OLTL Tribute Thread

[EricMontreal22]

He consulted at ABC Daytime in the late 90s--maybe around 97? I know he had harsh statements about The City (ones I disagree with) and for osme reason I wanna say otherwise he focused more on OLTL--though it doesn't sound like his ideas were really paid attention.

[full hearts]

Max/Tina *swoon*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69QO_KEUhCQ

Edited May 2, 2013 by full hearts

[MissLlanviewPA]

I NEED to look for some Max & Gabby there that I might not have seen yet.

[DRW50]

VickRobCal has two new clips up from right after Gabrielle's 1989 trial, and Gabrielle begging Max to be with her.

[full hearts]

Here is some Max/Gabby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_9VR0EQkd8

[BKuzak]

Viki & Clint Love story is now at the part of 1988 with Viki finding out she lost a year 25 years earler. it leads to Eterna and Megan. What did everyone think of this story? In this long clip, it has a cute scene of Viki in her old HS cheerleader uniform and then the reunion that was pretty interesting.

[DRW50]

May 1969 Afternoon TV

[soapfave06]

Nice interview and so well written. Thanks for sharing!

[danfling]

I don't know if these men are the same person or not, but'

an Australian wine maker named Roger Hill has died. He was sixty-three years old.

The actor who appeared in the movie The Warriors and later in the soap opera One Life to Live (and then, seemingly vanished) was also named Roger Hill AND was sixty-three years old.

Is this the same person?

[BKuzak]

Watching the Viki finding megan story on the "Clint & Viki love story" just gave me a horrible thought. What if Victor earsed her memory...not letting Viki remember she was even pregnant with a child because in the back of his mind he thought maybe the child was his! and that's when he stopped abusing her.

[EricMontreal22]

I am cleaning out my old laptop and found a bunch of Michael Malone articles reprinted on a fansite to his work that I had saved five years back. I am not sure if I or others had already posted them, but I think they are of interest (two touch on his AW as well, so maybe I should post them there.) I can't find the fansite--it may have been a geocities page (It wasn't updated past his AW run--perhaps for the best considering the second OLTL run.)

What the Dickens!

After years of contemplating his novels, Michael Malone turns his talents to an ABC soap

by Michael Neill and David Hutchings

Michael Malone insists he is not at all defensive about his new job as head writer on the ABC soap One Life to Live. "If Dickens were alive, this is what he'd be doing, " he says. Then, to further emphasize his absolute, total lack of any insecurity whatsoever, he invokes . . . who else? "Shakespeare was considered low culture in his day, " he says. Then he drags in The Novel. "Novels were low culture in the 18th century, " he says. "Lord knows what the low culture will be in the future! "

The problem is that in the literary and academic world where Michael Malone has spent his life, any conversation about low culture can move rather quickly to soap operas. As a visiting writer-in-residence, first at Yale, then Swarthmore and later at the University of Pennsylvania, Malone taught writing and produced seven novels before plunging into the frenetic world of daytime last July.

The new job pays obscenely well by the parsimonious standards of academia -- which was one reason Malone signed on. And since he joined the show, the venerable ABC soap has jumped from No. 11 to No. 4 in the daytime ratings. But there remains the nagging question: What will the neighbors think?

Many of them, it turns out, are thrilled. "I've found an astounding range of people in academia who admit they sneak home to watch soaps after teaching, " Malone says.

Still, the high-culture/low-culture rift almost kept him from even finding out about the One Life job. He had met producer Linda Gottlieb in 1980, when she was negotiating to buy the movie rights to one of his novels. When Gottlieb became executive producer of One Life last year, she thought of Malone. "She told the network she needed a novelist, someone who wrote huge-canvas novels, " he says, "and that's when a mutual friend called my wife and told her. " His wife, Maureen Quilligan, is a professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. "She didn't even bother to tell me about it, " says Malone. "She laughed and said I'd never be interested. A week later I got the call from Gottlieb, and I started watching the show. "

Malone had just finished writing Foolscap, a comic novel about vicious academic politics. (Published last fall, it won mostly positive reviews.) He had never even watched a soap opera before -- and Maureen advised him not to start. "She said, 'You're an American novelist. Your duty is to your art,' " Malone says. "But then she started watching them too, and we saw all this interlaced structure and an endless chance to tell stories. "

Storytelling has long been Malone's forte. The son of a physician father and an English-teacher mother, he was born in Durham, N.C., the eldest of six children. "I wrote plays when I was young and forced my brothers and sisters into costumes, " he says. "I'd make them sing 'Be My Little Baby Bumblebee' in bee wings. "

