“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Have a safe and happy Fourth of July, everyone!
Marlena and the Team
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: MARLENA | No Comments »
By Patrick Erwin
I’ve been writing about soaps for a while, but I am a relatively new daily fan of One Life To Live. Yes, as Marlena has observed, some of us soap viewers are boarding the OLTL lifeboat, and I, for one, have bought my ticket!
I watched OLTL a bit here and there (especially during the first Malone years), but I am really drawn to the quality of the show now. What could I possibly say about OLTL that has not been said before — about the writing, the characters, the pacing? Nothing, that’s what. So instead of trying to recap OLTL, I decided I’d try to tell you why I’m loving OLTL so much … by talking about Guiding Light.
Huh, you say? Work with me here.
With apologies to The Golden Girls‘ Sophia Petrillo, I say: picture it — Springfield, 1990. The show was slated for some major changes. Pam Long was running into network interference, and she and GL parted ways. At the same time, several of GL’s biggest stars were Read more…
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Guiding Light, One Life to Live, PATRICK | 13 Comments »
By Marlena De Lacroix
Have you boarded the One Life to Live lifeboat yet? Judging from the letters I’ve received in the last three weeks from readers like Esther, Cherry, Marilyn and DSO, even the most discerning and stubborn of Marlena’s Thinking Fans seem to be boarding. They’re in hope it’s the one show that can keep their long-term love of soaps afloat in a sea of rapidly sinking - and stinking — shows. So we’ll have lots to say here on the experience of watching OLTL, which Marlena herself has watched faithfully since 1970. Our own Patrick Erwin, a first time viewer, will weigh in with his observations later this week. He’ll compare other soaps he’s watched with OLTL.
And BTW, there’s an inside joke here. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1944 movie classic Lifeboat stars Tallulah Bankhead, Hume Cronyn, William Bendix and a wonderful character named Read more…
Posted on June 30th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: MARLENA, One Life to Live | 22 Comments »
By Damon L. Jacobs
Days of Our Lives‘ Sami and her twin brother were born into a loving intact family. Her father was on the police force, her mother was a psychiatrist, her doting older half-sister loved her. What could possibly go wrong?
More like what DIDN’T go wrong! In her childhood alone, Sami (played by Alison Sweeney) dealt with the death of her father, the death of her mother, the return of her father, countless father’s girlfriends, only to learn he wasn’t her father at all, and both her real parents were being kept alive on an island but separated and then returned home. Confused? Imagine going Read more…
Posted on June 26th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Days of Our Lives, SOAP SHRINK | 3 Comments »
By Marlena De Lacroix
The star of the 2008 Emmys was a body part your mother blushingly called your “backside.” Stars couldn’t stop talking about derrieres, and wound up acting a lot like them.
“Oh, oh, I love your butt, what a cute little butt, I’d take that cute little butt,” All My Children’s Rebecca Budig (Greenlee) squealed as she checked out Bryan Datillo’s on the SoapNet Emmy PreShow, which Budig was co-hosting with Ricky Paull Goldin (Jake, AMC).
And then there was Tyra Banks’ acceptance speech for Best Talk Show: “When you have a dream, there are going to be many people that tell you that you cannot do it, that you are not good enough. And I want you to tell them to kiss your dimply, fat, juicy, booty-licious, skinny, jiggly, saggy, fat ass.”
Marlena isn’t ordinarily a prude about language. But these are the Daytime Emmys, the once a year gathering that is supposed to salute excellence and reward the very hard work talented people do in daytime drama every day. Generations of producers, performers and journalists have fought to make sure the Daytime Emmys remain respectful both to the soap world, and intelligently inviting to the outside world, where soaps are Read more…
Posted on June 23rd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: All My Children, General Hospital, Guiding Light, MARLENA, Young and the Restless | 17 Comments »
By Damon L. Jacobs
Look into his eyes. Those deep blue eyes. There you may see a man who has great capacity for warmth, generosity and concern for his family and community.
