Classic Soaps Guiding Light

[Daniel Avery]

That familiar actress (playing Detective Deborah Saxon) is Frances Fisher! And she kicks ass all over Monticello during her time on the show. The neighbor serving her the poisoned soup, "Mrs. Corey" is actually another character in a disguise, played by Planet of the Apes actress Kim Hunter. The viewer was expected to recognize Nola Madison masquerading as "Mrs. Corey" but of course a new viewer would not have known. Kim Hunter's Nola has been on the show for a bit, playing a vain, self-absorbed, over-the-hill actress prone to such extreme (and melodramatic) measures to get revenge on people who cross her.

 

[Daniel Avery]

Having a child that was half Spaulding and half Bauer seems sort of genius. Did they wring a lot of conflict out of Alan-Michael being split between the two families? What happened to Hope?

I wouldn't say they mined that conflict very often, choosing instead to have stories where young A-M was generally rebellious against his father since it was well known that Alan had treated Hope shabbily, and since A-M had been raised by Hope someplace else (I'm thinking New York, but I could be wrong). He seemed to have that same teenaged rebellion that they write so often, and appealing to his Uncle Ed was more an effort to play one relative off the other to get what he wanted. Hope was another character born on the show. When Mike spent that period of time in Bay City, Hope was there with him (as a little girl). They chose to write Hope (and A-M) out of the show in 1983 or 1984. She may have made a guest appearance at some point, but I'm pretty sure they never showed her again.

There were other uncomfortable ties between the Bauers and Spauldings, in true soap opera tradition. Roger Thorpe, originally brought in as a Spaulding Enterprises employee, became a sometimes-ally of Alan's as Roger and Ed became mortal enemies. In the wake of Roger raping Holly and Christina (Blake) being born, Ed and Holly became a couple and Roger became obsessed with getting baby Christina away from them, and blackmailing Alan into helping him continue to evade capture. When Roger "died" by falling from a cliff in Santo Domingo, it was Ed who was holding onto Roger's hands before Roger fell to his "death". Ed and Holly resented Alan for helping Roger get away with so many of his crimes. This is why, when "Christina" (Blake) returned to town, she treated Ed as something of a father-figure, since he and Holly had been together for a period of time when she was little.

 

[Jason73]

There's a playlist of consecutive episodes from 1979 to the end of 1980. I believe these came from the AOL video service site.

Thank you! I think I'll back up my viewing and watch those 1979 episodes before I carry on with 1980.

 

[Jason73]

That familiar actress (playing Detective Deborah Saxon) is Frances Fisher!

YES! Thank you! It was driving me crazy trying to figure out how I knew her.

"Mrs. Corey" is actually another character in a disguise, played by Planet of the Apes actress Kim Hunter. The viewer was expected to recognize Nola Madison masquerading as "Mrs. Corey" but of course a new viewer would not have known.

I haven't seen Mrs. Corey yet but she's been referenced a number of times. That storyline sounds fun.

Kim Hunter's Nola has been on the show for a bit, playing a vain, self-absorbed, over-the-hill actress prone to such extreme (and melodramatic) measures to get revenge on people who cross her.

I think I may have seen her. Is she involved with a sort of younger man?

 

[Daniel Avery]

Yes. He eventually gets killed by a Hand Puppet.

Curious now?

 

[Jason73]

Funny -- tonight I was bouncing around a couple of 1979 episodes of GL because I wanted to see some episodes with a character called Rita that I saw mentioned fondly on another site. I remember the actress from Santa Barbara. While I was watching the episodes I got sucked into some scenes with this super hot guy and a woman who was poisoning him. Turns out the character's name was Ben and he was played by -- Stephen Yates, who I watched not too long ago as AW's Jamie. I did some further googling on the character, Lucille, who was poisoning him and she sounds like a lot of fun

 

[Daniel Avery]

Oh, yes, Ben McFarren was their resident hottie in that period. He never would have gotten the gig as Jamie Frame if he had not been so memorable as Ben on GL. Lucille Wexler was a horrid woman involved in a gothic tale of keeping her sheltered daughter Amanda from getting involved with Ben, despite his being a great soap hero-type. Lucille's bizarre attachment to Amanda came with a huge story attached later on, and Lucille ended up becoming the centerpiece of a murder mystery.

