OLTL Tribute Thread

[JamesF]

I really appreciate getting a take from fans who watched this at the time. I knew from hanging round here over the years that Georgie was a Fatal Attraction/murder mystery so I was expecting it to pep things up for me. Some of it did I guess but I got that distinct JFP vibe that I remember from dipping into GH in the 00s. I seem to recall Todd referring to her as the "family blow up doll" and on the one hand I was amused but then it kind of sums up how the female characters were starting to be written...

As for HBS, the most humbling part of the rewatch was realising during her perimenopause story that she was essentially my current age... such is the cognitive dissonance of watching the 1990s with teenage me in the back of my mind.

 

Yes, that's a really good way of putting it. It didn't feel particularly exploitative to me, just very very over blown after the more nuanced (to me) style of 1994 Viki/Dorian.

I googled after the first... "recital" by TK and fell down a 30 minute rabbit hole of middle aged women posting about their reactions to it. Eye opening.

[Vee]

When the whole video sex scandal story started I think both fans and the actors were jazzed - HBS and Woods had been vocal about being not just on the backburner but 'in the freezer' for several years under the multiple post-Malone (no relation to Post Malone) regimes.* In early '98 it seemed like they were suddenly active, vital and in the thick of hot new story. (This was a key skill of JFP's in those years; she knew to play veterans early and often regularly, and keep viewers hooked - Bo, Nora, Viki, etc. rarely had any downtime regardless of story.) Then the Georgie story became a gruesome, ugly murder mystery that I felt often played like sheer hysterical camp (especially rewatching some of it recently) and then of course, the Rappaports took over the show. This gets much, much worse in 1999 and 2000 and more ruinous, until JFP leaves for GH (where she ultimately bites off more than she can chew trying to remake the network flagship soap GH playing her favorite actors in the same way in 2001, and is ultimately deposed to a mere facilitator for Bob Guza in 2002 - that is a whole other topic) and goofy but well-intentioned Gary Tomlin rights the ship somewhat.

(* - Allegedly, the Drew storyline with Victor Browne in '96 was intended by Malone to be a interracial summer romance for him and Rachel, with Drew's mother, '80s heroine Becky Lee Abbott, rewritten as a bigot against the relationship. Becky Lee also inexplicably is shown as a con artist in this period, both turns are totally OOC for the character. Later, one of the subsequent regimes I think in that same year apparently intended for Drew and Nora to sleep together. Fortunately, none of these story turns happened.

When Michael Malone returns in 2003 for his disastrous but insanely watchable second stint - it's kind of all his excesses turned up to 11, on LSD - he makes several feints at trying to reunite Bo and Nora. First by having Matthew finally be retconned into their son, after JFP made multiple attempts to destroy any viewer hope for that by having Sam run multiple paternity tests. A potentially dynamite Bo/Nora/Max/Gabrielle quad is teased early on but nuked when Frons orders the firing of the entire Holden clan. Then the Bo/Nora teases devolve into a series of kludgy, go-nowhere sequences where they are trapped together in close quarters and have people questioning their closeness, Asa tries to connive to reunite them, etc. Various new romantic spoilers like Mark Dobies' Daniel Colson and the interminable series of Paige Millers are introduced and ultimately none of it goes anywhere, possibly because of BTS reasons.

Viewers do not really respond to almost any of Bo and Nora's other romantic options from 1999-2009 minus the brief, doomed Bo/Gabrielle romance and remain vocal about wanting them back together, but it takes til 2009 - and allegedly a come to Jesus talk with EP Frank Valentini - to finally put Bo and Nora together. When they do it works like gangbusters; the actors are fully committed again, very passionate together onscreen, and whoever was responsible for the long-term split Bob Woods later comments that it was a mistake to keep them apart, saying 'we could have been printing money all these years.' It was a nice way to close out the last 3-4 years with a strong veteran supercouple.)

I do agree that the Todd redemption saga plays real different today rewatching it for the first time in many years, post-#MeToo. I understood wanting to keep Roger Howarth, I don't regret a lot of what I enjoyed with him in those years or when he returned in 2011 ready to work again, but some/a lot of it is also so gross and wrong now. You get queasy even about what you enjoyed or still enjoy and value, because you are watching in real time and with different eyes how they have recontextualized and in some ways marginalized the 1993 story you can also revisit in real time on YT.

