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

[Vee]

I think any Y&R book would end up being about 300-500 pages longer due to the sheer metric tonnage of games of thrones, backbiting and egos at that show - and this OLTL book is already full of dish. It seems like every single interview I see with any long-running Y&R castmember, they all stopped giving a !@#$%^&*] about playing nice long ago. They clawed their way to the top of the heap and they tolerate each other at best and unlike the other soaps, they don't often seem to pretend otherwise. Y&R is a bloodsport.

[Chris B]

I'm reading this book as well and it's not just Ellen Holly who had negative things to say about Agnes Nixon. I don't think it's a black and white situation. Things were very hard for black people during this time, so even if you had someone like Agnes featuring black characters, it doesn't mean she could've been offensive in her handling of it behind the scenes. Nor do I doubt Ellen faced the same things other famous black actors did in terms of segregation. Now I don't necessarily believe everything as Holly remembers it, but I do believe she was constantly harassed in a subtle way and it eventually made her explode. I know how it is as a black man. People will say and do subtle things but u can't really respond since they usually aren't big enough to be obvious to most people. That's when you get accused of playing the race card.

I also feel that it's a bit of deflecting when people talk about how lovely someone is like in this case. At least acknowledge her complaints and go from there. I appreciated that when Michelle Stafford had her issues with Victoria Rowell she at least addressed the incidents Rowell accused her of and told her side. You can hardly expect someone to say "Oh yeah I was a total racist, but some transparency is nice.

[Chris B]

I'm reading this book as well and it's not just Ellen Holly who had negative things to say about Agnes Nixon. I don't think it's a black and white situation. Things were very hard for black people during this time, so even if you had someone like Agnes featuring black characters, it doesn't mean she could've been offensive in her handling of it behind the scenes. Nor do I doubt Ellen faced the same things other famous black actors did in terms of segregation. Now I don't necessarily believe everything as Holly remembers it, but I do believe she was constantly harassed in a subtle way and it eventually made her explode. I know how it is as a black man. People will say and do subtle things but u can't really respond since they usually aren't big enough to be obvious to most people. That's when you get accused of playing the race card.

I also feel that it's a bit of deflecting when people talk about how lovely someone is like in this case. At least acknowledge her complaints and go from there. I appreciated that when Michelle Stafford had her issues with Victoria Rowell she at least addressed the incidents Rowell accused her of and told her side. You can hardly expect someone to say "Oh yeah I was a total racist, but some transparency is nice.

[YRfan23]

It would be a delicious read though....

It would also give Braeden and Bergman the chance to really spill about their relationship throughout the show, and also people would get say how crazy they think Brenda (Dickson) really is vs what she still believes.....

[Vee]

Julia Montgomery (Samantha Vernon): It might have been a great storyline, but Phil Carey had sciatica; he was on Percodan every day and drinking at lunch. He was a nightmare.

Robert S. Woods: We used to go to one [bar]. Philly would call it seeing his "acting coach." They kind of knew where he was going when he talked about the coach.

Joe Lando (Jake Harrison): "Going to see the acting coach." Oh, we did that for my character's bachelor party. They shot that on a Friday night, which was crazy - to put all these guys on the set right before the weekend. We all went out and met the acting coach, who was a bartender around the corner that Phil and Clint would always talk about. We had a few martinis, came back, and hjinks ensued.

Julia Montgomery: He was a dear guy, in a way, but he was irresponsible. And I had to kiss him! You should see some of the outtakes.

Michael Storm (Dr. Larry Wolek): Phil was great. I loved Phil. I hated having to work with him, because it was like working with John Wayne - in the political respect. We differed greatly in that regard. But he was a wonderful man - a nutcase, a real character. A throwback. He was intimidating to work with - he'd had a hell of a past, and you really thought you were in the presence of someone who was bigger than you, and not just physically. But I loved him, and we got along together; we golfed a lot.

Barbara Treutelaar (Didi O'Neill): I remember one time [the Buchanan men] were over at Tavern on the Green, and a big fistfight broke out - all three of them. And then they started calling Tavern on the Green the Bucket o' Blood. They were great together.

Anthony Call (Herb Callison): I used to do this thing I called "take a cowboy to lunch," because Clint had a drinking problem, and he got kicked out of almost every restaurant in New York. I was having lunch with him at one o'clock, and he ordered one martini - I can't drink at all if I'm working - and then another one. I said, "Bucky, it's one in the afternoon!" And he said, "Well, it's six o'clock somewhere." Oh, he was bad news, but he was so much fun.

Steve Fletcher (Brad Vernon): He was a man of the world. He was a troubled man, but he was very open about how he'd struggle with his demons. And if you had some of your own, he could always help you through them. As a babe in the woods, so to speak, to have a big brother like Clint was always a comfort. I miss him.