He went to Syracuse University and then pursued a Ph.D. in English at Harvard, where he also met Maureen. "She was a real scholar, " he says. "My dissertation was on archetypes of innocence and eroticism in American film. Hers was on the Renaissance. " It was at Harvard too that Malone began writing Painting the Roses Red, a novel about graduate school, published in 1975. "I got $2,000, " he says. "I thought I was rich and I'd go off to Europe and be this artist. " Instead he married Maureen and began to bob along in her academic wake, all the while writing his novels. "Maureen thinks it's very convenient to marry a novelist because you just move them with you from place to place, " he says. "All they need is a pencil and paper. "

Malone expects to return to writing books eventually, but for now he's in New York City five days a week, writing in his One Life office about people named Asa and Clint, while Maureen stays with daughter Maggie, 15, in the family's restored Philadelphia townhouse. Malone works long hours, often until 10 at night. He's writing soaps, but he still has standards. "Agnes Nixon, the creator of this show, had a very clear vision of what she wanted -- class problems, differences between the haves and have-nots, " he says. "I've tried to put that back in. "

The show's actors like his style. Says Erika Slezak, One Life's Victoria Lord Buchanan: "Michael has created such wonderfully complex situations. I've never had much of a relationship with my children on the show -- and that is happening now. "

There are, however, special problems with soap writing. "You get actors who come and say they are quitting, and you have to write in their departure, death, disappearance, " Malone says. "And you have to watch death. In soaps you can be dead -- or you can be dead, dead, dead. The actors we know won't come back we make dead, dead, dead. "

He receives plenty of kibitzing from home -- from both Maureen and Maggie, a high school sophomore. After school she watches the show on tape and is generous with advice. "I'll say, 'Oh, Dad, why are you putting those two together? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.' "

If only Shakespeare and Dickens had had that kind of input, think what they might have accomplished

(People Magazine February,1992)


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One Life to Live Went Looking For a New Writer and Found a Novelist

by Kathy Henderson

When ABC hired movie producer Linda Gottlieb ( "Dirty Dancing ") to revitalize its ailing soap opera "One Life to Live, " she didn't round up the usual bunch of daytime soap writers.

"What she said was, 'I'm looking for the American Dickens,' and what novelist could resist that? " said Michael Malone, who had published seven novels and worked with Gottlieb on a screenplay but had never watched an episode of a soap opera, not even "Dallas. "

"My wife thought the idea was so hilarious, she didn't pass on Linda's first phone message, " said Malone, a soft-spoken Harvard Ph.D. who looks like he could be the Pillsbury doughboy's bearded uncle. But, as he sampled the show, Malone began to realize that soaps -- or "the stories, " as he prefers to call them -- had a lot in common with his work. "I write big novels with lots of characters and interlaced structure, " he said (his most recent, "Foolscap, " is a funny adventure in an academic setting). "For someone who likes to tell stories, this is heaven. "

"One Life " needed a jolt when Malone joined it last summer. Created 24 years ago by soap doyenne Agnes Nxon, the show originally centered on the push and pull between classes and races in Llanview, a fictional suburb on Philadelphia's Main Line. In recent years, plots had grown increasingly bizarre, including the introduction of an underground city called Eterna and a story featuring rap music that Malone deemed "terrible. "

"One of the dangers of this form is to try to go around what it (a soap) can do best, " he said, "which is draw viewers into the characters' lives and emotional relationships. I wanted to re-create a sense of place and then unfold what seemed to me to be the essence of these characters. "

In taking the soap from a low of eighth place (out of 11 daytime soap operas) to a sustained rating of fourth or fifth, Malone has balanced stories about the show's core family, the Buchanans, with quirky new characters and unexpected cameo appearances by the likes of Dick Cavett (as a sleazy radio talk-show host), Paul Bartel (as a nervous lawyer) and Wallace Shawn (as a restaurateur). "One Life " reaped high ratings and extensive publicity last winter with a week-long clip retrospective during the death throes of Megan, a popular heroine, and a Valentine's Day show using classic lover poems to spotlight each of the show's couples.

"He's very clever, " Lynn Leahey, editor- in-chief of Soap Opera Digest, said of Malone, "and he takes chances with the characters in ways that might not occur to a more experienced soap writer. But he can also pull off good old cliches like 'Wife Coming Back from the Dead' and reposition characters that aren't working, which is just as important. "

In one startling transformation, Malone made Alex, a run-of-the-mill blond vixen played by Tonja Walker, into a sassy, hilarious mob widow who said to her late husband's henchman, "May I call you Bulge? " When he replied, "Only my friends call me that, " she cooed, "I'm looking forward to finding out why. " Another lovely young home wrecker turned out to be a virgin. "That's a rare one these days, isn't it? " Malone said with a laugh.