I adored Ellen Bethea as the original Rachel - none of the others worked until Daphnee Duplaix in 2009, who was too briefly on the show. HBS said she was the only one who captured Bethea's spirit and integrity, and she was right. If the show were alive today I'd have Dan Gauthier's Kevin and Duplaix's Rachel as a tentpole married couple for the Buchanans, raising Kevin and Kelly's difficult child Zane. (Bethea is all but retired as a poet/activist in Vermont.) In rewatching over the last decade I also discovered, like you, a real love for Valarie Pettiford as Sheila who I barely remembered. The recast just doesn't work, even if Stephanie Williams was a popular veteran of both Y&R and GH. Again, were it up to me and the show were around you'd see Pettiford back as Sheila on a recurring basis from time to time at least, happily remarried to Hank.

The full first year or two of Gottlieb and Malone may become available soon. If so, I look forward to watching it make history.

Edited March 22 by Vee

[chrisml]

What has always annoyed me is how little acclaim Gottlieb got for her tenure. Yes, she made mistakes (the less said about the opening visuals the better) but she brought intelligence and a sense of purpose back to the show for most of her run. How the show did not earn an Emmy nods for best show during Gottlieb's tenure is baffling. Yet Gottlieb got a lot of criticism in the soap press and Erika Slezak still thinks Gottlieb was bad for the show while praising JFP. Once JFP took over, the stories got darker, meaner, and the female characters lost brain cells. 

[JamesF]

For my ills, this is why one day I hope I get to watch the era through because I remember reading about some absolutely wild shifts like Linda Dano, Rappaports, Ben Davidson, Skye and I'm super curious. Incidentally, I did my time with GH around 2004-5 and that was quite enough for me.

 

So that's why Becky Lee turned up for the inconsequential few months she was on?! Having not seen the 80s, she presented as a strangely Wario version of Nora (same hair but brassy and basic) and I had no idea why she was brought in. 

Another era I hope to visit. I've read snippets of the Victor Lord story and insane sounds right but I am morbidly curious.

The character/Howarth is inherently watchable to me but the tipping point is probably the overlap of Marty leaving and Viki being his protective sister. It's a really unpleasant shift. Then we get him holding Viki at knife point at the cabin which feels even more fractured.

Your comments are also making me consider my thoughts on Rachel. The recast situation had the same vibe of what I felt with Sheila in being a watered down version (and I hated the victim narrative that went on and on and on in different stories).

Having only seen a year of JFP, I couldn't agree more. And I'm not somebody who has a beef with her for ruining one of "my shows". The shift is stark.

[Vee]

That was more Guza than JFP - she was reduced to a line producer for his vision when he returned in '02 after JFP and Megan McTavish's Year of Hell. She had very little creative control after that. But woof, yes, Linda Dano's ABC Daytime Tour, Skye, Ben, etc. Don't get me started.

That is a hilarious comparison and accurate. But no, Becky Lee back in the '80s was a very sweet, calm, moral person.

Buckle up! Malone II was many things but never dull; it frequently rivaled JER's DAYS for me at that time, but it was equally mortifying to watch. There were the seeds of some decent ideas beneath the terrible execution, then there were huge debacles like Malone trying to force the robotic Jessica Morris as Jen into redoing Marty's entire story arc, right down to multiple scenes of Andrew and Nora standing around saying things like 'you remind me so much of a girl named Marty Saybrooke.' Then came El Leon Antonio, the noble peasant being executed by redcoats in Angel Square in fair maiden Jessica's Revolutionary War fantasy. That's not even the craziest stuff.

Erika and Roger loved the Viki/Todd relationship and so did I in its day, but I also think there's a natural queasiness looking back on the overall shift to focus on Todd-Todd-Todd now. Especially while rewatching '93.

Malone had also intended for one of the recast Rachels in the mid-90s to kill R.J. in a murder mystery. Tim Stickney's popularity (and presumably Malone's firing) saved him.

Edited March 23 by Vee

[DRW50]

1999 is also a period which goes for long stretches without a headwriter. There were claims JFP was just happily headwriting the show herself. Then ABC moved Megan McTavish over.

There was actually a great deal of negative attention in the soap magazines to the changes in Becky Lee, which probably shows the popularity of the character in spite of her decade away. I have sometimes wondered if that's the reason the story was junked, although there were probably about six reasons. At least she was written more like her normal self when she was back on briefly when Bo was doing his Weekend at Drew's routine.

