One Life to Live Tribute Thread

[Vee]

I really was not plugged into fandom at that age, but I remember the magazine covers screaming about it in the supermarket, and I was certainly shocked and heartbroken as a kid when Todd was killed off - I'd come to love him with first Rebecca and then Blair, despite his being this scary villain when I started watching. I also wasn't entirely surprised when he came back. I remember thinking it was a stupid waste of time that Marty insisted on marrying Dylan and that Patrick and Blair were screwing around.

No, I've never seen that interview. That's neat.

[amybrickwallace]

One of the lines of Patrick's monologue as he tried to talk Marty out of marrying Dylan, at the church, in her wedding gown, that proved prophetic: "I will build our home out of the stones on our land, made from the very earth it stands on. In the firelight, I see you holding our first child. She looks like you. She looks just like you." Of course, I'm referring to their portrayers in this case, who would go on to have two daughters of their own.

I also love how Patrick was the only one on the show not to call Marty by her nickname, but by her given name, Margaret. That is, when he didn't call her "Angel". Yes, I am a mushball!!

I give credit to both SH and TK (and also, KDP) for rising above the awful storylines they were given - Marty and Dylan's going through with their wedding, Patrick and Blair's affair (does anyone think he would have given her a second glance under any circumstance, even if he wasn't on the rebound?), and Kelly causing them to crash and lose their baby? It was especially jarring as KDP was pregnant with her first child (and JDP's second) and it was not an easy pregnancy, from what I've read.

Other than her brief appearances on PC as the ghost of Granya, did SH do any other soaps?

[Vee]

I remember gossip that Susan was up for the ill-fated Lily Walsh recast on ATWT when Chris Goutman refused to come to terms with Martha Byrne in the mid-late 2000s. She didn't get that part, or she turned it down. I don't know of her doing any other soaps.

Patrick and Marty (and most of the show, for that matter) was not the same after Michael Malone was forced out. They were coasting for a good long time after that, on the fumes from his and Linda Gottlieb's success, riding those popular couples (Patrick and Marty, Antonio and Andy, and in a more diffuse way Todd and Blair - they didn't use them as a united couple in love so much as united in angst over their not being together after he returned from the dead) without much in the way of good story for them. I loved Patrick and Marty and Antonio and Andy so I could take a lot, but it left the show in a sort of drifting limbo, which is where Jill Farren Phelps found it.

Edited April 25, 2014 by Vee

[amybrickwallace]

It's so funny, because a lot of Patrick's story sounds like it could have been written by Claire Labine, especially his first few months. It's so funny with her RH success, she never seemed to have the same effect on the character that people like Michael Malone and Susan Bedsow Horgan did.

Edited April 25, 2014 by amybrickwallace

[DRW50]

Most of what she did write for him sucked, although to be honest I thought most of his stories kind of sucked.

[amybrickwallace]

The only character I remember her for on OLTL is the parrot!! That is usually not good, LOL.

[amybrickwallace]

In the OLTL 40th Anniversary trivia book by Gerry Waggett, there is a chapter about accidents on the set. One of them was when Max and Blair were being paired again, and James and Kassie DePaiva were told to play the sex scene as rough rather than tender. When they did, the DePaivas ended up toppling over a sofa and he got a bloody lip. Ouch!!

[amybrickwallace]

Hey Carl, would you please post the OLTL Trivia Quiz as played by Bob Woods, Robin Strasser and Kevin Stapleton that appeared in the 7/29/97 issue of SOD? I LOVED whenever SOD would do quizzes with the actors!!! Thanks!!!

[danfling]

Claire Labine tried to write for R. J. and Hank Gannon. She had Hank recalling how their mother treated them as children in one scene.

[DRW50]

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[amybrickwallace]

I can't even imagine Susan Haskell as Lily. Tell the truth, I can't see her as anyone but Marty!!

Didn't JFP take over EP from Maxine Levinson? Both Linda Gottleib and Susan Bedsow Horgan would have been long gone by then.

[DRW50]

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I think Susan Haskell would have been a decent Lily, although I can't see her with Jon Hensley.

[Vee]

I believe she did, yes. My point was, the show was sort of in a holding pattern for almost two years, maybe longer, once both Horgan and Malone were gone - sort of coasting on a handful of popular couples, the leftover material from the Malone/Gottlieb+Horgan renaissance. Not much seemed to move, really, that I can recall. It got boring, definitely. I liked Téa under the Labines though I couldn't understand why the show hadn't reunited Todd and Blair, I liked Patrick and Marty, I liked Max and Maggie, one of the last of the Malone couples, but stories just sort of meandered along. You had subplots like Carlotta with Hank and Clint, which I liked, you had the Hayes family - I loved Mel and Dorian - but until JFP there wasn't much galvanizing, exciting story again. Ultimately JFP proved ruinous to the show, of course, but by the time she showed up in '98 it was just exciting to see things happening and people taking risks again. I remember it was the Georgie Phillips story with Bo and Nora that pulled me back in as a teen, and looking back it was pretty tacky but it was still something happening again. RSW and HBS were initially thrilled about it, too, about their story getting a shot in the arm - they did a gushing interview about it for TV Guide. That didn't last.

JFP told a lot of lousy stories, but she knew who to lean on to keep me watching - she played Erika Slezak, HBS and RSW all week every week, and when they came up on that big February sweeps period in 2000 where Nora learned that Lindsay had falsified Bo's fertility test results two years prior, which led to their divorce, and ran off to confront Lindsay at her wedding to Bo, I was absolutely glued to my seat. And the scenes were great. I could not stop watching. It was, ultimately, in the service of bad stories - JFP had no real intention of re-pairing Bo and Nora while her beloved Kale Browne still needed a frontburner couple - but she knew that she needed to keep them together and tease it in story perpetually, she knew how to lean on people and viewer loyalty to that history together and that made a lot of it work, superficially.

[danfling]

I liked the show before Jill Faren Phelps became the executive producer. I don't think that Todd and Blair should ever have been reunited. I liked Blair with this bartender named named Teddy. (Chad Sears played the role.)

I also LOVED Maggie and Patrick. The show should have used Andrew and Cassie more effectively.

And, pairing Cassie and Kevin is one pairing that I ABSOLUTELY HATED.

[amybrickwallace]

Point taken. Thanks for your insights, Vee!!!