The soap opera writers' discussion

[amybrickwallace]

 

It truly is a great moment to see. They never got the ratings they deserved in their heyday, but when the show was firing on all cylinders - there was nothing like it. It was quality television all the way around. They had some of the best breakdown and script writers in the business - Courtney Sherman Simon, Frank Salisbury, Patrick Mulcahey, Michele Val Jean, to name just a few. Those folks never got the individual attention/praise they deserved.

[danfling]

Did Robert Short write any episodes for the primetime "Our Private World"?   Or, were all the episodes written by Irna Phillips?  I read online that William J. Bell co-created the show.  Did he sometimes write for it also?

[denzo30]

I always see writers on soaps (back then) No idea how the 3 on air operate today have nothing really do the actual writing.  All soaps were set up with a certian theme and I believe the EP is the one who does all the driving.  I have watched certain writers on shows and thought it was amazing only to yawn at their next gig show.  I believe they dont have control of how they really want to write.  Wasn't Susan Sussman ( i think her name) bringing the Y&R to star ratings and then she writes and creates her own show Generations which was just awful and so boring..  They write based on the direction who controls it all.  Harding Lemay worked very closely with Paul Rauch on AW in the 70's and the EP knew he was doing a great job and let him have it but that is not typically the case

 

 

[Contessa Donatella]

 

OH! I am so glad you've done this list in this fashion. Of course we don't agree about everyone. However, I adored Nancy Curlee Demorest, Pam K. Long, Millee Taggart, Bridget & Jerome, felt totally sorry for Claire because she had only a year there, pitched a great same sex story for Holly & Olivia & got shot down & then fought pretty much non-stop with Rauch & they even fired her & her son but then rehired them-crazy; I  could not stand B&E at GL even though I liked them at other shows; detested the Nursery Rhyme story & know that Maureen hated doing it/also detested clone, walking through painting & time travel. GL is not Reilly's ball of wax. I don't like McTavish anywhere; I was okay with Lucky & Kreizman; I adore Jilly! Last and not least, I could not stand anything at all about "ConWest" - both the EP & the HW, did not belong at GL, especially not near the end. Weston was a nightmare in an interview, for just one example. And, he spent too much. I don't have the quote I'm thinking of right at hand but Jill Lorie, when speaking of Gus's motorcycle death, says that what's important about death on a soap opera is what you make out of it. It is similar to Nancy Curlee's quote about Mo's death, which I have somewhere around here.

[Contessa Donatella]

GL Head writer Nancy Curlee Demorest had this to say when asked if she had any story regrets over the years: "Although Maureen's death was a lynchpin in a carefully conceived and well-executed story, Ellen Parker was so fine, and so well loved, that her absence left a hole in the show that was later hard to fill." ... 'Mo', Reardon by birth, Bauer by marriage, Michelle's 'mother' by circumstance, tentpole legacy character, Roger's only real friend, lost to the ages ...

 

On one page there is a clip of the Roger/Holly/Marital Rape scene & after the clip, each actor speaks.
     Zaslow: When people ask me what scene, what story I was the most proud of, it's this, it's the rape. For that we used hand-held cameras for the first time, to give people the sense, the feeling of Holly being menaced by Roger. And, well, it's like this, we did it in one day.
     Garrett: No soap had previously done this, dealt with marital rape and it was just beginning to come out in the real public view, as well. To this day I get letters from women who are victims of danger in their own homes, telling me what the show meant to them, and means to them, still. Holly took Roger to court and they twisted it all around and tried to make it seem that she had done something to cause it, something wrong. Well, that part of the story went on for days and I would walk home, and Holly was afraid and I was afraid. And, I would say over and over and over again, "It's not my life. It's Holly's life. It's not my life. It's Holly's life. It's not my life. It's Holly's life."

 

Elana Levine is a professor with the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee who will publish a book in © Mar. 2020 HER STORIES: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History."     https://www.dukeupress.edu/her-stories

 

"At NBC programmers admitted that they went to a 90-minute show 'because they couldn't come up with a better idea.'"