The changes to Rachel were horrific and degrading. The material she got under Sandra P Grant felt sadistic and, at times, outright racist. Sandra was better served singing karaoke on a Bruce McCulloch SNL pre-tape a few years earlier than she was by her OLTL run.

Edited March 23 by DRW50

[Vee]

Pretty sure she was. When fans and I think the mags caught on they made her hire Megan, and unfortunately they got on like a house on fire.

Becky did return again very briefly for Asa's latest fake funeral in 2002, when all the wives turned up. She was nice enough then but had very little dialogue.

The stuff with her and Georgie hollering away at each other is hysterical - it feels like an infomercial for bad roommate situations. Then Georgie just starts whaling on her with a phone which, I'm sorry, I laughed. This is when you sublet!

For those who may not be aware, this is one instance where JFP briefly got her way at GH later on: She helped get Jennifer Bransford (Georgie) hired as the forgotten, lamented Carly #3 in 2005, when they either could not secure Laura Wright yet or were still figuring things out depending on who you ask. I remember being floored by the recast as no one had heard of JB since OLTL. It did not go well! And she was dumped as soon as Guza and co. could get a name (Laura) to replace her. Some have said it was a deliberate sabotage attempt to prime viewers for a stronger recast post-Tamara Braun, but I don't buy that; I think they were over a barrel with no big name available right away, and JFP stepped into the void (as she would later do during the 2008 writers' strike) to try to exert her will once again, and it flopped.

[Khan]

Sorta brings new meaning to the phrases "hold the phone" and "off the hook."

At the time, I loved watching the "Who Killed Georgie Phillips?" story.  For me, it was the first time I was riveted by anything that OLTL was doing since at least 1991, lol.  And I thought the climax, which aired in primetime, was particularly tense and riveting.  In retrospect, however, I can look at that story and see the excesses.

Edited March 23 by Khan

[j swift]

I was pondering how modern audiences get so easily tired of long stories.  But in comparison, how long was the Jenny/Katrina baby switch story?  It feels like it lasted for more than a year.

EDIT - I answered my own question

Please register in order to view this content

Three years, that is remarkable!  Fans today would lose their minds!

Edited March 23 by j swift

[danfling]

I loved the entire Price family.   I felt that Sheila's break-up with Troy was too sudden and not logial enough.  She then became paired with Hank.

I enjoyed Valerie Pettiford in the role of Sheila, but I also greatly enjoyed Stephanie Williams in the role.  She was so beautiful, but the character had so little to do.  The only time that her storyline was anywhere near interesing is when R. J. came to her apartment and she begged him not to hurt Hank's career.   R. J. made Sheila strip for him.  She did have a semi-emotional scene when she told Hank good-bye and that she was moving to Europe.

Dr. Ben Price was also a wonderful character to me.  I had never known until today that the show considered killing R. J., but had that storyline materialized, two likely suspects would have been both Sheila and Ben.  His final scene with Marty, though, completely puzzled me, as I had noticed no attraction between those two characters.

I also liked the storyline in which Rika Price (sister of Ben and Sheila) was involved with Troy's son.   (I think that the actor and actress later married in real life.)  Rika would have been good with Javier, R. J. or Antonio.  I beleive that it was during the Linda Gottlieb years that the rap storyline aired and Curtis Blow was a special guest and a consultant.

The best thing to have done with this storyline is to have Sheila say good-bye to Hank, leave to join Ben in Europe, then (several years later) to return with a child who may have been Hank's or may was not his.

I absolutely hated the return of Becky Lee and had not known that there was a reason for her personality change.

I liked all three of the actresses who played Rachel.   Mari Morrow may have laced the talent of the other two, but her work was acceptable.   I loved Rachel B. Grant, although i always that the she and Kelli Taylor (Tayor #2 on All My Children) could have played each other's roles just as well.

I loved the months of friendship between Max and R. J., and missed it after the writers stopped writing mutual scenes with them.  I especially hated the way the show fizzled the character of R. J. out.  Wasn't R. J. paired with Alex or Lindsey later.   I did not care for their scenes.

 

 

[danfling]

I loved the entire Price family.   I felt that Sheila's break-up with Troy was too sudden and not logial enough.  She then became paired with Hank.