Without irony, Malone invokes Shakespeare and Spenser as forerunners of soap-style evil twins and orphaned heirs. He takes great exception to the idea that daytime drama represents "the basement " of TV.

"To do this well, you must never look down at the audience, " he said. "A few of my friends thought I would come in and do some sort of Monty Python version of a soap, but my work is very mainstream, and I believe deeply that there is a place where all audiences can meet. An example is Dickens himself, or from our culture, 'Gone With the Wind.'

There are two original American art forms: musicals and soap operas. My gosh, people in cultural studies departments are teaching soap operas now! "

Even Malone's own wife, Maureen Quilligan, has become hooked. Separations from Quilligan and the couple's teen-age daughter have been the job's major drawback (they live in Philadelphia; he lives in New York during the week), plus a brutal workload that includes overseeing a staff of nine outline and dialogue writers and editing every script personally, a task few other head writers take on.

"About 500 pages of material come out of this office every week, " he said, likening soap production to "a machine that works in this day when so many American machines don't. "

For a novelist accustomed to dreaming up characters in solitude, the three-ring circus atmosphere of a soap set was a happy surprise. "It's like having fictional characters wander into your office, " said Malone, "because the actors talk about themselves inside their characters. 'I don't wanna say that,' or 'I don't see why I have to do this' -- these are real human beings, but they are obsessed by the parts they play. " Malone confessed that he, too, finds himself intensely involved in "One Life " life: "I dream in Llanview; these people are very close to me."

With a Daytime Emmy nomination for outstanding writing already to his credit, Malone has found ABC receptive to his ideas. "If things were a disaster, the network probably wouldn't have been as good, " he said, adding that a story involving homosexuality has been planned for summer. Is the handsome Episcopal minister with the stern military father secretly gay? "No, but that doesn't mean people might not accuse him of it, " Malone said mysteriously.

Though he works hard to connect plotlines and maintain the proper storytelling tempo, Malone said he never worries that his fountain of ideas will run dry. "The network people used to say, 'Watch out, you're burning up stories,' which flabbergasted me.

In one of my novels, 'Dingley Falls,' I had planned to tell a year's worth of story in this little town, but by the time I got to page 1,200, I'd written six days. My wife said, 'Just make Sunday a church service -- you've got to stop now.' With me, there are endless things that seem to bubble out. "

(LA Times-July 5, 1992)

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Emmy Acceptance Speech:

"There are alot of us up here, but there are hundreds more that should be--other writers, the cast and crew, the producers and directors of One Life To Live--without you what we do would just be typing. And the wonderful ladies across the street at ABC-Mickey and Pat and Maxine and Barbara.. and two very extraordinary women-Linda Gottlieb, who had the amazing courage to hire all of us and to turn us loose in Llanview-thank you.....also, Agnes Nixon, who created the world that we live in... If Charles Dickens is the father of daytime, she's his daughter and we're very proud to be among her children. Thank you."

(Michael Malone)

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Scared Scriptless

by Jason Bonderoff

Creating a soap opera is a lot like playing God. Birth, death, happiness and misfortune-it's all in a writer's hands. He can make a character fall in love or fall off a cliff. He can even bring people back from the dead.

Soap writers win Emmy's, get good tables at the right restaurants, and earn big-buck salaries. So why are so many of them scared scriptless?

Maybe it's fear of the blank page. Coming up with a never-ending supply of entertaining (yet believable) plot twists for 40 or so characters-then putting lots of snappy dialogue into everyone's mouth-isn't easy. ONE LIFE TO LIVE'S talented head writer, Michael Malone, admits he's had sleepless nights worrying about the Buchanan's and their cohorts. "I do dream about the people in Llanview," he confides. "Once I had a really horrible dream where all the characters had blank faces because I didn't know what their stories were going to be. In my dream, I saw white, cut-out faces of people, all void. That was terrifying."

For inspiration, Malone keeps photos of the OLTL cast hanging in his office wall. "Sometimes, I move the photos around," he says. "I put people next to different people and think, 'How would these two people look together?' Right now, I've got Wanda Wolek's picture next to Joey Buchanan's. But don't make anything out of that," he laughs. "They're not getting invovled."

....Accident-prone stars pose another hazard..... Some emergencies are...difficult to handle. "A real nightmare," says OLTL's Malone, "is when the phone rings and you find out that Clint Ritchie [Clint] has been in a tractor accident," When that happened last year, OLTL executive producer Linda Gottlieb immediately summoned the writing staff together, "We sat down and talked," says Malone. "Actually, first we all sat down and prayed because nobody knew if Clint was going to make it or not. Then we had to make a decision about recasting, because no matter what, he was going to be out for a long time and we were building our big Viki/Clint/Sloan story."

