Thanks @EricMontreal22 I have been searching for that for years. Is it still online or archived?

Check your messages. I had forgotten how many fascinating details it has (although being a long dissertation a huge chunk of it is filled with methodology and maybe a bit too many minute details...)

@EricMontreal22 Thank you for the 1976 notes.

You do get a sense of no love lost there with Doris and Gordon. No wonder she said what she said when she was fired.

I wonder if there were ever any occasions of viewer mail having an impact.

I never would have guessed Agnes was the one who suggested they kill Victor to raise ratings, as it feels like, just reading the synopses, he had been boxed into a place where dying only made sense.

The downside is his death seemed to hurt Viki as a character and she steadily moves into more of a secondary focus or into plots which aren't that compelling (like her angsting about Kevin being taken).

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

I never would have guessed Agnes was the one who suggested they kill Victor to raise ratings, as it feels like, just reading the synopses, he had been boxed into a place where dying only made sense.

The downside is his death seemed to hurt Viki as a character and she steadily moves into more of a secondary focus or into plots which aren't that compelling (like her angsting about Kevin being taken).

And, of course, the more time passed from when Victor was a character, the easier it was to radically and retroactively change who he was (which did some long-term damage to Viki, too).

27 minutes ago, Franko said:

And, of course, the more time passed from when Victor was a character, the easier it was to radically and retroactively change who he was (which did some long-term damage to Viki, too).

Oh it did horrible damage to Viki in the long term, and in the short term you had the damage of killing Meredith, giving up on and killing Tony, and so on. I don't know where Viki would have been without Erika, Clint/Viki, and then Rauch putting the character back at the center of the show. By the show's last years it was just Erika powering through a lot of poor and weak writing.

Edited 18 hours ago18 hr by DRW50

Thanks @DRW50 I wonder how many of those backstage people ever watched the show? To think,some of them might have had no idea about the story or characters.

Thanks for sharing!! Seeing this brought back memories from that time. The video was likely produced around July 1993, around OLTL's 25th anniversary. I recognize some of the cast shots in this video from a montage that appeared in the 25th anniversary episode.

2 minutes ago, robbwolff said:

The video was likely produced around July 1993, around OLTL's 25th anniversary. I recognize some of the cast shots in this video from a montage that appeared in the 25th anniversary episode.

I thought the same. They're definitely using some of those shots that the anniversary montage used to promote couples or potential couples of the time - including Chris McKenna's Joey and Rebecca, lol.

A planned Dorian/Danny romance. That would have caused ripples and ignited Larry/Dorian/Viki conflicts. ABC dropped it yet years later Dorian/Jason was allowed.

That Dorian/Harry romance must have been very short lived.

As for Robin, how long did her second marriage last?

I don't think that Danny had much to do. But there were so many comings and goings and stalled stories in those years.

Radio & Cable Week, Sunday, April 14, 1985

Actress: Don't make me nice By C. PASSALACQUA Syndicated writer

Who is the real ‘Alexis of Daytime’? Almost all actresses who play villainesses on soaps aspire to that accolade. But all longtime soap enthusiasts know that all but one are pretenders to the throne. The title belongs to Robin Strasser, an expert actress whose innate understanding of the subtleties of villainy make her character, Dorian Lord Callison, on “One Life to Live,” much more believable than the scenery-chewing Joan Collins on “Dynasty.” “One Life to Live” airs daily at 2-3 p.m. on ABC. Her credentials, including a Daytime Emmy as Best Actress, should guarantee job security. Not so, says Strasser. “We soap actors don’t reach a plateau of merit and status and just stay there. All it takes is a new producer and a set of writers to say ‘you’re out.’

” Indeed, “OLTL” has recently undergone such a change. Says Strasser: “I have the most respect for the taste of new producer Paul Rauch, but since he’s come on, Dorian hasn’t been working that much.” Strasser is upset over the cancellation of her story line about an older woman-younger man affair between Dorian and Dan Wolek (Ted Demers). “I was promised a hot, sexy, overdrive story,” says Strasser. “But the network slapped it down.” It’s puzzling to Strasser since such affairs are popular on nighttime soaps such as “Dynasty.”

The network told me it would destroy the audience's respect for me, she says. “Well, they don’t have respect for me. You’re talking to someone who has made a career of playing people you don’t like. You can’t give the audience what they want! This is not a popularity contest! If you lose their ability to surprise them then you lose the ability to move them.” Dorian's current story line, her romance with blue-collar Harry O’Neill (Frank Converse), is a back-burner story, not in line with Dorian’s usually devious nature. “I was told by Rauch to make Dorian more vulnerable and to ‘warm her up,”’ she says. “But now I’m so warm and affectionate I could be Kathy Noone on ‘All My Children’! (Miss Noone plays the ultrasweet Ellen Dalton), for crying out loud. I don’t think the fans buy it.”

Professionally, Strasser has a happy home life after a few years of domestic turbulence. After a messy divorce from actor Laurence Luckinbill (who subsequently married Lucie Arnaz), she married Richard Hogan, an ABC Sports executive.

I'd thought they moved on from Dorian and Dan to Dorian and Asa, lol. Two totally forgotten romances a few years later, so it is very weird to see Robin and Phil Carey cooing over each other in this period.

I can't see Dorian with the Dan of this period - I haven't watched that period in a while but I thought there were some homoerotic vibes with him and Jamie Sanders. Maybe with the late '80s Dan, Michael Palance, although he was aggressive.

I'd never seen Robin comment on the nicer Dorian of this period. It's real outlier for the character. I can see why she wasn't thrilled, although I think the break in her feud with Viki was a good thing.

1 hour ago, DRW50 said:

I can't see Dorian with the Dan of this period - I haven't watched that period in a while but I thought there were some homoerotic vibes with him and Jamie Sanders. Maybe with the late '80s Dan, Michael Palance, although he was aggressive.

All I know about the Dan in the '80s is that they did some abortive teen scene stuff with him, and then of course there was Michael Palance. And that Erika scoffed at the way they tried to reintroduce him at some point (I don't know which recast was referring to). She said they made a fuss over wanting to bring Dan Wolek back as a working-class doctor, when she remembered exactly how much money Dan had left to him in Victor's will as a boy and therefore that angle didn't make sense to her. This was in 2013 - she had and probably still has a mind like a steel trap for these details.

I'd never seen Robin comment on the nicer Dorian of this period. It's real outlier for the character. I can see why she wasn't thrilled, although I think the break in her feud with Viki was a good thing.

What's very weird is rewatching some of spring-summer '86 in order. Dorian, Viki and Tina bond over Victor's 'secret box' which has keepsakes for each of them and Viki and Dorian are on very convivial terms, hugging and bonding over Victor's love for them after all. It was odd as hell.