One Life to Live Tribute Thread

[FrenchBug82]

I don't doubt this has been litigated many times, especially at the time, but may I ask what specific points about the finale were "more putrid" than needed to be?
I can think of things I disliked and a handful of choices that don't sit well with me but I am curious what people - with the benefit of time having passed and knowing what happened next with some of the characters - feel was done "wrong" in those last few weeks.

[vetsoapfan]

Gordon Russell wrote the show into 1980, but left in the spring, as I recall.

Sam Hall, who had been Russell's co-headwriter for a few years, took over the reigns with Peggy O'Shea. 

I preferred the Russell/Hall team, but O'Shea was fine too, and I was satisfied with the show under her and Hall combined. A few years later, when she wrote the show by herself, it was noticeably weaker (but Paul Rauch was producing then, so I was not surprised and did not totally blame O'Shea for OLTL's downwards spiral).

(When O'Shea wrote for Search for Tomorrow, Mary Stuart said she was the best writer that the show had ever had.)

[danfling]

I understand that Ms. O'Shea stopped writing for daytime serials due to the interverence of the network (and possibly the producer) of One Life to Live.    I thought that her writing was wonderful!

[Paul Raven]

Gordon Russell was going to be  headwriter of General Hospital but became ill and died soon after.

[amybrickwallace]

The thing that turns most people off in the SB finale happened in the credits. The behind the scenes people were shown and credited, and the last one was Rauch. He was seen putting out his cigar with his shoe, which was and is seen as tasteless for the occasion.

[vetsoapfan]

And he would have been such a vast improvement over many of the awful writers who controlled GH in the 1980s after Pat Falken Smith departed. 

Yes, that was the most tasteless, arrogant and putrid (LOL) moment for me.

[amybrickwallace]

Exactly.

[j swift]

I was today-years-old when @vetsoapfan helped me realize that the character's full name was Wanda Webb Wolek (WWW), maybe she was the one who invented the internet?

[vetsoapfan]

She did, but then Al Gore stole the credit, LOL!

[j swift]

The etymology totally makes sense, I mean she was off screen quite often, so she needed something to fill the time, she just would have called it the world wide webb

Although just typing the phrase reminds me of the poorly constructed character, Jason Webb, whose defining qualities were his ponytail and motorcycle.  He would be filed next to Ty Moody as cougar-bait without much personality.

[amybrickwallace]

Yes, he did!!

Please register in order to view this content

[allmc2008]

And some, like me, feel that was brilliant. He tried to turn the show around but couldn't. It was very much a 'good riddance" move.

[FrenchBug82]

Can't imagine why a producer signalling "Good riddance" about a show that the audience watching loved enough to stick with to the end might have been poorly received by said audience.

I mean, come on. I don't recall that moment and, yes, SB was probably unsalvageable by then but this is classless, even if one agrees with the sentiment.

[victoria foxton]

 

 

[Paul Raven]

Interestingly Robert Milli was in the initial cast of One Life to Live and Love Is A Many Splendored Thing,in both shows playing a doctor named Jim in a budding relationship with a non Caucasian woman. in both cases the story was dropped.

Milli was replaced on OLTL by Nat Polen an  older actor, who was 55 in 1969. Milli was 10 years younger.

Was this done to eradicate any notion that Carla had been involved with Jim, who now presented a more benign fatherly image?