Malone and company decided that hiring a pinch hitter didn't make sense because the whole story was based on the deep history Clint and Viki shared. How could a new actor convey that? "Besides, with a new actor, we wouldn't be able to use any Clint/Viki flashbacks [to remind the viewers of the couple's happier times]," Malone notes. So, OLTL opted to hold the Clint/Viki/Sloan story in abeyance until Ritchie's return several months later.

...Even without such worries, head writing is never a nine-to-five job. "Characters become like family. It sometimes distresses people in your personal life," admits Malone, who jokes that his wife and daughter don't always want to hear about Max and Luna during dinner.

...Today, most writers are up on world affairs, although Malone jokes, "I remember thinking, 'I really am inside the world of One Life To Live' when somebody told me that the Soviet government had fallen, and I just said, 'Oh, God, no. Are we going to be preempted?' ". But he's grateful for small favors: Malone has yet to lose a long-term story outline in his computer (just the breakdown for one script) and his dentist hasn't tried to sell him ideas while plying him with Novacain. What would Malone's worst nightmare be? "If Erika Slezak [Viki] walked into my office and said, 'I'm leaving the show tomorrow, I've decided to raise roses.' " Oh well, Malone would just have to go back to the bulletin board and play musical photos.

(Soap Opera Digest Jan 18, 1994)

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SWEEPS SAVED BY OLD MASTERS

by Marlena DeLacroix

Until recently, soaps had become so dreary and so lackluster that Marlena was ready to begin negotiations to return to her old job in Paris as a cancan dancer. Then May sweeps started, and what I saw got moi excited about daytime all over again! So what made me rethink my career change? It was superlative material created by some of the medium's best veteran writers and producers who have recently joined new shows. Here are some comments on the work turned out in May by such old masters:

Michael Malone, the new head writer of Another World (formerly of One Life to Live): What a dazzling debut the always interesting Malone made on AW last month! His scripts in his first two weeks were so bracing and sharp, I could hardly believe I was watching dusty old AW!

Malone took twin evildoers Grant and Cindy (sparkling performers Mark Pinter and Kim Rhodes), a soap super couple waiting to happen, and wrote two wedding ceremonies (one in Las Vegas and another in Bay City) that were so hilarious I darned near laughed myself silly watching them. Best of all was Cindy's line when she insisted that she be written into Grant's will before she went through with the Las Vegas ceremony: "No will, no way!"

AW was so entertaining during those two weeks that you could almost forgive Malone for doing a bare-faced ripoff of The Fugitive in establishing a badly needed backstory for Bobby Reno. (We found out Bobby is really Dr. Shane Roberts, on the run from jail for allegedly murdering a woman.) Marlena was most impressed that AW managed to stage actual chase sequences-rarely done on soaps taped on indoor sets-in and around Vicky's house as Shane ran from Detective Morris (Robert Gentry, perhaps best known as All My Children's Ross Chandler). The sequence in which incognito "Dr." Shane tended to an injured Jake in the hospital is the closest these two disparate characters have ever come to being civil to each other.

And the always dry Gentry did such a fantastic imitation of Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive that I almost excused AW for recasting Gentry on the show a mere 16 years after he stopped playing the major character Phillip Lyons on the very same soap.

Let's hope Malone's AW continues to be as good in the months to come as it was in May.

(Soap Opera Weekly, June 10, 1997)

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ATWT'S BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES

Susan Batten cried "Uncle" last month to As the World Turns Executive Producer Felicia Minei Behr.

"When I was asked to take over the role of Connor Walsh, I was told that they wanted to take the character in a new direction," explained Batten in a statement. "It became increasingly apparent that this was not possible." Batten replace Allyson Rice-Taylor in the role of Connor Walsh in March.

Batten elaborated to Digest before she left: "Most times when they recast, they give it some breathing time. I don't think I had any breathing time. [ATWT fans] are so mean about me. They say such rude things [on the Internet] and talk in such bad language about me replacing Allyson."

Indeed, the attacks on Batten did take on an unusually vicious, personal tone. It's one thing to complain---vigorously-to a show about a recast, and there's no doubt this was the wrong actress for this role. But why were viewers so angry at the actress herself? (Fans were even sending cans to the studio to urge execs to "can" Susan Batten.) "All Susan did was accept a job," points out an ATWT insider. "They were against her from the moment she stepped into that studio. Not because of her talent as an actress, but because of circumstances of timing and fan loyalty to another actress." What has ATWT learned from this? "Don't recast in the middle of a love scene!" responds the source.

Batten-by all accounts a warm, gracious lady-had enormous fan following in her previous role as Luna to One Life to Live. "There's a group who call themselves the Luna-tics," smiles Batten. "It's very sweet, and I appreciate it."

