2 hours ago, slick jones said:

Maestro Ernesto Fausch

Haha that’s! 😁😁 well I got the letter right..

7 hours ago, j swift said:

4/2/1991 - Desert Storm is over

 

We start with my favorite type of story, totally unsubstantiated gossip from behind the scenes. 1). Genie Francis was approached by B&B to play Caroline after Joanna Johnson left and she was desperate to find another role after DAYS. 2). Jeanne Cooper and Doug Davidson have the highest Q scores on daytime 3). An unnamed network (ABC) is paying young actors to take acting classes while on the job.  No mention was made of the connection between those acting classes and a certain Hollywood cult/religion that was later revealed in the doc Going Clear.

 

Then, there was more obvious goss - producers stuff the emmy ballots and Susan Lucci was the highest paid actor in daytime.

 

Heather Tom and Kristoff St. John both got contracts on Y&R two months after they began on screen.

 

Twin Peaks is tanking in the ratings in the second season.  That SOD editor who loves Twin Peaks got in two mentions this week, including a report that more people watch it than DAYS or Guiding Light.

 

Harlan Barrett, (Julia and Brenda's father), is being cast and there are big hopes for him being a leading man on GH.  They got the guy from the Mod Squad but it is not Michael Ontkien from The Rookies, (who was on Twin Peaks at the time), so I am not interested.  However, SB just fired an older male character named Harlan, so maybe it wasn't a good idea.  On the other hand, Brenda having a father would have made for interesting stories when she started dating Sonny.  

 

A side story about Leanna Love on Y&R.  I forgot what an odd character she was.  However, the idea of a woman being "frigid" is a lost soap trope.  Today all characters are down for a bed hop any time of day or night, so it was interesting to have a woman date five men and never want to sleep with them.  BTW in the 1982 Y&R summary, they mentioned that Leslie moved away with the "Maestro", did they really only refer to him as Maestro in every script?

 

The Dark Shadows primetime revival is also tanking in the ratings.  For the life of me, I'll never understand the desire to remake a "cult classic".  By definition, a cult classic has a small niche audience.  Why did NBC, and later Tim Burton, think that a higher budget was the only thing missing from its mass appeal?  I've always thought that the cheesiness of the original was a part of the attraction that one could never repeat on purpose.

A couple of other highlights from the issue

 

Jason Bonderoff has yet another story about starting new soaps.  This time after a confusing introduction we get the inspiration for most of the recent soaps.  Bill Bell credits Brad with deciding that B&B should be about the fashion industry.  Although, the article says that he could have sold CBS on an idea written on a matchbook because they were so desperate to replace Capitol.  The head writer of Generations credits her good friend Brian Frons with pushing her to add the multiracial elements to her soap. 

 

Picky Picky wonders why beautiful women like Sheila and Cassandra on Y&R have to drug men in order to sleep with them.  It's an odd issue when they credit the sensitivity of the "incest" story on ATWT, but they confuse Sheila's, and Cassandra's, nonconsensual sex with low self-esteem and poor values

 

Finally, Nicolas Coster looks good no matter what age or silly costume  

Edited February 15, 20197 yr by j swift

Our top story: Fiona Hutchinson is out at OLTL! Alas, the pastures weren't so green in L.A. I think it was also eventually revealed that ABC was deliberately low-balling her in contract negotiations. It puts the network's comment that she couldn't "come to terms" in a different light. Anyway, we're nearing the end of the Rauch era. Waiting in the wings: Luna (literally), Cassie and Blair, to name three.

 

Over on AMC, Jeremy and Dixie are staying, Skye continues her show's exodus and Mimi is coming soon. Going back to Jean LeClerc's situation, it's interesting that his contact apparently wouldn't become invalid with the move to Loving. Actors sometimes really are cattle! On a happier note, Cady McClain's around for three more years.

 

Lauren-Marie Taylor's new hairstyle was an improvement, I must say. Speaking of hair, Lisa Peluso's dating a member of ZZ Top!

 

What Could Have Been: Julio Iglesias on SB! In honor of the Valentine's Day holiday, let's enjoy the cheese that is "All Of You."

