Marland Monday: Enough Is Enough
Last Monday of the month! It’s also… Marland Monday!
Yes, every Monday I look back at the career of Douglas Marland, one of the GOATS of daytime television. It’s the end of February, which means it’s the end of sweeps month. So let’s look back at another February moment. Come on everyone!
So today we’re going to look back on Guiding Light. This storyline plot point has special meaning to me. When I started writing about Marland last year, I had just revised a scene in my memoir where indirectly he was a part of. Confused? Let me explain.
In 1980, Procter and Gamble decided to switch things around. Bridget and Jerome Dobson had done a fantastic job writing GL, so they were switched to As the World Turns. Marland came to GL. He came at an interesting time: Michael Zaslow, who was an enemy of the Bauers for years, said he was going to leave the show in April. (Sidenote: Zaslow and Marland did Hamlet together years before in Canada) Like Hamlet, Marland knew that Roger needed a sendoff, but it needed planning. He had to terrorize Springfield one last time. He posed as an elderly professor staying at a boarding house. This gave Marland a chance to introduce Nola (Lisa Brown) who brought Roger his meals and knew something was up. Roger wanted his daughter Christina (Cheryl Lynn Brown) but he was trying to figure out how to get her. He found out there was going to be a carnival. Knowing Christina would be there, he dressed like a clown and went to, in Natalie Merchant’s words: “…carnival…of sights to see/All the cheap thrill seekers vendors and the dealers/They crowded around me.”
To make it extra creepy, it’s a circus carnival!
He tailed Christina who was with mom Holly (Maureen Garrett) and stepdad Ed(Mart Hulsitt) and came close to getting her, but Christina became scared and ran away. Smart girl, Chrissy. In the meantime, they run into Rita (Lenore Kasdorf) Ed’s estranged wife. Awkward small talk ensured. Rita was pregnant but didn’t know who the daddy was. Was it Ed? Or Dr. McDreamy Greg Fairbanks? They were waiting for blood tests to find out.
While Christina was having fun with a distorted mirror, Roger tried again to grab her. But she ran back to Ed and Holly. “Damnit!” Roger snapped. Rita looked up. She knew that voice. Roger had raped her two years before. It was one of the fissures of her marriage to Ed, that she didn’t tell about the rape. She looked at the clown, the voice that was so familiar. She mouthed one word: “Roger?”
Rita then called for Ed. Ed was gone. Roger came for Rita, then she ran into the House of Mirrors. Roger followed her. Rita tried to find an exit, but she kept on going to mirrors. Roger slowly walked behind her, taking his time.
It then cut to other people at the carnival. Rita screamed something Mike (Don Stewart) and Alan (Christopher Bernau) commented on, but they thought it was just part of the carnival.
Rita kept running around the house of mirrors, trying to find an exit. She saw Roger in one of the mirrors, making him look closer than he was. All the while Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand Enough is enough (is enough) I can’t go on, I can go on no more, no.
I won’t spoil it for what happens next. What I can tell you is why, after forty-two years, do I remember this so well?
It was the first time I saw a Marland storyline: I had several earaches the winter early spring of 1980. I missed school and stayed at home with my grandmother. She had lung cancer and died several months later. But we sat in the living room, watching Rita go through the Hall of Mirrors. I’ll always be sad we didn’t have more time together, but I am glad we had that moment.
When I saw The Lady from Shanghai years later, when Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth are in their Hall of Mirrors, I thought aha! That’s where Douglas Marland got the idea!
Anytime I hear “Enough is Enough,” I think “Rita and Roger in the Hall of Mirrors!”
A year ago, I rewatched the scene for my memoir, wanting to make sure I got it right. I rewatched the scene, taking some notes. I thought “God, why won’t someone do a biography or something on Douglas Marland?”
Well, I decided to do something. Been doing it for eight months now. I’m thinking of turning it into a podcast. More will be revealed. Stay tuned.
Turn in next week…