"I feel very strongly about Susan," asserts Michael Malone, who created Luna when he was head writer of OLTL and is now Another World's chief scribe. "I think she is one of the most gifted actresses I have ever worked with. She brought everything she had to Luna, and became one of-if not the most-popular characters in her age group on that show in a very short time."

Malone has some theories about Batten's immediate rejection by ATWT fans. "My little knowledge of it is that she was moved into a part almost overnight that had been played for many years by a popular actress. That is almost impossible to do. Secondly, my understanding is this character [Connor] was a rather acerbic, tightly coiled business executive. Susan is all heart and love and laughter. To box her into a character who is tight and small seems a waste of her talents."

Malone had just landed at AW when Batten joined ATWT. "Michael said to me, `You were supposed to wait for me,' so we had a laugh about that," reports Batten. "If he wrote a puppet show I would do it, because I like his work so much."

"I hope her next job will use more of what she has to offer," muses Malone. AW's Cass could use a love interest…

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AW: MALONE ALONE

by Marlena DeLacroix

As I was finishing the first draft of this column about Michael Malone's rocky head writing tenure at Another World, word came that Malone is out. Now, I'm not clairvoyant. Any AW viewer could see that Malone (a Daytime Emmy winner at ABC's nicely budgeted One Life to Live) brought some magnificently insightful and dynamic ideas to AW when he arrived last spring. But I speculate that one reason Malone's work came off as so tragically half-baked is because the NBC show is so cheaply and unimaginatively produced.

Take last summer's trial of Nick for raping Toni. Here was a bold stroke meant to diversify the show's bland canvas of characters and designed to deepen AW's flat dramatic tone both intellectually and spiritually. And what kind of courtroom set does the notoriously low-budget AW build for this showpiece of a trial? One that's about as deep and as wide as a tuna fish can! Compare this to the vast Palladian trompe l'oiel of a courtroom set Guiding Light executive producer Paul Rauch had constructed for the Reva/Annie murder-of-the-fetus trial early last summer. I rest my case.

It's unfortunate, but maybe AW just couldn't supply the resources needed to meet Malone's dramatic vision. His current front-burner story, what he has called in interviews :The Fall of the House of Cory," is grand and sweeping in its' dramatic intent. By allying Carl's ancient enemy Alexander with Rachel's bitter children Amanda (a.k.a. Hadley) and Matt in a plot to break up Carl and Rachel's marriage, Malone has primed his characters for a classic Greek family tragedy. But who does AW cast to play opposite the classically-trained Vicky Wyndham and Charles Keating (Rachel and Carl), two of the most powerful thespians on daytime television? A girl fresh out of drama school (Laura Moss, who plays Amanda) and a callow young actor who starred in the film Return to the Blue Lagoon (Brian Krause, Matt). Duh!

What's most telling is that what worked best for Malone were stories in which the only resources needed were sets and good, proven actors. Malone gave Lisa Peluso the role of a lifetime in Lila. She has been so good, in fact, that we've barely noticed that she has been given neither a plot to play nor a love interest. In the tragic diet pill story, Malone wrote beautifully for Judi Evans Luciano and Joseph Barbara, the actors who play those rare, middle-class soap characters Paulina and Joe. And, of course, Malone produced the biggest daytime miracle of all-getting me to not only love but fully appreciate the diversified talents of an actor I had long thought of as a soap world cartoon: Tom Eplin. Remember the scenes last summer at the playground in Lassiter, in which Vicky reduced Jake to tears by proposing to him? I never knew that the oft-buffoonish Jake could be so tender, or that the oft-overblown Eplin could absolutely tear my heart out of my chest. Emmy! Emmy!

Malone later said in an interview that he knew if he could finally make Vicky see why she loves Jake, the audience would fall in love with him, too. The ability to analyze, the intellectual curiosity to ask why: That, darlings, is the mark-and the miracle-of a really good head writer.

Conversely, there are many things about the rest of Malone's Aw that I flat-out didn't understand. I turned on my TV last week, and there was the otherwise delicious Kim Rhodes (Cindy) dressed in a Spiderwoman costume grinning at the fertility statue, whose electric eyes were blinking. Huh? And what the hell is that statue anyway? A prop left over from the never-aired, New Orleans-based 13 Bourbon Street? The disembodied spirit of notorious NBC stuntster James E. Reilly (Days of Our Lives former head writer)?

Mark Pinter is so wonderful he can play anything, but why in the world has his Grant morphed into comic relief as Mayor Grant Harrison? In his previous incarnation, when Grant was a haunted Shakespearan villain, Pinter's performance was the most brilliant thing on daytime television! No one was happy to lose longtime cast members David Forsyth (ex-John Hudson) or Kale Browne (Michael). Ironically, Browne put in the best work of his soap career on the way from contract to recurring, as Michael counseled son Nick during his rape trial. I can't make heads or tails of the new comic characters of Cass and Donna (Stephen Schnetzer and Anna Stuart), both of whom seem lost at sea. And what's the deal with RKK (Robert Kelker-Kelly, who plays Shane)? Talk about lost! The actor (who may or may not still be in the cast when you read this) is drowning! I just don't get it.

