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Jan Spears

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Everything posted by Jan Spears

  1. So, I've passed the episode 150 point (March 4, 1981). It was in February 1981, after six official months on the air, that Proctor & Gamble and NBC began making changes to Texas. The biggest changes were the dismissals of head writers (and series co-creators) John William and Joyce Corrington, and the demotion of Paul Rauch as executive producer of Texas and Another World. (He would carry on as executive producer on Another World.) While I doubt even the most stellar writing would have made a dent against the pop culture phenomenon General Hospital and a resurgent Guiding Light in that time slot, the Corringtons didn't help their cause any with the storylines they did produce in the first six months. Other than the attempted assassination of Alex Wheeler and its aftermath, there were just too many dead stretches with the stories. The other changes occurring in February-early March 1981 involved the cast. Chandler Hill Harben was out and Jay Hammer was in as Max Dekker. I'm not sure the change made things better. Hammer was the better actor but Harben was more convincing as someone who was supposed to be working as the foreman of the Marshall ranch. Also out around this time were Lee Patterson as Dr. Kevin Cook and Ann McCarthy as Samantha Walker. Neither character was working so their departures were not a surprise. Lee Patterson did get a nice farewell scene with Carla Borelli in which their characters set aside their old animosities. On a more positive note, February 1981 saw the introduction of Benjamin Hendrickson (who would go on to play Hal Munson on As the World Turns for 20 years) as Paige Marshall's sleazy former director/producer of her porn epic, Endless Passion. (The Endless Passion storyline would consume the show in 1981 and would involve practically the entire cast in porn, drug dealing, embezzlement and murder.) As for the show's leading lady, Beverlee McKenzie, her storylines were a mixed bag. Anything with McKenzie as Iris and Lisby Larson as her daughter-in-law, Paige, was pure gold as were the Iris/Vivien comedic scenes. But the would-be grand romance with Bert Kramer as Alex Wheeler was a dud. McKenzie and Wheeler had no chemistry and the tale of long lost love regained was not believable. In essence, Iris and Alex were both Jay Gatsby - endlessly trying to repeat the past. A more credible story for Iris and Alex would have been for them to realize that too much had happened in the 25 years since last they had seen each other for their marriage to ever be a success. Finally, the "secret" of Dennis Carrington's parentage was still a plot point in February 1981 and a ridiculous one at that given how many people knew the truth: Iris, Alex, Eliot, Paige, Reena, Ryan, Dawn, Terry (and probably some others I can't remember.)
  2. If the subject is dead, you can depict the subject any way you like. Mommie Dearest (the movie) is the ultimate example of that. No less than Christina Crawford has criticized the movie for deviating from her book in sensationalistic ways. But in the case of a living subject (and particularly a subject who may not want anything to do with a production), the creative team behind the production has to be very, very careful not to defame the living subject. I have no idea what Amanda Burden's relationship (or lack of such) is to this production. But I can envision a whole team of lawyers saying behind the scenes not to include her except in the most legally defensible of ways (i.e. Mentioning that Babe Paley had a daughter named Amanda from her first marriage).
  3. I've never read anything about Slim Keith and Bill Paley being anything more than close friends. She's still living and I can't imagine she would give her consent to be depicted in any intensive way in this. FYI - Slim's memoir (Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life) was published around the time of her death in 1990. I read it 30 years ago. The impression it left with me was that Slim herself was not especially interesting but she knew some very remarkable people. Interestingly, the chapter that has stuck with me is the one where she writes compellingly about her stepdaughter, Bridget Hayward.
  4. Episode 134 (February 10, 1981) - At long last, Vivien arrives from Bay City to resume her function as Iris's maid/confidante! Also, the Wheeler mansion set debuts for the first time. (It was formerly the Marshall family home in Houston.) Finally, Dennis and Paige announce their marriage to Iris and Alex, which kicks off the 'Endless Passion' storyline. This is about the point where a lot of changes start occurring in terms of the cast and production staff. Throughout 1981, many more changes would occur; culminating with Beverlee McKinsey's departure at the end of November.
  5. The reveal in Season 5 that Amanda was Alexis' daughter was great and I liked how she was a constant irritant to Alexis throughout the season. But Amanda's whole story in Season 5 seemed to have no special purpose other than for her to wear the wedding dress at the 'Moldavian Massacre'. (And she did make for a stunning bride in the season finale.) Ultimately, though, the only place for the character to go from there was down, especially given the character's somewhat awkward origins and motivations.