I enjoyed Valerie Pettiford in the role of Sheila, but I also greatly enjoyed Stephanie Williams in the role.  She was so beautiful, but the character had so little to do.  The only time that her storyline was anywhere near interesing is when R. J. came to her apartment and she begged him not to hurt Hank's career.   R. J. made Sheila strip for him.  She did have a semi-emotional scene when she told Hank good-bye and that she was moving to Europe.

Dr. Ben Price was also a wonderful character to me.  I had never known until today that the show considered killing R. J., but had that storyline materialized, two likely suspects would have been both Sheila and Ben.  His final scene with Marty, though, completely puzzled me, as I had noticed no attraction between those two characters.

I also liked the storyline in which Rika Price (sister of Ben and Sheila) was involved with Troy's son.   (I think that the actor and actress later married in real life.)  Rika would have been good with Javier, R. J. or Antonio.  I beleive that it was during the Linda Gottlieb years that the rap storyline aired and Curtis Blow was a special guest and a consultant.

The best thing to have done with this storyline is to have Sheila say good-bye to Hank, leave to join Ben in Europe, then (several years later) to return with a child who may have been Hank's or may was not his.

I absolutely hated the return of Becky Lee and had not known that there was a reason for her personality change.

I liked all three of the actresses who played Rachel.   Mari Morrow may have laced the talent of the other two, but her work was acceptable.   I loved Rachel B. Grant, although i always that the she and Kelli Taylor (Kelly #2 on All My Children) could easily have exchanged roles.   (I thought that Ms. Taylor was extremely talented and was wasted.)

Also, One Life to Live introduced a hospital administrator who was trying to have Ben Price fired as a physician,  She could have been placed in triangle with Hank and Shelia had the show kept this character.

 

 

 

 

 

[chrisml]

Count me in as one who thought the Rachel/Georgie storyline was extremely racist and offensive. IT went along with JFP's way of dumbing down and then brutalizing the female characters (the Cassie/LK of it all still bothers me). My memory is that the Rachel part of this story did not go down well with viewers or the press. 

The Todd stuff p*ssed me off when it was happening and it still does. There was no need to redeem him or continue his story. If you want to keep the actor, make Howarth another character. It's a soap; people would deal. Only on soaps can you turn a serial rapist/murderer into a romantic lead. I think redeeming Todd and keeping the character on the canvas really harmed OLTL going forward, but I may be in the minority on that.

[Vee]

The rap storyline was the last gasp of Rauch. IIRC Gottlieb writes Rika out in early fall '91, in a nice group canvas barbecue or local festival sequence that is on YT.

I like what little I've seen of the original Ben Price with Ellen Bethea's Rachel. I didn't remember him at all. I only remembered the very boring Peter Parros, who baffled me when I tuned in to ATWT a couple years later and it seemed like they had literally transplanted the exact same character across networks, another bland doctor named Ben.

IIRC that was the great Susan Gibney, probably best for her Star Trek role as Dr. Leah Brahms, LeVar Burton's outer space crush. She was such a shrew on OLTL lol. She's still so talented and quite a chameleon.

[danfling]

Last night, I watched a lot of tapes from the Paul Rauch-era of One Life to Live.

I have a couple of questions:

In what order were the various members of the Sanders family introduced?  I imagine that it went in this order, but I would like to know and not speculate:

1.  Judith Russell Sanders (Louise Sorrell) - sister of Jon Russell

2. Jamie Sanders (Mark Philpot) - came onto the show when Joshua Cox was introduced as the new Dan Woleck

3. Charles Sanders (Michael Billington for one or two episodes and then replaced in the role by Peter Brown)

4. Elizabeth Sanders (Lois Kibbee)

5.  Kate Sanders (Marcia Cross)

Later, Mari Lynn's mother married into the family.

 

The show seemed to be heading to a Lisa-Brad-Connie triangle.  I had forgotten all about this.  This was after the character of Dr. Joshua Hall had departed the show.   Lisa's father (Lloyd Hollar) had also left, as had reporter Mike Rivers (Eriq La Salle).  The role of Connie O'Neill was being played by the second actress in the role, Teri Donohue.

Who else inferred a romance between Lisa and Brad?   How long did this last, or was it for a single episode?