It's easy for amateur soap analysts to speculate that Days-happy NBC was forcing Malone to do this, and P&G was forcing him to do that. But who realy knows what happened behind the scenes out at AW's studio in Brooklyn? Maybe Malone was in over his head from the start.

All I can see is that Malone's vision never fully made it to the screen. That's a waste, because he is a gem of a head writer. Literate and humanistic, he's a natural heir to the intelligent writing tradition of Agnes Nixon and Claire Labine. In an era of shallow, dum-dum (think Sunset Beach, The Bold and the Beautiful!) soap writing, he is sorely needed. Let's hope that by the time you read this, another show will have hired Malone-one with an imaginative producer. I never thought I'd live to see the day I'd miss (Malone's OLTL executive producer-and Marlena's old punching bag) the ever-grandstanding Linda Gottlieb.

(Soap Opera Weekly, November 18, 1997)

[EricMontreal22]

A few about Billy Douglas

One Life to Live - Billy Douglas (Ryan Phillippe)

1992

Synopsis:
Ryan appeared on One Life to Live during the summer of 1992. Ryan's role was a breakthrough one: daytime television's first gay teenager. Ryan plays Billy Douglas, newcomer to the town of Llanview.

Billy is reluctant to tell anyone of his homosexuality, especially his parents. He is able, however, to confide in the town's pastor, Andrew. And then, due to the scheming of a woman Andrew scorned, rumors fly around town, that the pastor is a homosexual and has made advances on Billy.

The town quickly displays it's homophobia, with Billy's parents leading the way, demanding for the removal of Reverend Andrew from the parish. Upon witnessing the town's reaction Billy is now even more afraid to reveal his secret. Yet his silence only draws Andrew into deeper criticism.

It all comes down to a dramatic moment when the town meets at the parish where Andrew gives a riveting speech on the disease of prejudice and homophobia. Billy takes a public stand, against his father and in support of Andrew.

Comments:

A young Ryan displays his acting chops with his performance as Billy Douglas. Ryan is called upon to perform a number of difficult scenes, but none are as memorable as Billy's "coming out" to his parents. Billy shows bravery as he reveals his homosexuality to his parents so reluctant to hear his words. Ryan's strong performance is a gutsy one as well. Kudos to him for taking on a controversial role at such a young point in his career.

One Life to Live Could be a Gay One Says Popular Soap

June 12, 1992

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation applauds ABC's One Life to Live for featuring a gay character. Though Billy Douglas isn't the first gay character to appear on a daytime drama, the teenager's arrival in the fictional town of Llanview marks the first time a soap opera has featured a long-term story line dealing with homosexuality. "Lesbian and gay characters on television disappear after a single episode," said Chris Fowler, Executive Director of GLAAD/Los Angeles. "We need ongoing, major characters on television to reflect the complexity of our experience."

"The truth is that there are boys like Billy Douglas living in small towns all over America," observed Ellen Carton, Executive Director of GLAAD/New York. "We are delighted that One Life to Live is finally going to make the lives and accomplishments of lesbian and gay teenagers more visible."

Ryan Phillipe, the heterosexual actor who will play the role of Billy Douglas, said that he was initially hesitant about accepting the role. He decided to take it after learning about the high rate of suicide among lesbian and gay teenagers.

One Life to Live will not reveal the plots of the upcoming episodes, but executive producer Linda Gottlieb promises that the story line will deal with the homophobia lesbian and gay teens commonly face. GLAAD also hopes that the episodes will include a love interest for Billy. "Daytime drama centers around the romantic lives of its characters," pointed out Byron Potts, Co-chair of GLAAD/San Francisco Bay Area. "It is fitting that they lead the way in affirming that everyone has the right to love whomever he or she chooses."

Andrew fights homophobia

{C}

Summer 1992

{C} The spread of homophobia in Llanview coincided with two key events: first, the arrival of Andrew's father General Sloan Carpenter (Roy Thinnes), who had been diagnosed with Hodgkins disease and had come to town to make peace with his son. Andrew decided that while he had his father around he would try to make Sloan face the truth about his other son; Andrew's brother William, who had died of AIDS (William was also gay) The other key event was the appearance of trouble d gay teen Billy Douglas (Ryan Phillipe) who moved to town and quickly became friends with Joey. After he told Joey that he was gay, Joey was initially shocked and confused, but later accepted it and remained good friends with Billy.

