Y&R: TV Guide interview with Jill Farren Phelps

[Y&RWorldTurner]

That's if they cared at all.

I remember the great Ed Trach always reaping praise on ATWT and GL in interviews, while poor AW barely got a mention.

Post-Lemay, what AW really needed was a Douglas Marland/Nancy Curlee-type writer, which it never got. Instead you had people like Margaret DePriest, Thom Racina, Leah Laiman, Jean Passanante, et al getting their hands in that mess.

I can see why some fans liked Donna Swajeski's tenure (I did not), as it was the last time the show had a consistent and long-running regime.

[ChitHappens]

He didn't intervene when she should have been off that show because he was probably spending her money and wanted that gravy to continue coming in. Even though GH was not using her, weren't they giving AL $50k annually until they decided not to anymore?

[LoyaltoAMC]

If the numbers crunchers were so quick to remove Anna Lee from the show, what's the reasoning behind keeping Ruth Warrick and James Mitchell on contract at AMC? Except for the one appearance on the 35th anniversary, Ruth hadn't appeared on the show in at least three or four years, and Mitchell didn't appear for a couple years before his death either. Yet they remained on contract up until the very end. Possibly Agnes had some pull?

[Khan]

That's also why I'm curious as to P&G's vision for the show, since, depending on what you read or whom you talk to, P&G seemed to have written off AW around 1982 or so.

As I've said before, though, had Doug Marland not died, I think P&G eventually would have asked him to step down from AS THE WORLD TURNS and salvage AW. Then, Nancy Curlee (either with Stephen Demorest, or on her own) would have moved over to ATWT, leaving GL in the hands of someone like, say, Lorraine Broderick or (gulp) James E. Reilly.

[LoyaltoAMC]

I thought the first half of the 80s was still rather decent, especially the whole Catlin/Sally storyline with Jackie Courtney's return, the introduction of the Loves, Cass/Felicia/Wallingford/Cecil stuff circa 83-85. Allen Potter was EP, and I think Richard Culliton was HW (someone correct me if that's wrong). Not sure what happened, but it all seemed to degenerate into a hot convoluted mess in 1986, when I believe Gillian Spencer and Sam Ratcliffe were writing, and I guess that's when DePriest was called in the first time to salvage the show. For the record, I didn't care for Swajeski's tenure either. I also understand why fans liked it--because of some stability she brought--but it wasn't even close to being the show's high point.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Frankly, I wonder why PGP insisted on making GL a continuation of Texas by bringing Gail Kobe and Pam Long over to that show.

They probably would've been more helpful to the parent show Texas was spun-off from. AW, towards the end, was all about friendships, which was an area Long excelled at. She probably would have loved writing for Anna Staurt and Linda Dano as well.

[Khan]

True. However, consider the fact that GUIDING LIGHT was up against GH at that time. Granted, the audience for TEXAS was small, but those fans were devoted. P&G might have reasoned that combining TEXAS fans with existing GL fans would be enough to dethrone GH as the number-one show.

[LoyaltoAMC]

NBC daytime was a ratings disaster in the early 80s. Maybe it was decided that AW didn't need a HW who couldn't move the ratings at a fellow NBC show. It seems as though Kobe/Long were a package deal, so, like Marland, maybe they were given the option of which P&G show they wanted to write for, and they chose GL. It's so funny...as a teen I was in love with Long's Texas, and later her early GL stuff (Annabelle Simms mystery, the 4 musketeers...even the Dreaming Death) but I've been watching some of those episodes on youtube of late, and I have to say that, from the pacing to the dialogue, they come off as very amateurish to me. Very "soap writing by the numbers." Maybe they were just products of a different era, but they were not at all how I remembered them.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

It may be an unpopular opinion, but I think Long's second stint was far superior to her first stint.

Maybe it was Robert Calhoun's influence, along with Nancy Curlee and Trent Jones.

[LoyaltoAMC]

I agree. Watching her first run, it just comes off as somewhat cartoonish and "soap opera-ish" in the worst sense of the word, especially compared to the earlier Marland stuff which still holds up. I haven't rewatched any of her second stint, but also thought the writing, for the most part, was much more intelligent than her first run. Although in her defense, when she and Kobe first came to GL, it was the Reagan/Dyansty era of everything being crazy and outrageous, so maybe that was P&G mandate to them in 1983. Her later stint reflects an increasingly subdued culture in which glitz and over the top glamour were starting to go by the wayside.

[R Sinclair]

That sounds painfully familiar... (looks down at own signature banner).

[Khan]

Sorry, R, I've turned off all banners here. If I stepped on your toes, I apologize.

[MichaelGL]

Oh Jill, you haven't done contemporary soap since 1993.

[Khan]

Seriously, can someone tell me what's in R Sinclair's signature banner? This is driving me crazy!

Thanks.

[frequentsoapfan]

It says you don't belong here guns held by Jason and Dante are pointed at the Mannings