3 hours ago, Vee said:

It is so good to see you back as opposed to finding ghosts of your posts at the old A.V. Club.

Nice to be back and see familiar faces (particularly yours!)  I'll try to stick around for a while. 

1 hour ago, danfling said:

Just to be thorough, All My Children did have an African-American character in its original cast.   Hilda Haynes played nurse Lois Sloan.   I never saw her, but I understand that she was Ruth's good friend and confidant during her marriage (or part of it) to Ted.    She may have also done some protesting with Amy's group.

I think that all the new ABC soap operas after the introduction of One Life to Live featured African-American characters.  (All My Children, The Best of Everyting, A World Apart, Ryan's Hope, etc.). 

 

ABC's final soap opera which was MOSTLY white was Dark Shadows, and even that show featured at least two African-American characters for brief times.

Thanks for the correction--I see she gets a brief mention in the AMC coffee table book.  Of course not a major storyline like Ellen implies...

Loving didn't have any black contract players at first, did it??  (I mean Debbi Morgan had a somewhat important role in the pilot but that doesn't count...)

No, I forgot to mention Loving, but I was thinking about the Debbi Morgan character as I was posting.   I don't think there were any African-Amerians in the premiere cast.

 

John Daniele and Louise Stubbs were later added.

3 hours ago, All My Shadows said:

Just another reason why I'd give anything to see more episodes from this truly golden age of AMC. In the ep surrounding Tom and Erica's wedding, we see brief glimpses of Frank and Caroline at the wedding while Nancy had just given birth the same day to Carl Jr.

ETA: And yes, Eric, you have been so missed!

Great to see you here  

Thanks for detailing the blanks--and yeah, man, I'd love to see some of that.  As you say, it should mostly all be there... 
Lisa Wilkinson as Nancy is one of the guests who came to Ruth and Joe's housewarming for the 25th anniversary week.

1 hour ago, EricMontreal22 said:

Great to see you here  

Thanks for detailing the blanks--and yeah, man, I'd love to see some of that.  As you say, it should mostly all be there... 
Lisa Wilkinson as Nancy is one of the guests who came to Ruth and Joe's housewarming for the 25th anniversary week.

IT'S AN ERIC!!! Hey, hope things are well. I, too, have seen past posts over at A.V. and wondered how you been.

Add me to the list of post-ers happy to see Eric back!!

@EricMontreal22 Thanks for answering my questions!

My understanding during the years was that actor Don Blakely had created the role of Frank.

 

Lisa Wilkinson left the role of Nancy and was replaced briefly by Avis McArter.  (Avis McArter had earlier played a role on Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.)

 

Lisa Wilkinson learned that Nancy was expecting a baby, then she learned in real life that she and husband John Danielle were expecting in real life.

Edited September 21, 20187 yr by danfling

15 hours ago, Taoboi said:

IT'S AN ERIC!!! Hey, hope things are well. I, too, have seen past posts over at A.V. and wondered how you been.

Ta!  Nice to be back

Does anyone remember when the Victor/Sloan psychological mirroring stuff aired? When in 1995?

I seem to recall a dream Viki had of Sloan or Victor's face being superimposed on each other, but I don't remember when or many details of the plot point. If they're on YT, great.

 

Ah - found some of it, from late '94 I think - Viki equates Sloan breaking up with her (secretly due to his illness) with Victor and Eugenia on the stairs. But I could swear there was more after the DID reveal.

 

 

The end of the second sequence may be what I remembered; Victor and Viki kissing after she kisses Sloan. Shades of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. I am a little surprised they let that air. The bit with Victor and Dorian is great. All as disturbing as when I was a little kid.

 

I started watching in the spring-summer of '93 and from the start I could tell something was very off with the legend of Victor Lord as they retold the past story in bits and pieces for a new viewer. I don't know when I consciously realized I thought he had molested her, but by this time (this was fall '94, I think?) I knew something very, very bad was coming. And I've told my story about the big reveal in 1995 many times - I didn't really know Viki had had multiple personalities before she threw Dorian down the stairs. Terrifying.

