I could've sworn that Jody & Sky/Jeff didn't pop up until 81. Didn't Gavin work at the disco and Jody was a bad-dancer storyline go on? And wasn't there a triangle between Jody/Gavin and someone else?

And I coulda sworn that Sky & his twin butlers had a dance company and BeBe Neuwirth was a dancer in his company.

I just remember a whole lot of stuff happening in the disco kinda like GH at that time.

But hey it was so long ago and at that point I was already watching Y&R/ATWT/OLTL/AMC/GH/Loving/Love Of Life/Capitol & occasionally The Doctors so I could be wrong.

Sky did come in as owner of the Whitney Dance Company. His lead dancer, Martine Duval, was also his girlfriend [she was played by Sonia Petrovna, great name]. Martine was in a triangle with Sky and Gavin that expanded to include Jody, then expanded again to include Martine's ex husband, a jewel thief, with whom she eventually reconciled and left town. Jody took over Martine's role as lead dancer at some point.

So you were actually spot-on with the plotline. But the Whitney Dance Company was a serious modern interpretive/ballet type company, not disco at all.

Wasn't Jody Travis first involved with the Karr's nephew Kelly, the puppeteer?

I started watching EDGE the day it moved to ABC (and 4:00 pm), so I definitely remember Louise Shaffer's Serena from the moment she shot her husband on the courthouse steps. I've always thought that the moment in the trial where Adam takes "Serena's" wig off is one of the show's most memorable moments, and when I saw the episide again at WOST it only confirmed that opinion. Another scene I still remember takes place an episode or two later (it may have been Shaffer's last scene). Adam brings her to see her son Timmy (who's been staying with Mike and Nancy) one more time before they cart her off to the mental hospital, and Josie again pretends to be Serena, so as not to frighten the boy as they say good-bye.

As I recall, Nicole's aversion to the ring is eventually explained by a buried memory she has of having her original wedding rings forcibly removed from her finger while being held hostage by Claude Revenant (when she was presumed dead).

Yes, Jody started out involved with Kelly, then, while with Kelly, was drawn to Gavin, then, while with Gavin, drawn to Preacher Emerson, then, finally, while with Preacher, drawn to a photographer named Jeremy. These changes in romantic interest were aligned with evolutions in Jody's character, from the sweetness of 'girlish' love with Kelly, to something more mature with Gavin, and linked to her career as a dancer [eventually actress], then her sexualized 'rebellion' with the 'bad boy', Preacher, which actually signified her ability to think for herself and make up her own mind about people, then, when she went to college and got involved with that life, a more mainstream choice. By the time Jody went mainstream, she was played by Karrie Emerson, a perfectly decent actress and pretty woman who nevertheless lacked the distinctive quirkiness that Lori Loughlin had brought to the role of Jody. JMO.

The whole Faraday plotline was exceptional - great writing, great acting, emotional, properly planted plot turns, and we were all spoiler-free in those days!

I recently spent an exceptional day at the Musuem of Television and Radio's library, watching Christmas eps of EoN. If any of you live near the city, or are going to visit. GO. Go, and then tell the curator you like EoN. One of the guys is very much into it and will get you eps that aren't WOST'ed.

The Museum of TV and Radio in NYC and LA is a great resource for lots of classic soaps, not just Edge, but they do have probably close to 40 EON episodes between the regular collection and the archives. Most of them are from the 50s and early 60s, too, which means that there isn't a lot of overlap with what WOST is presenting.

My favorite of the ones I've seen so far (you're limited to four episodes per visit) is from about 1962, featuring the climax of the Speed Taft storyline. Taft, a criminal who I believe is involved with drug dealing, has been holding police officer Ed Gibson (Larry Hagman) hostage, and is locked in a shootout with Monticello police, led by Chief Marceau. Meanwhile, Ed's wife (and Marceau's daughter) Judy is having problems with her pregnancy and Louise Capice is trying to keep her from hearing about the shootout. Not just the writing and the situation, but the direction and the "cinematography," if you will, are outstanding and compelling.

So yes, the Museum is always worth a visit.

Oh, Mah Gawd! I loved EON so much back in the '80's. I adored Raven and Schuyler Whitney. I adored them so much I vowed to name my firstborn Schuyler. And I did. My daughter's middle name is Schuyler. Gosh, I wish Soapnet would run EON instead of tired old Ryan's Hope. It would be great to see Larkin Malloy again - before all his troubles.

