Main Line Express: Pine Valley to Llanview

Caftans.

Earrings.

TURBANS.

This clip never gets old.

I loved Phoebe and her friends tsk tsking.

"You cannot live together without benefit of clergy!"

Phoebe is a soap icon, for sure.

Natalie Ross as Enid Willoughby Nelson played the uptight, outraged frau to perfection.

I've argued for years that we need more characters like Enid and Phoebe.

They especially needed characters like that in the later years. Natalie Ross is still alive was involved in acting so she would've probably been willing to appear if asked.

She was a looker when she was young.

Oh, how I miss OLTL. I loved it when it was bad, I loved it when it was good. I loved the good acting, the bad acting, the good writing, the bad writing. It was part of my life for 40 some-odd years.

I miss it too, R8.

When is Sleestack on that big primetime show? She is back, bitches!

I'll be surprised if Sleestack gets much if any work after that guest spot. With her age, unusual looks, acting style, and lack of a real diverse resume, its hard enough for actresses in her age range who don't have those things against them.

How many times was Erica slapped by Mona during AMC's history? Mona's patience must have been tested many times by Erica, yet they did seem somewhat closer than typical soap Mother and Daughter.

But were they as close as my daughter and I?

Don't go there, Pete Cooney ...

Like mother, like daughter.

Is Palmer sitting on Cliff's lap in that picture, R13?

Mona was Pine Valley's all time most exemplary resident. Would have taken incredible discipline to not want to wallop respect into the wayward urchin daughter. The woman was saintly!

Ten cents a dance. That's what they pay me.

R17 Mona could cut a bitch if needed though.

I loved Mona.

She was the only one that could slap some sense into Erica's silly head.

After Mona died, Erica lost her conscience. The trouble with Erica is that she never matured unlike, say, Brooke.

I just want Robin Christopher back on my screen.

I'm surprised they haven't brought Robin Christopher back on GH. I guess the Prospect Park lawsuit was the reason for her not returning for awhile since Skye was an AMC created character, but they still haven't brought he back since it was dismissed in December 2016.

[quote] The trouble with Erica is that she never matured unlike, say, Brooke.

How could she? When her portrayer is, like CZJ, a perpetual ravishing 33?

[quote]I just want Robin Christopher back on my screen.

I met her on the subway after she had gone off AMC and we talked about some of her plotlines. She was cool

My all time favorite girl on girl bitch slap on OLTL was when Destiny's mother slapped Nora! My favorite kidnapping was when Margaret kidnapped and raped Todd. I can't believe someone can't figure out a way to bring it back in some form and make money on it with all the platforms out there. Someone in the industry tell me why it would be so difficult?

Robin is lucky, she got Matt Crane's cock on the regular.

The Prospect Park reboots came a few years later, I think they would've been successful. They were a little too ahead of their time before streaming became big. Of course PP was clueless how much money it costs to produce these type of shows.

It was maddening watching the older frau fans on the PP Facebook page. If they weren't totally internet ignorant and had no idea to how to watch on HULU, they weren't willing to watch their show in that way - they want it on TV, it wasn't on 5 days a week anymore, their favorite star(s) weren't on it - I'm not watching!, complaining about relatively minor cursing and just about everything else.

And of course when the PP reboots went belly up, they were ecstatic and insisted that ABC would bring AMC and OLTL back, which of course never happened and never will.

I’ll never forget a time Phoebe referred to a bunch of people as “pusillanimous milksops.” Had to be late 70s era but I saw it on YouTube some time ago. That is a rather sophisticated word choice for any scribe to use, let alone on a daytime soap which I think were unnecessarily derided back in the day. Shows like Ryan’s Hope and AMC felt like Broadway plays.

Mini OLTL reunion!

No Carlotta? No Slee?

It's nice to see Kassie looking so fantastic and healthy again. She looks wonderful!

They all look good

LOL at this comment on one of Kristen Alderson's other pic: "Your mom is beautiful but it’s time to get rid of the Farrah fawcett hairdo."

So this is an AMC/OLTL thread?

okay dokey

WhyTF is Kathy Alderson at all these events?

R34 Her mom truly has one of the worst hairdos. Its been that way for years. Horrific!

R36 Her mom goes EVERYWHERE with her

Was this for some type of charity or did they all plan it? Kind of cool that they are all so close.

I would love to see AMC again, hell Od be okay with watching reruns.

Fuck AMC!

What's up with Kristen Alderson's brother? Last I heard he was fighting cancer.

And Niki....FUCK YOU!

Wow, I really have no idea who most of those in the OLTL pic are. I recognize KDP and that's about it and what is with the weird devil eyes so many of them have. Is it a light mishap or what?

I watched OLTL on Hulu but I would rather it be on TV. I would not mind of few more of the OLTL people coming onto GH. I know that's not fair to GH fans but I'm a fan of GH too and I would be willing to share. First I would want them to turn Franco back into Todd and bring on my #1 favorite to work with RH, ES (Viki). I would not mind seeing ol' Tea again. I would like her to be able to see Danny, the child she thought was hers for the first few months of his life. I would like to see TSJ (Victor) He was unbelievably hot with Tea. Of course Dorian would be great to see again but I hear RS is a little cra cra so that might not work out.

Finn I'd like to stay Finn. I like him better as Finn and I love Finn with Anna, HATE him with Alexis. No Jessica or that redhead. I forget the character's name, one of Viki's forgotten kids. Not regularly but if they're going to have Nora pop in now and then I wouldn't mind seeing Bo for a few short visits.

Niki was so much more interesting when you could buy her as someone people would want to hang out with. Look, there's J.T. Walsh!

What kind of off-brand OLTL reunion is that? No Slee, NO KATHY GLASS, No Elaine Princi!

r43, when did you watch OLTL exactly? You don't recognize Easton? KdlR? Jim DePaiva? TSJ?

r44, they originally wrote Niki as a character rather than the caricature she became.

I only watched that fukiin show to see auntie ruth!!!!

R44, that isn't Niki's first appearance. You have to go back to the 1960s for her first.

Because these threads are never complete without...

The Glasshole had best stay subtle and infrequent, else it will get a red tag quicker than you can say "Fire Dena Higley."

Does anyone know when Slee is on The Resident?

R51 Six more sleeps until the Slee returns! (March the 26th)

I have missed my Slee!!

She's eating prunes so she can be as clean for all of you as possible!

Rumors of her driving a Tercel into the hospital on The Resident are absolutely not true - not true atall!

I was hoping we could keep this thread Tercel and Glass free.

Oh well, I'll do the second best thing; IGNORE.

Yes. Please come up with a joke that's actually funny.

R57

Your mom

Even better:

DENA HIGLEY NEW HEAD WRITER OF OLTL REBOOT!

If I won the lottery I would buy all the rights to OLTL and all the characters. Then I would do an all drag version and tour summer stock.

OLTL drag would be awesome!!! Imagine Viki v Dorian. Andrea Evans Tina. Nora v Lindsay!!! Renee!!! Natalie and Jessica. So good!!!

I miss them all, r61

On another thread, it was said that John Callahan was bi (and hung) and had several fellow members of the AMC cast. Has anyone heard this? Who did he do?

R63 Never heard he was bi, but that he was hung and got around a lot. Tom Arnold said on Howard Stern that he seen him nude in the shower and he was hugely endowed. He supposedly cheated on his ex-wives (including Eva La Rue) a lot. Supposedly he had an affair with Amelia Heinle and led to his divorce with La Rue.

He hasn't aged well. He looks like he might be a boozer to me.

Tom Callahan DEFINITELY has the look of a lush.

I always remembered thinking he had no lips

Who's had more plastic surgery: Kelly Ripa, Sarah Michelle Gellar, or Eva LaRue?

John Callahan, but it was at a discount.

Who'd a thunk that scrawny little Reggie Montgomery would be starring in the biggest movie on the planet??

Reggie has a hot body but his face is still homely and lacking a chin.

r67, Eva doesn't look like she's "done" - she still looks great.

Ripa is painfully thin

Slee's episode of The Resident airs Monday.

HEY Pine Valley folks... Greg Nelson is in NYC right now performing on stage in a revivial of AR Gurney's "Later Life"... if he can land a role the the theatre, why hasn't Ms. Slezak??? Surely there's a role waiting for her... perhaps she could the psychiatrist in a new stage adaptation of Sybil?

Someone get me a playwright stat! I smell a Tony in Erika's future!

Lau has aged very well. He's still very handsome.

Shame on r73 for not calling out his co-star Barbara Garrick, so deliciously marvelous as Allison Perkins

Gabrielle Medina's first exit from OLTL was so perfectly written. Nobody could do soap acting as well as Fiona Hutchison.

Nice photo of KA and Brittany Underwood at La Strasser's new home.

I always found it so interesting how strikingly different the soaps were lit network to network. CBS was so dark, NBC was rainbow colored and ABC (my favorites) were... I honestly don’t know how to describe but so distinct. Why was that???

Aw, I like that they KdP/Strasser are still close and with the younger girls.

Strasser looks like an old witch.

Choke on a prune you potato faced sow.

I am now curious who was pushing Seponski on OLTL all of those years considering neither Frank nor Ron have tried to find a place for him on either GH or DOOL.

Loved this interview with Ruth Warrick. It's so funny watching Joan Rivers asking Aunt Phoebe about all the men she's slept with and how good each one was in bed!!!!

Ruth was so the opposite of Phoebe!

I guess Slee's episode of The Resident airs next week?

No, R85, not until April 16.

Why do they keep pushing off Sleestack’s 1 chance of a comeback?

Because she's constipated.

You don't need The Resident when you've got it all!!!

Please join me in congratulating Miss Kathy Glass on making the cover of "Chicago Daily TV News." I have a hunch this is just the beginning. With a top Q score and record-shattering teen fan mail, it's only a matter of time before Miss Glass attains super-stardom.

Is Kathy Glass guesting on the same show as Slee?

Dear god...it's back

Lil will be watching Slee’s primetime appearance from her tercel in heaven.

The jokes are as dead as the shows themselves.

R92 I blocked it.

Sue is still living a glamorous lifestyle. Sadly, the same can't be said for Slee.

Sue looks like she's living the anorexic lifestyle.

Slee’s opening line on The Resident is “She’s over here, Paul.” The writers really did their homework.

R98 Okay, I admit, I laughed at that one.

Happy Easter!

Has Sue eaten since AMC went off the air?

She didn't eat while it was on the air either. She probably gets IVs to keep her alive.

Has Slezak had a job since OLTL left the air?

Tune in tomorrow to The Resident, bitch @r103

Slee has one line in the Resident. Upon getting stitched up after falling and getting a nasty cut on her arm, her character Leticia nastily tells the doctor, "Get those black stitches out of my face!!"

R105 LOL!!

[quote]Tune in tomorrow to The Resident, bitch

Her episode has been rescheduled to April 16.

Are they that backed up? It was originally supposed to be in March.

They're in reruns for the next two weeks. Didn't want to go against the NCAA final tonight and I don't know what's on the 9th.

Fox has not eaten enough of Slee’s prunes. The shows are backed up. Eat the prunes and things will flow freely. Can’t wait to see my beloved Slee again.

Who's been tossing prunes down the stairs to the shut-in son while Slee is doing her under-five in LA?

Clint liked having his prunes sucked, so Viki made sure to bring an appetiser to bed.

Was Slee's prime time cameo shot at Tavern on the Green?

Does anyone know the song that is used here?

LaLooch has grandchildren. Does Slee?

Welcome Gary!

r116, one gets the sense of a facade... everything is too perfect to be real: husband, kids, animals, her stressing how happy they are.... I mean, are there people that are really like this?

All a very carefully orchestrated facade.

Why aren’t either of her kids married? Hmmmmm

Suck it, Slee!

I haven't seen so many bones since the gang bang in Frank's office.

Slee could never pull of this petite and sexy rockin bod!

"I could never go to a psychiatrist because I don't have any problems!"

How ironic, they picked a woman with a perfect storybook life to play daytime's most fucked up character LOL

Oh no. That pic at r122 shows the Lucci’s finally crossed over to the world of too much plastic surgery, and she had looked so good before.

Sue is so fuckable

Slee is a hottie!

Lucci passed her plastic surgery limit years ago.

Helmet must pop a Viagra and fuck that hot tight little body all night long

41 years ago this week, ingenue Kathy Glass became the first actress in daypart history to achieve a #1 Q score for 15 weeks in a row. The honor previously had gone to Susan Seaforth Hayes, who had a 14-week run as #1 in 1975, finally being supplanted by Jackie Courtney. So, let's a take a moment and remember this amazing feat and how much joy Miss Glass brought to our lives. Here are the daypart rankings for this week in 1977:

#1 Kathy Glass (Jenny, OLTL)

#2 Denise Alexander (Lesley, GH)

#3 Jackie Courtney (Pat, OLTL)

#4 Victoria Wyndham (Rachel, AW)

#5 Susan Seaforth Hayes (Julie, DOOL)

#6 Eileen Fulton (Lisa, ATWT)

#7 Ruth Warrick (Phoebe, AMC)

#8 Mary Frann (Amanda, DOOL)

#9 Robin Strasser (Christina, AMC)

#10 Beverlee McKinsey (Iris, AW)

(tie) Valerie Scarrett (Diana, GH)

"Where did you find this letter?" "Viki, it doesn't matter where I found it, the point is----" "Where..... in God's name..... did you find...... this.... FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILTH?!!!!"

Poor Viki. So much going on. Not only did she have to contend with Dorian and Tina finding out the truth, as well as traveling though a stargate. But we get to see flaskbacks of a young Slee!

"young Slee"? Isn't than an oxymoron?

R130 that storyline (as good as it was) did seem to sow the seeds of the shows eventual identity crisis of the early 90s. Only Viki as matriarch was the common thread during the next ten years when it changed styles and themes so often.

R114 it's Chaka Khan "Love Me Still"

The thirst is as strong as ever, bitches.

Beautiful Kate. So many of us little gay boys raised on soaps were all about Natalie.

Go away Serial asshole.