  6. Dynasty was never the same without Pamela Sue Martin and the edgy restlessness she brought to the character of Fallon and to the show itself. The introductions of Diahann Carroll as Dominque and Catherine Oxenberg as Amanda compensated - in part - for the loss of Martin. But too often in Season 5, the show resorted to importing guest stars (Rock Hudson, Ali MacGraw, Billy Dee Williams) to lull viewers into thinking the storylines were more compelling than they actually were (and had been during Martin's tenure).
  7. Episode 109 (January 5, 1981) - The Chicken Coop makes its first appearance. 'The Coop' was such an important part of events on Texas in 1981 - it deserved to be in the closing cast credits!
  8. I agree - too many characters and not enough interaction between characters who should have had some. (Courtney barely interacted with her three siblings and Terry only ever really interacted with Rikki.) I watched episode 91 (December 9, 1980) this afternoon and it's the last episode for the character of Dawn Marshall (and her portrayer, Dana Kimmell). You can see how disconnected Dawn had become from the rest of the show by the end of 1980 because she only had farewells with her brother, Justin, and her grandmother, Kate. She didn't say goodbyes to Courtney, Paige (understandably), Ginny, Max or Elena in her final episode. And she left Houston knowing the big secret about Dennis Carrington - that he was Alex Wheeler's biological son. But there wasn't even a farewell scene between Dawn and Dennis where she might have made veiled comments about how so many people (Iris, Alex, Paige) were deceiving him.
  9. The beginnings of Texas went back even further than the summer of 1980. For instance, Another World introduced Reena and Kevin in the fall of 1979. Then, Texas stories launched on Another World for weeks (if not months) before the actual formal launch date in August 1980. If you weren't watching Another World in the run-up to the airing of the first Texas episode, you would have missed critical story elements such as Alex Wheeler spotting Iris at the Houston Opera and Mike Marshall committing suicide and been totally lost once the series actually debuted. The early days of Texas were confusing! I've always thought that the writers for Texas were trying (at the beginning, anyway) to emulate the great Harding Lemay, who had taken Another World to such success in the 1970s with a very Broadway style of writing. Unfortunately, Texas debuted at precisely the same moment (summer 1980) when General Hospital was becoming a pop culture phenomenon with the first of its two Luke-and-Laura 'Love on the Run' storylines. What took General Hospital to being the peak of all things in 1980-81 was very different from what Texas was doing. What had been innovative in the 1970s on Another World suddenly came across as old-fashioned on Texas. I don't agree that it was but there was nothing Texas could do against the General Hospital juggernaut.
  10. I've made it to episode 80 of Texas (original air date: 11/24/80). Episode 80 ended with a great Friday afternoon cliffhanger. Just as Iris and her long-lost love Alex Wheeler were pronounced husband and wife, Iris's ex-husband, Eliot Carrington, shot Alex with a high-powered rifle! (Eliot was played by Daniel Davis - the future Niles on The Nanny.) As for the show itself, it had definitely picked up speed by late-November 1980. The biggest improvement was with the show's central character - Iris. After weeks and weeks of boring scenes with Iris either vacillating about whether to marry Alex or playing concerned friend to Reena, Iris's old fighting spirit from Another World began to reassert itself. Helping matters immeasurably were the introductions of the none-too-stable Eliot and Lisby Larson's character, the scheming Paige Marshall, into the Iris-Alex-Dennis storyline. The biggest weakness remained the character of Alex Wheeler. I've never been wild about the actor who played Alex. But my bigger objection is in regard to how the character was written. The show made the classic mistake of having Iris extol him to the heavens while his actual actions told a different story. His carelessness contributed to Mike Marshall's suicide. He carried on with his best friend Striker Bellman's wife for 20 years and then dumped her when Iris showed up in Houston. He threatened to expose Eliot's past in a Cambodian prison camp unless he left Houston so Alex could claim Dennis as his son. The audience was supposed to think he was this great prize . . . but he really wasn't. Otherwise, it's possible to rewatch the first 16 weeks of Texas and see which characters would get the heave-ho in late-1980 and early-1981. Like any new soap, there was still a lot of shakeout to go.
