Marland Monday: When You Break a Marland Rule, it Doesn’t Work Out Well
Warning: this essay contains of ableism and corporate bad behavior.
Monday Monday, do you think you can’t trust this day? Sure you can! It’s…
Marland Monday!
That’s right cats and kittens, this summer I’ve been looking back on Douglas Marland, one of my favorite writers who is considered the GOAT Of Daytime Drama writing. This week we are looking at one of his legendary rules on writing soap operas. I’ve been trying to see if you can apply his rules to all writing. I’m going to admit it, this week is a bit tough. Let’s look at the rule and see why:
If you feel staff changes are in order, look within the organization first. P&G (Procter & Gamble) does a lot of promoting from within. Almost all of our producers worked their way up from staff positions, and that means they know the show.
So here’s the deal: This isn’t really about writing. I’m not a big fan of the actual business of Procter and Gamble. In fact, they broke one of Marland’s Rules in 1997 with Guiding Light. Quite frankly, the show never recovered.
Michael Zaslow had played Roger Thorpe off and on for twenty-five years. Roger wasn’t a good guy. He raped two women, one of them his wife. He blackmailed people, kept secrets, and when two women miscarried his babies, he didn’t come to their bedsides. Yet Zaslow played Roger with such cunning, so suave. You hated him yet when he called someone out on their hypocritical behavior, you had to admit he was right. He had two vulnerable spots: his daughter Christina (renamed Blake) and Maureen, Ed Bauer’s wife. Ed Bauer was also his enemy, so his crushing on Maureen made it interesting to watch. When Maureen died on the show, Roger was emotionally gutted.
In 1997, I noticed Zaslow slurred some of his words. That surprised me; he always spoke with such precision, such style. I then went on vacation to the UK and Ireland for three weeks. When I came back, another actor was playing Roger. Wait a minute. Who is this guy? Why is everyone calling him Roger? The Internet was still spanking new; all it said was Zaslow was taking a leave of absence. Was he okay? In August 1997 TV Guide’s Michael Logan published this story:
Zaslow said he was fired from the show. Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin the head of the production of Proctor and Gamble, claimed that was false, saying they asked him to take a sabbatical. He then asked for his disability to be written into the show. She refused, then said a cruel, ableist comment. It’s twenty-four years later and this still makes me angry:
“Roger is a powerful, active, sexual, multicolored villain. That’s who we need him to be on the GL canvas.
We do not need a wizened little old man. And that’s what he would have to play in his condition. It really hurts me to have to say that, but all I can do is wish Michael all the best. My heart truly goes out to him.”
Yeah. She said that.
Zaslow was later diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gerhig’s disease. Eventually, he was confined to a wheelchair and had to have a voice box. One Life to Live did a brave and gracious thing: they hired Zaslow (in the mid-eighties he played David Rinaldi) to reprise his role. The head writer at the time Claire Labine (another GOAT who created and wrote the sublime Ryan’s Hope) wrote his disability in.
Let’s break down how One Life to Live did it right and kept to Marland’s Rule:
They looked within the show’s organization, tried to see how they could accommodate Zaslow. Executive Producer Jill Faren Phelps (who ironically ordered Maureen to die on GL, definitely breaking a big Marland Rule) got him on the show. Claire Labine was willing to write him in this show and give him a storyline. Actress Robin Strasser was excited about working with him again; her character Dorian had been married to David and they had a daughter Cassie. They made a decision that accommodated a great actor to keep acting. They did what We Love Soaps later said, a classy thing.
If OLTL was the Gallant in this situation, GL was the Goofus. At first, they stopped Zaslow’s hiring on OLTL, saying he was still on GL. Zaslow filed a grievance with his union and a lawsuit against the show. They settled the suit and he went on OLTL. Michael Zaslow died in December 1998.
GL screwed up. They didn’t look within the show to see that maybe he could’ve been accommodated. They could’ve had Roger been called away on a business trip so we didn’t have another person playing such an iconic role. I don’t blame the actor who took the role; he thought it was a temporary gig. I have no idea if they asked the head writers at the time if they could write the disability in. I know co-stars Maureen Garrett (who played ex-wife Holly) and Fiona Hutchinson (who played another ex-wife Jenna) spoke out against the firing. No doubt they would’ve made it work. I like to think the writers might’ve been agreeable. Then again, they were ruining one of my favorite characters at that time. But they didn’t look truly within the organization to see if they could make changes. If they did, they paid for it. Hutchinson’s character died on camera (the true sign TBTB is ticked off at you) and Garrett was saddled with bad storylines for years.
I write this with a bias: I have several learning disabilities that affect my fine motor skills (including handwriting, oh the irony!) and faced ableism as well. I want to believe Marland would’ve stood up and said something about Zaslow’s firing (it occurred four years after Marland died) They had worked together on a production of Hamlet in the mid-sixties with John Cullum. It was Marland who knew Roger deserved a big send-off when Zaslow left in 1980. This wasn’t the Proctor and Gamble he was speaking of when he talked about his rules. Let’s face it, almost all businesses have blood on their hands. But this time it was publicly cruel. And unnecessary.
I promise, next week I’ll get back to Douglas Marland and how he created stories. But this week we need to remember his rules weren’t just for writing and soap operas. Some of his rules were how to treat people.
And how not to treat them.
