Marland Monday: Stop Worrying About Where You’re Going and Move On
Hi everybody! It’s the last day of the month and it’s also Monday, so that means it’s…
Marland Monday!
Every Monday I remember Douglas Marland, the GOAT of writing soap operas. I was going to continue spotlighting actors who followed Marland from show to show, but I had some creative setbacks. I had to turn down a writing retreat because it’s located in a high infection county. I received three, count them, three rejections in one day. I also pitched several media outlets for essays. Silence. I get it. Everyone is stressed, tired, burned out. But man, why does it have to be so hard?
I know Marland had setbacks. I wrote about two here: when he had to diagnose the phantom fetus to Lisa in the early 70s on ATWT, and when storylines he planned for the soap Loving were derailed. How did he handle it when things simply didn’t go his way? It was time to do some digging.
I looked up his birth name, Marland Messner. He had a lot of acting roles, including touring with Mr. Roberts.
In the late fifties, he changed his name. Marland became his last name. Douglas for the first. Why Douglas? Did he like Kirk Douglas? Douglas Sirk? I have no idea.
I do know that under the name Marland Lee Messner, he wrote a song titled “I Wonder Why” I haven’t found any other information about the song. But I did find another entry in a copyright book. Both were for 1963. This one was for Waterloo! It was supposed to be a musical based on Waterloo Bridge, the first film Vivien Leigh did after Gone With the Wind. I’m guessing “I Wonder Why” was one of the songs connected to the musical. Of course, I wonder what happened? Why didn’t it get produced? I’m just amazed he wrote a musical. My attempt at a musical would be like this: “I’m at Waterloo Bridge! It’s in the movie Alfie and the Kinks sang about it! Abba didn’t sing about it! Oh, Waterloo Bridge!” Yep, shouldn’t quit the day job.
Marland continued to act, then in the mid-seventies, he started to write dialogue for Another World. He won an Emmy. But he was featured in 1976 for helping senior citizens put on a musical. It doesn’t give the name of the musical, but it’s set in the time period Waterloo! was set in. The director of the senior center was Dorothy Bryce. Remember that name. She’s going to be mentioned again later.
Now I’m sure Marland was thrilled that his Waterloo! found a home. But oh man, the limbo must’ve been hard. I get it, I’m in limbo right now. Also, did he dream it would be on Broadway, like Oliver! and My Fair Lady? Or even off-Broadway? I am sure the senior center actors were fantastic. Sometimes it’s hard to adapt old dreams though.
But he kept going. He wrote for The Doctors, then General Hospital. What amazes me about the latter as he was on the show for only a year and a half. Then he got into a teeny tiny skirmish with Gloria Monty. He went to Guiding Light, then to Loving. I’m betting it felt like a punch to the stomach when they objected/said no to storylines he wanted to do. But he pressed on. In 1985, he went to As The World Turns. There were familiar faces there; he had been on the show. One of the younger members probably knew him: Scott Bryce. Yep, Dorothy Bryce’s son. It’s a small world after all.
The same year he joined ATWT, he was adapting Father Andrew Greeley’s mystery Cardinal Sins to be the first daytime miniseries. It never happened. I’m betting that was hard. In 1987, when ATWT won Best Show at the Daytime Emmys, Lynda Hirsch reported that Marland was working on a script for a new show. It was going to be harder-edged, set in a Pennsylvania steel town. It would be called Soul Survivor.
Several months later, the 1988 Writer’s Strike happened. Everything just stopped. It hit TV the worst; everything went into reruns. I often wondered if the Writer’s Strike killed Soul Survivor’s chances of being produced. Or if CBS simply didn’t want to take their chances with another show. Whatever the reason, Marland kept on going with As The World Turns until his death. Someday, I would love to do a table read with the pilot script of Soul Survivor.
This is what I do know. He kept going. God knows it wasn’t easy, but he kept going. He had to do what Sondheim wrote in the song “Move On”
Stop worrying about where you’re going
Move on
If you can know where you’re going
You’ve gone
Just keep moving on
I chose, and my world was shaken
So what?
The choice may have been mistaken
The choosing was not
You have to move on.
He kept on moving on. He kept writng. He kept creating.
Let that be his lesson to you today.
Tune in next week…
