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Daytime's Master Headwriters: Their Strongest and Weakest Work


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I sampled Bailey's work at GH, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else, and from what I saw, I'd say the work she did on that show was the...least awful of her soap career. Her writing at BEACON HILL and HOW TO SURVIVE A MARRIAGE was the epitome of dreadful.

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Gag! Retch! Vomit! Hurl! Barf!

 

When Laemmle descended upon DAYS, she piously announced that its storytelling was "dull and repetitious," and needed to be overhauled. She proceeded to axe 14 characters (including the popular Bill and Laura Horton) and introduce nine new ones of her own. The tone of the show became cold and shallow, with little warmth or poignancy. Characterization was weak (she did not seem to understand the characters whom she had not created herself, and was not talented enough to create new ones with any depth) and the plots were sluggish and mundane. The show felt "ugly" to me, and was a lot duller under Laemmle than it had ever been under any other headwriter. The one character of Laemmle's to become a viable part of the series was Liz Chandler, but I think she survived because of the actress' (Gloria Loring) charisma. The character only became viable after Laemmle had been fired.

 

Primetime TV's RICH MAN, POOR MAN was an enormous success in its first year, 1976, with great writing and captivating characterizations. When it returned for "Book Two" for the following year, with the dreaded Laemmle writing it, the entire series collapsed into an unwatchable mess, and never made it to a third season.

 

In my opinion, Laemmle ranks down there with the very worst writers DAYS ever hired...and that's saying a lot! She was worse than Dena Higley and Tom Langan. I'd put Laemmle, Thom Racina, and James Reilly in the DAYS WRITERS' HALL OF SHAME.

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Yes, during the summer of 1980. In August, I think. Laemmle also killed off Bob Anderson, Brooke Hamilton, and Margo Horton. Considering that she only lasted for six months as headwriter, from April to September, 1980, her DAYS was grim, to say the least.

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I found their work to be tepid and uninspired, but still better than Laemmle's.

 

 

Deidre Hall and Jed Allan acted their hearts out during the story, and their performances were acclaimed, but I think the audience generally hated the story. There was no internet back then, but fan letters printed in the soap opera magazines expressed anger at the gruesome (and not particularly well-written) "dead baby" story.

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Yes.

 

At the end of 1979, Fred Silverman was in charge of NBC, and he demanded a complete overhaul of the show (which had become lethargic, and which was doing poorly in the ratings). When the great Pat Falken Smith took over headwriter duties a few years earlier, the show enjoyed a 9.7 (!!!) rating. With the uninspired writing of Ann Marcus, Elizabeth Harrower, and Ruth Brooks Flippen, however, the ratings had steadily sunk to 6.6. Al Rabin also claimed he wanted to eliminate the backstage negativity from the show, and between Silverman's mandate for change and Rabin's determination to improve backstage morale, major changes took place at DAYS.

 

It was a disaster. Fans were furious about the huge cast purge, and didn't care for most of the newbie characters suddenly hogging the show. Nina Laemmle's writing was the worst DAYS had endured up until that point, and the rating plummeted even further, down to a dismal 5.6.

 

Axing Pat Falken Smith in April, 1977, was the biggest mistake DAYS ever made, IMHO. None of the writers who followed her understood the show, its values, or what the audience wanted to see. I'm not so sure Al Rabin or Fred Silverman did, either, but...that's a topic for another thread. :)

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Wasn't Falken Smith working off of Bell's outlines for most of her first stint though? Wasn't part of the legal deal when Bell left to create Y&R was that he would write outlines for DAYS for a few years? 

 

It could explain why Falken Smith's first stint at DAYS is vastly superior and better than anything else she ever did...

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Yes, part of the deal for William J. Bell to get "out" of his DAYS OF OUR LIVES contract to do THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS was the he would continue to provide storyline outlines for the show, which he continued to do for years after moving over to Y&R. Subsequent writers, however, like Smith and Ann Marcus, had the discretion to use, modify, or change this material as they saw fit. After working together for so many years, and having similar styles, I would imagine Smith used a lot, if not all, of Bell's ideas, but by her own account in interviews, she was paid a huge amount of money on DAYS for "thinking creatively," and coming up with ideas of her own. The dialogue, pace, tone and "feeling" of the show while she was headwriter were also outstanding. Bell was still providing storyline outlines when Ann Marcus took over from Smith, but the instantaneous deterioration in quality under Marcus' reign was noticeable and shocking. So I would say that outlines alone do not make or break a show. It's also how the stories are handled, and how the dialogue and daily scripts are written, which has a huge impact on a soap's quality. The combination of Bell's and Smith's outlines, with Smith as headwriter, worked beautifully. The combination of Bell's outlines with Marcus' input was a disaster. I have to give Smith credit for handling DAYS so well, particularly seeing what happened to the show after she left, even with Bell's outlines at subsequent writers' disposal.

 

I would agree that Smith's first reign at DAYS was the highlight of her career, but her work at GH was also outstanding, and I even thought she wrote beautifully for THE GUIDING LIGHT during her brief tenure there.

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I wonder what Bell thought of DAYS after he left (and after Falken Smith left). So much of the core he worked hard at establishing was gutted and it was never really the same kind of show again. 

 

He probably didn't care as he was onto his own shows by then, but of course, had it not been for his success at DAYS, he wouldn't have had the opportunities he had. 

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