 

Casting or characters that went the distance:

Heather Tom and Kristoff St. John, Y&R. I'm smirking at the comment that Neil's going to be involved with Olivia and Dru "in the months ahead."

Charles Keating's return as Carl on AW (although it wouldn't be solidified until more than two years later)

Casey Hughes, recently born on ATWT

 

Casting or characters that didn't: 

(A moment of silence for GH's Dawn Winthrop, who epitomizes this idea.)

Peter Brown on B&B

Margaret Reed in what would become Diagnosis Murder (On the other hand, it worked out for Dick Van Dyke and Victoria Rowell for a while.)

Billy Warlock's second run as Frankie on DOOL (They might already have been planning to buy out his contract at this point.)

Jeff Phillips as Hart on GL

 

The New and Improved General Hospital (TM, @j swift) continues to get plenty of coverage. Interesting that Monty herself directed the location shoot that brought on Jenny and Mac. "She has unbelievable energy and knows what she wants," indeed!

 

Michael Cole's casting as Harlan earns a blurb. I agree that it's a shame he was neither played by Michael Ontkean nor around to be part of Brenda's storylines. I wonder why they waited to introduce her character when she was already on the drawing board? Was it so Jenny, Julia and Dominique could gain more traction as young leading ladies? Was it better to have Brenda in the Karen-Jagger-Jason-Robin orbit?

 

Also, who's Joyce, the new love interest for Bill Eckert? Would this character end up becoming Nancy, his ex-wife? Anyway, Lord Larry Ashton was written out, but Simone Hardy was saved (to an extent). Meanwhile, Tristan Rogers' voiceover work in The Rescuers Down Under is finally mentioned months after the film's release. I guess SOD had that story as an evergreen. Speaking of better sooner than later, GH is criticized for the unsatisfactory ending of the Robert, Cheryl and Lucas story.

 

10 hours ago, j swift said:

3). An unnamed network (ABC) is paying young actors to take acting classes while on the job.  No mention was made of the connection between those acting classes and a certain Hollywood cult/religion that was later revealed in the doc Going Clear.

 

The Dark Shadows primetime revival is also tanking in the ratings.  For the life of me, I'll never understand the desire to remake a "cult classic".  By definition, a cult classic has a small niche audience.  Why did NBC, and later Tim Burton, think that a higher budget was the only thing missing from its mass appeal?  I've always thought that the cheesiness of the original was a part of the attraction that one could never repeat on purpose.

Is it wrong that my gut instinct was to assume it was NBC? Of course, in 2019, it's "Acting classes? Why bother?"

 

The irony is, Burton from his Pee-Wee's Big Adventure to Ed Wood era could have made an authentic Dark Shadows film that was still true to his style.

 

4 hours ago, j swift said:

Picky Picky wonders why beautiful women like Sheila and Cassandra on Y&R have to drug men in order to sleep with them.  It's an odd issue when they credit the sensitivity of the "incest" story on ATWT, but they confuse Sheila's, and Cassandra's, non-consensual sex with low self-esteem and poor values.

I wonder if Henry dying with a smile was something Marland envisioned or James Rebhorn brought to the table.

 

All this and Nicolas Coster's altruism and belated career monogamy earning applause. Once again, Happy Valentine's Day!

Edited February 15, 20197 yr by Franko

25 minutes ago, Franko said:

The New and Improved General Hospital (TM)

Just for comparison sake, SB had Pamela's return to the Capwell dinner party in this issue and it was reduced to a paragraph in the weekly summary and no mention in the Comings and Goings.  There is a definite skewing of the editorial coverage.

 

From voicing a cartoon to acting in an action-adventure tv show, one would think that Tristen Rogers would have started to see that the pastures weren't always greener (and he should have passed it along to Fiona).

 

Every issue that they mention the Barretts I keep thinking of the irony that Faison is coming and he will have a much larger impact on the history of the show 28 years later.

On 2/14/2019 at 7:58 PM, Franko said:

I wonder if Henry dying with a smile was something Marland envisioned or James Rebhorn brought to the table.

James Rebhorn played Henry Lange and Bradley Raines?  Did he list professional creep on his resume?