  11. Sidney Kirkpatrick based his book on the materials King Vidor had gathered on the William Desmond Taylor case and then set aside. The book really takes you into the freewheeling silent film era when the studios were just starting to get themselves organized. It also conveys how scandals then were truly scandals and how the tabloid press was already working at full force.
  12. I highly recommend Colleen Moore's autobiography, Silent Star, which was published in 1968. Silent Star recounts Moore's rise to stardom in the 1920s but it also doubles as a history of the silent and early talkie eras in Hollywood. The book is very episodic - entertainingly so - with numerous digressions about various movie stars of the period. (Moore finished in the Top Ten of the Annual Money Making Stars Poll from 1925-1931. So, she knew everyone in Hollywood!) I would also recommend Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's book, A Cast of Killers, which discusses the director King Vidor's attempts to solve the murder of director William Desmond Taylor in 1922. Moore plays a big part in that book. Finally, Moore was a shrewd investor which left her very wealthy right up to her death in 1988. She even wrote a book on the subject of investing, How Women Can Make Money in the Stock Market.
  13. Greta Garbo performed a great kindness to John Gilbert after their relationship ended. With the transition to sound in 1929, Garbo's career at M-G-M rose to even greater heights while Gilbert's imploded. (Gilbert is considered one of the greatest casualties of the transition to sound if not the greatest.) In any event, M-G-M was prepping Queen Christina for Garbo in 1933 and they cast Laurence Olivier in the role of the Spanish ambassador. For whatever reason, Garbo didn't like how things were going with Olivier. Since she had cast approval, she went to Louis B. Mayer (legendary head of M-G-M from 1924-51) and asked to have Olivier replaced. Mayer told her she could have anybody she wanted. Garbo replied "Jack Gilbert" and Mayer promptly threw a fit because he hated Gilbert. But Garbo held firm because she knew how much Gilbert had done for her when she came to M-G-M in the mid-1920s and he was still the bigger star. The actress Colleen Moore (herself a huge star during the silent movie era) wrote later: "I have always loved Garbo for this last, wonderful gesture - to try to give Jack his career again. We all loved her for it."
  14. I don't think there was ever a long-term estrangement between Joyce and John. There was a short-term rift when Three's Company was transitioning into Three's a Crowd because Joyce felt that John should have told her privately what was happening rather than her having to find out about it in a staff meeting with everybody else.
  15. In the show's early weeks, Texas did introduce some retroactive continuity regarding Iris and her motivations on Another World. In the retroactive continuity, Iris - as a young woman - had met and fallen in love with the penniless Alex Wheeler. He abandoned her because he didn't think he was worthy of her. Alone (and pregnant with Dennis), Iris's energies turned negative. I don't know if this was an improvement on what had come before. I think Iris was more interesting for not having a motivation on Another World beyond being naturally spiteful. Certainly, Iris in the early weeks of Texas didn't make for compelling viewing. She spent most of her time sitting on Reena's couch sighing about the possibility of being reunited with the now fabulously wealthy Alex. The show made a course correction in 1981 by bringing back some of Iris's old personality. But instead of the Iris-Mac-Rachel triangle, we got the Iris-Dennis-Paige triangle. Iris transferred her incestuous love for her father to her own son! The post-Iris year (December 1981-December 1982) was great, and the show did indeed find its footing independent of Beverlee McKinsey. It was too late, though. While the storylines were compelling in that final year, viewers had deserted in droves when McKinsey left. Texas went from a survivable 3.6 rating for the 1981-82 season (September-April) to a 2.7 in the 82-83 season (September-December).
  16. Yes. NBC cancelled Texas (and The Doctors) with enough advance notice that the show could resolve its standing plotlines by the very last episode. The final episodes were very satisfying because most everything got resolved. Also, for fans who had stuck with the show from episode 1 in August 1980, there was the satisfaction of knowing that the principal characters who had been present from the start - Reena, Justin, Paige, Billy Joe - had become better versions of themselves by the last episode in December 1982. (Reena, especially, had come a long way from her beginnings. By the end of the series, she had found true love with Grant Wheeler and made peace with her mother, Vicky Bellman.)