Erika Slezak: Clint worked hard in the beginning. It was the drinking that got him in the end - but he was always good. He was always glad to be there.

Margaret Klenck (Edwina Lewis): [...] I love Bobby Woods. He's my pal. But [the Buchanans] came in, they didn't have theater backgrounds, they didn't have that ethos. It wasn't about trying to make the scenes better, or going to the director and fighting for your character. They didn't have any of that, because they came out of Hollywood. Let me put it this way: Clint Ritchie once said to me, "Look, when the red light is on, that's when I'll talk to you."

Sam Hall: Agnes hired Gordon Russell. I knew him as an actor, and he remained an actor playing a writer all during our years together. He was so busy acting that he couldn't cope with writing. Gordon charmed Agnes, though - she and I were never close at all. But she'd always call Gordon, and he'd tell her jokes to put her in a happy mood.

Peter Miner: Gordon was one of the really great head writers. He would hang around the makeup room. He occasionally acted on the show, and he developed a really close rapport with the actors. He'd pick up stuff they said - not just things they told him intentionally, but things that were going on in their lives, and he'd use it.

Brynn Thayer (Jenny Wolek): [...] He'd come downstairs every morning and ask us about our lives, and then he'd write it. It was like our secret club.

Michael Storm: [...] God love Gordon, he'd be at the coffee machine at 6:30 AM, waiting to talk to - and listen to - the actors.

Steve Fletcher: [...] The writers pulled a lot of inspiration from plays, and they'd also hang out on the studio floor and absorb what the actors were saying. You'd have conversations with people between takes, and then hear bits of them in scenes later on.

Gordon was absolutely brilliant when it came to placing bits of your personality into your character. It brought things closer to home.

Sam Hall: The whole bloody soap is supposedly based on the Annenberg family, and this is proof of how wrong Agnes was. They owned newspapers in Philadelphia, where Agnes lived. The Annenbergs are notorious. There's an Annenberg in Hollywood at this moment who's an important producer.

Erika Slezak: At some point in the '80s, they got it in their heads that Larry Wolek's son Danny was going to come back as a blue-collar doctor, and I jokingly said, "We don't have any blue-collar people in this town. They don't exist! Come on, look at our landscape!" And on top of that, I knew Danny was Victor Lord's grandson, and I remembered the scene where we read Victor's will, and how much money Victor left to Danny. I didn't understand how they were going to make him a blue-collar character.

Jozie Emmerich: It did start out with class distinctions, and I think those were always on the show. I mean, there was always white trash. [laughs] Somebody was always a wannabe - certainly, Tina Clayton, Marco Dane, and Karen Wolek were during those years. I don't think we ever got away from that, I just think different writers did different things. As long as we had writers like Gordon Russell, Sam Hall, Peggy O'Shea and Michael Schnessel, we had a continuance; we had part of it. I don't think the show got away from that, I just think it got bigger in a way. Stories were told on a broader scope.

The writing changed later, but you used to have people who truly knew literature, and truly knew how to write; they weren't just fans of the show. They truly understood how story is structured and how characters work. I remember meeting with Sam and Peggy during the storyline where Karen and Marco were on the run and joined the circus - God bless those two. I said, "This is hysterical! Where do you come up with this stuff?" And Peggy said to me, in all seriousness, "They're writing themselves." Not the actors, the characters. The characters were telling them where to go. It wasn't where they went and what they did, it was who they were.

The writers on the show were extraordinary during my time there. Sam, Gordon and Peggy were three of the most intelligent people I've ever worked with on a soap opera - they were well-read, they were experienced. Sam had great elegance and class, charm and wit. Gordon was the best raconteur in the world. They just had everything at their fingertips, and they tried new things - and they created these Buchanans who had a backstory that could have used as the basis for its own prequel, and it would have lasted 20 years. It was an adjustment.

I don't think you can stay the same. I don't think the show lost anything. There was still a lot of that class element.

Erika Slezak: I stopped worrying about job security after Joe Stuart left. [laughs] I'm sort of joking, because Joe always made it clear that all of us could be replaced, and he fired plenty of people for strange reasons.

[allmc2008]

I love you Vee!!!

[DRW50]

Some of those stories sound so unprofessional, you can see what Linda Gottlieb had to deal with when she came in. It must have been a tricky set, and personality clashes, since it sounds like some of the most professional actors (like Slezak) disliked her quite a bit.

[marceline]

I didn't realize Clint Ritchie was an alcoholic.