4 hours ago, j swift said:

James Rebhorn played Henry Lange and Bradley Raines?  Did he list professional creep on his resume?

"Please, I Incest" was printed on his business cards.

SOD - 4/16/1991

 

Headlines include:

Did Generations fail due to racism or ratings?

Why did Fiona Hutchinson leave OLTL?

Will anybody show up for Tony Geary's surprise party for his TV son now that Gloria Monty's cast purge is complete?

 

Well, Fiona was low balled by ABC (as reported by @Franko last week), but it is a part of an overall tightening of the ABC soap budgets.  Also, not helping is that Tony Geary's return to GH tanked the ratings and then they went down even further the next week.

 

Generations failure was due to a bad timeslot not racism.  Nobody ever discusses that despite casting black actors, the lack of black writers or producers may have been a part of the creative failure of that show.  Also, once they got the notice that they might be canceled, all of the new actors hired for the revamp were white.  Upon review, Vivica A Fox and Richard Roundtree's father/daughter duo were the only two new black characters introduced after the show began, as opposed to Jordan Hale and his whole clan. 

 

SOD makes a classic ratings report error.  They note that more people VCR'ed AMC than watched many primetime shows.  However, SOD reported the rating but not the share (the proportion of 18-49-year-old audience) or the differences in ad revenues based on VCR vs live watching habits.   Reporting the audience totals does not reflect the actuality of how ratings are interpreted by advertisers and is one of my pet peeves when entertainment reporters who do not understand statistics try to explain the ratings system (don't get me started on the stupidity of the SOD ratings bar charts).

 

AW is on the hunt for an actor to play Sam's friend Tom Mclean, a freelance photographer from a lower middle-class family that is full of juicy secrets.  Tom, and the proposed  Mavis, are promised to have a "major impact"  on Bay City.  What happened to those plans?

 

Y&R killed off Cassandra in a car accident, but fans worried that the actress died should calm down and remember that it was TV.

 

Weekly James (Joey, the forgotten Eckert cousin) Morrison news has replaced the Patsy Pease Trashfest.  He is dating Dedee Pfeiffer and they just got a new dog.  Dedee wound up married to three other guys, no word on who kept the dog.  Emma Samms's new marriage is also announced this week.  She'll also marry twice more.  Finally, SOD wrongly states that Dedee was not related to Michelle so I am going to write them a letter and hopefully they'll publish a 28-year-old correction.

Edited February 21, 20197 yr by j swift

Just a partial commentary for now, but ...

Another month, another impacted DOOL couple. It would be a stretch to call April & Johnny a supercouple, though. Anyway, Lisa Howard (formerly of Mike & April and Nick & April) is leaving after three years. Her storyline has dried up, what with losing two leading men and her onscreen family in one year. Compare this to Lynn Herring as GH's Lucy, who lost her onscreen family but still had Scotty and the Quartermaines (and eventually Bill Eckert) to play off of. I'm just saying -- if DOOL wanted to keep April, they could have maybe thrown her into, say, Jack and Jennifer's orbit. My theory: They didn't try too hard to keep Howard because she was probably up for a raise, with that money now likely going to Deidre Hall and Wayne Northrup's welcome back salaries.

 

It's official: DALLAS is reaching the finish line. Tell that to Victoria Principal, who allegedly declined to appear in "Conundrum" because she wasn't 100 percent convinced it would be the finale. Elsewhere in the Lorimarverse, "1945" will become HOMECOMING. No mention yet that the new show will lead to Lechowick and Latham departing KL.

 

Also caught in the revolving door:

1. Father-to-be and consummate bedroom scene professional Peter Boynton, out as Tonio on ATWT (Alas, he and Susan Marie Snyder will divorce in 1995)

2. Careful kisser, victimized party and especially in demand Fiona Hutchison, out as Gabrielle on OLTL (The idea than a non-ABC, NYC-based soap was interested in hiring her makes me wonder if Jenna on GL was already in the works. And I'm not sure who she would have played on SB. Suzanne Collier? Nu-Kelly?)