  17. I thought I would start a distinct thread for the small but intense group of soap fans who loved the NBC soap Texas during its 2 1/2 year run and still remember it. Texas started life in August 1980 as spinoff of Another World and was conceived as a starring vehicle for Beverlee McKinsey, who was then at the peak of her popularity on the parent show as the malevolent Iris. At the show's start, Iris moves permanently from Bay City to Houston to be closer to her son Dennis (played by Jim Poyner). There, she meets various Houston denizens, including her long-lost love Alex Wheeler (played by Bert Kramer). For several years in the 00s, complete episodes from the show's first year were available for download on AOL. Consequently, fans have posted episodes online so that the show's fans can watch uncut episodes in sequence. I've started rewatching the show from episode 1 (August 4, 1980) and have finished the first five weeks. Like all new soaps, Texas had a lot of growing pains in its first months. Watching the episodes again, I would say that the early days were better in some respects than I remember them as being and worse in other respects. On the plus side, two casts members who would dominate the series until the very last episode - Carla Borelli as Reena and Jerry Lanning as Justin - came roaring out of the gates from moment one. Borelli, in particular, was endlessly entertaining - she was married to her staid husband, Dr. Kevin Cook, but attracted to Justin and ranch hand Max Dekker (and probably half in love with her own father, Striker Bellman.) On the negative side of the ledger, I had forgotten how boring Iris was during the first few months of Texas. The hellion from Another World suddenly (and somewhat implausibly) morphed into a conventional soap heroine fretting about her son and her rediscovered love (Alex) from a quarter century prior. The lack of chemistry between McKinsey and Kramer didn't help matters. The powers behind Texas must have hoped that McKinsey and Kramer would have Victoria Wyndham/Douglass Watson-level chemistry but it wasn't to be. (If you know what direction the show took by the end of 1980, you know that the casting/character mistakes were rectified soon enough and Iris [as a character] reverted to her original personality.) In any event, I hope there are Texas fans here at Primetimer Forums!
  18. I rewatched the two episodes (July 14-15, 1981) in the Ice Princess storyline where Luke, Laura and Robert stowaway on the Cassadine yacht. The last shot of the episode on the 15th was of the Titan departing for points unknown. I looked up the day-of-the-week for that episode expecting it to be a Friday cliffhanger. It was only a Wednesday! The Ice Princess cliffhangers were coming fast-and-furious at that point and there was another one to go on Friday, the 17th. Unfortunately, the high gear pace begins to drag as the 'high seas' episodes wear on - a side effect of the 1981 writer's strike?
  19. Given the popularity of Polly Holliday's Flo character, I was curious to see what impact her leaving in Season 4 had. As it turned out, the show lost a little but not that much: Season - Rank - Rating Season 4: #4/25.3 (Holliday leaves in episode 16 and Diane Ladd joins in the next episode.) Season 5: #7/22.9 (Ladd leaves by the end of the season and Celia Weston joins.) Season 6: #5/22.7 Season 7: #41/? (Numerous changes to the show's air dates and time slots) The show survived just fine without Holliday (at least in terms of ratings) and weathered the flux surrounding Ladd and Weston. The real disaster occurred in Season 7 when CBS kept moving the show around on its primetime line-up and the ratings collapsed.
  20. I agree. Yes, it was a sitcom. But there was always a strong element to it of the waitresses struggling to make ends meet and, more importantly, feeling like their dreams were forever beyond reach. Even the series finale - while upbeat - didn't have every single character going off to live in affluence. If Alice was remade as a series now, it probably would be a drama with comedic aspects rather than the reverse. (In other words, it would resemble the original source movie much more than the series did.)
  21. Alice being a would-be singer was part of the show's premise but Lavin got her start working in musical theater in New York. She returned to musical theater after Alice ended (i.e. she replaced Tyne Daly in the Broadway revival of Gypsy.) I think that was part of the show's appeal and why it lasted so long. In its day, people could relate to the main characters and their various situations. Flo returning to Alice might not have worked (and not just from a standpoint of Lavin and Holliday's working relationship.) I wonder if Flo having to return to Mel's as a waitress (after owning her own business) would have been a little too downbeat for a sitcom audience. That was always her style - dating back to the 1930s and 1940s.
  22. I remember that storyline. It occurred during the Ice Princess era and it showed an interesting generational conflict between the nurses. The older nurses (like Jessie) wanted to stick with the traditional uniforms and the younger ones (like Bobbie and Anne) wanted to switch to the more modern uniforms. As I recall, they ended up splitting the difference - each nurse could choose her preferred uniform. Contrary to received opinion, there was a lot happening on General Hospital during the Ice Princess era other than Luke and Laura.
