Llanview In The Afternoon: An Oral History of One Life to Live, by Jeff Giles out today

[SFK]

Ellen's "black bitches" line struck me as pure hyperbole, I see no reason to get all up in arms about it. It's as if someone was telling the story of Beverlee McKinsey leaving GL: Jill warned Beverlee that she had a legally binding contract, Beverlee told Jill to, "Suck my dick! Trick, I wrote the [!@#$%^&*]!", and bitch bounced.

[SFK]

I can hardly wait to read this book and I really wish I had the will to just avoid this thread and not spoil it for myself, but these anecdotes are great. It's sad that we've lost so many voices who would have made invaluable contributions to this book, but hopefuly that'll put a fire under those interested in compiling similar oral histories of other soaps.

Would love to read Nixon and Lucci being this candid about AMC. The older one gets, the less [!@#$%^&*] one gives.

[saynotoursoap]

Patricia Barry did not play Eileen. Pat Barry was Addie on Days of Our Lives and Miss Sally on Guiding Light. The original Eileen Riley Siegel was actress Patricia Roe.

Cathy Burns is still alive. She moved away from acting to become a playwright. Giles stated that some actors flatly refused to be interviewed, some did not bother to connect with him, and others simply were not interested in revisiting the past. I imagine Hirson, Burns, and Roe fall into one of those categories, if he was able to track them down. It is too bad that Dorrie Kavanaugh died so young. She was the definitive Cathy for me, and from what I understand, a force of nature in real life. I would have loved to have read her take on Reinholt.

[John]

O wonder if they talked to Brett Claywell, Scott Evans, Crystal Hynt, Farah Fath & JPL

There were ruors that FF was the instingator in the letting go of Kish & Stacy cause of Jealously

[saynotoursoap]

This is not at all off topic, but the answer depends upon how you personally define a "good" or "bad" producer. Stuart is, I believe, similar to Valentini in that he can get a show produced, stay on budget, and perhaps even come in under budget to turn a profit. If that is what you mean, Stuart was probably a good producer. If you define good producing as one who develops a strong creative vision for a series and creates a happy, creative working environment for actors and crew, then a resounding no is in order for Stuart.

I have always found him to be a complete arsewipe. Pompous, arrogant, humorless. He posted the Nielsens outside the stage door at his soaps. When the ratings were down, he blamed the actors, accusing them of not working hard enough or possessing enough talent. When the ratings rose, he was quick to take full responsibility as the leader.

He will remind you in a New York minute that he won an Emmy at The Doctors. What he will not volunteer is that the series was awarded the Emmy his very first year as producer, having inherited an already superb production from Allen Potter, who previously won the soap an Emmy two years earlier. Stuart also will not tell you that the ratings dropped every year that he was in charge. When he took over in 1973, the series was rating a 9.5. When he left in 1977, it was down to a 6.9.

As for OLTL, he seems to have a fair relationship with some of the actors, most notably Courtney and Slezak, but a wider margin of the actors did not like him or the tone he created in the studio. I would not credit him with OLTL's rise either. In my opinion it had far more to do with Gordon Russell's intriguing writing, some powerhouse acting, and a trickle-down effect from ABC's ascendancy.

[DRW50]

Most of the stories that go around about Stuart at OLTL now mostly seem to involve his alleged relationship with Courtney.

[SFK]

I'm pretty sure he's the one who told Linda Dano that she shouldn't bother seeking greener soapy pastures because she'd never play lead like (unnamed actress). Linda talks about this in a red carpet interview with Mimi Torchin, i.e., what was going through her mind when she won her Emmy.

[Vee]

My mistake on Patricia Roe/Barry. Allan Miller (Dave Siegel) mentions going through three Eileens, but I'm not sure who the third was.

So yeah, random quotes. My rationale for the spam is, it's free promotion.