One day, Billy made a decision: he was going to come out of the closet with his parents - he went to Andrew for advice. Andrew urged the boy to follow his heart and placed a hand reassuringly on Billy's shoulder. At that moment, troubled young troublemaker Marty Saybrooke (Susan Haskell) glanced in the door to the rectory and saw Billy and Andrew. Marty had been trying to seduce Andrew for weeks, but he had refused her advances. Jealous and furious to see Andrew caring for someone else when it appeared he didn't care about her, Marty formulated a horrific lie that turned the town upside-down. Going to Billy's parents, she told them that Andrew was a homosexual and was making advances toward Billy. Horrified, the Douglases immediately took action, demanding Andrew's resignation.

Once the rumor hit town, it spread like wildfire. Hate erupted everywhere - a rock was thrown through the community center ... Cassie, who was dating Andrew, received notes referring to Andrew as her "fag lover". Bigots threw dirt at Andrew and Sloan and spraypainted the rectory with graffiti. Sloan and the vestry board of St. James (Renee and Viki excluded) urged Andrew to come out and proclaim his heterosexuality. But, apart from maintaining that he did NOT try to molest Billy, Andrew refused to disclose that information. He argued that people's sexual preferences were nobody's business and that the right to privacy had to be respected. Furthermore, he arranged for the AIDS Quilt to come to Llanview and planned to add his brother's name to the quilt. This enraged Sloan and the members of the church who didn't want a "freak flag" displayed on the church lawn. But Andrew pushed on with his plans and Viki tried to get Sloan to accept them.

But the controversy refused to die out, as the new police commissioner asked lieutenant Maggie Vega (Yvette Lawrence) to name all the gay police officers in the squad. Andrew realized that the only way to end the hate was to get Marty Saybrooke to admit to her lies. But Marty refused to do so, turning self-destructive instead.

The day of the Quilt ceremony, an angry parishioner confronted Andrew outside the rectory and beat him, even as Andrew held up his Bible to defend himself. Hours later, a bruised and battered Andrew arrived at the church, ready to move on with the ceremony. But there was a crowd of church members on the steps, barring his entrance. He was no longer allowed in the church, they said, because he was a "pervert" and was seducing innocent children. Billy screamed at his parents to let Andrew through and he, Joey, Cassie and Andrew marched into the church. Sloan followed in hesitantly with Viki.

Inside the church, Andrew launched into a stirring tribute about the right to privacy, about the destructive power of hate and about the poor people who died of the AIDS virus. By the end of his sermon, Andrew had won a good portion of the crowd over. He had not, however, won over Mr. Douglas, who urged the parishioners to take back their church. It was then that Billy Douglas stood up and announced that he was gay. His father screamed for him to shut up and sit down, but Virginia Douglas rushed to her son and promised that she'd love him forever.

Andrew led the procession outside to the church lawn, where the AIDS ceremony was just getting underway. Among the tears of those who lost a friend or family member to AIDS, Andrew brought William's quilt to its new home. A hand fell on his shoulder. It was Sloan - he wanted to help lay the panel. Sloan then told Andrew all about his relationship with William. Sloan took William, as a boy, to the beach one day and taught him how to fly a kite. William was not a strong, athletic boy and the kite soon got caught in the trees. Sloan had been so enraged that his son had failed to master something so simple as a kite, he had slapped him. From that day forward, the bond between father and son had been broken. Crying and begging forgiveness from his beloved son William, Andrew and Viki comforted him. Then, together, they laid the quilt.

Llanview did not magically heal after that day - Billy still suffered bigotry at school - but Andrew had succeeded in turning Llanview from a town of fear and hate into a town of acceptance. After that day, Cassie and Andrew's relationship was stronger than ever, while Sloan and Viki were beginning to acknowledge feelings for each other

[EricMontreal22]

And the kinda hard to find Soap Opera Book's take on OLTL (published1978)

One Life To Live
The Soap Opera Book, 1978

The Viewer's Guide to the Soaps

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One Life to Live is an ABC New York show that has recently gone to forty-five minutes. It is daytime's "show of stars." Erika Slezak, Lee Patterson, Jacquie Courtney, and George Reinholt are members of the cast. These are the stars that inspire fan clubs and win straw polls in the magazines. They are the subjects of numerous stories and stunts. For example, George Reinholt has stripped for photographers and talked about it. (The picture that appeared in the fan magazine was vague below the waist.) Jacquie Courtney shared with her fans the disagreements that led to her highly publicized departure from Another World; and she has provided one of the fan magazines with spreads of photos from her personal album.

