This is a wonderfully crafted film, which deserves to be more widely known.  I thought David Hemmings and Sharon Tate had great onscreen chem in it, too.  It's a sharp, subtle telling of one of the oldest stories on Earth.

Thanks for posting this notice, Vlad.

Steve

Jennifer, honey, I'm so sorry!  I'm ignorant of the details but heard the man in the laundromat complaining that the fabulous day (weatherwise) could have been better if the Sox had won.

My condolences,  Steve

Samantha is one of the few elements of 1840 that works consistently throughout the storyline for me, and it's all thanks to Virginia Vestoff's brilliant, bravura performance.  I wouldn't be surprised if Vestoff demanded a real slap, but would be a little doubtful whether Selby would actually hit her, since he seems like such a tender-hearted fellow.

The non-supernatural stuff involving the Quentin/Samantha/Gerard triangle is the springboard for the best scenes in the entire final period of DS' history.

G.

Just to chime in with my two drachmae on the subject...

Agree that Liz was Vicki's Mom; I watched the Oct.-Nov. 1966 episodes recently and the way Joan was playing the role was definitely as if Vicki was the daughter by whom she was trying finally to do right, bringing her to Collinwood.

I think Hanscomb was the Father and that Liz had had an affair with him.  It's too bad they did not do a storyline where Frank found Hanscomb and brought him back to Collinwood for a showdown with Liz.  Perhaps this was discussed and then switched to the Jason story that they did wind up doing.

As for Vicki's fate, she should have married Frank.  Conrad Fowkes was by far the most personable of the men they paired her with, and there seemed to be some genuine chem between the two.  I assume that Fowkes ran afoul of DC and left the series because of that--happened with a lot of other talented folks (Fowkes?)  When AM wanted out of the series in the Fall of 1968, I'd have preferred a storyline where Frank returned to Collinwood and brought Vicki out of her depression in the wake of Peter/Jeff's disappearance from the scene.  I'd have relished dialogue along the lines of "Peter Bradford was just a bad dream."  Yeah, the kind of thing you get after too much chips and salsa late at night.

I don't think DS' run would have been prolonged if Moltke had stayed on board, but we would have gotten the chance to see her do other roles.  I don't see Vicki being paired with Barnabas under any circumstances.  I think the writing team would have had to have been given a freer hand to have developed some different styles of storytelling after 1968 for Moltke to have had sufficient interest in staying, and it is possible that this kind of overhaul might have prolonged the life of the series. Since I personally believe that DC chose to pull the plug on the series, I don't think any amount of retooling or ratings burst could have saved it.

G.

Thanks for requesting the eclaircissement, Fran.  I live in Boston (yeah, I have to keep up that fantasy) and everything Jennifer wrote is opaque to me.

I'd really rather wait on the clippers till after my trip to Canada, though.  My boyfriend prefers me with long hair!

G.

Well, to be brutally candid, the words "How about them Sox?" is enough to put me into a stupor worthy of Laura Collins and a cheerful blaze.  The eyes just glaze right over.

And I thought Nomar was a character from The Day the Earth Stood Still. As in Klaatu Nikto Nomar Barada?

but pay me no mind, I really live on Mars, the whole Boston thing is just a fiction...

Talking of news, the word from California is really quite frightening.  I'm going to Canada on Friday and I really wish I did not have to come back.

G.

In my not-so-humble opinion, the era of anything on television remotely resembling theater--shorthand for narratives with three dimensional characters and some semblance of attention to production detail--is in its death-throes.

By five years from now, there will be very few series in any genre left on the tube that do not fit some version of the "reality" TV model. Even cable is going the same way--a friend has been updating me on the struggle to keep East Enders on the BBC's American channel, but apparently even the Beeb is more interested in "Trading Spaces" or whatever the Hel it's called than a quality series.

As for Port Charles, I never watched it, but I think its failure is indicative only of a show that did not start out with very much reaching the end of the line.  They kept that Caleb story going for, what, 2 years?  it was meant to last a couple of months, iirc.

G.