Steve Fletcher (Brad Vernon): I had a hard time figuring Brad out. I'd played plenty of dark characters before, but you know, in soaps, they're episodic; you don't have that one arc with a character. [...] [i asked Peter Miner,] "Why does this guy keep repeating the same bad behavior?" He said, "Think of him as an addict." I said, "Okay, I understand that." He said, "And with addiction, there's a cyclical process. Behavior causes guilt, you escape from guilt, you repeat the behavior." All of a sudden I realized why Brad was who he was. Peter did that for me.

[...] Brad raping Karen was lifted, in part, from Streetcar Named Desire. In portraying something that awful, they also did justice to the story. My character paid a price for his actions - they didn't glamorize it. Brad and Karen didn't develop any kind of romantic connection; Brad went to jail. And he was raped in jail. It was poetic justice.

When Brad was sent away, we actually filmed in the Bergen County jail. They told me, "We're going to deal with prison rape." They didn't really dwell on it much, I must say. I appeared in a hospital scene after being beaten in the shower, and my onscreen father, Tony George, asked me, "What happened?" I replied, "They tried to make me less of a man. And they did." That was it.

Susan Bedsow Horgan: Joe [stuart] was a network guy, and boy, was he not liked. He did something very unethical to my husband, preventing him from taking another job and then firing him right after so he was completely out of work. I had the feeling that he was very tyrannical.

Robin Strasser: I loved working for Joe. He was an equal opportunity misanthrope - "I don't like actors, I don't trust actors, nobody gets any favors." It applied to everybody, and to me, whether perversely or not, that was reassuring. The playing field was level. Joe Stuart strode the Earth as our executive producer, and you could bet that when he walked on the set, everybody trembled just a bit. He wasn't afraid to fire you, he wasn't afraid to call you on stuff he didn't like, he wanted it good, and he wanted it fast. When he directed, we got out an hour early.

Joe Stuart: Oh, Robin's such a pistol.

Erika Slezak: Joe Stuart was very fond of Jacqueline Courtney, and he made sure to put her front and center. At that point, I was fine with it, because I didn't have a need to be on every day. Jackie and George had been the big stars on Another World, and I was happy to have a little time off every now and then.

Joe Stuart: There was one fan luncheon where George pissed off the entire cast - first, he announced he refused to attend such a thing, and then in the middle of it, when Lee Patterson (Joe Riley) was making his speech, George walked in. The only thing he didn't have on was a cape. I mean, it was so deliberate - you know he had someone on the inside telling him when to make his big entrance. Lee was furious.

Arthur Burghardt (Dr. Jack Scott): I admit I didn't want to do it - I didn't like the acting. And I created a large backstory for the character, including the fact that he was a womanizer who didn't want people to know about it; problem was, the story was so scaled down that we had to focus on just this one aspect of who he was.

I thought it would be interesting if Jack had opened up a new heart wing at the hospital - a place that cared for the wealthy as well as the poor. Folks from all walks of life. But [Ellen Holly's] machinations, and her need to continually make Carla the victim in all situations - it made it impossible to have a good time. The show offered me a three-year deal, but suddenly I realized that the story wasn't about him and her, it was only about her. There was nothing more for me to do.

Day in and day out, I searched for ways of personalizing and loving this rich, world-famous, selfish oaf of a doctor who fell for this frail and unhappy housewife who could never get over her ethnic in between-ness and be happy. Interestingly, neither Jack nor Carla could be happy, and I wanted a storyline that would illuminate the selfishness and self-centeredness of both their existences - which I thought was a modern tragedy.

Robert S. Woods: I used to just stare at Ellen when I started on the show. I couldn't take my eyes off her - she was so beautiful. And so good. They were having her work with this guy who was a maniac. When I first started, she wasn't working with Al Junior. [Al] was great.

Erika Slezak: Ellen was miserable with Arthur, because he was awful. He was obnoxious and irritating, and he thought he was this really big, hot [!@#$%^&*] guy. Anybody would have hated working with him, but Ellen was particularly angry because it was her story - she had outlined and written it herself, and she had begged Joe not to hire him.