On One Life to Live, Jacquie and George portray Patricia Kendall and Tony Lord. The two had an affair about ten years ago, after which they went their separate ways (Patricia with child) only to be reunited in the present storyline. Patricia's son Brian is, of course, Tony's son, though he will be the last to know it. Patricia and Tony will not be free to marry when they rediscover that they love each other. (Tony is married to Cathy Craig, a neurotic young woman.) However, the fans love to see this couple, as a couple. Jacquie and George—"they just can't stay away from each other" says a fan magazine, referring to the course of their daytime careers. Before coming to One Life to Live, the two portrayed Alice Matthews and Steven Frame on Another World. Much of their present popularity derives from that earlier relationship.

Jacquie Courtney, as Alice, came to mean a great deal to the viewers of Another World. Her eight-year romance with George Reinholt, as Steve, is perhaps the most celebrated in all of soap history. In fact, when a man recalls with pleasant complaints his wife's old addiction to soap opera—when he says she used to greet him at the door with tears in her eyes—he is probably paying tribute to that old relationship between Jacquie and her fans. What makes Jacquie a star? She is unquestionably beautiful; she's a fine actress; and she had, at least on Another World, a role that every woman could identify with. As Patricia Kendall on One Life to Live, Jacquie continues to lead the straw polls in the fan magazines (sometimes sharing the honor with Susan Seaforth Hayes). But it's a more mature Jacquie. Not the pretty teenager grown up—but a very womanly, very interesting newspaper reporter.

The appeal of co-star George Reinholt is easy to understand. Until recently, the soaps have had few men who are not Establishment types—father figures, at least in appearance. Reinholt has always looked a little more fiery, more dangerous than your Chuck Tyier or Dan Stewart. He is brawny, rough- faced, and given to tragic expressions. He has had (on both Another World and One Life to Live) a questionable past and a respectable present—a combination no woman can resist. Unlike most soap heroes, Reinholt doesn't look as if he can be dominated by women. He is known to be very difficult to work with (a fact that accounted for Steve's sudden helicopter crash on Another World). And nobody yet has succeeded in marrying him.

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Jacquie and George are relative newcomers to One Life to Live. The other superstars on the program have been there for many years, and have very devoted followings. Erika Slezak is undeniably one of the loveliest ladies in daytime. According to her fans, she projects "warmth," in character and in person. Certainly she is kind to viewers who contact her or organize on her behalf. Erika is moreover a very fine actress (she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London). And, as every fan knows, she is the daughter of actor Walter Slezak. Erika plays Vicky Lord Riley, the heroine of the show. Her partner and usually-loving husband is Lee Patterson, another superstar.

Like Erika, Lee Patterson has many fans who are totally committed to One Life to Live. Most of these fans are women who find him sexy, even though he hardly ever unbuttons his jacket (in the prevailing young and restless fashion). As Joe Riley, Patterson is attractive mostly because he is ruggedly down-to-earth, protective of those he loves. And because of the chemistry between him and Erika. Erika Slezak and Lee Patterson are a couple the fans love to see together, and now, after many years of difficult storyline, they are.

Although Jacquie and George and Erika and Lee are the primary attractions on One Life to Live, a number of younger actors seems to be achieving star status. Among these are Michael Storm (Larry Wolek), and Katherine Glass (Jenny Wolek). Tom Berenger, who played Jenny's true love Tim, was also exceedingly popular before Tim met his untimely death. There are few soaps which so derive their popularity from individual stars.

The appeal of the show, apart from its superstars, is harder to identify, in part because One Life to Live has changed so over the past few years. It was at one time thought to be one of the young trendy shows. The Jenny and Tim romance was compared to that of Phil and Tara (All My Children). Issues were "relevant." Cathy Craig was known to be a feminist. There were a few ethnics and even a Jewish family (the Siegels). In short, storylines were such as to interest college-aged viewers.

Recently, however, One Life to Live has begun to sound more like a traditional soap. Adultery, mysterious parentage, kidnapping of babies, etc., is what is happening now—good storylines in the old mold. There have been frequent changes in storyline direction, and inexplicable (though highly interesting) changes in character, particularly among the evil set. Characters are becoming less realistic, more melodramatic. For the present, "relevant" storylines seem to have disappeared. Time Magazine described the show as a "sociologist's delight now giving way to careless love...."

One Life to Live is a soap of middling popularity. It reaches about six million households every afternoon. The presence of so many daytime superstars guarantees that it reaches some of soap opera's most ardent, and most organized, fans.

[greens_dupres]

Thanks for posting- these are interesting.

What was the deal with Susan Batten? Did OLTL let her go and she went to ATWT?

[danfling]

She chose to leave the show. She had a buisness, and she wanted more time to spend on that.

Because she was so great in the role, I suppose that it was decided to not recast the role. Her death storyline was one of the best in the show's history.