Why Did Beth Ehlers' Stint on AMC Fizzle?

[SFK]

I thought he had great chemistry with Natalia and Jesse, but he certainly was not an overnight success.

[soapfan770]

Ehlers' affair with Derwin destroyed her first marriage. Her affair with Rob Bogue destroyed her second.

[AMCHistory]

Ah.... I thought the Bogue marirage disintegration was attributed to Mandy Bruno.

[soapfan770]

That was Bogue's own marriage; it was Ehlers who destroyed her own marriage and at least according to Zimmer's book Bogue was suppose to leave his wife for Ehlers but changed his mind. The stuff with Bruno was later on after Ehlers left.

[glatwt]

EGO!!!! this is coming from a long BE/GL fan and i may go off topic but to me it was her attitude! GL spent YEARS treating her as the queen of the show, basically putting her on everyday and shoving her into story after story! she made that comment about not being able to "work without ricky". im sorry, but what about all them other costars she worked with for years before him? that must have been a slap in the face to the ones that were still there! and yes i agree GL may have been hell to work with it's last two yrs but the first chance she got to jump to a different show, she did it! where was the loyalty to a show that made your career and spent yrs focusing around your character? when it became tough she left, plain and simple! i have more respect for the actors who stuck it out till the end but she thought she was gonna leave and make it 'big' at a much more bigger budgeter AMC and basically they used and abused her. sorry beth dont have no sympathy for you and that comment u made at the emmy's, right next to the GL table when u first joined AMC about it "going to be a great time", well they left you hanging! i know GL would have left her with the cancellation but at least she wouldn't have come across as such a SNOB!!!! sorry for the rant but thats how i feel!

[R Sinclair]

She spoke ill of Chuck Pratt in the same interview she had disparaged her pairing with JR Martinez. That's what did her in. You're barely on a show 10 months and you claim that you know more than your boss, accuse them of making it really hard for you by pairing you with JR and say the head writer can't write? Regardless of what the popular opinion might be of Pratt's writing, he was still the head writer and consulting producer on a show that owes her not a lick of loyalty. She must've gotten it confused. She couldn't do what Kim Zimmer did on the P&G soaps over at ABC. Especially during the frat house years of 2007-2009. I think she thought being "Beth Ehlers" carried more weight than it did.

[cct]

The reason Ehlers' character fizzled was because she was hired to be the re-cast Liza (everyone was clamoring that Liza would be perfect to bring back at this point), but when fans learned that it wouldn't be Walker coming back to play Liza, Pratt decided he would "go back to AMC's beginnings" and "honor Nixon's social storyline prowess" by doing a story about the war a la Vietnam back in the day.

So Ehlers would be the pro-war, I've-been-there side and Goldin would be the anti-war, like-my-mother-Ruth side and then the two would "meet-cute" (which they did do that) and bond over their mutual hatred until it became love and they'd recreate the success they had on GL.

And being a stupid fan hoping that (once again) AMC might be back on track, I fell for it. Unfortunately, we got endless shots of these two running in the park and bickering with one another once a week until a tornado blew into town. The whole war story was never really the umbrella Cindy-has-AIDS-divide-Pine-Valley social story it was meant to be, and then by the time they pulled in Martinez (who actually had the only decent story in this "story"), there were other fish to fry with the tornado and its aftermath. Who cared about the war when Annie was in a wedding dress stabbing Erica at Fusion? (which was great, btw;MCE is the ONE actor who OWES Pratt for saving her job and making her the only spark on this show for years).

Then Ehlers, pushed to the side, became very bitter with the press, rude about Martinez, and in general, unlikeable, so when she disappeared, most fans (like me) didn't even know she had left for the longest time.

I think it was all a shame, because I remember Ehlers on GL, and I actually think she could've fit in as an AMC actress.

[Max]

Despite not saying so earlier, I still am very pissed that Ehlers left GL for greener pastures when the going got rough. But so did Jerry VerDorn, yet nobody ever seems to call him disloyal. (VerDorn is a far classier person than Ehlers, but both actors balked at having to take sizable pay cuts.) To his credit, VerDorn did an excellent job at OLTL.