Okay: I admittedly haven't been on DL lately, but when the fuck did they reinstate redtags (and deletion!!) for soap trolls and the like?? That's awesome!

r137, still stalking my page Spicen? You blocked me years ago but evidently you still lurk. Hilarious.

You need mental help Serial. You’re psychotic. Everyone knows it.

r140, "Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities." - Oscar Wilde

R136 - Natalie was the BEST! She seemed to always have the best storylines. I remember being so disappointed that her affair with Ross turned into rape. They had the most insane chemistry (or so my pre-teen self thought). He was her stepson, they would bang in the stable and practically choke on their lust for each other when forced to act normal around others at Corrlandt Manor. But then they felt they had to soften Natalie to the basic bitch daytime audience so let’s just rape her!

It’s been covered plenty on DL that Ross’s portrayer Robert Gentry was gay which makes their chemistry that much more remarkable. Poor Kate - all her leading men were gay according to DL (James Mitchell, Jean Leclerc, Robert G)- when she finally got a straight one (James Kiberd) he was a boorish pig and they hated each other!

But back to the thesis- Kate Collins ruled.

Lord what an incredible moustache Robert Gentry had! A porn-stache for the ages!

If my random google search is correct, Gentry is now the theater director at Perrysburg High School in Ohio.

Interesting career change.

R143 I think he's retired now? He's in his late 70s, maybe early 80s.

The best 80s 'stache belonged to Jon Russell.

Collins was always charismatic and an interesting character, but after the rape she was always the victim. They really wanted to show she was this wonderful person who and emphasized that by having her being tormented by someone. First the rape, then Erica making a movie about her, then Palmer manipulating her into staying with him then trying to send her to jail, then Adam after her money, Janet throwing her in a well, fake Natalie blind and held hostage on a boat etc.

She went from being a driving force who went head to head with Erica and drove her own story to the stereotypical old school heroine always in need of rescue. I understand how they needed to tone her down a little from when she first arrived, but St. Natalie tending the sick and baking cookies was too far. Luckily the actress had enough personality to keep her interesting, but I think that is a large part why Melody Anderson failed. She was not right for the part, but the part was also watered down by the time she took it over.

And the sexiest daddy cock also belongs to Jon Russell!

Stop it Serial Nutjob. Stop trying to make failed actresses like Kate Collins and Kunterlin into something they are not. You are a sick person.

Kate Collins was a goddess during the original Natalie/Jeremy/Erica/Alex storyline. The show had begun to sputter when she joined, with Agnes no longer inherently involved and the quickened pace to compete with Days, and I really believe she carried the show for several years until it regained its footing. She was so interesting to watch. I often wonder if they took her out of the Erica/Jeremy orbit because she was easily upstaging Lucci in every scene they shared.

R135, thank you, thank you, thank you for that Kate clip! My favorite soap actress ever. I was in junior high when she first arrived on AMC and I watched every day mostly for her. She was still fabulous even after they made Natalie "good" and gave her that frau hairdo. ABC should have offered her the moon to stay, and kicked that pig Kiberd to the curb!

I wonder if Kate has any idea how many young gaylings she hooked on AMC, and that we still remember her fondly!

Holy crap, this is soooooo 80s...but Kate and Jean look so cute and youthful out of character...

But ugh, Zimmer's "hosting" is awful! Was she trying to channel Brendad Ickson?

Who cares about that two-bit hussy Kate Collins?

R152 No one. Kate was a huge cunt to Kiberd. A cold old frau. She was a nasty old bitch that no one missed when she left.

As you can see by this thread, r153, Kate has many devoted fans many years later. So, you can fuck off.

Kate has 2 fans. One of whom is a psychotic certifiable nutjob, Serial. The delusional freak is a conplete nutjob with no real life friends. He’s hardly anyone to take seriously.

[quote]I often wonder if they took her out of the Erica/Jeremy orbit because she was easily upstaging Lucci in every scene they shared.

I don't know. I do think Collins was a better actress overall, but I think Lucci did well in scenes with her adversaries (Barr, Collins, Canary, Geller, Pratt etc). as long as it did not involve a big cry. Plus, they still had a fair amount of scenes together once the Erica/Jeremy/Natalie triangle was over.

Guys, please mute/block/trolldar the psychotic Spicen freak at r148. Anybody monitoring this thread will see that Kate posts are not coming from one fan... she has many admirers.

Sue was fine with female costars if they were older than her. And she was fine with Julia Barr (who she realized wasn't competition).

But Sue did to Kate Collins what Sue did to many other actresses, including Marcy Walker......she made sure the focus always came back to Erica. And bitch was sneaky about it, so most of the actresses never knew what hit them.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, however, had Sue's number from day one.

When ABC soaps were at their zenith in the 80s, I don't think the form was ever more popular. Their promo campaigns capture a moment in time that feels so innocent.

Would love to see old Slee try to pull this off. Sue is goals!

r158, Lucci seems to have perfected the art of being fake nice as a survival tactic, because I think she was probably worried about being affiliated with Erica's personality. I'll never forget this tribute to Oprah at the 1998 Emmys, where Lucci left a message for her talking about how inspiring she was and Oprah, watching from the audience, actually rolled her eyes. It was very eye-opening.

r161, when Lucci left Viki Sleestack an over-friendly congratulatory message in her 40th anniversary tribute montage, the OLTL cast and crew watching actually started laughing.

I think Sue gets a bad rap. She seems genuinely nice. Besides SMG, I've never read about any co-stars that ever had a problem with her. She seemed very well loved by the cast throughout the years. Is she best actress in the world? Obviously not, but she's had her moments, and she's really one of the very few, if the only, soap actors known outside the daytime ghetto.

A bunch of the actors returned for a reunion when La Looch guest hosted that Debbie Mantonopolous show. I think she is well-liked and respected by her co-workers.

Also, actors always speak about what a nice place AMC was to work and the familial nature on the set, considering Lucci was such a significant presence on the show, she must have contributed significantly to that vibe.

I'm an American beauty.

"They put me in a turban!"

r165, I never got the impression that Lucci was some gathering force on the set, as if setting the tone for the whole show.

Susan was beloved, no doubt about it. And SMG was a brat. And let’s be honest- she’s gonna have at least one strained relationship over the course of 41 years on a set! That’s not wacky. The fact that she was always professional and gracious and would NEVER besmirch a cast mate publicly speaks for itself. She’s old school. And a little bit like Valerie Cherish...but that’s ok.

[quote] she must have contributed significantly to that vibe.

I remember watching one of their anniversary specials on the Lisa Rina talk show (I remember liking the co-host, an OLTL actor involved with Nora), and they were interviewing the actress who played Nina and Peter Bergman. Nina was talking about what a great ensemble environment it was and then pointed to Susan, and said that she helped created that environment, with strong agreement from Peter. It was unprompted (she was not asked what was it like working with Susan Lucci), and Lucci seemed genuinely surprised and touched by the comment.

I also remember one actor, I think Michael Knight, comment how it was hard to be a diva on the set when Lucci and Canary were not and they set the tone.

Collins had a final interview at the end of the show about what she liked coming back for one last time, and she said hanging out and talking to Lucci and Jill Larson about the old times.

Sad that I still remember those interviews from about 15 years ago and plot points from the 80's, but the last five to ten years of the show are a void to me. They really let it go down hill.

I am sure Lucci was no saint, and did not get along with everyone, but she was there a long time and you get mostly positive things about her. I heard similar things in some of the interviews from her Devious Maids castmates.

One last comment about Lucci, one thing I have heard is that she was always prepared and definitely a hard worker. Michael Jordan does not say too much about his soap time and seems a bit embarrassed by it, but I did hear him say he learned a lot about work ethic from watching her when asked about what it was like being on a soap.

They may have learned work ethic from Sue but certainly not acting.

Frons wanted Dee Dee Halls as nuTara Martin. I actually think that might've worked, but I can imagine that La Looch had something to say about that.

I had no idea that they were going to make Tara a lesbian.

Tara and Bianca were going to be lovers and eventually marry. Sue would've been Dee Dee's mother-in-law. That would've been delicious, but that was never going to fly with Sue.

I always thought it was classy of Kate Collins to come back for appearances as "Natalie" opposite Robin Mattson's Janet. (Natalie was a figment of Janet's whacked out mind)

r176, here is that scene: Collins and Mattson had wonderful chemistry and, for once, a soap storyline seemed believe that Janet's old face could have been like her sister's.

Shut up Serial asshole nutjob. Go get a friend. Moron.

If they could bring Dixie back they certainly could have brought Natalie back.

Dixie, and by extension Tad/Dixie were wildly popular. I loved Natalie, but she never achieved the same rabid popularity that Dixie had. Dixie sort of ranks up there with Tara, Jenny, and Nina as their signature tortured romantic heroines.

Where's the Megyn Kelly interview that Slee ever sat for?

I hated Dixie most of the time. So self-righteous.

They killed Natalie off probably because they knew Kate Collins would never come back full time and Melody Anderson flopped in the role and was not accepted by most fans.

Collins last several months on the show of her first stint on the show was miserable. She hated James Kiberd with a passion and he did her as well. She tried to ignore him but he supposedly got very nasty at times. She went to the heads of ABC daytime and complained about Kiberd and threatened a sexual harassment lawsuit. The fans would not except Natalie and Trevor being broken up.

They ultimately sided with Kiberd and did nothing. Collins then quit and they reluctantly agreed to release her from her contract early to avoid a potential lawsuit and bad publicity. This situation was worse than the overblown Lucci/Gellar fued. Collins kept her cards close to her chest and no one on set knew she was leaving until her last day of taping.

Collins and Kiberd had terrific chemistry. The fans loved them, but I can see how his boorish behavior would put her off. Bryan Cranston tells a story in his autobiography in which he, Kiberd and some other members of the early "Loving" cast were at a network party. Kiberd stripped down to his underwear and then started dancing with an incredulous Agnes Nixon. He sounds like a piece of work. I don't think Kate suffered fools like him very easily.

Collins was a nasty old beyatch. Kiberd was a fun guy.

Kiberd and his wife Susan Keith didn't get along when they first meeting. He was on Loving and she was auditioning a role (Shana) testing opposite of him. He took an immediate dislike for and told them to hire any of the other actresses he tested with except for Keith. They of course hired her and they soon fell in love. She admits he was hard to get to know and can be very difficult.

Funny that he ultimately left on AMC on not-so-great terms himself. He wanted a raise when he contract was about to exprire and time off to do a play and they said no to both so they had to write him off rather abruptly. Unfortually it led to Robin Mattson getting written out soon afterwards. They didn't bother to have Kiberd to come for her exit storyline.

Bovina cast in a Broadway musical.

She does look a bit less bovine in the photo. SOMEONE has had work done, clearly.

She's still very plain looking.

She’s an Emmy winner! lololol

Kate Collins was such the bigger asset than James Kiberd. Trevor was fun and memorable (his clever nicknames... Janet from Another Planet, Tinkerbell, Kendall Hart-less) but Natalie was the driving force between all major storylines from 1985-1992- or at least the best stories (exception being the Adam/Dixie/Tad/Brooke saga). ABC should’ve had Kate’a back.

I wonder if Trump tried to rape any of the AMC gals. I bet he’d try with Kristen Meadows on OLTL.

I was surprised that they let Natalie go instead of Trevor. They were a fun couple, but he was relatively new and she had been around for a number of years and had ties to a number of people on the canvas. Trevor was mainly tied to Natalie and newcomer Haley.

I have always wondered how her character would have fared if Collins had stayed on once she and Trevor had to play the married couple. His wives always became cookie baking Stepford wives and ended up being jettisoned because they had become boring. Even Robin's Janet spent a lot of time just folding laundry and fretting about the kids once she and Trevor married. Would Kate's Natalie had the same fate? They had already taken away quite a bit of her edge. I am not saying she should have stayed the scheming gold digger but playing the happy housewife of a cop was not right for her either.

I hated that they paired Natalie with Trevor. Her relationship with Jeremy was perfection and Kate was incredibly close to Jean LeClerc. It's heartbreaking that Agnes and AMC would demolish this fantastic couple just to prop that coarse simpleton Trevor.

It's eerie that Natalie got that Princess Diana haircut and went through a nasty divorce (sound familiar) only to die young in a car crash. This was a couple of years before life imitated art.

Did you notice how dark the lighting on the show became in the late 90s? I was watching back this AMC Emmy montage and I could barely see the picture.

R192 Never ever ever ever ever bring anything from Serial Psycho here. Ever.

I'm confused...I thought Kiberd/Collins had mended fences by the time she left? Didn't she leave because she had been overworked the previous year and needed a break?

The fact that Kate wasn’t nominated for a single Emmy is really a head scratcher. The year she did double duty as Natalie and Janet and acted opposite a well... and still made it compelling should’ve earned her the gold, if not at least a nomination. I will never understand why she didn’t join the ranks of other AMC actors who won multiple Emmys.

MARY me if you must, but Kate was a revelation during the rape storyline. She was absolutely riveting and it was a crime that she wasn't at least nominated. Most of the other actors involved in that story were nominated. She was so good, and this gayling loved her to pieces.

Her peers hated Collins because she was such a beeyatch. Peers nominate you. Thus no nomination, ever. That’s the price ya pay for being a bitch.

You're way off, r199. By all accounts, Kate was a lovely person. You people who conflate an actor with his or her character really give soap fans a bad name.

If she was such a bitch then why has no one else said anything negative about her other than Kiberd?

Not to mention that they bothered to bring her back several times over the years, having to fly her in from Chicago. They could've gotten Robin Mattson back to play Janet much easier since she was still acting and probably would've been willing to stick around for longer if they wanted.

Why did Lucci keep getting nominated and Collins get nothing? Something reeks about this.

Do you really have to ask that r202? It's called publicity. Lucci's losing streak always gained mainstream coverage which brought viewership to the Emmys.

r203, but it's your peers who vote for the Emmys... why was Collins' work ignored? Mattson got tons of Emmy noms on Santa Barbara. Does the show have to do the campaigning or what?

Collins was a better actress than Lucci but it did get them more attention when Lucci was nominated for umpteenth time.

It must've gotten old for the other actors who won to be overshadowed by Lucci losing yet again.