3. The ever-ready to try new things Anne Heche, on her way out as Vicky and Marley on AW

4. The perfectly fine, that car accident was on TV, Nina Arvesen (note SOD's typo), out as Cassandra on Y&R

5. Another actor whose storyline has dried up, Hugo Napier as Larry Ashton on GH

6. Possibly the entire cast of LOV; Also, ABC has both a "daytime chief" and a president of sports, daytime and children's shows?

 

How about that puff piece about the Eckert actors having a surprise party for little Glenn? You can just feel the "please like them" vibes as you read it. Monty has a nice bit of double talk there: Nobody was fired, she just didn't renew contracts.

 

Today I Learned:

We almost had a Melissa/Brian/Molly triangle on DOOL. Melissa has two more months on the canvas and Molly ended up being paired with Tanner.

 

Can somebody with more knowledge of AW help us out? Just what happened to Tom and Mavis? I don't think we can write this one off to a production shakeup, a la the OLTL characters that never were.

 

One last thing before I go back to work: Carol, the potential love interest for Bill Eckert, is included in comings and goings. She gets a grand total of one mention in Curlyqgrl's summaries of 1991. My theory: Carol's publicity is a Trojan horse for the ultimately abandoned idea of having Bill and Bobbie as a couple. I can't wait to read SOD's reaction to that.

Edited February 22, 20197 yr by Franko

(Back from work.)

Last week, I figured the piece of Tristan Rogers' voiceover work was an evergreen. I'm wondering if that piece on how publicists functioned during the Gulf War was the last war-related story SOD had in the hopper. It's going to be interesting to see how SOD covers a genuine sustained news event which affected daytime, the O.J. trial. Also, I'm reminded of Michael Logan ending his Worst of 2001 column by saying there was a special place in hell for a publicist promoting a star's holiday album as 9/11 was going on.

 

I noticed the Deedee thing, too. I guess at that point in her career, she wanted to avoid any hint of nepotism, or her publicist messed up.

 

Gene Palumbo tries to rewrite history in the social issues article. Why would Lucy want an abortion? She was using the child she miscarried as a means to secure her standing as a Quartermaine. Interesting that GH supposedly was going to do a story about Native Americans and land claims. There's no mention of ATWT's Native Americans storyline, so I guess it hadn't aired yet. On the other hand, Jessica and Duncan's love story appears to be progressing (I'm sorry, I don't have much knowledge of ATWT).

 

Really, why didn't NBC roll the dice and try a DOOL/GEN/AW block? Maybe they figured too many radical moves had hurt AW and didn't want to make the same mistake twice? Which would also rule out a DOOL/AW/GEN/SB block, or airing GEN at 3:30.

 

Two more primers to go. For all I know, SOD will say to hell with it and run a combined SB-LOV piece. Presented without commentary: the Nathan, Olivia and Dru recap comes at the end of the Y&R primer.

 

All this and the kinder, gentler Peter Reckell, rockin' dem jeans.

6 hours ago, Franko said:

what happened to Tom and Mavis? I don't think we can write this one off to a production shakeup, a la the OLTL characters that never were.

At first, I guessed it was Evan Frame and Iris, however Evan had already come and gone by 4/91 - but it would have been great if Evan, son of Janice, and Sam, brother of Mitch, were somehow friends (or better yet, lovers set out to scam Amanda's fortune).

 

6 hours ago, Franko said:

Carol, the potential love interest for Bill Eckert, is included in comings and goings. She gets a grand total of one mention in Curlyqgrl's summaries of 1991. My theory: Carol's publicity is a Trojan horse

 

In last week's issue, Bill meets with Carol who suggests using refurbished parts to repair the Quartermaine plant, but Harlan wants to focus on closing the plant.  My guess is that a salvage repair shop owner lacked the glamour that GH wanted with Bill 2.0 so she was backburnered like cousin Joey.

 

6 hours ago, Franko said:

Lisa Howard (formerly of Mike & April and Nick & April) is leaving after three years. Her storyline has dried up, what with losing two leading men and her onscreen family in one year.

April, and later Molly, were both played by good actresses who got the shaft by pairing them unsustainable male characters

 

17 minutes ago, Franko said:

Peter Reckell, rockin' dem jeans.