[Paul Raven]

Ver Dorn was put on recurring and basically told that after 26 years he would hardly be used,so the disloyalty really started with GL.He was offered a contract at OLTL and did what he had to do.

[dc11786]

Jerry ver Dorn had been dropped to recurring. I think most fans were sympathetic to the fact the man was no longer receiving a regular paycheck and took a gig with another soap who offered him a contract.

By the time BE had left 'Guiding Light,' I wasn't watching regularly anymore, but I think GusH had become as destructive to GL as Manny and Rassie had in the years prior to 'The GusH Hour.'

[glatwt]

Max, not to argue with you but Jerry was put on recurring giving him the position to take another job worth his while, which he did! GL was not using him for yrs so he walked to a show that was willing to use him and that they did! Ehlers quit when the going got tough!! many others complained about changing in the "back of a car" or using "outdoor plumbing" but they stuck with it!! money or loyalty they stayed! everyone knew when GL switched to the new production model, they were done but they stood it out. ehlers quit in disgust when zimmer, newman, chappell, tognoni, alexander, chamberlin, etc all roughed it out giving us an end!! ehler's given her stardom, left them high and dry for greener pastures!

[cityfan01]

I still say that she would have been much more successful as Liza and probably would have been much bigger on AMC. and would have fit in better as Liza than Luner did

[DRW50]

The biggest failing with Beth Ehlers in later years was coldness and neuroses overtaking her screen persona. It was very difficult to watch. I guess this could have worked as Liza, but I'm not sure.

I would have cast her as some type of scheming, insecure rich type, like the Tylers.

[JellicleCat]

I'm sorry, but I don't understand this talk about how Ehlers should have stayed on GL out of loyalty etc. She realized that the show was doomed and looked for a new job, what's wrong with that? She has bills to pay just like anyone else. The way she went about it, and the attitude she had about it, may have been wrong, but not the decision itself. People change jobs all the time, why is it so horrible when an actor does it??

[Mitch]

Agree that Ehlers could make any decision she wanted to in regards to her career, money, etc. No actor needs to give their loyalty to a show, which at the drop of a hat can fire you (the contracts for actors were created to protect the show, so they can drop them every cycle if they chose to.) JVD was really the only actor left on the show who had ties to the Charita Bauer, old time GL, and his Ross had ties to everyone on the canvas and was in effect, the "core," character of the show. Wheeler and Davey cut him out in favor of their faves the Coopers, so he had no choice but to get the hell out of that mess.

The backlash against Ehlers is that GL turned itself inside and out to become the Gush hour and "All about Harley," take for example, the first words spoken in the new format, which was Ehlers saying "My name is Harley Davidson Cooper and this is MY town." Deas and Frankie D were kept on contract far past their expiration date to be support for her character, every man who ever came to town fell madly in love with her ( the NuDylan, who hadnt had feelings for Harley in years inexplicably dropped Bridget off camera to pine over a married woman) etc. Those were all choices of Wheeler and Kreizman who were so short sighted they decided to put all their eggs in the Gush basket..however, Ehlers didnt keep her head down while other long time vets were dropped to recurring or fired all together, she acted like she was the end all and be all of the show and that attitude seemed to have carried over to AMC, pissing off fans of both shows. Not to mention her very brittle on camera demnour, Harley went from being a warm, neurotic goofy, funny loving human character to a brittle sharp shrew, and that wasnt in the writing, it was all in Ehlers acting, which seemed to come from her personal life. Its kind of funny that her shining moment during her last years on GL was when she played Irna Phillips (knocked it out of the park is what she did) who herself was a brittle, neurotic uh, difficult woman. Maybe Ehlers SHOULD have played someone like that on a show for long term instead of the romantic heroine GL tried to make her.

And the gossip was that when Bogue went back to his wife (who he dumped as soon as Mandy Bruno looked his way) Ehlers was PISSED and tried to get him fired from the show. When Wheeler grew a backbone and wouldnt do it she made life miserable for everyone on the set, and no one was too sorry to see her go.