Blue_eyes247, my ex and I were going to name a son, if we had one, Schuyler, which led to much mockery from my family. [We didn't have any children, it turned out].

Sky and Raven have been my number one soap couple from the moment they laid eyes on each other. They were so perfect for each other, and one of the side benefits to the whole Jefferson Brown plotline was getting to watch Sky and Raven court and spark all over again when the real Sky came to town. Though how he could have started out all obsessed with Valerie Bryson - a nice enough girl, really, but not a patch on our Raven - is a mystery that will never be solved. He ended up knowing who was the gal for him in the end, though!

I read somewhere that the only episodes they have left to syndicate are the episodes from 1978 to 1984. Now, it seems, all one needs to do is buy the rights and air them.

I don't what you mean by the only eps they have left to syndicate. Have the rest been destroyed? Lost?

I remember Martine! I'm a dancer and so when Jeff/Sky, Martine & the Dance Co. showed up I was in *heaven*.

The triangle I was talking about IIRC was Kelly-Jody-Gavin. Didn't Jody have to give an organ or a transfusion to her sister when she showed up?

I swear there was a disco set in the very very late 70's & very very early 80's and that a lot of action amongst the younger set took place there.

Didn't Jeff/Sky have twin butlers or something? And what was the deal with Kelly & the puppets? (I wasn't a hardcore EON watcher so some things are kinda foggy)

I used to *love* the disco'ed up theme song and opening.

And what was the deal with Maryann Aalda's character? Didn't she show up in like '82?

I tend to focus on '78-82 a lot cause that was soaps "golden age" for me. I mean you had "Jaws" "King Kong" & "The Godfather" on Ryan's Hope, "The Ice Princess" on GH, Shrinking Potions & Billy Aldrich on The Doctors, The big Asia remote shoot on Search For Tomorrow, Kelly Nola Morgan & TJ on GL, and so on & so forth. And it seemed like each soap had a young teenage vixen, and a disco club at that point. Hee!

Possibly a bit of both. EON went to tape when they moved to ABC in December 1975. AW didn't start archiving until 1979, even though they started to tape in the late '60s. So 1978 was quite possibly the date EON decided to start saving the shows.

Yes, when Jody first showed up she was asked to give Nicole a transplant - I believe bone marrow - and at this time Jody had real hostility towards Nicole, plus concerns about her own health and safety, so it was by no means a sure thing, and her decision to do it was a turning point for the character.

The Kelly/Jody/Gavin triangle was real and kind of overlapped the Jody/Gavin/Martine/Sky quad.



My only real memory of the disco's importance was later - in the early 80s - when the gremlin-like Robbie, working for Louis Van Dyne, used the disco to brainwash people, and tried to get Jody to fall in love with him. "Robbie knows what's best for me" became her mantra for a little while... There may have been a disco earlier, though.

)

When Jefferson Brown took Sky Whitney's identity he knew Gunther Wagner, Sky's manservant, was one of the few people who might figure out the impersonation so he fired Gunther, but, knowing that people expected to see Gunther with Sky, hired Gunther's twin brother Bruno on the condition that he be known as Gunther. Bruno was sleazier than Gunther, who turned out to be rather goodhearted. It's likely that David Froman, who played the Wagner boys, had a fan following - he was a funny, quirky actor - and TPTB decided as long as they were bringing back Larkin Malloy as the real Sky, they might as well bring back Froman, as the 'real' Gunther...

Kelly was a puppeteer and had a children's show on WMON. At one point the puppets were used to implicate him in a murder but I'm low on details.




DiDi Bannister - and DiDi was an unlikely name for this rather humorless character - made her first appearance in June of 1981. She became Cliff Nelson's law partner, taking over the firm when Cliff left, and was a love interest for upright lawman Calvin Stoner, though they suffered many travails as he tried to end his marriage to musical-comedy performer Star Stoner [great names on this show!]. She was brainwashed into insanity for a little while during the Louis van Dyne storyline, but recovered, and she had a brother named Troy, a reformed hoodlum who was always in trouble...

Ouch. That would mean all the early Whitney family stuff is lost forever, including one of the better bloopers in soap history: the episode where Keith Whitney pushed his uncle off the tower of the Whitney summer estate, and we saw the body fall in a long shot.. falling... falling... falling, till you heard a 'thud' and then saw the body hit the ground.

