Marland Monday: If you gotta play at garden parties, I wish you a lotta luck.
Oh my Goodness, is it Monday already? That means it’s Marland Monday!
That’s right cats and kittens, it’s Marland Monday, where I salute Douglas Marland, one of my favorite writers and whom many consider one of the best writers in the soap opera genre.
The past several weeks I’ve been looking back on a show he helped create with Agnes Nixon, another GOAT. Let’s review:
1. A new show is born!
2. Casting the show, including a new actor named Bryan Cranston.
3. The TV movie pilot, starring Lloyd Bridges and Geraldine Page
Today I’m going to look at the first two daytime episodes shown in late June 1983. Come along with me! This will be fun!
The day after the TV movie, Loving made its daytime debut. It starts off with a title card that says An Invitation to Loving.
As Dionne Warrick sings “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” (Um, odd song choice, but hey, it’s Ms. Warrick) we get random people telling the camera what do they get when they fall in love. One girl gets skinny. One guy feels as if he’s sixteen again and a jackrabbit. It’s a cute little bit that goes too long.
We then switch to… ladies and gentlemen, Dorothy Lyman!
Lyman was riding high in 1983. On All My Children she was Opal Gardner, the comic relief/bad mother to heroine Jenny. On Mama’s Family, she was the daughter-in-law from hell Naomi Harper. Lyman is one of my favorite character actresses, but I was trying to figure out what she was doing on Loving. It turns out she is introducing the show. After introducing herself, she says the “entertainment form that says it best is daytime drama.” We then hear an old-school soap opera organ music. “Oh come on you guys cut that corny music!”
We then see clips of Loving. They’re all future episodes, so we really don’t have any context of what the stories all. We get more Person On the Street interviews about love. Finally, after ten minutes, the show starts.
It’s been two weeks since the events of the TV movie. Merrill (Patricia Kalember) and Roger Forbes (John Shearin) have a tense moment after she interviewed him for the news. Because Merrill is the only reporter in Cornith. (Yes I am kidding) The two of them are good in their acting and we want to know more about their history. There are two great visuals: We see the outside of Roger’s office which looks like a Tudor cottage, and the Alden mansion that looks beautiful.
Augusta Dabney has been recast as Isabelle Alden. Funny I’m watching this: I just read about Dabney in a biography about Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift (she and then-husband Kevin McCarthy were friends with Clift) Dabney was in several movies plus she was in Another World, General Hospital, Young Doctor Malone, Guiding Light, and A World Apart where she played Betty Kahlman Barry whom was based on Irma Phillips, the woman who created the soap opera genre. This is a great recast.
The Aldens are having having a garden party to celebrate Roger becoming president at Alden University. Granddaughter Lorna is there, along with grandson Jack. Lorna and Jack bicker, so something is definitely up with them. Garth Slater (John Cunningham) comes to the party. I’m betting the whole thing is adding salt to his wound that he wasn’t named president. We also meet his wife June (Ann Williams) and his daughter Lily (Jennifer Ashe) Lily was a bit overdressed, but looked lovely. When June was offered either alcoholic or non alcoholic punch, she paused. In the hestitation, we saw some foreshadowing. Then she asked for non alcoholic punch. It was a small detail but Williams made it very real.
Sure enough, Garth complained about the press coverage and complained about Roger Forbes. June told him to shut up. He then complained to Merrill who came to the party with boyfriend Doug (Bryan Cranston) who finally told him off. Still upset, he chastised Ann about her punch drinking. He then wondered where Lily was. Lily was looking at a pond. Jack found her and they talked for a while. Garth interupted the conversation and told Lily he wanted her to play some piano pieces for the party. Lily looked irritated; she doesn’t have any pieces of music. We also saw the Donovan kitchen where Rose (Teri Keane) tried to encourage Mike (James Kiberd) who is upset about being passed over for a promotion and felt that Merrill was holding back on the Johnny Forbes murder.
The second episode had more of the garden party. June still looked nervous about Garth, while Jack wanted to chat with Lily. Merrill and Doug left the party early and discussed Mike. Apparently Doug and Mike have been fighting for years; Doug was against the Vietnam war and didn’t go. Mike went. They haven’t gotten along since. Mike confirmed to wife Noreen (Marilyn McIntyre) that he did feel resentful of both Doug and Merrill. In the study Jack and Lorna finally have a big fight and Jack said “You know brothers and sisters…”
“You’re not even my real brother and you know it! You don’t even belong to this family!” Lorna snapped.
The music swelled.
Here’s some thoughts:
When the show finally got to business, it’s really good. Marland didn’t do info dumping, rather he gave us clues. June had a problem with drinking. Lorna was jealous of her golden boy brother. Jack was adopted. Mike and Doug’s feud. He gave us little crumbs so we could follow along as the show progressed. What slowed it down was the long People on the Street interviews, and I hate saying this, Dorothy Lyman’s introduction. I don’t blame Lyman, she was doing Agnes Nixon a favor. But we didn’t need the extra info. We needed to get right to the story.
Next week: The balloon is burst by a needle. What went wrong with Marland and Loving?
Also real quick: Alan Locher who runs an interview series on YouTube called The Locher Room will be doing an interview with Patrick Mulcahey, an Emmy winning writer and a protege of Douglas Marland’s. The interview will be on November 11 and can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK2r9Ag-kfA
Tune in next week for our conclusion!
