Steve Fletcher (Brad Vernon): " I had a hard time figuring Brad out. I'd played plenty of dark characters before, but you know, in soaps, they're episodic; you don't have that one arc with a character. [...] [i asked Peter Miner,] "Why does this guy keep repeating the same bad behavior?" He said, "Think of him as an addict." I said, "Okay, I understand that." He said, "And with addiction, there's a cyclical process. Behavior causes guilt, you escape from guilt, you repeat the behavior." All of a sudden I realized why Brad was who he was. Peter did that for me.
[...] Brad raping Karen was lifted, in part, from Streetcar Named Desire. In portraying something that awful, they also did justice to the story. My character paid a price for his actions - they didn't glamorize it. Brad and Karen didn't develop any kind of romantic connection; Brad went to jail. And he was raped in jail. It was poetic justice.
When Brad was sent away, we actually filmed in the Bergen County jail. They told me, "We're going to deal with prison rape." They didn't really dwell on it much, I must say. I appeared in a hospital scene after being beaten in the shower, and my onscreen father, Tony George, asked me, "What happened?" I replied, "They tried to make me less of a man. And they did." That was it."
Susan Bedsow Horgan: "Joe [Stuart] was a network guy, and boy, was he not liked. He did something very unethical to my husband *, preventing him from taking another job and then firing him right after so he was completely out of work. I had the feeling that he was very tyrannical."
*Patrick Horgan aka Dr. John Morrison (The Doctors)
Robin Strasser (Dorian Lord): "I loved working for Joe. He was an equal opportunity misanthrope - "I don't like actors, I don't trust actors, nobody gets any favors." It applied to everybody, and to me, whether perversely or not, that was reassuring. The playing field was level. Joe Stuart strode the Earth as our executive producer, and you could bet that when he walked on the set, everybody trembled just a bit. He wasn't afraid to fire you, he wasn't afraid to call you on stuff he didn't like, he wanted it good, and he wanted it fast. When he directed, we got out an hour early."
Erika Slezak (Vicki Riley): Joe Stuart was very fond of Jacqueline Courtney, and he made sure to put her front and center. At that point, I was fine with it, because I didn't have a need to be on every day. Jackie and George had been the big stars on Another World, and I was happy to have a little time off every now and then.
Joe Stuart: There was one fan luncheon where George pissed off the entire cast - first, he announced he refused to attend such a thing, and then in the middle of it, when Lee Patterson (Joe Riley) was making his speech, George walked in. The only thing he didn't have on was a cape. I mean, it was so deliberate - you know he had someone on the inside telling him when to make his big entrance. Lee was furious.
Arthur Burghardt (Dr. Jack Scott): I admit I didn't want to do it - I didn't like the acting. And I created a large backstory for the character, including the fact that he was a womanizer who didn't want people to know about it; problem was, the story was so scaled down that we had to focus on just this one aspect of who he was.
I thought it would be interesting if Jack had opened up a new heart wing at the hospital - a place that cared for the wealthy as well as the poor. Folks from all walks of life. But [Ellen Holly's] machinations, and her need to continually make Carla the victim in all situations - it made it impossible to have a good time. The show offered me a three-year deal, but suddenly I realized that the story wasn't about him and her, it was only about her. There was nothing more for me to do.
Day in and day out, I searched for ways of personalizing and loving this rich, world-famous, selfish oaf of a doctor who fell for this frail and unhappy housewife who could never get over her ethnic in between-ness and be happy. Interestingly, neither Jack nor Carla could be happy, and I wanted a storyline that would illuminate the selfishness and self-centeredness of both their existences - which I thought was a modern tragedy.
Robert S. Woods: I used to just stare at Ellen when I started on the show. I couldn't take my eyes off her - she was so beautiful. And so good. They were having her work with this guy who was a maniac. When I first started, she wasn't working with Al Junior. [Al] was great.
Erika Slezak: Ellen was miserable with Arthur, because he was awful. He was obnoxious and irritating, and he thought he was this really big, hot [!@#$%^&*] guy. Anybody would have hated working with him, but Ellen was particularly angry because it was her story - she had outlined and written it herself, and she had begged Joe not to hire him.
Ellen Holly (Carla): In my wedding, they made Erika Slezak my matron of honor. She was very unhappy about that, because she thought she was being dragooned into my storyline to give it luster. What she didn't realize was that they were trying to bond her to the black audience. I was being used to promote her best interests.
Erika Slezak: I loved Ellen - I thought she was a wonderful actress. She's a very strong-willed, intelligent woman.
Ellen Holly: I didn't get a single close-up at my own wedding. They all went to Erika. There I was - it was my storyline, I was the bride, there was a national cover on newsstands across America asking them to tune in, and I didn't get any close-up shots.
I waited for three years, hoping Al would speak up and say something to Joe Stuart. He could have, because Joe was deferential to black males. He could have said, "Listen, man, lay off her." [...] Al watched as I was driven off that show and didn't speak a word. [...] The first two years of One Life were thrilling. After that, it's just a question of being a fireplug that keeps getting pissed on by junkyard dogs.
Julia Montgomery (Samantha Vernon): There was no working with Phil [Carey] (Asa). He was at the end of his career, and I think he was just walking through it. He'd read the teleprompter incessantly. He was from Hollywood - he was used to one or two pages a day.
Peter Miner (Director): Phil really impressed me over the years. He had a film background, so he had never done more than seven minutes in his life when he came on the show. I went to the writers and said, "This guy has real pride. Don't do this to him. You've got to give him a chance to let him get into the rhythm - don't give him 25, 30 pages a day." Nobody got it. He was never comfortable with much over 20, but he eventually got up to where he could handle 20, 25.
Phil used to lecture people about being grateful for the show - he'd tell them about how he'd had a career in Hollywood, which had its good years and bad years, but that he was constantly broke. He said, "I came in here, and it was the first time in my life that I ever made a living that I could count on."
More to come
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