Look a little deeper, however, and you will also see anger, bitterness and an intense fear of being inferior to others.
But let’s back up a bit. Guiding Light’s Joshua Lewis, played by Robert Newman, is the son of Martha and HB Lewis. Little seems to be known about Martha and her relationship to her children. But HB was a rigid task master, an old fashioned cowboy who didn’t appreciate sass from his children. Unfortunately for him, he received a lot of sass from his rebellious, hot-headed rock-&-roll-loving son Josh. There was much resentment and competition between these two, and at one point HB even married the woman Josh loved (Reva, natch). Josh clearly was an outsider, and did not Read more…
Posted on June 19th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Guiding Light, SOAP SHRINK | 4 Comments »
By Marlena De Lacroix
I’m not overly excited about this week’s Daytime Emmys. I could be fluffy and say it’s because they moved the ceremony to L.A. several years ago and I don’t get to go and to buy a dress, and to me (I attended here in New York 23 years in a row) the Daytime Emmys was always about The Dress. But the truth is, daytime drama, which I’ve spent most of life my loving, is a collapsing industry, and I just don’t feel very celebratory. Glitz and glam be damned, wouldn’t the time and money spent on the Emmys be better spent gathering everyone in the industry together to meet and intelligently discuss finding a way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again?
Oh well ,brighten up, Marlena! Friday night is the Emmys broadcast (8 p.m. EDT on ABC) and you must make award picks. As Irving Berlin wrote Read more…
Posted on June 18th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: All My Children, As the World Turns, Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, Guiding Light, MARLENA, One Life to Live, Young and the Restless | 11 Comments »
How many times have you seen a soap villainess or villain — or even a soap hero or heroine — do something that is so wrong and so bizarre that you’ve jumped up from your armchair and screamed: “WHAT IS WRONG with her/him?”
In the vast, messy world of today’s soap opera — where cheap thrills usually trump character development, history is all but forgotten and Read more…
Posted on June 13th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: General Hospital, MARLENA | 1 Comment »
(Everybody sing, to the theme from Ghostbusters …)
When the diva’s off the wall, and her tough ex starts to bawl, who you gonna call? SOAP SHRINK
Hey, would she really say that? And would he really do that? Help is on the way, from SOAP SHRINK
So when your soap is all askew, and you don’t know what to do, who cares if you are blue? SOAP SHRINK
By Damon L. Jacobs
Hello and welcome to my cyber office. These sessions will be an opportunity for us to examine the psychological profiles of some of our favorite soap characters, explore their symptoms, and get a better grasp of why they do the things they do. My hope is that we will have a dialogue about each person, and this will lead to a deeper understanding and appreciation of our shows. I welcome your feedback in the comments section below.
On the Soap Shrink’s Couch this week: Carly Corinthos Jacks (played by Laura Wright). Read more…
Posted on June 12th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: General Hospital, SOAP SHRINK | 11 Comments »
By Marlena De Lacroix
Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Brian Kerwin (Charlie Banks, One Life to Live) for the Broadway theater site, Theater Mania. I talked to him both about his Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor (OLTL’s only acting nomination this year) and his very contrasting, on-going role as a pervert who tries to seduce a 15-year-old girl in the Broadway hit August: Osage County. Osage, already a Pulitzer Prize winner, is nominated for ten Tony Awards (the awards broadcast is Sunday, June 15, at 8 p.m. EDT on CBS).
Despite his hectic schedule — I met with Kerwin on a Wednesday matinee day between shows — I found him to be relaxed, soft-spoken, funny, a total pro. What a doll! It’s easy to see why Erika Slezak (and everyone backstage at OLTL) likes to work with him. Complete with remarks from Erika herself, a discussion of his 30-year career in stage, movies and TV (his first role was Greg Foster on Young and the Restless in the 70s), and a bit about his family life, my interview (under the name of my alter ego, Connie Passalacqua Hayman) with Kerwin appears here.
Posted on June 9th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: MARLENA, One Life to Live | 9 Comments »
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