One Life to Live Tribute Thread

[Vee]

That's what you get for writing your lines on your hands.

[amybrickwallace]

Yup. I think that by this time, teleprompters were no longer on the OLTL set as well.

[DRW50]

I haven't had a chance to listen to a lot of them, but OLTL audio tapes are still being uploaded (from 1977 and 1978)

https://www.youtube.com/user/artax84z

[slick jones]

I actually started listening to those a couple of weeks ago. I'm up to cd 14, which has Joe Riley finding out about his tumor, and Marco romancing Sam Vernon. The Tony-Pat-Paul triangle is prominent , as well as Will-Jenny-Brad-Lana.

[amybrickwallace]

Was George Reinholt still playing Tony then, or had the role been recast by that point?

I've been watching some of the Marty/Patrick romance on YT (I was in high school when it came on, but never really watched it. I DID read the tie-in book, Patrick's Notebook, where I noticed that most, if not all, of the dialogue was intact verbatim). I don't know how popular it was at the time, or how the triangle with Dylan Moody was received, but I think that the performances and chemistry of Susan Haskell and Thorsten Kaye transcended the written dialogue.

I wonder if it was love at first sight for them, because knowing now that the romance spilled over off-screen, the looks of longing on their faces and moments in scenes where they didn't break eye contact...was like, wow.

They left OLTL together in 1997, I know, but had their real-life relationship been made public when they were still on the show?

[Vee]

I absolutely adored Patrick and Marty as a kid.

I had been a huge fan of Susan Haskell and Marty since I'd started watching a couple years prior. I identified with her fiery character a lot, she was who I wanted to be as a little gay kid - a strong young woman with lots of big wild hair. They don't do that much anymore on soaps, they don't let young characters be a force unto themselves regardless of a pairing or an easy box to fit them in story-wise. It took them years to find a man and a partner who could match Marty (who wasn't her rapist, or Andrew, plus they'd alternately diverted or miscast the various Kevins and never pulled the trigger on that) and that was okay because Haskell could carry it. The same held true for Melissa Archer's Natalie years later, and then Kelley Missal as Dani on OLTL 2.0 last year, but I digress.

Anyway, you have to understand that my mother was big on our Irish roots and so I was surrounded by, like, the music of Clannad and [!@#$%^&*] in my house all day long, and Irish culture and all that stuff was big at the time, and so between all that and my existing love for Marty, and Thorsten Kaye's great work in the role I was hooked pretty much immediately. IIRC the IRL relationship was public knowledge pretty quickly too.

Edited April 25, 2014 by Vee

[amybrickwallace]

Thank you, Vee!! I take it that RH was a staple in your house back in the day.

Since you had already been watching before TK came aboard, what did you think of Marty with Dylan? That is, before Patrick came into the picture.

Susan Haskell deserved both those Emmys and every other accolade she got for playing Marty. What a dynamo.

I have to admit to melting every time Patrick would call her by her real name, Margaret, the only person who did.

What can I say? I am also a 30-something woman with long wild hair. It always comes back to the hair!!

[Vee]

I'm afraid it wasn't - RH left the airwaves before my time, really. I came to first appreciate it only when I got older and it started running on cable, and I had friends who were huge fans.

I didn't care for Dylan Moody. I'm not sure anyone did. I definitely didn't care about Suede, who was dead almost immediately after I started watching.

[slick jones]

Philip MacHale is the Tony Lord. The channel[i believe its Robert Sharp] has a cast list beneath each youtube episode The stories are so well plotted at this time.

[Paul Raven]

On the one hand I can understand GR's frustration at some of the writing, but if he was continually complaining then maybe he shouldn't have signed on.

If this was his modus operandi, would he be the same in any acting role, be it theater, primetime or movies? If so I don't think he would last long anywhere.

Ultimately, an actor is played to deliver the lines.If GR was so concerned,maybe he should have been a writer instead and then have to deal with actors challenging his work.

[DRW50]

I think Susan might have been with someone when she first met Thorsten, so I'm not sure when they first got together. I can't remember though, I'm just going off old memories of interviews from the period.

I think George was already gone as Tony by the time the audio tapes began.

[amybrickwallace]

She did have a boyfriend named Tom who was a doctor in Florida (he was her date at the Emmys and she thanked him in her acceptance speech).

It's funny how some RL couples can be on the same show and their chemistry doesn't always transfer on-screen, like the DePaivas. Then again, Max and Blair were never meant to be endgame, not as far as I know.

[amybrickwallace]

I don't think so, either. He seemed to be the type who could dish it out but not take it.

[Vee]

Michael Malone has talked before about how he had at one point intended for Max and Blair to be endgame, a la Gone with the Wind or something - something about Scarlett and Rhett, he has a lot of those kind of analogies. He was surprised by how Todd and Blair took off instead.

Susan Bedsow Horgan has told the story more than once about how they were approached about Thorsten Kaye, by a creative scout presumably, and given twenty-four hours to come up with something for him on their show before he was offered up to, I think, AMC. Overnight or something, she and Michael Malone came up with the character of Patrick for Marty - they knew they would need another strong male lead to off-set Roger Howarth, who was ready to leave, and so they went for it.

The DePaivas did have chemistry onscreen - especially in that one notorious scene where they make love in Vegas or Atlantic City or wherever, something that is still pretty racy for daytime. It's just that what they had was nothing compared to what they had with other people, and the pairing was boring and bad for their individual characters.

Edited April 25, 2014 by Vee

[amybrickwallace]

Thank you, Vee!!

Yes, according to a Brandon's Buzz podcast from 2011, Susan Bedsow Horgan was the guest and she did say AMC was indeed the other show in competition for TK. She and Michael Malone saw his tape and knew immediately that they wanted him, and she did mention that because Roger Howarth was leaving (for the first time) that they would need a strong male presence on OLTL.

What was the fan reaction like when Howarth left, even though it was his choice? How long was it before he came back - it was only a few months, right?

Did you ever see this clip, Vee? Classic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBUWrQ3qm5I