Debbi Morgan commented when she left AMC in 1990 to join Generations that 'No matter how many Emmys I might win on All My Children, it's always going to be the Susan Lucci show"

And that's how it should have been, cunts! It was MY show!

Preach!

It felt like the 80s were all about backstage politics and, particularly in Lead Actress, the "leading lady" would get nominated year-in, year-out (i.e. Lucci, Hubbard, Slezak when she submitted, Zimmer). There was some crashing of the party (Marcy Walker & Finola Hughes at the end of the decade), but it wasn't until 1994 when Lucci wasn't nominated (and Hillary Smith won over people like Kathleen Widdoes and Fiona Hutchison--great actors who'd never been nominated before) that the nominations started being a little more comprehensive (and even then, I'm sure there's still backstage shenanigans going on).

r206, Was Hubbard even nominated that often? Slezak was not nominated from 87-91 so that is a pretty big stretch.

And don't forget - they also changed the process several times as far as how nominations and winners were chosen. And there was also the issue of bloc-voting which led to the blue ribbon panel.

[quote]I'm confused...I thought Kiberd/Collins had mended fences by the time she left?

I have no idea if they did or not, but if there was any chance she could come back and work with him in a few years, I don't know if they would have had her die in hospital bed and she would have died in a way that her body was not found. When she did come back recurring as Janet they did give Collins Janet not only killed Trevor - they showed a show of his "body" with a loud tie stuffed in a freezer. I suspect there was no love lost when she left, although her being tired and sick of the grind might have been her main reason for leaving.

She cam back as ghost Natalie a few times and appeared to Timmy and dead Gillian and as a mirror image to Robin's Janet, but did she ever have a ghostly scene with Trevor in any of the returns?

Wasn't Debi's main reason for leaving AMC that she felt she would also be kept in the "black" story line and she was not happy they caved and ended the Cliff-Angie romance due to vocal viewers who did not want a mixed raced couple.

I think Debbi realized she'd always be a small fish in a large pond at AMC. She probably saw a chance to become the big fish over at Generations. She was lured by former AMC EP Jorn Winther, who was brought on to help Generations, with the promise of a being front and center.

Kate should have been the AMC nominee for 1992 instead of Lucci, she would have won it instead of Slezak (who took the Emmy that year for Megan's death storyline)

Throughout the '80s and into the '90s there was a very clear pecking order in terms of leading ladies at AMC, with Lucci always on top, however, Barr was just as clearly the number 2 during that time add to that the primary ingenue (Nina, Jenny, Hillary, Cecily, Julie), always got almost if not equal screen time to those two, so it was a tough place for any other actress who was always going to be way down the list.

More mature actresses like Kathleen Noone and Gillian Spencer were also very active in storyline, at least the first half of the '80s. Poor Candice Earley, who seemed equal importance to Barr for the first half of the '80s, fell into oblivion in the latter part of the decade, pretty much being Natalie's shoulder to cry on. If you watched AMC throughout the '80s, it was pretty jarring to watch Donna go from lead to nonentity.

Natalie was Erica's only real rival and in many ways Kate Collins was Lucci's essential female co-star for a number of years. Brooke had stopped competing with Erica by late 80s so Nat filled that role very handsomely. When Collins was off the show, Lucci never again got an adversary that really gave Erica a true run for her money, not until Finola Hughes came aboard in the late 90s. But Natalie was well on the way to dethroning Erica as the show's most popular character... she was just a chemistry magnet and Kate did something remarkable in taking her from a gold digging villainess with schemes to fuck her sugar daddy's son to Pine Valley's premiere romantic heroine... when you realise she did this in 5 years, it's extraordinary. Essentially, Kate's instinct for camp, especially in the early Natalie years and then with Janet, cultivated her a massive following among gay soap fans.

[quote]it was pretty jarring to watch Donna go from lead to nonentity.

Donna did have one last big story line with the return of Billy Clyde and Emily Anne learning her parentage. In some ways, she might have run her course and did not click with other potential love interests. It seemed like they were toying with having her with Travis then through him back with Erica to do the triangle with Jack (which did make more sense).

Ellen was still a pretty big part of the show into the late 80's through the Ross/Natalie rape story line and Julie's parentage, and then seemed o be placed on back-burner once she got back together with Mark. They were both shipped off not too long after that.

After Richard Van Vleet left the show in '84, they seemed to place Donna through a series of short-lived relationships...Ross, Tom, Zack. They finally married her to Benny, which was in the nail in the coffin of her backburner status. Vasili Bogazianos was fired in '88. They chem tested her with Walt Willey, but it never went anywhere. It's amazing she lasted as long as she did. I remember an interview with her in the late 80s, and she was asked about how it felt to be on the backburner for an extended period. She replied that it freed her up to do other things and mentioned that Kate Collins was incredibly gracious in their scenes together.

r217, there's an episode here where Phoebe is repelled by the idea of Chuck and Donna possibly reuniting and reminds him that they are from 'different' worlds' "I can't forget who or what Donna was, or the dreadful people she associated with... that Billy Clyde Tuggle and that Estelle LaTour!"

AMC just wasn't the same without Ruth Warrick... there's something about the way she would always glance at the camera with those huge bewildered pop eyes to get her lines off the cue cards which made it SO GOOD.

Donna and Candice Earley were never given due credit for the show's popularity IMO. Was she the best actress? No, but she was talented and had chemistry with everyone. The show was sagging in the the ratings a bit by the 75/76, and she and the Chuck/Donna romance were credited with revitalizing the show and bringing it to #1. Chuck/Donna and all the Locust Street/hooker stuff were incredibly popular.

IMO Kate Collins and Fiona Hutchison on OLTL were the great unheralded ABC soap opera stars, who actually carried their shows for years at a time.

r221, this is for you sweetie

Candi and Clint Ritchie were an item for quite a while. I wonder if he was a drunk when they were involved.

They really ugged Donna up in the '80s, with that cheap perm and bad dye job, she looked awful and then the character was in a car accident and they have a close-up of her crossing her eyes as she drives off the road that would make Karen Black cringe.

r213, if anyone should have won that year other than Slee, it was Jessica Tuck.

Jessia Tuck didn't submit her best work if i remember correctly. I think she stayed away from any of her death scenes. She should have won that year!!!

Erika Slezak didn’t thank J-Tuck the year she won after Megan’s big death scene. That strikes me as really glaring and not gracious given the volume of the storyline they shared. Makes me wonder if they were daytime’s answer to Shirley and Debra...?

I still get verklempt when I think about Megan dying.

Serial psycho, STOP trying to make Kate and Fiona relevant. They are very very very very minor in terms of the big names in soap history. You sick moron.

r227, the actual death scenes may not have been eligible for contention in the 1992 Emmys.

And that is the one awards clip I could never find and was never posted to youtube - the 1992 lead actress win.

Robert Newman as Trevor would have been AMAZING.

OK, Bitch R213.I have indulged your obsession with the lovely Kate Collins until this comment. Janet And The Well was comedy gold, but Kate NEVER would have won for that caricature. And I really like Kate.

If Jessica Tuck would not have STUPIDLY, and I mean STUPIDLY submitted garbage episodes instead of her hospital scenes, she would have won hands down. She felt that the blue ribbon panel would not have understood the scenes in that context (they would not have resonated) because those scenes were more for longterm viewers of the show, not a blue ribbon panel.

Dingbat R231, YES they were. They aired in February 1991. Jessica done FUCKED up. Stupid decision.

Go away Serial psycho sicko. Get help. No wonder your family had you committed for 60 days. You are one sick bastard.

And to the FOINE bitch above who mentioned Fiona Hutchison. Hugs!

Miss Fiona was MVP of soaps from 1988-1991.

This bitch brought it, EVERY DAY with ZERO applause.

Truly one of the most underrated television actresses (daytime and nighttime) of all time.

Pure emotion. Always completely present.

r235, they aired in February 1992. The cut off for the Emmys of 1992 would have been scenes airing until December 1991.

Kate Collins and Fiona Hutchinson are two are the best!!! Beautiful, super soapy, talented, and always showed out.

Fiona's hair was always a bit off the hook, wasn't it?

I always loved that Fiona and Andrea Evans were close friends off the set. Tina and Gabrielle were the best! Their relationship was so complex.

I always loved that neither Kate nor Fiona were liked by their peers.

Who is the Fiona / Kate troll? This buffoon can’t allow for people to have a difference in opinion and actually like 2 actresses? You act like people here are extolling the virtues of Eva Braun! You can’t deny that they had huge storylines and fan followings. That’s indisputable. Relax dude. So you didn’t particularly like them. But pretending you’re some sort of daytime insider who knew they were diva monsters is just not ringing true. You are 300 lbs and typing your lame missives from the Rust Belt. And you’ll never convince me otherwise.

Fiona might have saved Andrea's life. Her crazy stalker attacked her once in the lobby of the studio once and Fiona pulled him off of her.

Where is Fiona now? I loved her as Gabrielle... I always wished she would pop up on the one of the Bell soaps, or even GH or Days.

r240, I once saw a youtube post refer to Tina and Gabrielle on OLTL as 'Cinderella and Rapunzel on acid'.... I think that sums them up to a tee!

T&G ruled OLTL in the late 80s!

Love her.

I ruled OLTL. Always.

Never ever bring anything serial asshole psycho tweets over here. Thank you.

I was a blue ribbon panelist the year that Jessica Tuck was nominated and really wanted to place her first but couldn’t because her reel was a fucking mess. She made a huge mistake thinking the blue ribbon panel needed to be able to follow what was happening story-wise. We just wanted to see good acting and would filter out what didn’t make sense to us. She should have submitted those heartbreaking hospital scenes.

Were you on the blue ribbon panel the year Kate Collins was nominated? Oh wait. Nevermind.

I was a panelist for about six years, often judging the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories. I think the last year I did it was when we finally gave Lucci her Emmy-and she actually deserved it that year.

That's what most people don't always realize - part of the nominations/winning game is the footage that's submitted. Some knew what worked and some did not.

Ellen Holly's tribute to Slee was cut from the tribute. Let's just say it involved tears.

I would say Slee knew how to choose tapes down to a science - she won every year she was nominated.

I don't know how often the actors themselves picked. Our panelists may have more to say on that.

Many interviews with winners would say "I let so and so in makeup do it because they watch the show and see what the audience does, etc."

No she didn't BITCH! R256. She lost in 88 after submitting the Old West episodes.

Yes but Slesak’s tapes apart from that were GREAT. Clean, unfussy, unaffected acting...unlike Elizabeth Hubbard who made us visibly irritated by her hamminess and sloppy acting.

Sorry, SLEZAK.

So the actors put these reels together themselves? They don't get any help from the show or at least from someone who knows what kind of scenes should be submitted? How did they do it? Edit a tape on their own of scenes they've saved from the show, like fans recording their scenes on a VCR or did they have a more professional way of doing it?

The tapes consisted of every single scene they appeared in in two episodes. They made the selections and production edited the tapes. Sometimes we’d watch tapes and some scenes were fifteen seconds long which looked stupid but we were told beforehand that it was a rule that each tape had to contain every single time the performer was on screen, it couldn’t be edited to just include longer, more meaty scenes.

[quote]I did it was when we finally gave Lucci her Emmy-and she actually deserved it that year.

I know she is not always the greatest actress, but she can also really deliver and that episode really played to her strengths. It helped that Barbara and Travis came back and still clicked well with Erica and Jack. It seemed like they had never left. Speaking of not picking the right reels, I wonder if Lucci might not have had the best track record for picking scenes. The classic soap heroine scene is the big cry, which was not Lucci's strength. I think that is part of the reason she won of the intervention. She had to keep it together for Bianca and you saw her being quietly devastated as her daughter whispered she hated her (or blamed her). Erica was relieved and happy that Bianca was finally opening up but still devastated at what she was being told and feeling like she failed her daughter.

Liz Hubbard was so ridiculously overrated. In an interview, Anna Stuart threw shade at La Liz, saying that on The Doctors, Liz developed her whole style of acting around reading off cue cards! Meow.

Yes, R263, Erica’s concern for and heartbreak over her daughter’s bulimia was palpable and totally believable. Up until then Lucci’s tapes were awful. Sometimes I thought bad ones were submitted on purpose because her Emmy losing streak had turned into something financially beneficial-remember that artificial sweetener commercial?

Hubbard always flubbed her lines on ATWT. It was annoying.

And when she wasn’t flubbing her lines she was repeating them for emphasis-

“NO, Ambrose, I will NOT be calling Iva Snyder back, I won’t, I WON’T, because she’s been NOTHING but trouble for Lily, NOTHING but trouble for her so I WON’T, I WON’T call her back, I WON’T!”

So annoying. And sloppy as hell.

You Sleestack fans have to audacity to call Liz Hubbard a ham... are you fucking kidding me?!

6 time Emmy winner Sleestack is much more respected than line flubber Hubbard.

r268

That made me laugh. I came to OLTL in the 90s with Jean, Princess etc. where ES was much more subdued. Did Rauch want her to be so dramatic? That seems Rauch's MO

r267 took a wrong turn. This is Llanview/Pine Valley.

r270, Sleestack is the GIF that keeps on giving...

"Let GO, Niki!!! LET GOOOOOO....."

I'll be on the Midwestern Towns thread sharing my Hubbard/Lucinda love.

The Paul Rauch era of OLTL met the times. It was big, garish, loud and overstated. But glorious in its own way. Opulent location shoots, big hair, big stories, just BIG. An era long gone by. And Erika was the perfect heroine for it. She was able to go very big while also giving off a thespian/theater ac-tor vibe. And then you had a vixen like Tina played by Andrea Evans that broke out in a huge way. It was a magical time for the show.

Before Linda Gottlieb took over, they sat her down and made her watch tapes from the Rauch era. She commented that it was the worst produced anything she'd ever seen in all her time in the business.

Linda had some good moments but the show became a gigantic bummer under her tutelage. The AIDS quilt elevated the genre overall so that alone made her an EP worth celebrating. But her casting bummed me out. Luna, Andrew... these homely lame people who did not fit on daytime and looked like NJ community theater players.

r276, Linda Gottlieb can go fuck herself. The 80s era of OLTL provided viewers with some of the happiest moments of their lives and you can quote me on that.

