The Voluptuous Horror of Grayson Hall

[Fletcher]

I'm really enjoying this conversation, and I know it's all in good fun, AND that all of us LOVE Grayson and all (or most) of the other actors.  However, I want to point-out that if the entire run of As the World Turns, or Edge of Night, or All My Children, or any other daily tv show that was done live on tape (or perhaps just live), were available on dvd, we'd see that nearly any actor under that much pressure day after day will develop affectations that would be noticable and laughable under the microscope.

This doesn't happen so much with the pressure of live theater because the direction is usually better (or at least more precise).  And it doesn't happen on modern soaps because they pretty much stop and start, and reshoot, and edit the heck out of a days work nowadays.

I'm not sure we always realize how lucky we are as fans of DS.  I've visited many soap message boards over the years, and you have no idea how many folks would love to have even a week's-worth of their favorite soap from the 60s or 70s.  It's a constant source of conversation on lots of soap boards.   We're lucky Curtis had the wisdom to keep those tapes (even if they were expensive).   But, I guess you all know that.

Okay, that's my admittedly unnecessary disclaimer.  

Carry on . . .

[Mysterious Benefactor]

We're lucky Curtis had the wisdom to keep those tapes

It's a common misconception that Curtis preserved the DS episodes, but that's not actually true. Curtis has never owned them. ABC did and then ownership was transferred to Worldvision. ABC is who should be thanked for preserving them.    However, we can thank Curtis for filing suit against ABC because, even though he didn't win, the result finally got the episodes released into syndication. A couple years ago I shared an article about the suit that appeared in Variety in 1975:

'Dark Shadows' Prompts Suit Against ABC And Worldvision