[LoyaltoAMC]

I'm not sure this is mentioned above, didn't Agnes offer to move Lillian Hayman and Ellen Holly and their characters over to Loving after being dumped by OLTL? I believe they declined, but she wouldn't have offered if she hadn't cared about the actors or the characters. And at this point, Agnes really had no connection to OLTL. Also, Sam Hall talks about Gordon Russell as if he were an acquaintance. Didn't they HW Dark Shadows together? Also, I barely remember Julie Montgomery's Sam in a relationship with Asa. The last romance I remember her having was with Jim Craig's nephew Mick Gordon. I thought Dorian LoPinto was established as Sam by the time they paired Sam and Asa. Poor Clint Ritchie. Didn't know his drinking was that bad. He and Candace Earley (Donna, AMC) were hot and heavy for a few years. She always seemed very down to earth...wonder if his excessive drinking pushed her away.

[Vee]

Sam Hall is just a cranky old man.

There's a lot more about Ritchie in there.

[applcin]

End of his career? He spent another 25+ years on the show and helped create a memorable, larger-than-life character. (Where did JM go?) I first started watching OLTL around the time Asa had that big birthday party to impress Samantha. I felt like Asa was a powerhouse, very charismatic at that time. Maybe PC needed the teleprompter but I think he came across strongly, I don't think the character suffered all that much for it back then. Granted, I always sort of felt like Phil and Clint were playing themselves to a degree with the whole cowboy thing (hell, CB was built around CR). It wasn't until later, when Phil was older and Asa had basically been through every conceivable storyline more than once (wives, long-lost sons, etc.), that I saw the "phoning it in" behavior which I assumed was a combination of age, tiredness and some boredom.

Maybe I'm in the minority as I had only started watching the show in the early Buchanan days and they were a big appeal to me (Clint ended up becoming my all-time favorite OLTL character) but I can understand some fans maybe felt like their OLTL changed for the worse for the shift in focus. I always felt that way about Todd Manning.

[Vee]

I have no problem with the Buchanans, and I loved Phil Carey. I'm just putting up stuff from the book.

[applcin]

I wasn't referring to you, Vee. I meant to disagree with Julia Montgomery's comment that Phil was "at the end of his career" and just threw in a mention that I enjoyed the Buchanan presence immensely, particularly Clint & Asa.

[All My Shadows]

I think, more than anything, this book really highlights the extremely different eras of the show. I'm liking the different comments from cast and crew and how defensive they are of "their" era without bashing the rest of the show.

Of the latter-day cast, a surprising contributor for me is definitely Chris Stack, who has some good things to say. I'd love to see him on/in something else. And of course, my John Brotherton. Only person from that period that I'm really missing is Jason Tam.

[Vee]

Anthony Call (Herb Callison): In the end, they made me an offer I could refuse. That's the simple truth. I was becoming a glorified extra. I knew I was in trouble - I spent a lot of time writing a couple of big-time storylines that would involve Herb without him taking over. One of them involved discovering oil under Llanview, which was an idea I really loved. The head writer, after he read it, asked me if I wanted to write for the show - nothing about getting my character involved. I was an old fart.

[...] When I really thought it was over - this is interesting. I never discussed this with Robin, because I didn't want her to feel badly about it, but when you're on a soap opera and you have a [...] leading lady, and that's what makes you special, you're dependent on that other person. I don't blame her at all, but Robin decided to take her shot at Hollywood and she left the show. It cost me big time, because that's what we had to sell, was our fighting and screaming every day. I lost a lot of my stature because of that.

Marilyn Chris (Wanda Webb Wolek): I stayed on until '93. I was no longer a single mother - my son is now 53, so he didn't need me to pay for tai chi lessons anymore [...] There weren't a lot of them, but there had been numerous things I had been unable to do, and I had to weigh that decision. The last producer I worked under was Linda Gottlieb, and like all producers, she wanted to add her shtick [sic] to the show - hers was a feminist spin, which was fun. I had a heart attack, and she wanted to look at how women are treated differently than men in that situation, and I got to work with John Fiedler, who was a charming man - may he rest in peace - and my character had a couple of oher boyfriends. [...] So Linda threw me a wonderful party. They did like four shows in one day - pieces to explain how Wanda met a man and was moving to Seattle to open a bookstore - and that was it. I don't think they ever replaced me in the role, which I take as an honor.

Brenda Brock (Brenda McGillis): I had to have some surgery, so I was down for five weeks when Linda Gottlieb came on. That was when they were just letting go of everyone, and when I came back from that leave, she met with me and told me they'd be building a storyline around me - Maggie DePriest was being brought back in as a writer at that time. I was really jazzed about it, but they didn't use me very much. [...] I stayed on for a year, not doing very much - it was great. [laughs] So when I wasn't renewed at the end of that contract, I was okay with it.

