Marland Monday: Hulswit or Simon in the Springfield Slaughter of 1981? Risk Everything
Oh my, is it Monday? That means it’s Marland Monday!
It’s also Labor Day. Here’s some Weavers to celebrate:
This summer I’ve been looking back at the career of writer Douglas Marland, and his legendary rules on how to write soap operas and how it applies to other forms of writing. Here’s today’s rule:
Don’t fire anyone for six months. I feel very deeply that you should look at the show’s canvas before you do anything.
Okay this has nothing to do with writing. Honestly, I don’t think I could fire anyone. I’d be Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, just a sobbing mess. However, I do believe it’s good advice from Mr. Marland. When you are writing for an ensamble, you have to take a holistic view. See what people’s strengths are, their weaknesses. Then write towards their strengths. Sometimes you do have to change, shake things up. But you need to be prepared that people might not like changes. Since it’s Labor Day, it feels right to explore something that happened forty years ago this month, something that is still being debated today.
When last time we explored Guiding Light’s history, those wacky kids Kelly and Morgan got married. A recast Morgan is around the corner, but we aren’t talking about her. In the October 4, 1981 Boston Globe, it was reported that Mart Hulswit was summoned to Executive Producer Allen Potter’s office.
Let’s backtrack: Mart Huswit had played Dr. Ed Bauer for the past twelve years. In those twelve years Ed had married three times, divorced three times, fathered a son named Freddy (renamed Rick when he became a teenager) then found out the daughter of his second wife was fathered by another man, but decided to go with the facade that he was her dad. The real dad became his mortal enemy and chased him around a jungle before falling to his death. The father who he thought died in a plane crash hadn’t died, and oh yeah he had a little sister who was now a student nurse at the hospital he worked at. The third wife cheated on him with the millionaire next door, who happened to be married to his niece. This wasn’t the first time she cheated; she had an affair with another doctor because Ed wasn’t, in the words of the Rolling Stones, getting any satifcation in the bedroom. Oh yeah, he was also an alcoholic who had periods of serious drinking, plus was a mentor to godson Kelly and AA sponsor to Tim Werner (played for several months by Kevin Bacon, put Huswit in the six degrees game)
In short, Ed Bauer was a flawed character. Very much a soap opera character.
Hulswit always made Ed likable and strong, despite all his flaws. Ed always got the fuzzy end of the lollipop, but always tried to make amends, to do better. I always thought of him as my grandmother’s Ed, because he was the Ed we watched together. He — and Don Stewart’s Mike and of course Charita Bauer’s Bert — were the spine that held the show together.
But Hulswit found himself one day in 1981 in the Execustive Producer Alan Potter’s office, being told he was fired. Hulswit was classy, saying he knew it wasn’t Potter’s decision. But whose decision was it? Was it Proctor and Gamble? Or was it Marland? Given my feelings for P&G, I am hoping it was the former. But there’s always been gossip it was the latter.
Hulswit wasn’t the only one; in what was titled “the Springfield Slaughter” many people were fired or let go: Sofia Landon’s Diane was killed off. Barbara Berjer who played Barbara Norris-Thorpe was let go, along with Robert Milli who played her ex husband Adam Thorpe. Stefan Schnabel who played Dr. Steve Jackson (Ed’s mentor and former father in law) was gone. I missed all of them; they connected me to my grandmother who had died. but Hulswit, oh man, that one ticked a lot of people off. One viewer wrote that watching someone else play Ed was “washing my feet with my socks on.” They wanted their Ed back, damnit!
If it was Marland’s fault, I am still torn. I loved Hulswit, as I said he was part of the spine of the show. But the actor who replaced him, Peter Simon, did an amazing job. His Ed was wiser. He still screwed up: cheated on his fourth wife (the beloved Maureen) had a baby girl with another woman, but kept trying to do the right thing. He was the doctor you wanted when you went to Cedars. When younger actors were in scenes with him, they tried to be as good as he was. I don’t think I knew how good Simon was until another actor played Ed for a while. This actor just couldn’t fit into Ed’s shoes, so they brought Simon back. He played Ed for another ten years, then off and on until the show was canceled in 2009.
But still, Hulswit was such a huge part of the show. He was the one who predicted they would do away with the Bauers as the center of Guiding Light, and he was right. After his firing, he did fine. He did other soap work, then did an enchanting holiday TV movie with Lee Remick. He also had a recurring role on Shining Time Station.
This is my long way of saying I don’t know if it was the right decision or not. If it was a Marland decision, I disagree with it. If it was a P&G decision, I really disagree with it. I might’ve created another role for Simon to fit him in the GL canvas. But this is what I’ve learned in my almost (cough) fifty years: when you’re in the arts, especially as a writer, you’re going to make decisions that might tick people off. You will, in Irna Phillips’ words, make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait. I’m still ticked off about fictional deaths that happened years ago. Don’t get me started on Little Women’s Beth. But as a writer you have to ask yourself is it worth the risk?
No easy answers this time. But maybe Judy Collins put it best: Catch your tears in a golden sieve/Don’t regret what you did to live/Don’t forget that you must forgive/To risk everything.
In writing, take chances. Risk being debated about forty years later. Try not to regret.
Tune in next week…