  23. The Hardy Boys - The House on Possessed Hill (Original Air Date: January 22, 1978) Summary: Joe comes to the aid of a mysterious young woman (played by a very young Melanie Griffith) who leads him to an abandoned old house (in actuality, the house from Psycho). Once there, he discovers that the young woman has a strong affinity for the supernatural and believes the house is alive. Frank and Joe have to figure out why the young woman is drawn to the house. Is it truly alive and trying to claim her? Or is something else at work? This is a nifty ‘dark, old house’ episode from Season 2. The house is wonderfully atmospheric and there are numerous supernatural occurrences (or are there?). Frank and Joe are forced to work with an atypical ‘client’ (the Griffith character) who possesses the gift of precognition and believes she can communicate with the house. Normally, I’m not a fan of Melanie Griffith’s breathy, childlike voice but here it actually works for her character, who is supposed to be in a regressive state. The downside to this episode is that it almost attempts to do too much in 48 minutes. Trying to juggle the female lead’s supernatural gifts and childhood trauma, the mystery of whether the house is actually haunted or not, and a routine Hardy Boys crime investigation leads to a bit of a muddle at points. The crime subplot, in particular, is confusing and I had to think through it because what was depicted and shown didn’t make matters self-evident. The best part is the ending, which is strongly reminiscent of the ending to The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula – Part 2. That episode suggests that the supernatural is an objectively real phenomenon. In The House on Possessed Hill, there is no dispute on this point – the supernatural nature of the house is shown as being real as the audience sees certain things that the characters don’t. (It also builds on what was implied in the Dracula episode – that Joe has a greater affinity for the supernatural than Frank does.)
  24. I rewatched Nips and Tucks, Three for the Money and Toni's Boys (Season 4, episodes 20, 21 and 22). Along with Home $weet Homes, Nips and Tucks and Three for the Money are some of the best team episodes in the second half of Season 4. Everyone is interacting with everyone else and they actually look like they are enjoying themselves. There's also a lot of humor, which was badly needed after so many episodes where a strange funk appeared to be hovering over the entire production. Of course, just when the show had righted the ship, the powers-to-be decided to release Shelley and hire a new Angel! Toni's Boys isn't a great Charlie's Angels episode and it isn't even that great of a backdoor pilot. (Toni, played Barbara Stanwyck, and the three "boys" don't exactly come across as competent until the very end.) Still, this is a guilty pleasure episode for me. Stanwyck plays her part with gusto and three guys have decent enough chemistry with each other. It would have been interesting to see if the show worked as a series. (I do wonder, though, how long a spinoff would have been able to keep up Stephen Shortridge's cowboy persona as 'Cotton'. That seems like a limited gimmick compared to what the other two brought to the team as, respectively, a master of disguise and an Olympic-level athlete.) Fun car fact from Toni's Boys: Kelly's Ford is blown up at the beginning of the episode. She is then seen driving a different make of car, which she uses to meet the other Angels at the agency. We then see an establishing shot of Kris's Cobra, Tiffany's Pinto (which she inherited from Sabrina) and . . . Kelly's Ford in front of the agency!!! I guess this is another case of Charlie magically delivering a replacement car in record time!II
  25. I rewatched Harrigan's Angels and An Angel's Trail (Season 4, episodes 19 and 20). Again, I have mixed feelings about these episodes. If ABC had been airing a rotating anthology series about detectives (similar to the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries that aired during the late-1970s), these episodes would have fit comfortably within the anthology format. (In Harrigan's Angels, Kris teams up with guest star Howard Duff. An Angel's Trail is the sixth and final 'Farrah Returns' episode.) The problem with these two episodes, though, is that they barely qualify as Charlie's Angels episodes due to the heavy focus on Kris (Harrigan's Angels) and Jill (An Angel's Trail). An Angel's Trail, in particular, is all-Farrah - it's as if the 1980 team members are guest stars on their own show! That being said, I do like the chemistry between Cheryl and Howard Duff in Harrigan's Angels. I always get a little lump in my throat when Harrigan confesses to Kris that both his wife and baby died during childbirth. Not the kind of poignant moment you ordinarily see in a Charlie's Angels episode and certainly not in one penned by Ed Lasko.
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