Ellen Holly: In my wedding, they made Erika Slezak my matron of honor. She was very unhappy about that, because she thought she was being dragooned into my storyline to give it luster. What she didn't realize was that they were trying to bond her to the black audience. I was being used to promote her best interests.

Erika Slezak: I loved Ellen - I thought she was a wonderful actress. She's a very strong-willed, intelligent woman.

Ellen Holly: I didn't get a single close-up at my own wedding. They all went to Erika. There I was - it was my storyline, I was the bride, there was a national cover on newsstands across America asking them to tune in, and I didn't get any close-up shots.

I waited for three years, hoping Al would speak up and say something to Joe Stuart. He could have, because Joe was deferential to black males. He could have said, "Listen, man, lay off her." [...] Al watched as I was driven off that show and didn't speak a word. [...] The first two years of One Life were thrilling. After that, it's just a question of being a fireplug that keeps getting pissed on by junkyard dogs.

Julia Montgomery (Samantha Vernon): There was no working with Phil [Carey]. He was at the end of his career, and I think he was just walking through it. He'd read the teleprompter incessantly. He was from Hollywood - he was used to one or two pages a day.

Peter Miner: Phil really impressed me over the years. He had a film background, so he had never done more than seven minutes in his life when he came on the show. I went to the writers and said, "This guy has real pride. Don't do this to him. You've got to give him a chance to let him get into the rhythm - don't give him 25, 30 pages a day." Nobody got it. He was never comfortable with much over 20, but he eventually got up to where he could handle 20, 25.

Phil used to lecture people about being grateful for the show - he'd tell them about how he'd had a career in Hollywood, which had its good years and bad years, but that he was constantly broke. He said, "I came in here, and it was the first time in my life that I ever made a living that I could count on."

[DRW50]

Those are some very frank comments. Since Ellen spoke at Al Freeman's funeral I didn't realize she felt like he'd hung her out to dry at OLTL. I was a little surprised at JM's comments about Phil Carey, as I didn't feel like he phoned it in.

[Vee]

That's not even the most candid stuff in the book. It's a very essential read.

Holly has spoken about that re: Freeman before, but she also clearly valued him as a friend and colleague. She mostly seemed to take umbrage at his asking her to leave his name off her letter to ABC asking for Doris Quinlan to keep her job, which she took around for the cast to sign - a quixotic pursuit which only sped Quinlan's dismissal. Julia Montgomery has a fair bit more about Phil Carey, and there is quite a lot about Clint Ritchie's ups and downs, particularly from Erika Slezak and Linda Gottlieb.

[cassadine1991]

Wow interesting that Erika Slezak had nothing but nice things to say about Ellen Holly, but not Ellen about Erika and even Agnes

Weird everything I'm reading about Ellen and her candid feelings about OLTL remind me of Victoria Rowell and her thing with Y&R, but that's just me

[allmc2008]

Maybe all of them are related to dear sweet Linda??

[Vee]

That doesn't make an ounce of sense even by your ridiculous standards, and it trivializes what Ellen Holly actually went through.

[Paul Raven]

This all fascinating stuff and someone needs to do a series on every other soap!!

Interesting to see the different points of view...

Phil Carey had been on daytime before.

He did Bright Promise which would have been live to tape so he did have that experience.Of course, it was only 30 mins,his part was smaller than on OLTL and he was 10 years younger.

[YRfan23]

If they ever do a Y&R book of this, i woudn't be surprise if it will also be VR bashing her co-stars while people like MTS say "She was such a great dynamic on this show, and whatever this whole "afro wig" incident was, I don't understand why she's so upset, when she was laughing too.....Ed and I loved getting the chance to work with her" etc.... and VR will just be like "I always knew that Mel and Ed were trying to sabotage me, when we had to do a scene together I think she begged them to cut out the scenes because she didn't want to work with me...." etc...