Jozie Emmerich: I would never have gotten rid of Paul Rauch - he was one of my favorite producers. I've known him since I was an agent and he was at Another World, and I think he's one of the best producers I've ever worked with. I had some difficulties with all the money he wanted, but I never, never, never tried to get rid of him.

Thom Christopher (Carlo Hesser): Letting go of Paul was the biggest mistake the network ever made with that show. Its demise started with that decision. That reservoir of intellect and taste that he brought to the show was just irreplaceable - I cannot stop praising him. The show was most vibrant with Paul Rauch. Tonja Walker and I would do scenes where the assistant director would sit in the booth and say, "They're off script." [...] But Paul trusted us to get out of it. We knew they were leaving us alone.

Linda Gottlieb: [i was sent] two weeks of the show so I could get an idea, and I [called Mickey Dwyer-Dobbin back] and said, "This is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. It's absolutely horrible." I hated everything about it - the pacing, the camerawork, the cast, the lighting. She said, "Well, if you took it over, you could change it completely. We'd give you a free hand." [...] I came in and they were doing music with little carts. There would be one cue that was 17 seconds long, one cue that was 12 seconds long. The music supervisor would roll it in live and play it, but if anything was off between the music and the dialogue, it didn't match at all. And the music was terrible, too - awful. I love music, and I thought there had to be a better way to do it. [...] All of that post-production work was really pioneered, I think, by One Life to Live.

Paul Glass (music director, 1991-2012): She raised the bar. All of a sudden, you couldn't just fade music in and out of a scene - we were playing it aggressively. It took years for everyone else to catch up. When she was in the building, you could feel the power.

Anthony Call: The Avid editing system changed everything. They started filming everything with three or four cameras, and added sweetening, that kind of thing. But they got rid of the dress rehearsal, which took something away in my opinion. Unfortunately, it became less about the acting and more about the science of getting things done.

Hillary B. Smith: Linda was very proud of all of the post-production she introduced, but it had the effect of taking control away from the actors, which I didn't like. I mean, it got to the point where you couldn't hear the phone ring during a scene, because they were laying the sound in during post. One person would see the stagehand jiggling his hand to signify the phone ringing, and the other one would have to react to that person reacting. You couldn't knock on a door. I mean...c'mon. Reacting to explosions was the worst - you'd act like there was this huge boom, and then on the screen, it was just a little pop. You'd feel like an idiot.

Michael Storm (Dr. Larry Wolek): Editing became vitally important to the show at the expense of the actors knowing what the rest of the cast was doing. The good part of that was that if your stuff was taped up front, you went home early - the bad part was that you didn't know about anything else that was going on unless you watched it on the air. [...] There was a time [...] when everyone knew [what] everyone else was doing. Not only on set, but once things were done for the day, we'd go have a drink. We had a One Life softball team that was very, very good. On the set and off the set, we were good friends. It was the happiest, most wonderful time a person could ask for, and of course when that stopped, there was resentment. I mean, Bob Woods - we were the closest of friends, and all of a sudden I don't know what he's doing! I don't see him anymore. We'd try to catch up in the halls, but we all lost track of each other and became more isolated. We worked through it - God knows the show was still succesfful - but I personally regretted losing that camaraderie.

Linda Gottlieb: Well, so what? That's probably true, but movies aren't done that way, and primetime shows aren't done that way. It isn't about that - it's about getting the best show. You don't get a good show when you're shooting in sequence; it's a ridiculous way to do things. To cling to that - people probably liked horses and buggies, too.

Thom Christopher: Michael's right - I agree with him. It was a phenomenal repertory company, and that ambience was split. It kind of got sad. The family feeling started to dissolve, and everyone had to work harder. There were some shows - and I took it as a challenge - where I didn't even have time to rehearse. That's a tough way to work.

Patricia Elliott (Renee Divine Buchanan): [...] We had one producer who shall remain nameless [Linda Gottlieb], but she came in and decided she was going to change the face of daytime, and one of the first things she did was write a great story about spousal abuse. It was a really good story, and the two actors who played the man and wife [Craig Wasson and Catherine Ann Christiansen] were excellent. It was well-done, but it was done on a six-week curve, which in daytime is kind of a blip - and she broke a cardinal rule of daytime, which is that you can't expect totally unfamiliar characters to carry that type of story on something that moves like a soap. They'll get buried. They should have had Asa beating up Renee, or pick another central married couple - then the story would have really had an impact. You have to matter to the viewers, and it takes between six and eight months to introduce a new character and have them even matter.

Suzanne Flynn (producer): Six months after I got there, I had seniority. [laughs]