I still crack up remembering it...

There's information about Edge of Night's archived episodes here..

Makes sense now. Thanks.

o/t How glad am I that Dan Curtis had the forethought to insist that all eps of DS be archived, even if some were just the kinescope versions?

help me fill in the pieces - wasn't there a character on Edge in the late '70s named margo? she was middle-aged and short blonde hair. i recall her as being wealthy and sharing scenes with the actor who later went to AMC as kent bogard.


that's all i can really remember. what was her storyline? was she a villianess or not?

Margo Huntington was played by the fabulous Ann Williams, who had been on Search for Tomorrow for many years as Jo's sister Eunice. After Eunice was killed off, Williams came to EON, where she was eventually revealed to be April Cavanaugh's mother. Margo owned the television station where Nicole worked and became involved with (and eventually married) Eliot Dorn (Lee Godart) after that character's cult storyline was abruptly dropped.

Margo was murdered in 1980 by Nola Madison, though Draper Scott stood trial for it. Eliot was then killed by Molly Sherwood, and this is the murder with Kelly McGrath as a suspect.

thank you! that helps fill in the pieces. i recall her not as a murderess or evil, but as something of sympathetic villianess, like a nicer iris from AW. am i right about that?


and nola madison rings a bell - was she part of an acting family that came to town to make a horror movie?

Margo was pretty bad when she first came to town (Sept 1978) - she arrived with Wade Meacham, and I think she was the financial backer of his pornography business, so she was involved in the whole Winter Austen storyline. She and Wade also plotted to break up Miles and Nicole. After she admitted to being April's mother several months later her character was softened a little, though she remained somewhat neurotic. I remember she tried to buy Jamey Swift from Logan so that April and Draper could have a child. Nola Madison was having an affair with Eliot Dorn, which is why she killed Margo, but Draper and Margo had never gotten along, which is partly why he was arrested for her murder. Miles looked prettty suspicious around this time too, because he was having some kind of drug problem.

Nola Madison (played by Kim Hunter) was the star of Mansion of the Damned, a horror film being made in Monticello. Her husband Owen was the producer, and they had two children, Paige and Brian. Paige was actually the first Madison in town; she was involved in a Patty Hearst/revolutionary type storyline (minus the kidnapping aspect). Paige and Brian, supposedly half-siblings, had always been attracted to each other, and eventually found out that they were not related after all.

I'm only recounting some of this from memory; there is a great EON website at http://lavender.fortunecity.com//casino/403/index.html with lots of information on the show.

Thank you for the excellent synopsis and the web site link. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I think a nighttime Edge of Night would make a GREAT soap. It could be very noirish and jazzy.

I wish WoST would bring back some of the old episodes they've featured for a little EON retrospective. I'm thinking mostly the Serena Faraday episodes, the Denise Cavanaugh return, and the two-part Mansion of the Damned premiere.

If memory serves that plot was ditched after the Jonestown suicides.




That is what I loved the most about the show. It was noirish and hip with the characters very well drawn. I think it would be great resurrected as a prime time show.

EON lovers! Two 1981 episodes are up at WoST.

I haven't watched them yet, but I will because I'm really intrigued as to how good Lori Loughlin was.

IMO, she was quite good. Moreover, she had a quality that marked her as not quite a typical soap ingenue. When Karrie Emerson took over the role at the end of the run she was much more mainstream and they took the character of Jodie into a more typical direction.

Now, is that the real Sky in these episodes? Or what? How does the two-Skys thing work?

I remember the Serena episodes being mesmerizing. And so amazing how they managed to seamlessly go from Adam Drake to Miles as the male leads. Soaps rarely have that kind of balls to change the canvas when they need to anymore. But then I have adored Joel Crothers since DS.

I have a question about the Mansion of the Damned premiere. I remember a moment at the end which creeped the fuck out of me -- they've held a party celebrating the beginning of production on the film, with Nola and her co-star running lines in the living room for all the guests. Jayne Bentzen's Nicole goes to the window and looks out onto the balcony, and there she sees something in the dark, at the end of the balcony, backlit by the city lights. Some kind of red-costumed devil or something, you couldn't see it too well -- and there is this shrieking wind or scream on the audio. And she looks back and it's gone. What the fuck was that? It terrified me.

