Actors who talk down their soap past

[DRW50]

I don't think he said anything that bad, but yes, he did talk somewhat dismissively. I'd tend to agree with both sides. Before the thread gets locked, anyway.

[DeeeDee]

[DeeeDee]

You mean they didn't become integral to the canvas with tons of airtime?!

Who would have ever guessed?

[Mr. Vixen]

[DeeeDee]

[Mr. Vixen]

[DeeeDee]

[All My Shadows]

Brian Bloom's thing with ATWT is that he was young at the time and was not at all comfortable with the attention he received in the daytime community. I read an interview where he states he often felt the atmosphere was shallow and that he was objectified. The attention he received was for his looks and little more, or so he thought.

[NothinButAttitude]

So much of it in this thread. Why can't we all get along?

[sivad40]

I got to give you credit because you at least brought the receipts.

I remember posting that Leslie's days were numbered when her and Neil broke up. The response to that was she still had a story because she was a lawyer and partners with Avery. Mason was a dead man walking once they went another direction with the story he had with Hilary. Tyler wasn't going to be with any women he had chemistry with and he wasn't going to be in long term romance with them either.

[Khan]

Seriously, I liked Bloom on ATWT, and I appreciate that he felt overwhelmed at a young age by all the attention he received for his looks and whatnot, but will someone remind the dude he was lucky to have received any attention at all? Because if he ever expected to be taken more seriously as an actor, I have news for him.

[vetsoapfan]

Rosemary Prinz (ex-Penny Hughes, ATWT) was quoted in THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF TV SOAP OPERAS, by Robert LaGuardia, as claiming that terrible things were done to the actors while she appeared on the program; things she would never forgive. She doesn't specify what, although she mentions the lack of loyalty and the lack of integrity among TPTB. She says she fought with the show a lot over the "crap" they gave her to do. She admits to being difficult to work with, but her character was hugely popular, so the show kept acquiescing to her outrageous demands, finally giving her a salary of $750 per episode back in the mid-1960s...an unheard of amount for that time. When she finally decided to leave the show in 1968, she vowed never to return...except if her father were being held in a Nazi concentration camp, and only her making another appearance as Penny would get him released.

In the mid-1970s, Janice Lynde, when she was riding a wave of popularity as fragile Leslie Brooks on Y&R, gave a blistering interview for (I believe) AFTERNOON TV STARS, a monthly soap publication. Across the cover was a quote from Lynde, "There were times when I just HATED Leslie!" She claimed that her character was a "nerd," and a "nebbish," quotes I'm sure William J. Bell was thrilled to read. I was surprised she did not get fired, although, like Prinz on ATWT, Lynde was hugely popular, and probably knew she could get away with a certain amount of murder.

In the late 1970s, a series of special Daytime TV magazines were published, each one spotlighting a specific show, and including interviews with the various cast members from it. Doris Belack (Anna Wolek Craig, OLTL) held nothing back as she criticized the dumbing down of the scripts, and how the characters were written simplistically, without realistic foibles or nuance. She was so outspoken, that actor Nat Polen (Jim Craig), who was being interviewed with her at the time, remarked, "You're through, you know that!"

Of course, in that same OLTL issue, George Reinholt let loose on Harding Lemay, the headwriter of AW, a show from which he had been fired. Reinholt complained that Lemay's terrible scripts were like "a Chinese menu," incomprehensible and so difficult to learn.

He even took something of a shot as his co-star, Jacquie Courtney, who was being interviewed at the same time. Courtney was asked how she cried so effectively on camera, and Reinholt snarked to her, "Oh, YOU. Courtney cries at card tricks. Take her to a basketball game and she'll cry if somebody doesn't make the basket!"

I'm sure Reinholt was a real pip to work with, LOL!

[John]

Didnt Prinz have a 12 year contract when she first started at ATWT? Know I think legally actors cant sign contracts for more than 7 years. So the production may have been a lot worse in the 50s and 60s

[vetsoapfan]

I've heard that rumor, but I don't think she ever really had such an extended contract. She did stay for a total of 12 years, from 1956 to 1968, but says that "every time" her contract came up for renewal, she asked for more and more perks, outs to do broadway, etc., and the show kept giving in to her, because they knew how little she wanted to stay on the show. Her comments indicated that she had multiple contracts during her time on the show.

[SoapDope]

I saw an interview with Janice Lynde from a few years ago and she said if she had to do it all over again, she would have never left Y&R. She said she was so young and dumb at the time that she had nothing else to compare to it and felt she to needed to branch out and try other roles. She also said looking back that Leslie was a most fascinating character to play