Gordon Russell wrote A Flame in the Wind. I was not aware that Ralph Eiilis (who was a former actor) had worked on that show, so I appeciate the news. I also had not known that either men had worked on The Doctors. This may have been when the show was an anthology show with self-contained episodes or when the show had five-episode arcs in serilized form.

Gordon Russell became the headwriter of Dark Shadows when A Flame in the Wind was cancelled. This was before Sam Hall (who had previously written The Brighter Day) was writing for the show. However, Grayson Hall, his wife, was probably already in the cast. Three of the writers who were working on the show at time were Ron Sproad (a former writer of Never Too Young and The Nurses and later wrote the serials Strange Interludes and Capitol0 and Joe Caldwell. Sam Hall was later added as a writer and became the co-headwriter with Mr. Russell of Dark Shadows. Ralph Ellis also wrote one (or possibly a handful) of episodes for Dark Shadows.

After the cancellation of Dark Shadows, Mr. Russell and Mr. Hall were offered co-headwriting jobs at One Life to Live. This is the point, I believe, that Agnes Nixon mostly turned the reins of the who over to others (and I don't think that she would have done that unless she really believed that these writers were good and capable).

I was watching YouTube on Friday night, and I found this episode from 1980s that listed the headwriters (of One Life to Live) as Sam Hall and Peggy O'Shea with the writers being Gordon Russell, Don Wallace (the originall executive producer of One Life to Live) and Lanie Bertram. Mr. Russell died in the summertime, and this episode aired in the summer, so I think that this was when he was leaving One Life to Live to work on the serial General Hospital.

I was not too impressed by Mr. Hall and Ms. O'Shea (a former writer of Search for Tomorrow). I cannot remember who took their place.

I do want to ask about John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington. Why were people so unhappy with their writing (along with the network)?

The main thing I remember about their writing was the death of Samantha Garretson. They wrote that, or stopped writing the show just before her death.

Sam Hall was brought back at that time, and was paired with Peggy Sloan. I think that the was a wonderful writer. However, she stated that the network interfered with the writing too much, she quit, and vowed to never write a serial again (all of which she did).

The pairing of Sam Hall and Henvy Slezar should have been wonderful, but I don't think that there was much colaboration between them.