This was simply the perfect exit scene for any soap opera character.... explaining the motivation for their action and parting with all the dignity they can muster. Superb. I cry at this scene because I know it marks the end of the One Life to Live and Llanview which will be in my heart forever.

R277 Susan Batten was very homely. She resembled a donkey especially when she smiled. I couldn't stand Luna. She was hated big time by ATWT viewers when she replaced the popular Alice Barrett. Some fans sent cans of dog food to the studio. She came across as very arrogant when questioned about being unpopular with ATWT fans and seemed to think she was untouchable but soon found out otherwise when she was fired.

I didn't think Worthham Krimmer was all that bad looking though. He wasn't a hunk though, for sure. Laura Koffman was far too attractive to be believably paired with him. Though the same could be said about James De Pavia and the donkey Batten.

The actors that played Suede and Jason weren't the most hunky by soap standards of the time either.

I hated the Gottlieb era. She was one of those people who hated/had disdain for soaps and tried to remake the entire genre. It showed in her work. Say what you want about them, but revolutionaries like Rauch and Monty loved the genre. Sure, they had missteps, but they just wanted to improve things, not reinvent the wheel.

R280 It was Allyson Rice Taylor that Susan Batten replaced on ATWT.

Alice Barrett was Frankie on AW.

I loved her as Luna on OLTL, but she was terribly miscast in every way on ATWT. It would be like replacing Slee with Minnie Pearl. Just too big a difference.

r277, that was the point. The casting of those types of people were intentional.

I would take Malone's character work over the Rauch era any day. You would never have a character like Andrew Carpenter on soaps today.

There is a reason many of his characters became part of the show's core.

R282 Thanks. Sorry about that. I wasn't much a viewer for those shows and got the two mixed up since they were both controversy fired around the same time.

I would love to see what Rauch could've done with that boring old-biddy show ATWT. I bet he could've lured Andrea Evans over.

r285, AE was not going to come back to NY no matter what.

To the people who say on Blue Ribbon panels: do you know how many people were on your blue ribbon panel? Just how many people vote for a particular category?

If not for that stalker, Andrea would have stayed and maybe Fiona would have even stayed. No Blair, no Todd, no dreary 90s plot lines.

R287, it varied. Here in NY there were up to twenty. I gather in LA they were many more because for some reason they took it more seriously, maybe because they felt the need to fend off LA bias from us New Yorkers. The screenings were generally held on weekends in April/May. I remember there was an AIDS Walk one of those days so there was a shockingly small amount on each panel.

r288, so Andrea's stalker is what essentially caused the downturn by 1991? And he caused ABC to replace Rauch? And he hired Gottlieb/Malone?

If you study daytime soap ratings, OLTL left the top 3 bracket of the dozen soaps after the departure of Evans and Hutchison. It never regained.

Speaking of ratings, I remember when AMC had their insane run at #2 in the early to mid-90s. They would pull in massive ratings which was remarkable since I’m sure many thought their glory days were behind them. That really was a second golden age of the show.

Tad/Dixie, Trevor/Natalie, Brian/Hayley, Edmund/Maria, Julia/Noah, Janet, and of course Kendall were insanely popular. I think the combo of actors leaving, an onslaught of new teens, McTavish's writing going berserk, the OJ trial, and Days' resurgence all hurt the ratings.

I feel like Tad’s return from the dead / Ted Orsini story and Who Killed Will Cortlandt? was that period’s zenith. I think AMC unseated Y&R for #1 the day Tad and Dixie finally reunited... if memory serves.

AMC was only #2 for a year I think? Started during Janet in the Well. 92-93? Maybe 92-94?

All My Children was #2 from 1991 to 1995.

R295- Hey dummy, it was Natalie in the well, not Janet. Which explains why you were also off on AMC holding #2 for a single year. No more from you...

I think Natalie in the well, Erica and Adam, Hayley & Brian, the mysterious Wildwind started the streak which led to the Will Courtland murder and was followed by some popular stories - return of Tad, Edmund and Brooke, Mona's cancer, Kendell-Richard Fields, Noah & Juilia. I would say it was still good a year or two after that with the return of Liza, the Michael and Kevin coming out stories, Erica's addiction. I think after that it started to falter with a promising period in the early 2000's with pre-Ryan Green ee, David, Vanessa, Leo, Bianca before it started its final slow downward descent.

R298- completely agree. Well summarized.

It was so good for so long. Even Ryan was OK initially with Gillian, etc. It was when he returned and it was Greenlee/Kendall/Ryan all the time, really odd weird stories, Bianca's rape and her hooking up with Zarf....just turned the show to shit.

ITA with Gottlieb. I hated the Rauch era. Most of all I hate him for destroying the Marco character. He took a powerful character like Marco and turned him into comic relief and that destroyed one of the most interesting couples in daytime, Macro and a, and just as a was about to find our her father was the evil Ivan Kippling.

I did love the Gottlieb/Malone/Griffith era. I loved that they raised the caliber of soaps and did powerful, character driven stories. I hate stupid plot driven crap. It was the 80s kind of stories that swayed from what daytime soaps really were, they were basically exaggerated real life, not sci fi and ridiculous adventure stories that began with Luke and Laura on General Hospital. They poisoned the entire genre.

Give me the AIDS quilt and gang rape stories any day over Eterna and shit like that. P.S. I could never stand AE, her look, her voice, everything about her was like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Thank god AE coming to OLTL coincided with VCR's coming out and I could ff'd most of her scenes.

For the same reason I loved Gottlieb/Malone and Griffith's work I also loved the work of Claire Labine, with the exception of Maggie and clown school. If that was Labine's idea of trying to lighten the show that was one huge mistake she made. I loved most of Labine's work on GH too and of course Ryan's Hope.

Much to my surprise GH is getting to have some decent character driven stories again. Maybe daytime soaps won't die completely after all.

I though Malone/Gottlieb was hit or miss. Some of it I liked. Loved the AIDS quilt, liked Luna and Blair (once Kassie played her), liked the Viki/Dorian refocus and the expansion of Viki's alters.

The rape story was stunning, but I felt that Marty/Patrick were bores, and didn't like any of the nuTinas. And I can see why none of the Buchanan men liked Gottlieb much, as none of them were shown to any good advantage in that era.

AMC's ratings dropped after Sarah Michelle Gellar left in mid-1995. The show was number 2 or number 3 until then and then nosedived to 5 or 6. Never regained... but still did better than OLTL.

The Janet storyline with Natalie in the well was going on at the same time as the Sheila baby stealing story on Y&R. 1991 was a good year for psychotic villainesses, which was obviously a winning formula to getting a soap to the top of the ratings.

Miss Viki Sleestack is on The Resident, tomorrow night on Fox. Set your PVr’s, DVR’s etc etc. welcome back, Miss Viki!

R268 I always loved that scene. The way they repeated her saying, "FAH-THER, I-REEEEN!" over and over! I often say it because of the camp of it all.

When is Ellen Holly's guest turn on the Resident?

AMC's ratings success was because of ME, cunts!

AMC's ratings success was DESPITE Sue. There, I fixed it.

People were on the edge of their seats in the 90s to see how much of Sue's upper lip would be drawn with lipstick.

They certainly weren't there for Sue and all three of her facial expressions.

Slee is on The Resident!

Can someone explain the Slee / Resident joke. From what I can gather... is the shtick that Erika Slezak is making a big return to acting as an “under 5” player on a lame prime time show. Does The Resident even exist? I know it’s a troll but would love the background.

r313, what are you talking about? She was a guest star on a prime time show. I don't think there is trolling in regard to that.

It finally aired last night, apparently.

Her airdate had been bumped a few times.

Slee wasn't an under five. She played one of the patients of the week, a med school professor who was having a health issue.

Apparently some of it involved hallucinations so I bet a little Niki Smith style hamming it up came into play.

I watched The Resident. From heaven. Bless you, Slee.

How come that witch, Dorian Strassman, has not commented about Slee being on primetime?

If you blinked, you missed it.

Sue had much more important things to do last night than watch some stupid medical show with a long-forgotten soap actress doing an under-five.

r320, clearly one of the important things was not eating.

The only thing that Lucci cooze has ever been good in.

Does anyone else remember all the muscle put behind AMC’s 25th Anniversary in 1995? Oprah dedicated an amazing show celebrating the milestone, there was a prime time special on ABC hosted by Carol Burnett and the actual show had a week of anniversary themed shows with lots of flashbacks playing out against a party at The Martins. (Think they were snowed in?) I have it all on a VHS tape and it might be what I grab first if I had a house fire. It made the show’s slow decline that much sadder.

I remember, r23! I had it on VHS too, lol!

r323, it's actually humorous in hindsight because it was only within a year that AMC became unwatchable and never really recovered.

Sue remember Barbara Bush. Quite a touching statement from Sue.

With the likes of "zarf"

So did anyone catch a Slezak on the Resident? Was she any good? A little rusty? Anyway, it's nice to see her getting work.

"You wanted Dorian and now you've got her."

I just watched The Resident with Erika. I thought she was great. Very underplayed with no hysteria. Because of what the character was experiencing, she could have gone that route, but she didn't. If they chose, they could bring her in as a talk to for the character with whom she was involved. They left it open, so maybe, but probably not.

Me and my friends had a viewing party of Slee on The Resident at Tavern on the Green.

Why hasn’t that bitch Dorian Strassman congratulated or commented on Erika getting a primetime guest starring role? Is Strassman that jealous of her? I think she is.

R330 The two baddies on the show were talking about getting rid of the Chief of Staff, I'd love for the good guys to orchestrate having ES's character take the job instead of them, after all she is a well respected neurosurgeon. She was very good on the show, I was afraid she would be rusty, but she really showed that she is a great actress. Did you know she attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts?

Fuck Slee! I bet she can't do this.

R333 I only watched her scenes so I missed that part. That would be an excellent way to bring her in. I would watch it for sure then. Looks like a pretty good cast. I don't watch too much primetime drama, but would for the Slee.

R332 Why should Strasser be jealous? She has a much larger resume outside of Daytime than Sleestack.

R334 Look I loved Susan as Erica Kane, I cried when she finally won the Emmy. I was actually on a marching band trip, that night, and it was crazy the entire hotel erupted with people screaming about her winning, the chaperones and the teens, male and female, gay, straight, bi, etc... because her losing streak had become so legendary, even among non soap fans, it felt like history was being made. But, she is not and was never as great an actress as Erica Slezak, the most honored Lead Actress in Daytime Emmy history.

R336 Yes, but the bitch Strassman can’t even tweet out a congratulations to Slee. And everytime Strassman mentions Slee, which isn’t often, Strassman jealously comments on how many emmys Slee has. I’m not happy with bitch Strassman’s silence on Slee getting a primetime gig. Steassman comments on other meaningless shit but can’t express happiness about Slee? Jealous bitch.

r338, please take your meds.

This "Lucci isn't as good an actress as -----" is tired. I don't think anyone feels she's the greatest soap actress ever--fuck, I don't even think SHE thinks she is the best. She wasn't even the best actress EVER on AMC--Barr, Collins, Morgan, Lyman could all be considered for that. But she had, and obviously still has, that "It" factor. I think she's pretty cheesy in intrerviews sometimes, but I'll watch her in anything. Even if she's not the greatest dramatic actress ever, she's always watchable. She can do drama when it's understated--and that's why she finally won the Emmy. I miss Erica Kane and I'd watch an AMC reboot in a heartbeat if she was on it.

I was never really into OLTL, but I do acknowledge that "Slee" is a fantastic actress as are others who have been mentioned on soap threads here.

I also maintain that the terrible Kim Zimmer is the most overrated soap actress ever! I'll give her the "Slut of Springfield" Emmy, but how she won multiple Emmys is beyond me!

She should congratulate Slee for landing a role after YEARS of trying unsuccessfully.

Strassman had some choice parts like that of Hooker #4 in 2000 Malibu Rd (at 1:31:22) after she left OL.

Spelling must have have dangled some mighty carrots in Strassman's face for her to have willingly taken a part like that.

Strassman played Hecuba on Passions after OL dumped her.

R344 Yes she did, it was the only time I watched that shitshow. I know some people loved Passions but I thought it was horrible, from the tawdry "Princess Diana was my best friend" premiere, to the fact that it was like someone took old Dark Shadows and Bewitched scripts jumbled them together, and then gave them to a bunch of monkey's taking acid to cobble a story together. I honestly think Passions killed soaps more than the OJ Simpson trial.

r334, maybe not sue, but she can something you CAN'T do...

act.

I'll never understand how Vicki seemed never to have domestic help at Llanfair.

A down on her luck Carla Benari Gray was the maid at Llanfair but Slee insisted actress Ellen Holly never appear on screen.

r103... you are right. I'm sorry, I got quite confused with the other time the two were up for same role.... Bening was cast as Catwoman but got pregnant and had to drop out, leaving the role to Pfeiffer.

Nothing really new here, but nice to here Lucci talk about old AMC. I know it is partially because she knows that is where her bread is buttered, but she always speaks of it so fondly. Sounds like the younger actors used to have more time to learn their craft in the old days.

r347, they always referred to Lois. In fact, we saw her multiple times in the 90s. There was a butler before that in the 80s, can't remember his name. And she always talked about "cook". I don't think those types of details mattered much in the later years.

Sue said that James Mitchell and Louis Edmonds both tried to sample her snatch.

Loos Edmonds ate out Lois Kibbee and Elizabeth Lawrence.

Over in the DOOL thread, it said that fans are bombarding Ron on Twitter to bring Slee to DOOL

Heron was the name of Victoria Lord's butler. And there was a nanny who looked after little Kevin, Joey, and Jessica.

KIM!

At Slee’s age, she's not going to commute from CT to El-lay to do a west coast soap. She’s not that desperate.

r350, can you imagine if he had asked her about Sarah Michelle Gellar, who claims that Lucci had her fired the morning after she won the Emmy in 1995.