 

From a Wiki column with Vicky Wyndham, recently:
 

"Oh my God. And also Harding Lemay, Pete Lemay, writing wonderfully for seven years; they just wrote so wonderfully for all of us that he created the myth that then I was able to dine out on, for the rest of my life on that show. Together we created this character that had enough substance and a track record for the show. Even after he left and it went to ninety minutes for two years. It gave the show a certain track record and my character became the anchor person. You have to have a certain amount of range and do different kinds of acting. You know you’ve got to … if you can get any comedy in anywhere, you’ve got to try for it. Many actors aren’t that flexible. I can be real nasty, really quick. That was good. So it didn’t matter that she became a good character. She still had all those edges. She could be sarcastic. She could be bitchy. She could be manipulating in good ways and bad. And she could be awfully funny. She also had this artistic side. Then I had these wonderful fans who loved the show and it’s really amazing, really quite a phenomena, because those fans outwardly they looked like pretty simple folk, typical ladies, but they are amazingly bright. And so appreciative when they know you’re giving them everything you’ve got. Audiences are like that. Hollywood, whoever Hollywood is, keeps forgetting audiences aren’t stupid!" - Victoria Wyndham about Pete Lemay

[robbwolff]

 

I believe Lucky Gold was responsible for the Reva time travel story, not Brown and Esensten. That happened in 2001, long after Brown and Esensten were gone.

[Contessa Donatella]

After McKinsey left the role of Iris in November 1981, NBC's Texas eventually lost one million viewers in the Nielsen ratings and was canceled in 1982.

 

MARY STUART...If America's three contributions to world culture are musical comedy, jazz, and soap opera, …

 

ROY WINSOR ...lf Irna Phillips is to be called the mother of soap opera, then Roy Winsor must be called father of the television soap opera

 

[Fanlore has it that they were working her long days, 4 days per week. Fanlore also has it that Chris Goutman wanted Bev on "Another World" at the very end of the show, briefly, and that P&G wouldn't have any of it because they were bent out of shape at her departure from "Guiding Light" years before.]

 

 

Oh, thank you for the clarification.

 

 

By the way, did Lucky write "Lorelei"?

Edited October 11, 2019 by Donna B

[Contessa Donatella]

"Julie Pinson auditioned for the part of Lily when Chris Goutman had it in his head to burn Martha Byrne." - Donna L. Bridges

 

Oh, thank you for the clarification.

[Contessa Donatella]

WLS: What, in your mind, is your finest moment?

Jane Elliot: No question about it. "Guiding Light." The story [head writer] Doug Marland created for me was just so good and so rare. Thanks to Doug, I learned who I was as an actor. He stretched me. He pulled me. And I rose to the occasion. He made me look good and I made him look good. ... But, to play Carrie Todd, I had to go very, very deep. And it wasn’t just because of her madness. She was a fully fleshed out, fully realized character living a really rich life. It was a very complete role. And I loved playing opposite Jerry verDorn [Ross], the most generous actor I’ve ever worked with. It was a once in a lifetime thing and I knew it at the time. No 20/20 hindsight necessary."

 

Edited September 15, 2019 by Donna B
One more thing to say: Unfortunately the EP had a different opinion.

[Contessa Donatella]

1. For what it's worth, this is Aggie's IMDB Trivia:
2. She became ABC's overall daytime consultant in October 2000.
3. It was her hand that opened the All My Children (1970) photo album on the opening montage sequence from 1970-1989.
4. When she went into labor and had to go to the hospital to deliver one of her children she brought her Dictaphone along so that she could continue working. 
5. During the 1960s she simultaneously wrote both Guiding Light (1952) & Another World (1964). This led to a few minor problems such as in the 445th episode of Another World (1964) she wrote in the script that the scene takes place in the coffee shop of Cedars Hospital.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Donna B
Snip

[Contessa Donatella]

Donna Swajeski's Writing: AW 1989-1992 (as was said), PC 2001-2002, GL 2005-2009 (a major contributor to "Otalia"), and AMC 2010-1011. I believe she is in some kind of children's work now.

[Contessa Donatella]

More of the Pete Lemay ...

 

 I was the first writer to take a soap to an hour.  I was eager to do it because I wanted to write longer scenes.  I wanted to write a scene that you build as you do in the theatre with the beginning of the conflict, escalating that conflict, and resolving it more or less if you could within one scene so that you get an emotional play.  We did it for the first year.  We were very successful.  Now they have taken that six minutes between commercials, and chopped it up into two or three scenes, three usually, sometimes four, and what I really wanted was a six minute scene. 

