It's interesting to me the attempted differences with this story and the Michael Delaney story on AMC several years later. Here, Clint and Sloan were the two main characters who were presented as homophobic (with plenty of layering given to Sloan before he saw the light), although I imagine others would have gone hogwild in being bigoted if they hadn't been tied up elsewhere (like Asa). On AMC, they were, IIRC, going to have several more established characters like Adam and Palmer express homophobic views until the actors insisted their characters would not feel that way.

I think that it might have been believable if someone like Kevin had had some questionable views, and they could have used that to cause conflict for Viki and Clint as Clint might defend him and Viki would be appalled, rather than Clint himself saying all these things.

Clint didn't deliberately throw a chair at Erika, but he had been drunk, it was an accident and his fault. I won't quote the whole passage from Llanview in the Afternoon, but this is some of the other stuff from her following that extended anecdote:

Clint apologized, and a couple of years later I found out he's done the sweetest thing for me. We'd been taping this party scene - they'd go on forever [...] I've always had a bad back, so I was lying down on the floor. [...] Anyway, Maxine Levinson took me aside later and said [...] "We just did a renegotiation with Clint, and he accepted our terms, everything was fine, but he wouldn't sign unless ABC bought you a chair."

Clint would come back from lunch high as a kite - happy, everything's great. And in the half hour or 45 minutes after run-through while we were getting notes, he'd come down from the booze. He could get mean. When he was drunk, he was just appalling. In 40 years, I stopped scenes maybe four times, and one of them was with him. [...] [Clint] was respectful, and kind of sweet and funny, really. It was the alcohol that destroyed him. It was Linda Gottlieb who made him go to AA - she told him she wouldn't renew his contract unless he stopped drinking, and she told him if she caught him drinking while she was there - or if he missed a meeting - she'd fire him. And he was completely sober for as long as she was there.

But a week after she left, Roy Thinnes told me Clint went to him and said, "Hey, you want to go get a drink?" Roy said, "But you don't drink." And Clint said, "Oh, she's gone."

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by Vee

Here's the chair incident from the book:

There you have it. A lot of it was already on the board in old posts and I went back to those, I didn't feel like screenshotting from my Kindle or wherever lol.

Edited 54 minutes ago54 min by Vee

1 minute ago, Vee said:

There you have it. A lot of it was already on the board in old posts and I went back to those, I didn't feel like screenshotting from my Kindle or wherever lol.

Vee, I didn't see you had summarized before I screencapped again. I tried to edit but it wouldn't let me.

My feeling is that Ritchie got away with a lot of bad behavior ("could get mean"/chair) that should not have been tolerated. I applaud Gottlieb taking a stand and making him attend AA, but her way of getting back/warning him through the storytelling is another matter.

3 minutes ago, chrisml said:

My feeling is that Ritchie got away with a lot of bad behavior ("could get mean"/chair) that should not have been tolerated. I applaud Gottlieb taking a stand and making him attend AA, but her way of getting back/warning him through the storytelling is another matter.

I think what happened with Ritchie was a drunken accident, but it was still unacceptable. And then there's James DePaiva, who threw a chair in Gottlieb's office during a tantrum. There was a lot of that going around at ABC back then (Tony Geary too).

It's a reminder of how complicated the dynamics at a show can be when Erika seemed very fond of a producer who enabled Clint Ritchie accidentally hitting her with a chair but had little use for a producer who helped make her workplace easier.

I can see why Erika never wanted to be paired with him again, if that was her decision. I just wish she'd had better love interests. She didn't get a decent one again until Charlie, and you see how the show treated that relationship.

1 minute ago, Vee said:

I think what happened with Ritchie was a drunken accident, but it was still unacceptable. And then there's James DePaiva, who threw a chair in Gottlieb's office during a tantrum. There was a lot of that going around at ABC back then (Tony Geary too).

Completely ridiculous behavior, but it was of course acceptable from the men. Would the same actions be laughed off or accepted if the female actors did the same thing? I don't want to sound like I'm attacking Clint Ritchie, but I do think he bears responsibility for not getting help for his drinking. I also think it's sad that only Gottlieb demanded he get help and that no one else made that a condition of his employment. They let him down. I find the whole thing sad.

23 minutes ago, chrisml said:

Here's the chair incident from the book:

This is just unacceptable. And so toxic to work in such environment. I can't imagine how she must have felt. Now I have even more respect for her professionalism. Thank you for sharing.

1 minute ago, DRW50 said:

I can see why Erika never wanted to be paired with him again, if that was her decision. I just wish she'd had better love interests. She didn't get a decent one again until Charlie, and you see how the show treated that relationship.

Erika did absolutely adore Mark Derwin and the romance with Ben under JFP, and they had a considerable fanbase. I was not among them after the first couple months but I understood why some liked it. With better writing and probably another actor (though Derwin is a lovely man IRL) it could've worked for me.

I remember stories (possibly apocryphal but who knows) about both Erika and Patricia Mauceri being less than keen on being paired with Clint in the mid-late '90s - IIRC Malone moved Clint to Carlotta in '95. I thought the Clint/Carlotta material was decent and I really adored what Labine did with Viki and Clint finally confronting each other about the blow-up of their marriage in '97. I don't know if Erika actually put her weight against a reunion. I couldn't fault her for it if so, but I do think they still had wonderful chemistry. And I was not some big Viki and Clint fan growing up, coming in as I did only once was already with Sloan; I only grew to appreciate Viki and Clint together much later. It's too bad about Ritchie's demons and illness, and bad behavior, all of which he bears a lot of responsibility for. He was still so good. I do think Pam Long may have intended the Clint and Lindsay marriage to run longer before she (per JDP) was 'run off' by Phelps - it was a good idea on paper and there was a triangle element onscreen with Viki, IIRC.

I adored Viki and Charlie, but I was also just fine with her and JVD's Clint. A very different kind of Clint in many ways but Jerry was razor sharp opposite Erika. I know not everyone agrees lol.

Edited 27 minutes ago27 min by Vee

1 minute ago, DRW50 said:

It's a reminder of how complicated the dynamics at a show can be when Erika seemed very fond of a producer who enabled Clint Ritchie accidentally hitting her with a chair but had little use for a producer who helped make her workplace easier.

I can see why Erika never wanted to be paired with him again, if that was her decision. I just wish she'd had better love interests. She didn't get a decent one again until Charlie, and you see how the show treated that relationship.

In watching all the Locher interviews, I've noticed that soap actors will latch onto one or two things and forget other aspects. My sense is that Slezak was so annoyed by Gottlieb's statements about wanting to "revolutionize daytime" that she ignores all the good she did for the show.