Yes, it was Kim. She was referenced several times before she had an human incarnation, and she was Asian. The same thing happened with Dorian's Carlotta. We heard her name dozens of times before she was an actual character. I loved when Dorian used to say "I practically raised those boys" -- meaning the Vega brothers -- when we never, ever saw them until they were adults or near adults.

But we did see Heron (Herron?) all the time, going back to when Llanfair was still the original Victor Lord's abode.

Kim Fung Toy

I loved Nigel

Yes, he was a polite, fussy kind of butler. Of course, Asa's butler, with his arched eyebrows and faultless commitment to the family, was more entertaining.

I know Peter Bartlett, who played Nigel. He loved that gig. He told me Prospect Park was so fucked up doing the internet version that he got a double check for the same day of work. And he wasn’t the only one who was fortunate enough to have that happen to. He offered to give the other check back but the PP accountant said it would fuck up the system so he’d better keep it!

Erika Slezak was very good on The Resident. She’s always been a good actress. I’m sure this will lead to other work, at least on episodics. Why the fuck are Bruce Greenwood and Emily VanCamp regulars on that piece of shit, though? It’s not as if they need the money.

Ironic that Ms. Sleeztack was owed over 250,000 from Prospect Park yet Nigel got double time!!!

Stay pressed, hunties!

r365, it might have to do with actors who were on a contract. I think they are all owed money.

Please tell your friend Peter Bartlett how much we enjoyed his portrayal of Nigel on OLTL. His comic relief to the antics of the Buchanans was welcome. Also, if he has any good gossip, we would love to hear it. (This is Datalounge, for goodness sake.)

Has Julia Barr retired? I loved how they used Brooke on the reboot. It's really a shame it didn't work out...I think Lucci would have eventually showed up and we could have had more Brooke/Erica scenes. They had wonderful chemistry.

I wish AMC had utilized them like OLTL did with Viki and Dorian.

I don't think Barr has officially announced her retirement but I think it's safe to say she has. She hasn't acted in anything since the AMC reboot.

I'd say she's been smart with her money and her husband is a dentist and oral surgeon so she probably doesn't need to work any longer.

I really wish casting agents would think outside the box, I've seen at least five films recently starring Judy Dench that Erica Slezak would have been perfect for. I wish Hollywood had some imagination.

Julia Barr acted circles around Sue

Julia did say she was essentially retired in an interview around the time of the reboot online. She was willing to make some appearances on the online version and basically did so to support David Canary, who by that time was really starting to struggle with dementia and could only manage a few scenes.

She did appear in scenes with Canary , and he was indeed struggling, but they were also putting Brooke and Micheal Nader's Dimitri together as a romance.

I loved Julia Barr. She really delivered the goods. She was nothing short of amazing in the drunk driving storyline, and then in the whole Adam/Dixie/Tad thing. Those storylines were so well written. Her character never really recovered after the succession of Pierces, then her romance with the child pornographer, and then her doomed romance with the guy who killed her daughter. When Frons came to ABC, he wanted Barr, Canary, and Marcy Walker gone. He didn't understand their appeal. Evidently, Agnes intervened and was able to save Canary's job.

Wanted to add that I was recently watching Barr in some of the Mark Dalton drug intervention scenes with Lucci, Kathleen Noone and Mark LaMura. She was top notch there too in a supporting capacity, nicely underplaying her scenes. Very effective. She's a very intelligent actress. Lucci should've taken a cue from her, because she is just so ridiculously over the top, overplaying everything, chewing scenery left and right to the point that it was distracting from the story.

R367 I second that, please let him know his portrayal of Nigel is still fondly remembered. I always loved the chemistry between him and Asa, so unusual but so fun and real. And, while I thought Nigel and Roxy would not work, it actually turned into one of my favorite pairings.

I remember when I was young and started watching AMC, I hated Brooke. It wasn't until I got older that I started appreciating Julia Barr. Brooke didn't become interesting to me until she was paired with Adam.

I was in college when Brooke's daughter Laura was killed by the drunk driver. The big scene where Tom tells Brooke that Laura is dead was playing on this humongous TV in the student union cafeteria. Everyone in that huge room was watching and you could not have heard a pin drop. I even saw butch jocks tearing up. Barr played it wonderfully, and I still think it's one of the best soap scenes ever.

Julia Barr is wonderful, I would love to see her return to our screens.

Yeah, she was great in that scene. No. No. Ah, no.

Julia Barr should've been the face of AMC, not Lucci. Barr is a far better actress.

Tom tells Brooke about Laura's death

Classic Erica and Brooke.

The last Erica/Brooke scene. The writing is spotty, but Barr and Lucci sell it.

Barr was a better actress, but I liked Lucci and they complimented each other well. For years the show did a good job of balancing multiple story lines and having them as the lead actress (with usually a third such as Natalie or Nina etc., but always Brooke and Erica). The a-list people would be on 3 days a week, occasionally 4 and the b list people possibly 2 days a week.

I thought the soaps started to suffer in the late 90's when they stopped using more of the cast and instead of having 3 to 4 story lines a day - and 6 to 7 overall, they started focusing on a couple of stories and you saw the same people every day.

Barr/Lucci was chump change compared to Slezak/Strasser.

Thank you R381. That scene was a master class in not just “soap acting” but acting in general. She really sold it. One could argue it probably wasn’t difficult to summon that anguish since she was a mother herself, but it was perfectly modulated and built in a way that felt heartbreakingly real. Julia was the real deal. And Dick Shoberg was great in that scene as well. He was right there with her. AMC at its BEST.

I agree R386, Was never an AMC fan, I was Y&R and OLTL, but I have watched this scene every now and then for years. It was probably one of the best acted scenes in ANY medium I have ever seen. That guttural almost laugh thing that Julia does and then puts her hand over her mouth. An act of someone who is in absolute shock. Julie Barr gave one of the acting moments I have ever seen. So completely true. This woman really felt these emotions. It is very hard to watch.

I remember one of the actors in the Laura's death story line said it was difficult for all involved because they were all parents. I would say that story which led to the Tad-Dixie-Adam story combined with the Natalie rape story, recast Will as Palmer jr., and the lighter Erica-Jack-Travis triangle and the Nico/Cecily farce (remember when Maurice was charming and Cecily probably could have been a long-term character) were the start of AMC improving again which would solidify in 1990, where it had its last good streak

The Laura death story was really brilliantly written by Lorraine Broderick. Her real-life daughter Annie was playing Laura at the time, so I can't imagine what it was like to write that and then watch her daughter "die" on screen.

Certain actresses play "raw" very well, and it's not easy. Barr is a good example. Susan Haskell on OLTL. Gina Tognoni on GL.

Kathleen Noone did raw pretty well also. I remember Ellen's break-up with Ross seemed very real and she did a good job showing hurt and bitterness.

What about Sue? Does she play "raw" well?

R390- BRILLIANT choices there. I knew Susan Haskell won that emmy in 2009 or whenever it was the minute I saw those scenes )I barely remember the storyline now- Faux Todd, or Marty had amnesia- I cannot even remember. Everyone was saying it was Debbie Morgan, but I knew a year prior when watching. She was THAT good. And it was raw. Gina is another great example. It is acting that comes from the heart and soul.

Lucci could never have matched Barr's reaction, and agree with the earlier poster she chewed a lot of scenery during the Mark's intervention scene. Still at some point in the 90's she did start scaling back some of her dramatic scenes and could be quietly effective in showing her pain. Nothing at the level of Barr, but I remember scenes like her trial testimony reliving her rape in the stabbing Dimitri trial, her returning Maria's baby, Bianca's intervention, Bianca's coming-out etc., the episode leading to her Woman of the Year speech (which was scenery eating but in a totally entertaining way) where she did a decent job. Probably not the best actress, but I don't think she was worst.

I think part of the reason the Laura story was so powerful, is that it was before spoilers. People were truly shocked. But the acting all around was great - down to guilt ridden Barbara.

Lucci was more of personality on AMC. I like her, but she was always a superficial actress.

Slezak is a great example of someone who could go either way in terms of raw emotion vs histrionics.

Slezak was wonderful in that Paris Texas storyline. It showed me that she could play anything.

I did think it was egregious what the show did to Niki Smith post 1986. It really was the writing. Everyone blames Erika, but that shit was written like a cartoon. Niki Smith in 1985-1986 was written as human being. I still get teary when I watch Niki on the stand talking about Harry O'Neill getting shot. Erika did a wonderful job creating a character, NOT a caricature like NIki became later. Those live week shows showed Niki (and Erika) and their absolute worst. I despised Gary Tomlin's OLTL. Despite the emmy.

I think Kate Collins combined the earthiness of Barr and the high spirit of Lucci, which is why Natalie became the show's most popular character for a time.

Oh fuck. We are back to Kate Collins again. I like her too. She was very elegant. Class.

r396, Niki was used as a plot device after the original story. Even Malone didn't really delve into Niki.

The worst of it was the creation of Tess and that whole mess. That was another jump the shark moment for the show, IMO.

r395, Slezak is a dreadful actors. Over the top, cringe worthy and would be laughed off the screen by today's generation. The whole episode she won another Emmy for is absolutely sold by one person and one person only... Robin Strasser. Strasser actually has to make the scene feel real whilst Slee hams it up (with another Emmy prize at the forefront of her mind no doubt)

[quote] Everyone was saying it was Debbie Morgan, but I knew a year prior when watching.

I think Debbie Morgan can be a great actress, but every time I saw her during her return (I was not watching regularly by then) she was playing each scene like it was the final soliloquy of someone about to die in a Shakespeare play. Part of it was the over-dramatic story lines they gave her, but she ate a piece of the set every time I saw her that last year or two.

Erika did such a great job with that big personality integration story line where they brought in additional alters. That really should have been the end of the alter story lines, and I felt a bit bad for her when they not only brought Niki back, but they did it in such a cartoonish fashion. Plus her daughter now had alters. It is like the spit on all of the serious work they done ten years earlier.

Morgan was really great in the Jesse "death" scenes in 1988 and deserved that Emmy win. Agreed that she was so-so in her return and that was partly due to the overly melodramatic storylines.

Slezak was phenomenal and understated during the Megan's death story. The writing was top notch and she played it perfectly.

r400, at this point, Viki is supposed to be having a complete mental breakdown. I would expect it to be heightened to a degree. Strasser had to play the straight man in those scenes.

[quote]Morgan was really great in the Jesse "death" scenes in 1988 and deserved that Emmy win

That was one of the times when I truly found myself tearing up watching those scenes. It was also a reason why it was a bit harder to believe he did not die, since Angie, a doctor, as on top of his dead body long enough where there is no way she would not have known he was not actually dead.

Kate Collins was a goddess and totally underrated actress! She made it look so damn easy. How come she is not talked about here?

A lot of it is dependent on the writing/story. Haskell is a superb actress with the right material. That whole Dylan and Patrick mess did her no favors as an actress.

Morgan is a dependable dramatic actress, but when they brought her back everything was SO heavy...dead babies, GOING BLIND..that it became kind of depressing to watch Angie. Even the reboot saddled her with the dark Cassandra kidnapping storyline. It picked up once Cass was found and towards the end of the reboot's run they were toying with an Angie/David affair. THAT would have been interesting.

Dr. David had that magic dick that all the ladies wanted.

Another underrated (and unfortunately short-term) actress who delivered on OLTL was Grace Phillips. She had a depth that Jensen Buchanan never captured.

And she had the potential to be a great heroine as Sarah, especially after Jessica Tuck left. That was really a wasted opportunity.

And what was also so wonderful about Grace Phillips is that she would take the subway to the studio everyday.

Shit R409, you all are coming up with some excellent actors! Grace Phillips was a MAJOR find. From her first scenes at Bo's wedding, she was fucking amazing. I vaguely recall some reason why they wrote out Sarah. I know that Gottlieb was behind that one. A total bitch from what I remember. And yes, considering the SHITTY characters they introduced from 92-95, how they let go of this great find, I will never understand. (Suede?? Luna's fucking brothers??, Angela Holliday?? That simp Rebecca?) Malone's run is so overpraised in my opinion. His B and C storylines were complete duds and the characters he created were generally horrific.

I am actually surprised that Lucci still manages to sell those products on QVC.

I think Susan Pratt is another underrated actress. She tended to get overshadowed on AMC by Lucci, since they almost always had Barbara in Erica's orbit. But she really shone for the few years they paired her with Richard Shoberg and then the whole Laura death thing. She was quite good. She also showed great range on GL, from light romantic comedy with Jay Hammer, and then the dark turn Claire took near the end of her run on that show.

r411, Gottlieb was actually the one who cast Grace Phillips.

From what I remember about the rumors, her departure and Sarah's death had to do with the dynamic with Bob Woods.

I actually liked the Angela Holliday story.

Remember this?

R414- That sounds right- RSW was known as a complete douche about who he was paired with- But she would be right up his alley though! 15 years younger and gorgeous. I feel that someone was a complete asshole and thats why Grace was fired. Jessica Tuck is still friends with Grace and they live near each other. Jessica sounds like a LOVELY woman. She gave a long interview to some soap journalist (a recorded interview) a few years ago. What a great lady. Completely lovely about her time on OLTL and she seemed to LOVE talking about the show. She sounds like a happy and content woman.

Slezak was pure ham on rye. Must've been too much RADA training.

I never cared for Susan Pratt on GH or GL, but I liked her on AMC. She did well in the stories they gave her once Barbara became more than just the bitch ex-wife of Travis.

Ugh, Travis. Never liked Larkin Malloy on AMC.

Actually, weren't the rumors at the time that they all felt Grace played TOO young against Woods?

R415- Hated it. Boring. Derivative. Malone's stories - other than Marty's Rape, Aids Quilt, Alex and Carlo, and Viki's alters, had no punch. The show is so boring to watch from that era. And that Angel Square shit- All of it- and that disgusting Kamar whats his name , really was cliched and again, horrendously boring. Anyone remember that boring cop Andy? One of the worst.

Malone needed a strong producer. When Gottlieb left, it didn't pack the same punch IMO.

Angel Square is probably what did Malone in.

I loved a lot of what Malone did, loved Andrew Carpenter. I liked Tina & Cain. I did even appreciate what Luna brought to the show.

