Donna Wandrey as Roxanne was pretty in a conventional way.  But she never held my attention like Lara Parker, Grayson Hall, Alexandra Moltke or Joan Bennett did.

on one of the dvd commentaries someone(i forget who.sam hall perhaps?)says that dan curtis cast women beautifully.

i agree.while i love most of the actresses on the show the four mentioned here are to me the most striking of all.

lydia,

you're right about adam's threat to "destroy the collins family".a big,fat,lame bore of a plotline.

it's like suddenly vicki wasn't enough.they had to up the ante and not just threaten her but everyone else on the show too.it was all a moot point too since savvy viewers knew they would not kill off most of the cast.it was a hollow threat and one without an once of suspense.

angelique and laura...

the two best soap bitches ever!

angelique.i remember a scene set in 1795.ang had pinched one of josette's fine paris hats and was boasting to ben stokes that one day she'd only have the finest things.in this scene i almost found angelique to be quite touching.like a poor servant girl scorned in favor of her rather spoiled and insipid mistress(which as written i found josette to be as an actual character).but then she turns around and does something really vicious.
in 1968 cassandra definitely took things up a notch being malicious when she really didn't need to be.she could have achieved the same results without causing so much damage.like with liz.not only did she cause liz to fear death but actually orchestrated her death with the naomi poisoning stuff.that's cold!blinding sam evans when as an artist she knew that would ruin his life.yes liz and sam crossed her but she could have just caused them to have memory lapses and not do such permanent damage.and of course making everyone in collinsport have that dreadful dream when only barnabas needed to suffer from it for the same end result.

i did notice when i first watched the 1968 episodes that cassandra was indeed granted an exquisite wardrobe(heavy on the green!).re-watching now i see that she got a new ensemble for nearly every episode!it's like the producers realized what a gem they had in angelique and wanted to highlight the character looking her best.most of the other character wore the same clothing repeatedly sometimes for years(ie. liz and that insane chartreuse caftan thing worn from 66-71).

as evil as angelique is she is usually motivated by understandable human emotions(love,hate,jealousy,revenge)where as laura seems so cold and unearthly.true she can operate out of revenge(liz,dr.guthrie)but her modus operandi...immolating her own children...makes her extremely hard to identify with.at the same time she's an immensely enjoyable villianess to watch and although it's not fair slightly edges out angelique as my favorite d.s. bitch.

i always thought that by 1968 "pantyhose" had been invented to accommodate the panty-skimming hemlines popular at the time.

i didn't realize women still wore stockings and garters that late.

so it ain't undies...as aunt abigail would say it's still "shockingly immodest"!

i doubt alexandra went commando...

i re-watched this scene as well and there is some sort of indeterminate undergarment "briefly" visable.

this reminds me of the recent brouhaha over a tabloid photograph of amy winehouse supposedly wearing a diaper underneath a dress.

a long time ago i posted a topic along the lines of "nobody carries a handbag".

it was about how,apart of julia's colossal,sedative filled pocketbook,the women of collinsport tend to do alot of running around sans-bag.

this episode exemplifies that perfectly.vicki,dashing from blair house across town to back collinwood in those squat shoes,is unseen in a town in which she is being looked for,all without the benifit of a coat or handbag.did they not lock the front door at collinwood?

it's almost as good as maggie making the hundred plus mile journey from wyndcilff to the blue whale without breaking a sweat.

i've been watching the 1968 episodes.

there is a scene shortly after the death of doctor lang where jeff clark lets himself into lang's house to retrieve some files about himself(seeing as lang was blackmailing him blah,blah)and encounters barnabas sulking around the place.

so things play out this way.barnabas tries to order jeff out but when he refuses and basically challenges barnabas to fisticuffs b backs down sheepishly.later when jeff vows to return to collinwood to tell vicki of the good news he's discovered b lamely tries to tell him that vicki's a "clever girl" who needs more than a pretty face to satisfy her albatrossian virtuousness.jeff,well on to barnabas' thinly veiled game,in so many words tells b that he and vicki are in love and to "leave us alone!".finally all b can muster up is a garboesque "get out!".from start to end barnabas comes across as ineffectual and rather fey.

and all of this milquetoastiness from a guy who a scant six months earlier was threatening to put burke devlin six feet under for vicki's fine affections.i cannot believe he allows this whippersnapper to order him around in this way!

also i believe this is the first of the great 'jeff mauls vicki' episodes.when he returns to collinwood he spins vicki(who really looks quite lovely in a full-skirted,poppy red dress quite different from her usual number)in the air and then does a real job totally destroying her neat hairdo in a face-grabbing "i love you" moment.

that roxanne spent her first several episodes lying on a slab in a bullett-bra one can see how she attracted b's roving eye.

i think she was something of a missfired attempt to get barnabas past the whole "josette" thing(especially as kls was on her way out the door when she was introduced)and move the story in a new direction.but roxanne ended up being a very poorly developed character in all three of her time periods in my opinion.

as for being "pretty" with her shag hairdo and maxi-skirts she was something of a departure from the fall-wearing,mini-skirted ingenues of the 1960's.she was way more 1970's looking and in her own way quite attractive.but as has been pointed out here victoria and angelique were breathtakingly beautiful as opposed to roxanne's mere "prettiness".