Edited September 22, 20187 yr by Vee

That period had some of the show's best production values. 

This is an interesting tidbit from a Jeff Giles interview about OLTL oral history Llanview in the Afternoon, but I don't remember this anecdote from the book. It also gives a different angle on the Clint/Viki/Sloan triangle which suggests Sloan was always fated to be removed from the story somehow - which I figured, but I didn't know it was supposed to originally end with Clint the victor earlier on. Linda Gottlieb's public comments about the early story seemed fairly down on Clint at the time and IIRC she famously said she was going to give Viki the one thing she'd never had: "An orgasm." Which is a great quote tbh.

 

Linda Gottlieb and Michael Malone lured Roy Thinnes back to play Sloan, after he played his other role on the show of Alex Crown.  He talks about how Alex was killed, and then they called and asked him to come back and he said, “My character’s dead!” Linda woo’d him back, because first he wanted to work with Erika Slezak and second, the story of the crusty old military guy who learns to accept his gay son, appealed to Roy. Unfortunately, it did not end very well.  They were playing him against Clint Ritchie, and Linda wanted to make a triangle on-screen.  Clint got hurt with a tractor accident and they had been meaning to get rid of Sloan.  But then when Clint got hurt they knew they needed to keep him around, and so they signed him to another deal.  And then when Clint got better, they decided to get rid of him.  And Peter Miner (Director, OLTL) said in the book, Roy was miserable because they would not tell him what Sloan was dying of, and he had no idea what was happening.

1 minute ago, Vee said:

This is an interesting tidbit from a Jeff Giles interview about OLTL oral history Llanview in the Afternoon, but I don't remember this anecdote from the book. It also gives a different angle on the Clint/Viki/Sloan triangle which suggests Sloan was always fated to be removed from the story somehow - which I figured, but I didn't know it was supposed to originally end with Clint the victor earlier on. Linda Gottlieb's public comments about the early story seemed fairly down on Clint at the time and IIRC she famously said she was going to give Viki the one thing she'd never had: "An orgasm." Which is a great quote tbh

 

The odd thing about that quote is I just never got that great passionate vibe between Sloan and Viki. And it is even more odd if the seeds were in place that she was with him because he was like her father. 

 

I could see it more with Viki and Ben, or I could have if I did not find Mark Derwin about as attractive as a block of cheese.

I think there was a certain swooning literary romantic angle with Viki and Sloan, but you're right that it was not quite so visceral.

 

I thought Derwin and Erika had real chemistry and thought the younger man thing was a good idea, but couldn't stand the story. He wasn't a great actor, though a very sweet and funny guy offscreen. Around 2001-2003 my brilliant fanfic idea was to have Tina return, fall for comatose Ben, and when he awoke a changed man he'd have an affair with her and promptly exit the show solo.

 

I remember this too:

 

 

Edited September 22, 20187 yr by Vee

Great stuff--I assume Susan Bedsow Horgan was in place as EP by then (which is funny as I used to always just assume the DID must have been another story under Gottlieb).  Her first year was good, then (around the time Griffith left and Malone went solo) it became a mess--of course a mess that looked great next to the following years.

Where is the Giles interview from?  Having recently reread the Giles book they do mention how frustrated Roy was with the knowledge his character had a fatal disease but for whatever reason the writers hadn't seemed to have decided what disease it would be...  So he had to play a lot of coughing, etc.

It was a Michael Fairman interview (naturally).

 

IIRC Gottlieb did mastermind the DID arc but left in '94. I thought Horgan and co. did a fairly good job of maintaining the existing style and tone until '96, though others disagree. She's not Linda Gottlieb but she's never gotten enough credit for her work, which is part of the reason I was happy to have her back at OLTL 2.0 - instantly the show was, tonally, serious and adult again.

Edited September 22, 20187 yr by Vee