R420, I did like Luna. I had no issues with her. In fact I really enjoyed her. The stories were just so middle of the road. There was a lot of good scriptwriting and intelligent dialogue. There was a lot of humanity (Malone was like the ANTI-Dena Higley)

But he wanted to write a novel. A soap needs cliffhangers. A soap needs heightened stories.

Alex and Carlo, were fantastic. A lot of sexual innuendo. A really intelligent and gothic duo, that were so much fun to watch. It was film level sophistication.

I always hated that Robin Christopher's Skye returned to ABC, but to GH and OLTL and not to AMC where she belonged.

I know they brought her back occasionally, but they never really gave her any Chandler stories after she came back to AMC and they didn't explore the fact that Myrtle was her grandmother!

I think I was one of the few who loved Robin Christopher on OLTL. I didn't mind JFP's favorites if they were good actors.

Say what you will about Malone, but it's no coincidence that the majority of his characters became the core of the show. And it's due to the writing that most of those characters integrated seamlessly, as if the viewer felt they were always there. Compare that with the amount of "successful" new characters who were viably integrated in the last decade of the show, and it's even more apparent.

I hated Malone's pretentious writing. Give me Tomlin's supercampy version any day, and toss in a few shirtless Ford brothers, and there you have OLTL.

Grace Phillips had such gorgeous eyes.

AMC bloopers

r403, LOL... Slezak was understated during Megan's death? Bitch please.

Do you think it kills Slee that Sue's kids are so much more attractive and successful than her loser offspring?

I just listened to Claire Danes on Howard Stern and she said that her friend’s 13 year old daughter is obsessed with watching vintage AMC on YouTube. Isn’t that something? But I can weirdly understand how that would be fascinating for a teen today to watch. Since the dawn of time, teenagers are obsessed with authenticity and no amount of Hollywood staging can authentically recreate the 1980s. But lo-fi scenes of AMC from 1983? You can’t get more authentic.

Claire Danes came this close to getting the role of Jessica in 1990 (on OLTL). It was hers but I cannot recall the scenario of how it didn't happen

r433, and Genie Francis was nearly cast as Sarah Gordon after Jensen Buchanan left. I think she would have been wonderful. AMC got her first, though.

Jennifer Bransford was hilariously brilliant as Nora's stalker secretary Georgie. I wish they'd kept her around for longer.

R433 - Claire talked about turning down a soap role during this same Howard interview. I guess it was Jessica! She didn’t say which soap. She said she didn’t want “to develop bad acting habits” and said she was probably wrong about her 13 year old take on soap acting. She came off as incredibly grounded and intelligent in the interview. Not pretentious.

Julia Roberts auditioned for the role of Hilary on AMC. Would have been interesting seeing her opposite Michael Knight and Ruth Warrick.

Carmen Thomas had zero charisma. She was supposed to fill the void left by Kim Delaney and that just wasn’t to be. Hillary was lame.

R437- I fear you’re mistaken. She auditioned for Linda Warner which went to Melissa Leo.

Genie Francis would never have been plausible as Sarah. And she was wrong for Ceara on AMC, too. She was so locked in to her Laura persona and a lot of people couldn’t get past that. I felt the same way when Taylor Miller was on AW. All I saw was Nina wearing less attractive clothes.

They recently fired Genie from GH and it made me realise that her brand in soaps has always relied on Tony Geary. Without him, she is just considered a dime a dozen soap actress.

Genie’s AMC hiring was so hyped. I remember it being on Entertainment Tonight which back in its Tesh/Hart heyday rarely deigned to cover daytime. And the writers never knew what to do with Ceara from day one. It felt like they were writing her day by day with no long term vision for her character. She wasn’t rooted to a family (save for being Murtyle’s niece or something...?). She went from vixen to incest victim seemingly overnight. I do recall her having a full on Dynasty like catfight with Susan Lucci. That was fun. But it was such a lackluster stint on the whole.

What is interesting upon reflection is how many legendary daytime actresses had contract roles on AMC at certain points. Robin Strasser. Genie Francis. Finola Hughes. Marcy Walker. Linda Dano (in that ill fated weird Rae crossover thing). All knowing they would have to be second fiddle to Susan Lucci who was never going to cede the premiere actress spot on the show. Clearly it was better to come in under the radar and let the work and fans take it from there. Think Kate Collins or Eva LaRue. You could break thru with fans but better to come in with low expectations.

Ah, my bad, I 100% remember reading that Julia auditioned for Hillary, but that may have been written y someone who was wrong. The timeline for Linda Warner makes more sense.

And I *loved* Melissa Leo on AMC.

Why should Lucci have to *cede* her status as AMC leading lady to anyone? She was the star, she knew it, her costars knew it, everyone knew it. Her acting skills can be debated ad nauseum, but she WAS AMC and her contribution to soaps can't be denied.

Watch the clip of drugged out Erica eviscerate half the town at the "Woman of the Year" event. Lucci really played it well, and didn't go for her usual over the top habits. The cast had to sit there and react to Erica's speech, and the way they were are all "present" even without any lines too me made the scenes so much more powerful and you can feel them supporting Lucci.

And then her costars weeping tears of joy when she won the Emmy. I'm sure they found her mildly cheesy, but other than the SMG stuff, she was obviously well liked by her cast, and was never the "diva" on the set.

In fact, AMC seems like it was the best soap to work on, as far as behind the scenes stuff goes. I know about the Collins/Kiberd drama, the Lucci/SMG rumors, and whatever weirdness went on with James Scott and Michael Knight...but there doesn't seem to have been a ton of turmoil on that set.

R444- I completely agree. I didn’t mean that Lucci was meant to ever cede her spot- it was more befuddling that these actresses (particularly Hughes, Francis and post-SB Walker) would be content to join a show where they had to know they would be, at best, second bananas. But I’m sure it was a decent paycheck and the powers that be really sold them on how they would be able to impact the show.

I liked Finola on AMC once "Alex" was gone and she was Anna as Police Chief.

r442, here's the fight. They dressed Genie very unflatteringly on AMC.

R381, that fourth 'no' always gets me.

This was in 1988 but Barr didn't win the Emmy till 1990, the year I thought Michelle Forbes should have won.

The Emmys are odd. I not only think McKinsey should have had one, but also Kathryn Hays and Hubbard, the latter two should have tied for the award for their work in 1986.

I'd have given it to McKinsey for her work in '85 (the Andy Ferris story, testifying at Lujack's trial, fighting with Warren, losing Locke and Lujack).

The reality is fans know who the better actors are than the industry because we have watched multiple shows.

Most actors don't even know who are on their own shows.

Rare exceptions to this are Bergman, Zimmer, Heather Tom, and HB Smith.

R446- I respectfully disagree. I felt like Anna didn’t fit on the canvas. And it was so bizarre that they would hype and stage a reunion with her and Robin... on AMC. What were they thinking? Sure there would be some duplication among GH and AMC but not enough to justify that stunt. Also, her chemistry with her AMC leading men was nonexistent. Her and Vincent Irizarry were depressing together. Same with her and Nader.

I loved Finola as Alexandra Devane Marick, especially in her pairing with Dimitri, but Anna just didn't fit on AMC. I wish she had remained Alex. Anna is such an iconic GH character her story should only be told there.

Cady McClain writes in her autobiography of a powerful actress on AMC who was jealous of McClain’s long, luscious locks and forced the hairdresser to chop it all off, resorting in her very unflattering mid-90’s pixie cut.

That had to be Lucci, right?

r451, that's interesting considering she always seemed to indicate that she liked to experiment with her hair and AMC allowed her to do so.

I feel like the Lucci making an actress cut off her hair is an urban legend, because I heard the same thing about Marcy Walker which would not have made sense that Erica barely interacted with high school Jenny or ingenue Dixie.

McClain changed her hair so often and it seems to be part of her personality to change it. She was always monkeying with the cut and the color. I am somewhat suspect of posts saying Lucci made either Walker or Cady cut their hair, especially now that I have heard the same thing about Cady when Cady was always changing her hair.

meant high school Liza not high school Jenny, who she actually did have some interaction with.

Not to mention that CM didn't really cut her hair till like 1995. That's a long time for Lucci to be simmering over luscious locks before she acted. LOL

I think Cady's unfortunate hair started in earnest around 1994. Here she (eventually) is in one of my favorite segments, "This Is Your Life, Janet Green." Alas, Trevor's doing his thing throughout.

Cady had some hideous hair styles over the years. This one was the worst one to me. It had to piss of the producers and they had to update her shot in the opening credits more than most of the other stars.

Between that and her going back and forth between AMC and ATWT several times, made me suspect that she was a bit nutty.

Wow, when was that one? It looks like a bad wig.

I would have rooted for Tad to fuck Liza just to get revenge on that hairstyle.

R457 -- I was trying to find that one. I thought the boards were a bit hard on her and her hair and then she showed up like that and I thought "they have a point". I think she actually looked ok in the pixie cut, but some of her other shorter hair cuts were pretty bad.

I think she had that hideous hair don't was from the latter half of 1995 to when she left AMC the first time in May 1996.

I remember that part of Cady’s book. And I can’t imagine her being in Susan’s crosshairs. They didn’t have any big storylines together, really. It read as so bizarre to me, and frankly somewhat implausible to me. I remember James Mitchell doing a thing for Soap Opera Digest on one of his anniversaries and he had to share memories of his costars and he praised everyone of them but was super restrained when discussing Cady. He said “she is a really unusual person.” Or something of that nature. It definitely wasn’t glowing like he did with Gillian Spencer, Jill Larson, Susan Lucci, etc.

God bless Soap Opera Digest for bringing the unintentional comedy for 40+ years.

Now, I'm thinking about ALL the actresses on AMC who cut their hair short LOL. First there was Candi Earley, then Lauren Holly, then Kate Collins, then Susan Pratt, then Rose Nevin, and then Cady. Even Julia Barr went supershort, I want to say around 1996. Damn, was Susan behind all of these shorter hairdos?

Kisses!

Marcy Walker getting her gorgeous blonde hair chopped off for AMC was all executive producer Jacqueline Babbin’s idea. She wanted Liza to look sexless so she wouldn’t be any real threat to Jenny. She also had her wearing Izod Lacoste polo shirts and prissy cashmere sweaters to achieve the same effect. And it worked IMO.

When do you think AMC began to lose its identity? For me it was when Frons joined ABC and he and his buddy Julie Hanan Carruthers foisted all that Fusion awfulness on viewers, shut out Agnes, and decided to center the show on four characters, Ryan, Greenlee, Zack, and Kendall. That must've been around 2005. That was when the show truly jumped the shark and there was no heading back. It just kept getting worse and worse.

It lost its identity once and for all when it turned out Pine Valley has a fucking SKYLINE. The show was always meant to be like Peyton Place. They fucked it up big time.

AMC had such a winning formula for so long: thwarted young love + social issues, both with a healthy dose of humor/satire and set against a background of family and small-town gossipy community. This is a classic AMC scene showcasing small-town snobbery and humor. What I loved about Agnes is that she could find the humor in any situation. Most other writers would not infused this scene with humor, but it works so well.

R469- well said!

I forget if it was Nixon or Ruth Warrick who wrote that AMC distinguished itself from the other soaps because it had “Dickensian” characters like Phoebe, Langley, Billy Clyde, Ray and Opal.

I know Pine Valley was always supposed to be a village, and Llanview a city. What about Corinth?

Corinth was a hamlet.

AMC started to go downhill around 1997 for me. I turned it off for good during the Erica steals the baby story.

Susan even cut her hair short in the late 90's...

I agree it started going down hill in the late 90's, but felt that it was fixable until around 2005 which would have been around the time of the Fusion stuff.

I quit AMC with death by pancakes and Zarf. I know everyone hated McTavish, but I thought her original stint was good. Daytime writers are seldom better the 2nd, 3rd, 4th time around, but there are no new daytime soap writers.

[quote]I quit AMC with death by pancakes and Zarf.

I think that might have been around the time I did as well. Zarf droning on how Babe is love was a bit off-putting. Also I remember Tad telling Joe Martin that Babe had Bianca's baby and Joe simply told Tad he was in a tough position and did nothing about the fact that this young woman he had known since her birth was mourning a child who was not really dead. It was hard to get past that. Although it might have been Tad burying Maddon in a box , torturing him and causing his death with no consequences that actually made me stop recording.

Holy crap, r477, you reminded me of a lot of horrible shit. I kept recording it to the bitter end, but sometimes it would only take me a few minutes to watch an episode. All the things you listed were awful. I think the Careys and the Laverys killed the show. And Zarf.

I also hated it when they killed off Simone. I loved her.

Frons has said that he didn't really "get" AMC, so he decided to turn it into daytime's version of Sex and the City. FAIL! I think early in McTavish's third run was pretty decent. In her lovingly demented way, I think she understood the show. The much-talked-about baby switch storyline (that was endlessly copied by other shows) culminated in Bianca getting her baby back for the 35th anniversary. After that, her writing spiraled out of control with Erica the showgirl, and then after she was canned, all those fucking Laverys, Zendull and Rylee. Jesse back from the dead. I remember an interview with Kay Alden, around 2007/2008, who had been approached about HW-ing the show. She said that ABC's focus group research on AMC was dreadful...nothing was working on the show, everyone hated everything about it. There were no bright lights. I think she wound up doing some consulting, but nothing big ever came of it. More than any other show, it was really sad to watch AMC circle the drain, because it didn't have to happen that way.

Cady is/was a nutjob!

Don't you guys remember the Emmy tribute to AMC when Susan presented and kept saying 'Erica Kane' over and over again? Cady bitched about her on her twitter that night.... she tweeted something like 'Gee, can she say Erica Kane enough times or what?' She was really pissed off. Then some Lucci fans started laying into her and Cady blocked them.

On Lucci's part, the speech was shockingly short sighted, because she made it all about her and Erica, never once acknowledging that AMC had been an ensemble. God knows what the audience felt... judge for yourselves:

I never "got" Erica Kane. She was never a reason to watch for me.