Also great were the Nola's Confession eps WOST hosted. Terrifying. Up there with the best of DS, but then I imagine EON in many ways always was the best of DS.

Nope, that's Jefferson Brown posing as Sky Whitney. Note the dropped hints about how Sky has changed from when he was a child. Also, Jefferson Brown is the one who killed Gunther (who is actually Gunther's twin Bruno!), which is why he is so eager to pin it on someone else.

The real Sky Whitney didn't show up until March 1982. The episodes at WoST are from September 1981.

And how long had "Sky" and Larkin Malloy been on the show at this point? Had the Sky up to this point always just been an evil doppleganger? Sorry to have so many questions.

When Sky first appeared in Monticello his Aunt Geraldine noted that she hadn't seen him since he was a child. He settled into town, opened the Whitney Dance Theater, flirted with Jody Travis and was rather threatening towards girlfriend/lead dancer Martine Duval. Finally, he became involved with Raven, and they fell in love and got married. Shortly after the marriage she discovered evidence indicating that he might be an impostor. Fearing exposure, he hired a hit man, Romeo Slade, to kill her, but at the last minute realized he really loved Raven and killed the hit man just before he would have executed his commission. That night he confessed everything - he really was Jefferson Brown, and had changed places with the real Sky Whitney after a plane crash killed the millionaire. Plastic surgery was provided by an unscrupulous doctor who had figured in an earlier plotline... Raven was happy to keep her rich husband's secret - and fortune - but Sky had other problems, leading him to kill his manservant [Bruno, posing as Gunther, because "Sky always had Gunther with him"], frame choreographer Gavin Wylie, then kill waitress Bobbie Gerard, who had a thing on Gavin and was looking into the murder. Police detective Damian Tyler, who suspected Sky and had a crush on Raven, kept pushing her, and when Raven found some evidence that Sky had killed Bobbie, Sky realized he couldn't afford to let her live any longer. He tried - with great regret - to kill her during a trip to Switzerland, only to be shot by a sniper.

Some months later the real Sky showed up [Larkin Malloy had proven popular, as had the Sky/Raven pairing] with a long backstory about how he hadn't died but had been in a coma and then woke up to find his identity stolen. He regained his fortune and threw Raven out. She determined to get everything back, only to find that the real Sky was more interested in demure Valerie Bryson. There's a lot more, but that's basically how 'the two-Sky thing worked'.

I just remembered something I read in SOD maybe a year or two ago. They interviewed Lori Loughlin and she said that Joel Crothers, who grew to be her close confidante in real life, told her to leave the show when her contract came up because she had so much potential. He said that if she didn't, he'd never speak to her again because she didn't deserve to be bogged down by soaps, or something to that effect. So she left.

I was quite young (eleven, maybe), but I remember really being into April and Draper. I was all upset when Draper was presumed dead and April didn't know he was really alive (I hadn't been indoctrinated into the ways of Fundamental Soap Opera Plot #25: The Presumed-Dead Amnesiac Spouse yet). For some reason, the one thing that sticks out in my memory is the little blurb at the end of the credits that the "carnival" (I think?) scenes with NotDeadDraper and the woman who wanted to keep him around were filmed in Rye, New York. Strange, but 25+ years later I still remember that.

I also have vague memories of Sky/Jeff and Raven. IIRC, Larkin Malloy and Sharon Gabet made a striking couple. Whatever happened to SG?

[heading off to imdb.com to check . . .]

ETA: Wow. No credits since 1989, when she played Melinda on OLTL.

I remember the 1979 episodes they put on WoST a while ago. April was really angry with Draper because he decided to represent Logan in his fight to take his kid with April away from her. That was a pretty raw deal.

Sharon Gabet became a born-again Christian and pretty much retired from acting. She wrote a memoir called "From The Raven To The Dove" which is available online. I haven't read it yet, but I'm considering it.

I believe that she is divorced from actor Larry Joshua, who she was seeing at the time she and Larkin Malloy decided to focus on their on-screen chemistry, and who is the father of her daughter, Jasmine.

WEHT Draper and April, anyway? They were the big focus of so many eps at WOST. As was Deborah Saxon, Frannie Fisher's character. Never found love, did she?