I was saving this for a rainy day....but since you've dipped into the 1979 period, I think you deserve a good laugh. The actors filmed these parody scenes (written by Marsha Clark, who played Hillary Bauer) surreptitiously to show at a cast party, but the results were so good that someone on the cast saved the tape and it leaked out to youtube decades later.

The character of Rita was....polarizing?

 

[Carrie Fairchild]

I know that this thread hasn’t been active for six years but I didn’t want to start another one when this seems to have been the place for general chat about Guiding Light.

I’ve been watching some 2002 episodes that have led up to Joan Collins’ arrival as Alexandra Spaulding. What I was wondering about was the whole San Christobel thing. The action is no longer based there but there are still references to it (Reva is currently on trial for the mercy killing of the island’s Prince Richard). During the San Christobel era, was it like a 50/50 split of scenes between there and Springfield? And was it jarring for viewers to suddenly switch from stories based in smalltown USA to stories set around a Caribbean island monarchy?

Australian soap Sons and Daughters did the two locations thing (Sydney and Melbourne) but that was established from the beginning and was set in pretty normal locales. I know daytime soap Capitol did it too (Washington and the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom of Baracq) but I’m not sure if they went as hung ho into it as GL did.

 

[Daniel Avery]

I wasn't watching GL during that time but I recall some of the basics just from hearing others discuss it. I think San Cristobel was created as part of a plot to explain where Reva had been during one of those "We thought you were dead/where have you been?" expositions. The show's writers just kept letting SC "grow" (introducing characters and back-story for them) rather than focus on the Springfield characters. Other soaps have fallen into this "mythical country" trap, like Capitol as you mention, as well as One Life to Live, Days, and Santa Barbara. And of course we all know Moldavia! Even the sitcom spoof Soap created "Malaguay," a South American country. About ten years earlier than this GL plot, Another World sent some of the characters to an island in the Caribbean called San Cristobal, but I don't think they meant for these to be the same place.

Making these places "unreal estate" allows the writers to say or do anything with them. I mean, San Cristobel had an odd leadership structure to say the least, It seemed to be in the Caribbean yet was full of white Europeans with non-descript accents.

 

[Carrie Fairchild]

I think San Cristobel was created as part of a plot to explain where Reva had been during one of those "We thought you were dead/where have you been?" expositions.

It’s a funny one because from what I can gather, when Reva returned from “the dead” in 1995, she’d been living with amnesia in an Amish community. It wasn’t until four years later that she went on holiday to San Cristobel and discovered that not only had she been princess of the island in the early 90’s but she’d had a son there too.

The show's writers just kept letting SC "grow" (introducing characters and back-story for them) rather than focus on the Springfield characters.

That’s what I was wondering about. It’s one thing to do an arc outside of a show’s usual locale but to split such an established ongoing show between two very different settings is a “bold” choice.

Making these places "unreal estate" allows the writers to say or do anything with them. I mean, San Cristobel had an odd leadership structure to say the least, It seemed to be in the Caribbean yet was full of white Europeans with non-descript accents.

Yes, the only holdovers from the San Cristobel phase that are onscreen in the episodes that I’m watching are white Americans (Olivia and her brother) and then the prince’s brother, who kind of veers between American and British.

 

[Daniel Avery]

the prince’s brother, who kind of veers between American and British.

That actor, David Andrew MacDonald, had an odd quality about him that played well in his previous soap role(s) as Andrew Stark/David Halliday in the final year of Another World. He is American but plays that non-descript villain type who has an undetermined accent. Given what he played in the final year of Another World, Prince Edmund was probably a walk in the park for him.