I always laugh when Susan Lucci is interviewed because no matter what, she will always make sure to say when she started on AMC Erica was just 15 years old. Is that true...? It seemed like she always made sure to nail that talking point in the later years when it wasn’t so fun to say you’ve been on a show 30, 35, 40 years because you could do simple math and place her in her 60s. I didn’t start watching until I was 10 in 1986 so I can’t speak to the early 70s. But I love how she always talks about Erica being 15.

Erica may have been 15, but Lucci was 23 when she started on AMC. She had already finished college when she got the role.

I agree with r475.

AMC really started going downhill in 1997 with Megan McTavish's 2nd run as HW. That's when they brought Kit Montgomery back from the dead, and also had Tanner on to cause trouble for Haley and Mateo.

It rebounded nicely when Agnes came back to write Bianca's coming out story in 2000. But once Agnes left as HW again, things started going downhill again.

The first year of Megan McTavish's 3rd run as HW was OK. That was the baby switch story. However, by 2005 with Erica's unabortion story followed by Tad burying Maddon alive along with all the Fusion nonsense, that was the point where it was jumped the shark and was beyond repair

I watched and loved AMC despite Susan Lucci. I saw Erica as more of a distraction to FF thru than anything else.

OMG I blocked out the whole unabortion storyline. What a kick in the cunt that was to Agnes's and AMC's legacy! I remember that Frons and ABC trotted out Agnes to say that she thought the storyline was "interesting." What was McTavish thinking, and who would greenlight such an atrocity?

R483, I’ve always been annoyed by that, too. Erica was NOT 15 when AMC began, she was 17.

They never let Erica really mature. Even up til the end, they played her 40-ish.

The problem is AMC lost its "heart". They abandoned most characters who gave it a sense of community/morality.

And Erica's presence was never comforting or grounded, like Viki on OLTL.

This is hilarious... Lucci trying to convince those assembled that AMC's final episodes on ABC are a 'work of genius'.

That is hilarious r491... "A man who simply mentioned All My Children on his radio show got 500,000 emails in ONE WEEK."

This is Norma Desmond levels of delusion.

It still pisses me off that OLTL was punished for AMC doing badly.

That's not true, r493. The plan was always to cancel OLTL. Its demos were only marginally better than AMC, but still pretty awful. The idea was to try and have AMC flourish out in LA. However, AMC's ratings/demos unexpectedly bottomed out, so ABC had no choice but to cancel AMC as well. OLTL was always going to be a goner.

r494, there was no justification for canceling OLTL in 2011. OLTL was even beating GH at certain points.

They should have cancelled GH and AMC and kept OLTL going: it was the cheapest show to produce after all... and it would have been OLTL's final revenge on the other ABC soaps which had always cast a shadow over it.

What always irked me was the OLTL was, along with DAYS on NBC, the only soap whose ratings had improved from the previous year. It makes no sense to cancel a show that is improving, especially when it also costs the least. I hope Frons burns in HELL!!!

AMC should have never let the Tyler/English family be reduced to just Brooke. Likewise, the Martin family should have never been allowed to diminish the way it did. It should have been a large, thriving part of Pine Valley to the end.

They shouldn't have killed off Anne Tyler Martin. She and Paul should have had more children beside the one who died of crib death. Chuck's parents were never brought to town (Chuck's father was by Charles Tyler's first marriage; perhaps Charles Tyler had other children by the first wife). Donna and Chuck should have had more children or Chuck should have married someone else. And why did the make Lincoln and Kelly unable to have children?

The Tylers and Martins were the core families, the ones that kept the show grounded in a small town feel. I never understood why all these millionaires wanted to move to Pine Valley -- Palmer, Adam, Travis, Dimitri. When the show started being about the Haves and the Have Mores, it really started losing its way.

Agnes made a clear and conscious effort to pretty much eliminate the Tylers, probably to make room for the Cortlandts and Chandlers. She killed off Paul/Ann's baby, later Chuck/Donna's baby, and later Laura Cudahy. The Martins survived thanks for the enormous popularity of Michael E. Knight. I shudder to think what would've become of them had Tad not become so phenomenally popular.

ABC would have been fine just canceling AMC. OLTL/GH would have likely done well as a pair.

NY-based OLTL was way too expensive to produce. Production would've had to have moved to LA, as AMC had done, to dramatically cut costs and keep it on the air.

r501, that is a total myth. OLTL was always under budget. It was AMC that was too expensive. And fyi, that move did not even prove to cut any cost.

r502, how do you know OLTL was under budget? Are your FV?

I would have liked AMC and OLTL to combine into one show. Basically, a spin off of the two, featuring characters from both Llanview and Pine Valley. They are only about 20 minutes apart apparently, so that means the geographical space they take up is the size of a great city.

I wouldn't say AMC was that much more preferred to OLTL. It was somewhat preferred because it was more known in mainstream mostly because of Lucci. Now GH was the real preferred show. They would go out of their way at times to appease Geary, Benard and Burton for years.

I remembering reading that something went wrong with the place they leased to film AMC in California that made them not save as much money as they expected. They also had more vets moving/commuting to continue doing the show than expected. They had hoped to get rid of more than they did.

I don't think AMC/OLTL combining into one show would work. They were two very different shows and daytime fans are often not ones that are open to change.

When AMC moved production to LA it felt so wrong. AMC was an iconic New York soap. It was part of the show’s lore and DNA. It had the feeling of a New York soap with a steady supply of talented (out of work) theater actors playing day parts. I know there were plenty of other soaps filmed on NY sound stages back in the day, but few leaned into NY like AMC did, from actual storylines (Jenny and Jesse’s runaway summer, Erica’s modeling) to location shoots like Cliff and Nina’s wedding at Tavern on the Green. In hindsight, it would’ve been better for the show to have been euthanized when it was still there. I don’t think the work produced in LA was at all worthwhile or worthy of the show’s heritage.

AMC truly died the night Bianca the lesbian was impregnated by her rapist.

RIP, OLTL. I miss you every day.

Let's face it - AMC had run out of steam long before the cancellation and was just trudging along. By contrast, OLTL felt like it was hitting a new stride in 2011.

No it didn't r509, OLTL was pretty horrible too by the end.

Time has made a lot of it seem less terrible than it actually was.

AMC could have rebounded if Frons had kept his big, fat, stinky mitts off of it. Writers who really knew the show..like Broderick...could have repaired it. Well, maybe. I don't know how you come back from the unabortion.

As bad as the unabortion was and it should have never happened, they barely even mined any drama out of it. Compare it to ten years earlier with how much drama and story line the arrival of Kendall brought to the show. Once Abortion Boy knew that Erica knew it was very ho hum. Instead of all the drama that could have come from their interactions and throwing in the Martins in the mix and exploring their complicated history with Erica, Josh's story almost immediately shifted to him liking Babe. That was his main focus. Erica Kane has a baby return from medical waste dead and it ends up being about Babe.

I do remember when Tad was investigating Josh and all of a sudden he made a big leap in logic realizing - he must be the baby Erica aborted when she was married to Jeff. They made it sound like a fetal transplant in 1973 was not that out of the ordinary. He was shocked Josh was Erica's son, but not shocked that he was an unabortion.

One more comment about the unabortion. Josh discovered that his uncle killed the man who had raised him as a son by burying him in a box for days where he ended up being crushed to death, and the show never followed up on it. By then the show was just into doing things to shock but not exploring the aftermath.

Even when Josh himself died -- he was shot by Zach and Kendell ended up with his heart via transplant. It was implied that it might have been in cold blood so Kendell could take his heart. A lot of issues that could have been fleshed out between Kendell-Zach-Erica, but I think they quickly glossed over them all and resolved the story quickly. Nothing really had any emotional depth or consequences beyond a week or two. It was also an example of someone going psycho in about a week even though there was no sign of it before. They also did this with Edmund (possibly as punishment for the actor's affair on set) and Aiden. The latter was esp. egregious because he had always been a white knight the ten years or so he was on the show. He might have been a block of wood who should have been written off but it was so out of character and the fact that he was obsessed with Kendell who he had not been involved with for years was completely out of the blue.

Aidan should've been gay after so many failed romantic pairings. Him going crazy was completely out of character. If you're going to make a character, at least make it entertaining like Marty throwing Natalie off a roof on OLTL. That character was completely assassinated, but Susan Haskell was great as crazy Marty.

Thanks to this thread, I’ve been watching AMC scenes on YouTube, and it only reinforces how much I miss it. Even when it was bad for those last few years, there were still occasional moments to remind you of what it was. I’d take those bad years again just to have it back.

I’ll “Mary!” myself now.

The Resident is no Devious Maids.

I kind of agree, r515. The last few years were awful, but there were always glimmers of the real AMC. This scene is a treasure.

Elder AMC fans, was the Greg/Jenny era as good as it seems like it was? I started watching in 1986 and always felt like I missed the very best years. Evil Liza, Opal (Dorothy Lyman and her Emmys), Jesse, Angie, Alfred... it seems like such a great story. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my years of fandom, but that seemed like a truly great period.

Yes, it really was, r518. I’ll couch that response with the fact that I was ten or younger at the time, but, I was engrossed by it and my mom (and even my dad) loved those years. For me, the best years were when Kate Collins was on, but, i remember the whole Jenny/Greg/Liza/Tad etc. tales fondly. Oddly enough, I recall little of my own daily life at the time, but, I remember those stories.

Thanks, R519! I was a fanatic during the Kate Collins years and loved them as well.

Kate Collins is the new Kathy Glass

Paul, get those Pine Valley bitches out of my face!

Did Dr. Kate Winograd ever visit Pine Valley?

No, but a young actress named Katherine Glass subbed for Taylor Miller in 1983 for two months. The ratings spiked and the show received more teen fan mail than ever before.

I like this little interview with DL fave Kate Collins.

Serial nutcase - enough with Kate Collins. She was mediocre, at best.

What about hot hairy daddy bear James KIberd?

As a confused gayling, one gander at Trent Bushey and I was no longer confused.

Yeah, R518, I watched in the early 80s, and it was as great as people claimed. My favorite storylines were the Erica-Silver (Deborah Goodrich) story, and the Jenny-Greg and Jesse-Angie stories, especially when Jenny and Jesse ran away to NYC for the summer. I loved the high school characters (Liza, Amanda, Alfred, etc.), Phoebe was a hysterical bitch, Opal was a scream, and just great characters all around (Palmer, Brooke, Tom, Mark, Ellen, Chuck, Donna, Kent, Joe, Ruth, Myrtle, Mona, Daisy, Cliff, Nina... I could go on and on).

Once they killed off Jenny, I thought the show lost a lot of heart. I wasn't crazy about some of the new characters being introduced in the mid-80s, so I slowly tuned out. Plus I was entering my last couple years of high school, so activities, my school work, my job, and my nerdy social life started taking up all my space. I'd catch AMC occasionally in college (late 80s/early 90s) , but never watched regularly again. So when people start talking about Kendall, Babe, Dmitry, Ryan... I'm lost.

I watched most soaps for some period of time (GH, OLTL, RH, Loving, GL, DOOL, ATWT, and AW), but vintage AMC was among my very favorites.

Natalie Hunter was the best thing that ever happened to AMC.

Agnes Nixon seems to get all the credit but she didn't headwrite the beloved years of AMC in the 80s... that was all Wisner Washam.

Aggie is a cunt.

r531 Agnes may have stepped back from the day-to-day business of being HW in 1982, but she was still actively involved with the show. Wisner Washam (husband of Judith Bancroft, who played Anne Tyler) may have been listed as the sole HW, but stortylines still had to be approved by her. She also suggested storylines.

Incidentally, the reason she stepped back from being co-HW with Wisner in 1982 was to concentrate on creating Loving, which debuted in 1983.

R528- yes! I wrote about Trent on a separate soap hunk thread. His body was absolutely insane. I was a kid when he was on AMC and his shirtless dorm room scenes were, shall we say, formative. That being said- he and Lanie were the most boring and saccharine couple in AMC history. They tried to recreate the poetry reading vibe of early Cliff and Nina but it just felt so out of step with the times.

r533, yes, she concentrated on the flop Loving and Wisner came up with the storylines (Agnes just approved them), including Jenny's death. Wisner also created Jeremy and Natalie.

I was appalled by the Agnes Nixon tribute at the Emmys because she was credited for work she had absolutely no hand in (including the OLTL glory years with Karen Wolek's double life and courtroom meltdown... all the creation of Gordon Russell).

Aggie was getting senile by the time Loving came along. Wisner and then Lorraine Broderick did more than old Aggie during the 80’s.

I started watching in 87. It was not bad - had the beginning of Brooke-Adam, the Natalie-Ross saga, Phoebe was still in her prime, Erica was comically trying to hide her morning sickness and her pregnancy with Bianca, Cecily was an interesting ingenue. In retrospect it was also a transition period -- a lot of the 80's characters, Nina & Cliff, Angie & Jessie were on what would be their last story lines and Phoebe never had a significant story line again and went from terror to lovable curmudgeon. Then the show really clicked around 1990 for its last good run.

Seeing youtube videos, it seems like it was a lot better than the previous couple of years (85-86) where a lot of the new characters of that time ( minus Natalie and Jeremy) did not work and were already gone before I started watching. I love Mrtyle, but every one at the boarding house at the time was disposable. Hunter's Robin character seemed especially forgettable. It does seem like the 80 to 84 period was golden. Too bad there aren't more 70's scenes available. That seems like it was almost a completely different show cast-wise, but still good.

What’s interesting is that there was only one year that AMC finished #1 in the Nielsens and it was the 1978-79 season, so well before Greg and Jenny mania. Must have been Cliff and Nina? Billy Clyde? Erica and Tom? Once Gloria Monty came in and revolutioned the medium, there was no topping GH. When you think about peak AMC, OLTL (Karen) and GH in the early 80s- that three hour block had to be better than any sort of Shonda Rimes block today.

Why aren’t Dorian Strassman and Viki Sleestack presenting at the Emmys this weekend? Stars from other cancelled soaps will be there presenting.

r540, Who besides 2 people? Martha Byrne and Liz Hubbard.