[Paul Raven]

Boston Globe Sun 29 March 1981

She's Good at Being Bad  Robin Strasser has more fun as a villain on the soaps

  By Terry Ann Knopf Globe Correspondent

Bitches will be bitches, after all. As the notorious Rachel on "Another World." she had countless victims in Bay City.Indeed, the Rachel-Alice-Steven Frame triangle stands as one of the most gripping storylines In soap opera history. Who can forget the time when Rachel used the occasion of Steven and Alice's engagement party to announce that the dashing young man was actually the father of the baby she was carrying?

Now, as the notorious millionaire Dorian Lord on "One Life to Live," she has simply taken her show on the road to Llanvlew. When Pat Ashley, a talk-show host (at a TV station owned by guess who?) became involved with the rich and handsome Clint Buchanan. Dorian broke up the relationship by going to bed with Clint.

And when Dorian decided she wanted to become the first lady of Pennsylvania, she simply struck a deal with Herb Callison, the candidate for governor. The price was a large wedding In return for a large campaign contribution !

Clearly, Robin Strasser. the 35-year-old actress who was the original Rachel for more than five years and the current Dorian for the last 2 years, has carved out a career largely by playing soap opera villains. (In between Rachel and Dorian, she was Dr. Christina Karras Martin, a mentally ill doctor on "All My Children" a character she disdainfully dismisses as "a wimp, but not a goody-goody.") .

In an Interview following an appearance on Ch.5's "Good Day" show recently, Strasser readily acknowledged the similarities In her two best-known characters. "Dorian Is simply Rachel older and richer." she said, expressing sympathy for the devils, "If you told Rachel she was doing something wrong, you would hurt her feelings. I knew that character well. Dorian knows she has problems. She has been In therapy.

Yet at the height of her crimes, she's unreachable. She honestly thinks she's doing the right thing." . Strasser gravitates naturally to villains who definitely have more fun. Alter all, villains are the initiators, the catalysts, the focal points for action: The villain robs the poor, elderly woman, forecloses the farm or ties the heroine to the railroad 'tracks."You are never passive as the villain. You never sit around drinking coffee or listening to other people's problems.When ABC asked me about playing Dorian. I told them 'I don't mind being mean or hateful I do mind being boring."

But aside from the obvious dramatic advantages of playing a villain, a larger question arises as to whether certain actors by virtue of physical and personal character traits are better suited to this kind of role. To be sure, daytime villains (with some notable exceptions such as Lisa on "As the World Turns" and Irts on Texas) have been on the dark side an outgrowth of our own cultural bias which equates blackness with evil. ""In America, we think of fairer people as good. A few years ago you couldn't do a soap product commercial unless you were a blonde or redhead." said Strasser. adding proudly: "I'm the prototype for dark-haired, dark-eyed villains. I'm something indefinably ethnic."

Interestingly enough, there seem to be some distinct similarities between Rachel/Dorian and Robin. "You can't cast against an actor's instrument.-' Strasser herself said. "I will always have this body, this face, this voice.

And a certain mindset, a certain background. "All actors are the sum of their parts. And the only thing you an draw upon as an actor is your treasure-chest of memories. If you've lived through a lot.

It's possible to have a lot to call upon as a performer. My feelings have always been right there to dig into." Strasser's own real-life story would probably be rejected by a soap opera writer as much too farfetched. Born and raised in New York City. Strasser's parents were divorced when she was a baby. Her mother later was remarried to a black photographer when Robin was only three.

But In a bizarre sequence of events, the youngster became a pawn in a protracted custody battle between her own mother and maternal grandmother who disapproved of the marriage filing a court suit on the dubious grounds that the little girl was being deprived of her Jewish heritage. Grandma won the first trial, whereupon Robin was hidden by a community of anarchists In New Jersey. While Strasser's mother ultimately won the case, the couple was subsequently divorced when Robin was 11 years old.

"All of my formative years were In a state of upheaval. I'm still putting my childhoood in perspective through therapy." she said. In all likelihood, the anger and conflict from the past, are what give Robin Strasser the necessary edge to play villains so effectively. Returning to the subject of her current character, Strasser complained that Dorian hasn't been on ."One Life to Live" all that much lately.

"I just told the producer that since I'm working so little. I'm working up a little strip-tease act. I was only kidding, of course. Just a little guilt trip, you know." she said, breaking Into that diabolical laugh and sounding very much in character..