The outfit seemed a little over-accessorized and inefficient for fishing - a hat, boots, and feathers on the Santa Monica Pier?

Edited February 22, 20197 yr by j swift

4 minutes ago, j swift said:

It would have been great if Evan, son of Janice, and Sam, brother of Mitch, were somehow friends (or better yet, lovers set out to scam Amanda's fortune).

Can we include Ian Rain in this scenario, too?

 

My guess is that a salvage repair shop owner lacked the glamour that GH wanted with Bill 2.0 so she was backburnered like cousin Joey.

That makes sense. Fred and Angela Eckert aren't going to last much longer, either.

 

Here's what I figured out from the Another World homepage - Sam had a friend Mark Allen, a photographer who dated Amanda, played by Bill Shanks (later on ATWT) from 4/10/91-5/2/91.  However, both Mark and Sam got recast, the new actors were not more popular than the old actors, so both characters got written off.

 

As for Mavis, who knows?

Edited February 22, 20197 yr by j swift

Nice work!

(Although there's one correction: Shanks was actually on ATWT before AW. Maybe he played Mark as a favor to P&G?)

Edited February 22, 20197 yr by Franko

Some nutty soap predictions for 1983 were published on today's classic tumblr:

 

General Hospital

Predictions for ‘83
Luke and Holly’s latest escapades will lead to Luke’s presumed death.  Scotty will make a big move on Holly.  Alan and Monica are ripe for a third party to cause marital conflict.  How about that long lost son of Edward’s? 

 

Scotty & Holly? Monica & Jimmy Lee? I can't imagine it unless they meant that Alan and Jimmy Lee were getting together.

 

One Life to Live

Predictions for ‘83
Rafe and Samantha and Cassie and Gary will become hot new duos despite complications.  Viki’s and Clint’s marriage might be complicated by Dorian using her charms on Clint.  And don’t be surprised if Viki turns to Larry after helping him get over the loss of Karen. 

 

Rafe was never going to be "hot" regardless of pairing, and Viki & Larry would've been incestuous 

 

All My Children

Predictions for ‘83
Silver’s manipulations will make Erica’s past seem almost saintly.  Former “nice boy,” Tad, will return and probably reveal that he’s inherited some of his dad Ray’s more spiteful characteristics.

 

Tad might never have been nice but he also was never as bad as his dad.

3 hours ago, j swift said:

Some nutty soap predictions for 1983 were published on today's classic tumblr:

 

General Hospital

Predictions for ‘83
Luke and Holly’s latest escapades will lead to Luke’s presumed death.  Scotty will make a big move on Holly.  Alan and Monica are ripe for a third party to cause marital conflict.  How about that long lost son of Edward’s? 

 

Scotty & Holly? Monica & Jimmy Lee? I can't imagine it unless they meant that Alan and Jimmy Lee were getting together.

 

One Life to Live

Predictions for ‘83
Rafe and Samantha and Cassie and Gary will become hot new duos despite complications.  Viki’s and Clint’s marriage might be complicated by Dorian using her charms on Clint.  And don’t be surprised if Viki turns to Larry after helping him get over the loss of Karen. 

 

Rafe was never going to be "hot" regardless of pairing, and Viki & Larry would've been incestuous 

 

All My Children

Predictions for ‘83
Silver’s manipulations will make Erica’s past seem almost saintly.  Former “nice boy,” Tad, will return and probably reveal that he’s inherited some of his dad Ray’s more spiteful characteristics.

 

Tad might never have been nice but he also was never as bad as his dad.

I'm guessing the idea of Scotty making a move on Holly was a smokescreen for the actual Luke/Holly/Robert triangle. As for Alan and Monica, their marriage was affected by a third party -- the eventually killed Susan Moore. I want to say most of their storyline that year concerned Jason's welfare.

 

Aw, I thought Rafe was handsome. No Cord, but I digress. *Already* Viki and Clint's marriage is complicated? Heck, they got married in November 1982. Then again, Echo di Savoy was waiting in the wings.

 

Tad may have been the Pine Valley pogo stick, but even he had standards.