I started really watchinhg AMC during the Greg/Jenny/Liza years and it was really the show at its peak, or maybe that's how I remember it, I was only 8 or 9 at the time, but Greg and Jenny drew me in. For years I thought Kim Delaney was the most beautiful woman in the world, until Robin Christopher came along as Skye. I continued to watch religously until college and some of my other favorite stories were Nico and Cecily and Lanie and Trask. I always liked Erica but usually never liked her romantic partner, especially Travis and Dimitri, Jack was okay, though. Once I got to college in the early-mid '90s I kept in touch with the show but didn't watch religiously. I was a big fan of Leo, but really the years of Greg/Jenny/Opal/Liza/Miriam/Cliff/Nina et al. still stand out in a way that nothing after ever did.

Our beloved Natalie slapping the taste out of Cuntica Kane's mouth... that's what we like to see!

YASSS QUEEN!

Go away Setial asshole nutcase. Sick bastard.

R467, you're spot on.

I don't know how many times Budig came and left and the real Greenlee's back to play scenes with the fake Kendall., but the show would just rip any history that took place while she was gone as if it had never happened. NOt the actors' fault, but the viewers hated it.

Alicia's a wonderful mother, but I will never forget a scene where she said to Toasty: "I'm angry, Zack. I'm angry."

NO, you're not! You're just standing there SAYING you're angry.

THIS....from Liz Hubbard...is ANGRY!

I always wanted Kate Collins to play young Ada on Another World in flashback scenes from Rachel's childhood.

If Liz Hubbard would have ever remembered her lines, perhaps she could have won an Emmy as Lucinda. She always flubbed lnes and repeated herself. Not Emmy worthy. Obviously the judges of her tapes agreed.

This is an ABC soap thread r548, so get the fuck out.

r548, go back your drab, boring, colorless, lifeless P&G gramma shows, and leave the exciting, vibrant, energetic, intelligent ABC shows to the rest of us.

1985-86 were not strong years on AMC in my opinion.

They had Erica involved with Giles St. Claire, a poor pairing.

They had Brooke invovled with Jeremy Hunter, also a poor pairing (although much better than Erica and Giles).

The Cliff-Nina storyline was going badly because of one of the fake Ninas playing the part.

The teen storyline that had propelled the show in the early 80s, imploded with the loss of Kim Delany, then Marcy Walker, and later Larry Lau. They tried to recast Liza and Greg, but both were stupendous duds.

About the only thing working in the teen storyline was Tad.

Trent Bushey bulged in all the right places.

True, 85-86 was not a great period for the show. The writing did suffer a bit without Agnes involved day to day, and Wisner Washam has said that the network started beefing up pressure to focus more on the kids and make the show less multi-generational, and it showed. However, the real issue was the loss of several of their popular female actresses one right after the other: first Dorothy Lyman, then Kim Delaney, then Marcy Walker, then Taylor Miller, and then Gillian Spencer. They tried to replace Lyman with Sandy Gabriel's Edna. Of the new female actresses they brought on (Carmen Thomas, Tasia Valenza, Heather Stamford, Barbara Kearns, Alice Haining, Melissa Leo, Deborah Morehart aka Hunter Tylo, Stephanie Winters), only Thomas had any real staying power, and she wasn't really that great. I'd say in this timeframe, Michael E. Knight and Kate Collins carried the show. But it was still a good show and felt like AMC compared to what McTavish and Behr would ultimately do to the show. The show began to crumble when Agnes, Lorraine and Wisner left in 1992 and Behr gave McTavish free reign.

1985 was a bad year for AMC, with all these disjointed stories. There was the horrible Tad and Dottie in NYC crime story, Gilles St Clair, redhead Nina in love with Benny, etc...Natalie making trouble for Jeremy and Erica was pretty much the only memorable thing.

It began to rebound in late 86 and was truly back to form in 87. Natalie moving into Cortlandt Manor, Taylor Miller returning, Nico and Julie and Charlie, Robin Christopher as Skye, The Hubbards taking in Scott and Cindy, Erica moving to Travis from Jeremy (how did he last so long?), Julie turning out to be Mark's daughter...

Good times.

The first half of 1985 was still pretty decent, with most of the plot leading up to the Who Killed Zack Grayson murder mystery. Jane Elliot and Stephen Caffrey were divine as mother/son grifters. The summer, with Tad and Dottie on the run in NYC, was just awful, although that very touching Kate Martin funeral episode aired that summer. Then you had a succession of WTF stories (Benny/Nina, Gilles/Brooke, Greg/Robin, Phoebe/Wade/Langley, Jesse/Angie/Eugene). The show began to recover in the fall of 1986 when Lorraine Broderick was installed as co-HW with Washam and Agnes began taking more of an interest. 87-88 was really quite good, barring the ludicrous Silver/Damon Lazarre story. To this day, I still have no idea what that was all about.

I remember AMC being named “Most Imdroved Show” in 1987 by Soap Opera Digest. I will say that for all their blatant Days of Our Lives schilling, their Best and Worst was really spot on and fair. I remember they named AMC Best Soap of 1989 because of the Tad/Dixie/Adam/Brooke saga. Which let’s be honest- kicked ass. I feel like every time AMC or OLTL was honored or panned it was so deserved.

I've been rewatching 1983 All My Children on Youtube. What a cast ! The performances are just sublime...across the board. James Mitchell, Dorothy Lyman, Kathleen Noone, Ruth Warrick, Eileen Herlie, Louis Edmonds, Gillian Spencer, Darnell Williams and Taylor Miller...I could go on. Such depth and nuance. Was there a better daytime cast in the early 80s ?

When I was in college, the Martin's had new neighbors... i think the last name was Sanders. Carrie was the daughter, Lenore was her mother (or was she a step-mother?). The father was a creep - you knew this because he smoked and was pretty high-strung. Didn't he beat Lenore? Carrie and/or her boyfriend introduced Tad to marijuana, Joe Martin was pretty close to having an affair with Lenore, somewhere along the way.

This may have been going on at the same time Devon was a drunk hiding vodka bottles around the house, keeping it a secret from Wally, Ellen and Mark.

Wasn't Sybil Thorne's murder still an ongoing investigation while Tad was sparkin up a joint and Devon was trying to get accustomed to be Bonnie Blue's mother?

Good times in Pine Valley!

558 posts and know mention of me! Pine Valley (and daytime's) first lesbian

Pine Valley sucked

^Yep, especially if you were an awkward, unhappy and lonely young woman with an insatiable craving for pussy. Who was there to eat out? Myrtle? Grandma Kate? Phoebe? Donna was hot, but she was a walking petri dish. I could've munched on Jenny, Nina, and Angie for days, but they were only drawn to closeted gay guys.

R5558, the Sanders family included mother Leora, daughter Carrie and the stepfather Curt. Yes, he was battering Leora.

Andrea Moar who played Carrie died a tragic death a few years ago. Apparently, they had plans in the late 90s to make the Allie Doyle character (played by Alla Korot) the illegitimate daughter of Joe Martin and Leora (they had an affair), but Agnes intervened and said hell to the no.

Lynn Carson loved my snatch.

Does the pilates chair keep Sue's snatch tight?

To Natalie and Janet, The Great and the Least, The Rich and the Poor, The Strong and the Weak, In Health and in Sickness, In Joy and Sorrow, In Triumph and Tragedy, You are ALL MY CHILDREN

Pussy juice became the nectar of life for Devon. She was clit-matized.

DOUBLE MARY (Mary Kennicott AND Mary Smythe) to r566!

I loved Slee with Mark Derwin

I wonder if Derwin awoke feelings and yearnings in Slee that had been dormant for years.

Mark Derwin fucked his female co-star on Guiding Light so maybe Slee was hoping!

Which of her co-stars passed the Slee test? She was from the very beginning judicious in whom she would play scenes with. She and Tony Ponzini dated for a time and then he never appeared with her again. She liked scenes with Marilyn Chris because she looked better next to that plump muffin. She did not want to appear next to Lee Warrick and Dorrie Kavnanaugh because they were slim and young.

I think she only consented to share scenes with women who were more unattractive. Thus her and Joe's endless bridge games with Doris Belack and the Craigs.

We all know by now Slee was sick of Ritchie by the 90s.

That fucking ben Davidson storyline where he called her Blondie. Gag.

James Reilly was a writer, just a staff writer, on AMC in the early 80s and helped "flesh out" the Opal Gardner character

She's such a James Reilly type character. It all makes sense now

Think of all the unwanted/unloved characters from AMC and OLTL the writers could have killed off if Monticello was a stop along the Main Line Express. The train could have made one stop, at the edge of night...

Word on the street was that Beth Ehlers was a huge diva on AMC. She came in with the attitude that she and Ricky Paul were there to save the show. And she broke a lot of china. The fact that her character didn’t take off in the least, even with that thirst trap of a storyline (JR Martinez) had to be satisfying to the rest of the cast who thought “calm down honey, you were on Guiding Light.” Hardly a smash.

That Doris Belack was such a hottie! Did she ever pose nude?

FYI, Slee was 28 when this photo was taken.

RE: Ben & Viki

It was just nice seeing Erika seemingly so enthused about a story/pairing. She had been dealt a lot of crap prior to JFP coming in. The Labines tried to do a Viki/Clint reunion, and she looked miserable.

AMC had an audience-retention problem from 1984 onward, that's for sure. From #2 with 8.2 million viewers in '84-'85, to #3 with 8.0 million viewers in '85-'86, and #4 with 7.0 in '86-'87. It tied for #3 with OLTL in '87-'88, jumping to 7.7 million viewers, then fell to 6.7 million viewers in '88-'89. By comparison, Y&R ascended from #3 to #2 and eventually #1 during that time, with less dramatic fluctuations. Days mostly held steady in that period, albeit in the second tier, ratings-wise.

In response to a poster up thread. Gina Tognioni also played raw well on One Life when the Labines discovered she could act. She went from a flighty young rebel to tragic heroine following her hand in Blair and Patrick's baby. It's criminal she did not get an Emmy for that. But if it also shifted the character to tragedy after tragedy in which she brought it every time. I think it's been said before that Jennifer Finnegan owns one or two of her Emmys.

Beth Ehlers was a huge flop on AMC. It didn't help that she was a new character tied to mostly new characters. They could have made her a legacy character like Julie Chandler or Kelsey Jefferson or the LOGICAL choice...Emily Ann Sago, out of the loony bin to reclaim her husband, Joey/Jake.

r578 That's not exactly word on the street. She very stupidly made a very obnoxious comment in the soap press that made her attitude pretty clear.

[quote]First you give me somebody who, God bless him, I love JR but he's not an actor.' And so that's hard enough with somebody who... it's going to be a long time before he gets out of second gear. And I'm constantly having to hedge my performance cause I can't be doing Shakespeare while he's doing something else.

She was released after 18 months while JR Martinez remained for 3 years and left by choice. Couldn't have happened to a bigger diva or a nicer guy. Martinez went on to win one of the seasons of Dancing With The Stars, BTW. Very likable and relatable guy. Ehlers, not so much. Martinez was very gracious about her remarks though. Class act.

Megan's goodbye with Dr Larry Woleck could have won her the Emmy against anyone. Tuck made bad tape choices. "Thank you. Thank you for helping bring me into this world. And thank you for letting me leave it with a little dignity. There's nothing an actress likes worse than a sloppy exit". Sob every time.

For as bad as OLTL sometimes was in its last decade, it was always recognizable. AMC lost that, although I still consider it a more classic soap.

Slee was thrilled to beat Tuck for the emmy win.

When Slee won that year she didn't acknowledge Tuck in any way.

Shut up r588, one think all you ES haters have in common is NONE of you know what the fuck you're talking about; you just make up shit as you go along.

r587, Slee held OLTL together even through the bad times.

Lucci was never the type to ground AMC.

I never wanted Erica Kane to "ground" Pine Valley.

R584, I think Ehlers would have made a more believable Liza Colby than Jamie fucking Luner.

I am guessing Ehlers assumed she would be quickly paired with Ricky's Jake after they both had a quick spoiler romance with other people. I don't think she thought people would want him with Amanda long-term, and while people liked his character, no one really warmed up to her. I think I was watching pretty intermittently by then but I cannot even remember who she played. She might have made a decent Liza or Julie. Luner might have made a better Skye - she sure wasn't Liza. I remember Pratt bragging how Luner would show the rest of the cast how the job was done (or something like that). No wonder he is so loved.

Mary Fickett's Ruth grounded AMC for many years. When she left, the show lost something. For a time, I think they tried to maneuver Julia Barr's Brooke into the a grounding force, maybe late 90s/early 00s, but they kept giving her one DOA story after another and I don't think Barr necessarily fit the earth mother category. It also didn't help that she was really the only remaining member of the Tyler/English family, so there were really no family members for Brooke to play off of. At one point they were obviously trying to make Kate Collins' Natalie into the show's earth mother, which was so wrong on so many levels.

r595 you are right. Ruth was the kind of mother anyone would want.

[quote] At one point they were obviously trying to make Kate Collins' Natalie into the show's earth mother, which was so wrong on so many levels.

Yes - I think they wanted the Dillons to be the new Martins in being the grounded family, with Mrs. Dillon being a happy homemaker baking cookies and fretting about Timothy and Amanda). First they tried to fit Natalie in the role, then Laurel, and then a reformed Janet Green. Laurel might have worked, but no one really liked her character, and how wants to see Janet Green fold laundry? By then they really did not know how to write "regular" person stories, so being in the role of down to earth Mrs. Trevor Dillon was kind of a kiss of story line death.

Mary Fickett was so wonderful, but she played a bad hand with the producers in 1995. Her contract was about to expire and she wanted to work less, and she assumed if she just let it lapse, they would keep her as recurring and use her less. They pretty much told no, so she and the show parted ways. I kind of liked Lee Meriwether, but she was no Mary Fickett, and I think Lee was very much aware of how beloved Mary was. Agnes and Francesca James lured Mary back a few years later, but by that time she must've been in the very early stages of dementia, because it was obvious she was struggling with her lines. When I think about AMC, it's Mary Fickett and the Martins that first come to mind before Erica Kane.

Lee Meriweather was the Donna Reed to Mary Fickett’s Barbara Bel Geddes.

Wonderful Mary Fickett/Dorothy Lyman scene. The scene is just sublime.

Where is the new SLEE VS SUE thread?