Backstage Mysteries: Forever Unsolved

[vetsoapfan]

Goutman at one point referred to Katie as "America's sweetheart" (vomit), so I imagine he had an exaggerated sense of the character's appeal. Maybe he wanted to connect her to the Hughes family, so that the audience would have to tolerate her...whether we could stomach her or not. The show making Nancy Hughes a supporting player to Katie's life also baffled me.

As for Alexandra Moltke, DS let her out of her contract because she was pregnant. She later said that she was stifled playing a good girl victim, who basically wandered around asking, "What's happening?" She said she would come back to the show if TPTB allowed her to play a "bad" girl (Victoria could have become possessed, for example), but the producers declined and so Moltke was out for good.

[Khan]

Sexual harassment. What that means exactly, I can't say. But allegedly, Maeve Kinkead was suing (or was going to sue) Rauch and P&G until the latter came up with the solution of transferring her to GL and creating the role of Vanessa for her. #grainofsalt

My guess? Depending on when this incident occurred, Jacqueline Courtney. I think OL and ABC had a lot riding on her and George Reinholt joining their show and were willing to accommodate them through any means necessary.

[NothinButAttitude]

So I'm guessing this is why Maeve was MIA when Rauch came to Guiding Light in the early '00s.

[titan1978]

She was still there during most of his run. He was there from the end of 1996 to 2002.

[NothinButAttitude]

I so forgot about that. IDK why I keep forgetting that Rauch was at GL all that time.

[vetsoapfan]

My first thought was Courtney, too, which would explain Holly's decades-long bitterness towards her. She was still bad-mouthing Courtney during interviews for Jeff Gilles' book.

On the other hand, Linda Dano once gave an interview in which she spoke of joining OLTL, and how the rule was that everyone had to share a dressing room. Dano was put in with Courtney. Why would Courtney have to share accommodations with anyone else, but not Holly? I could see if the network had mandated that Courtney and Holly share Holly's room, when Courtney first joined the show, but not that Courtney take over the dressing room completely, and have a private space for herself while Holly had to change clothes in the hallway. That's just...weird.

[titan1978]

My heart goes out to Ellen Holly because she was so important to the show, she is a talented actor, and she deserved to be one of the pillars of OLTL. Her kids should have been just as front and center as Dorian or Viki's families. And I belive Rauch was terrible to her.

But she also makes my head hurt. I think she is determined to make everyone as awful as Rauch.

[Gray Bunny]

The whole Maeve Kinkead/Paul Rauch thing was weird. At first, I thought it was just the die-hard Mattessa fans whining about anything and everything under the sun. But as you watched, you couldn't help but notice repeated digs at Vanessa's age, her diminishing looks, etc. From Beth Raines, to the Reva Clone, to the doctor performing Dinah's reconstructive surgery (after she got burned). It was too coincidental to be innocent.

I think she went recurring in 1999 and finally left for good in the summer of 2000, with Kurt McKinney disappearing soon after, once his contract expired.

However, she did return for GL's 50th television anniversary in June of 2002, when Rauch was still here. I guess Rauch could at least put aside his ego for the sake of the show every now 'n then.

P.S. She originally left in the summer of 1996, with the intention of taking a year off. This was before Rauch joined the show. She actually ended up returning sooner.

[titan1978]

Does anyone remember why she was taking a year off?

Remember when Guiding Light was filled with female characters of several generations and it seemed like they all had worthy story. Paging Nancy Curlee.

[vetsoapfan]

I agree. As a vital, core, original cast member, Ellen Holly should have been central to the series as the decades passed. She was a wonderful actress, and her character was complex, layered, and interesting. I have no doubt that Raunch was terrible to her, and that she experienced bigotry within the industry, particularly in the 1960s and '70s, but her insistence that so many people were relentlessly abusive to her tends to...strain credibility. I cannot, for example, believe that Erika Slezak referred to Holly and the actress who played her mother as, "those black bitches!"

[vetsoapfan]

Alas, all of the truly great writers of the soap opera genre have either passed away, or moved away from daytime TV.

Why the networks don't recruit fresh new talent, and rely instead on tired hacks whose track record of failure cannot be denied, is another unsolved mystery!

[Vee]

I think OLTL may have actually tried to ask Ellen Holly back in 2011 before the show went off. That was a claim at one point, anyway, that she was on the wishlist. I assume she said no if it's true, as she had in 1992 or '93 for another anniversary event headed up by Linda Gottlieb. Then there was that whole horrific Geocities-esque website she did right before the show went off which called her entire tenure on the show a disgrace and heaped abuse on Agnes Nixon.

The real disgrace is how she was treated by the show early on. I don't believe every claim she makes or agree with everything she's said, but I think what became of her character was just awful and I'll always believe there was more they could've done. At least use the family, if she won't appear. You can reference her and talk about her through children and grandchildren.

[titan1978]

She should not have been marginalized. Her story made the success of the soap. People that watched the show back then (my grandmother did) still talk about that story because it was different and important. I can absolutely believe network executives and people on the show were uncomfortable with a black actress as the star of the show at that time and said and did terrible things to her during her tenure. I also think time has made her bitter to the point of hating everyone on the show. But I can't blame her.

[sungrey]

Titan, I actually think ATWT had more energy in its final months than Days does now, but that's just me. You hit the nail on the head with some of your comments.

I have to wonder if Days is the blind item about a power struggle. Someone connected with this show must know what it used to be about. The fiery spirit of the supercouples. The love stories. The romance. The intrigue. The drama.

It's almost like Tomlin or someone at NBC is saying, and pardon my French, "I know the viewers want people like Peter Reckell, Matt Ashford and Stephen Nichols back. I know they want the supercouples back, and I'll be goddamned if I give them their wish. The long-time fans can !@#$%^&*] off."

No one knows how to rescue this show and it's obvious.

[GMac]

Wasn't there a problem with MK's desire to stop dying her hair? I can't remember if Rauch or ? that it caused a conflict with.