As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.....
I was surfing on YouTube and came across something which was of interest to me in how old the soap opera, The Young and the Restless was, in it is now something more like The Aged and the Napping combined with the Cheap and the Tawdry.
Like in the Designer Negro White House, the House of Bell has a host of blacks on that show who have absolutely no talent, except perhaps the Bad News Bear black kid, which is a shame as the entire show is Baby Boomer aging and if that is the demographic of it, it has fallen so far from what Lee and Philip Bell once created.
Back in the day there was Love is a many Splendid Thing where I think it was David Birney got his Meredith Baxter start, along with that little blonde who later became Abby in evil incarnate on Knots Landing.
Love soon enough tanked and a new soap opera appeared which was odd as no new soaps had appeared since Dark Shadows, the horror soap. The Young and the Restless was not that good really as the story was just Romeo and Juliet on viagra and ecstasy. It was rich family, poor family, and the families were good looking, with a love triangle in one facet of fatherless Jill getting laid by the rich industrialist Mr. Chancellor whose wife Kaye was a drunken old hag.
For a half hour in the 1970's people could look at pretty, and what the Bell's figured out for some odd reason or blundered into, in the music they chose was Nadia's Theme from that little Russian waif, and the score in the mood music was immensely good.
Sure Snapper was the cool doctor that Rich Springfield recreated on Days of Our Lives before he went rocker, and Chris was the well bodied blonde, but it was the music that rang the emotional bell.
Gwen Sherman played a prostitute in what seemed a good storyline for Snapper's brother Greg. He was the lawyer and trying to save this good whore who was a drunk. It was the tragic love story, and in it Greg saved her ass as she bawled in the shower as he scrubbed her clean, but the Bells stuck her into a Nun Convent to make it all cut your heart out.
The Bell's got that theme going on Y & R, as the Padre always shows up, unless it is some modern wedding and then it is some chic fillet in or something.
Mom watches Y & R, so that is why I know of it, as I gave up on soaps awhile ago, as it was a waste of time and emotion dragging me down, as that is what a soap is, slow wearing down so you come back each day addicted to the emotional drain.
I actually had contact with Lee Bell, the matriarch of that clan, and she was a very nice lady. That is what built the fan base in the top paid attention to the fans. The Bell's might have had the sliding roof mansion, but they never forgot shit holes like Wisconsin as the money which built their empire.
They brought out Capitol, and it sank, as no one cared about politicians whoring around, even if the cast was vapor hot. Their next venture was Bold and the Beautiful, which looks now more like the Old and Whatever would fit with a Big O like Orgasmic.
The Bells are quite loyal to their casts in recycling them if the casts are honest in their dealings with them.
They somehow also lured in people like Robert Clarey from Hogan's Heroes, Scottie from Star Trek and Eric Roberts who is Julia's brother, the actor in the family, along with other names.
Eric Braeden, the evil German in cinema from the 1960's and 1970's showed up and never left. That was a break really in show business as before Y & R no one would be caught dead in daytime if they still wanted to work up the ladder.
It is surprising not so much in the Y & R stable, but how many stars came off of a soap from New York in As the World Turns.
Long before Meg Ryan was sleepless she was Betsy. Long before My Cousin Vinny was a maul she was nutty Marcy. Some big names even like Kevin Bacon was the son of a shrink on Search for Tomorrow.
Soap acting is a paying job worth doing now, and I would love to be a character on Y & R, but could imagine how hell for leather that would turn out with the boundaries this blog has pushed back from the thought police. If the cartel mandates that no one can say the word Nigger, then by God I am going to keep using it, until it is a word without meaning.
So many of you never have figured out I took back an entire field of vocabulary, so that even timid little Mark Levin could act like Maddox in spouting off about Obama being a Marxist.
I think about people like Gwen Sherman who I found on YouTube in a tribute. It is odd how people touch other people they never meet. That is like 30 years ago, and yet someone was touched so deeply that they were still carrying the torch. Yeah it might be a bit stalker in not lifting the veil by association, but I think often of how Allan Hale who played the Skipper would go out with his hat, with wife along, and just have the time of his life having fans recognize him and interacting with him.
Sad part is Tina Louise who played Ginger hated the roll and being stuck in it, as she had been an actress in such things as God's Little Acre and wanted to be quality. She never understood though she was a bigger star than Betty Davis, because more people could name Gilligan's Island than a Betty Davis movie.
I know Y & R is failing even as it is the top soap in a field going by the wayside as Mockingbird is not funding that mind drug any longer to sedate a nation into misery. They would need a character like me who would come in and know all about each of them in their sins and make comment on it in poignant moments, and they really need some Obama Boston Blow Job event, to clean the chit out, as too many of those actors are coasting and too many of them are not actors at all.
It has always bothered me that Hollywood throws old actresses at age 40 and you never see them again as they think they look ghastly, when it is just old. Talent is talent, and there is a host of talent that should be doing some work on Y & R like Roseanna Arquette as she would fill that little screen and make it move.
I do not know how some actors make it like Michael Weatherly from Dark Angel and now on Navy CSI. Donald Belisario likes killing off women, but he likes these Tom Selleck type one dimensional characters who are non threatening to men and get women wet. I never understand how some of these stage props ever made it really as like James Garner they could never act no more than Clint Eastwood could act, but just give a sneer when angry.
I digress......
It is just odd that some people get a break which is just an Eddie Murphy part they snort up their coke head and keep playing the same roll for fame and someone who could act a bit like Gwen Sherman is only remembered by a few fans who literally are worth a million other fans.
Tina Louise wanted snob fans as she thought that is what making it was as that artsy fartsy crowd coos about. You will note that good movies never win Oscars and only some tortured loon actor wins awards.
My favorite actors are the ones who surprise me in a role in I look twice in consternation trying to figure out who they are. Summer Glau was like that in Firefly in which I did not like the character, but when she went Terminator I knew I had seen her before, but her transformation was that complete it revealed she really was an actress with range.
Most people do not have that ability and some are so large like John Wayne that you could not hide him in any role. Mr. Wayne's best acting was in Rooster Cogburn and the Lady. He should have won an Oscar for that.
I would conclude though an actress like Gwen Sherman who touched one person has a greater ability and more of a reward than any Emmy or Oscar. People remembering you is something. I remember Adam West as Batman and no one else. I remember like other people remember actors who somehow touched them inside when Katherine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall or whatever else was lifted up by the snobbery touched no one.
Time to close the menagerie down by opening the doors and sending you children out to play. You would be surprised how each of you have touched someone in they remember you for good, and they would do anything for you. Everyone has this.
agtG