His line about Anne Heche was odd because she was headed directly to the Parsons' School of Design & just fell over into a show biz career by accident. Of course, there is her talent.

 

When Lemay praised JFP he had not yet found out about Frankie Frame & Maureen Bauer. He didn't like them when  it came up in a WLS Interview.

Edited September 18, 2019 by Donna B
Errors in text, etc., Misspelled Bauer

[Contessa Donatella]

Those of us who are very fond of Pete Lemay hear him, here, talking about P&G, about Irna Phillips, about writing plays, about writing soaps, about his personal memoir "Inside, Looking Out", about Irna being furious when he said he had no idea what soaps were, about Irna training him & Bill Bell & Agnes Nixon, about using a staff or not using one, about Doug Watson, about Connie Ford, about Susan Sullivan, about working directly *with* actors, about Beverlee, about Paul Rauch, about Anna Holbrook coming from the stage, about Anne Heche, giving several years to the show but then being too good and having to move on, about half hour shows and about hour shows, about the homosexual storyline that was planned but then dropped by P&G, about Ada having a late-in-life pregnancy where Rachel was 'there' for her, about 'Lillian Hellman's dialogue is not her best thing and neither is Arthur Miller's', about George Reinholdt & 2 other actors that were considered a problem, ... Then, in the next paragraph, those of us who adore Pete Lemay but can't stand Jill Farren Phelps have a real dilemma as Pete names her the best producer he has ever worked with! Yikes!

 

Yet he did not know about Frankie Frame or Maureen Bauer until the next interview he gave & he was appalled when he found out.

[Contessa Donatella]

Pete Lemay: I learned it very quickly from Connie Ford [Ada Davis]. Connie would cut.  She was playing a very laconic woman who wasn't verbal. You'd give her a speech that went on for a page and she'd say, "What's all this?" and cut it down to one line and she would do the rest with a look. I learned it very quickly because, boy,  was she wonderful!

 

Pete: Years later I asked P&G's Bob Short why they even hired me when I didn't like any of the 5 or 6 shows they gave me to sample and he said that they thought everyone else would want me!

 

Pete about the gay story he had planned: One of the reasons I think it would have been successful is because we were very careful in the casting. We got a very good young actor, a very normal, straight, young actor. And he was very ingratiating. And also the audience had known the characters since they were toddlers. You weren’t introducing a new character saying, “Here’s a gay guy.” You were saying that this character, who they had known since he was a baby, was gay.

 

Pete: He was a twin. I wanted him to confide to his sister that he had just started college and had fallen in love with a boy. And they all agreed with it. It was all in the script. I had not signed the renewal of my contract yet. And once I signed it they pulled out the rug from under this story.

We Love Soaps: Who was “they?” Who exactly made this decision?

Harding Lemay: Procter & Gamble, probably.

We Love Soaps: How did they communicate that to you?

Harding Lemay: I got a call from Bob Short, who always
leveled with me, saying, “We’re just not going to do it, because we don’t think the audience would appreciate it. They’d turn over to GENERAL HOSPITAL or something.”

 

(And, so, there went one of soaps' famous/infamous stories that was going to be done way back in the day, even further back than the story that Claire Labine pitched between Holly & Olivia in 2001. And, the first gay story had to wait for AMC's Bianca.)

 

 

Edited September 17, 2019 by Donna B
Errors. More to quote.

[Contessa Donatella]

Both Victoria Wyndham and Charles Keating wrote at AW whether they got paid very much for it (They did not.) or whether they were credited for it or not (which I do not know).

We Love Soaps: Why do you think after 20+ years of trying to cater to the younger generation, only to see ratings fall, that the networks still push for this?

Harding Lemay: There’s no explanation. One of the things I found very difficult about the network people was that they come from a different background. They come from business. They have no idea what goes into writing and what goes into character...or even what goes into life.

We Love Soaps: But even from a business perspective, your show was number one for much of the 1970’s. And the number one show now for the past 20 years has been THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS, which traditionally features multigenerational stories.

Harding Lemay: I’ve always been baffled by the network mind. But then, I’m baffled by the producer’s mind, and usually the director’s as well.