After being cleared of murdering the dingbat who thought he was her husband, Draper left the country with April and their daughter, leaving behind a brokenhearted Logan who had fallen in love with April while Draper was 'dead' and during Logan's divorce/custody battle with Raven. Logan himself left soon after, once he won full custody of Jamie.

As for poor Deborah Saxon, no, she never found lasting love. Her best bet, Steve Guthrie, had left town to become a Texas Ranger or something and when she left some months later it was alone and lorn.

Can anyone explain to me the Denise Cavanaugh story? She was dying and threatened to come between Miles and Nicole? Or am I piecing the history together wrong?

Somehow, I know April comes into this. April was Miles's sister, right?

Denise Cavanaugh was a rich-bitch Daddy's girl who kept doctor husband Miles on a very short leash. When Miles began to 'stray' in the direction of widowed, pregnant patient Nicole Drake, Denise faked a fatal illness to keep him at her side. Imagine her shock when her father, also a doctor, told her she really was fatally ill. She decided to commit suicide and frame Miles for her murder to keep him and Nicole apart even after her death. Her disease moved quickly, however, and when she did die it was unlikely that she'd had the strength and coordination to inject herself with the fatal dose. Instead of Miles, as she'd planned, it was his sweet sister April who was accused of the crime. Eventually, it emerged that Denise's father had given her the fatal injection. A flashback - considered brilliant by fans of both headwriter Henry Slesar and actress Holland Taylor - showed a dying Denise mutter a heartfelt, "Thank you, Daddy..."

The 1978 episode at WoST showed her dad in bed and mute. What happened there? I think I read somewhere that his character's name was Gus Norwood.

Thanks for all the info, TudorQueen!

He'd had a stroke, but by the time Denise died he was functioning a little better than people thought. And yes, his name was Gus Norwood.

WoST is putting up an episode from 1983 in the bonus section tomorrow. I found this screen cap on the site, from Segment Five.

Is that Miles and Beth?

I'm not a hundred percent sure. I'd like to think it's Miles and Beth, but it could be Miles and Chris Egan, who he briefly romanced in between her rounds with Derek Mallory...

It may be. In any case, the episode is actually from 1984. My mistake.

The more I look at it, the more I think it's Miles and Beth. Unfortunately, I can't get the WoST clips to work on my RealPlayer...

Yeah, I am playing the fourth segment of it now and it is Miles and Beth.

More courtroom drama, this time from 1979.

It's really interesting stuff and I'm surprised no one responded to it, considering how many EON fans were here for the other bonuses. It's from the Wade Meacham trial, when Winter Austin was accused. The first episode has some British woman blurt out that she was doing God's work in turning in sluts.

How great was that ominous music when Mike Karr intoned, "No, Winter, they haven't found the gun."

I can't believe it's taken me this long to find this TWOP board.

I grew up watching EON. I remember scribbling the name "FEBE" and my mother telling me it was spelled "Phoebe," to my bafflement. (I was maybe 3?) I grew up thinking of the Karrs and Marceaus as neighbors.

I have dim memories of a storyline involving a hippie girl named Tango who did a Diane Linkletter off a building, I think.

Paige was a real idol of mine--mostly because Margaret Colin is such a wonderful actress. She and Frances Fisher just haven't gotten their share of fine roles. I'm excited every time I see Holland Taylor on TV or in a film.

And of course Raven. That wonderful, wicked Raven. I think I liked Juanin Clay the best. I see on IMDB that she died, fairly young, in 1995.

I missed out on the last couple of years, I think. Lori Laughlin was still playing Jody, and I think involved with Preacher, when I got caught up in marriage or college or both.

I'm gonna schedule some quality time at the TV museum in NYC this summer!

There is an episode of Edge of Night from 1983 up right now at WoST. If you're interested, here's the link.

Yes, Tango was Laurie Ann Carr's roommate during a period where Laurie was sort of rebelling against her family; she moved out, and dated a 'hippie freak' named Jonah Lockwood, who turned out to be an alternate identity of rich serial killer Keith Whitney [he and his older brother, Senator Colin Whitney, were early crushes of mine, starting my Edge-lifelong love of the Whitney family]. When Tango copped to Jonah's true identity, he threw her out the window, faking her suicide, but Nancy Karr figured out it wasn't suicide because Keith forgot one of Tango's shoes...



I was a Sharon Gabet partisan, as Sky/Raven were my all-time Supercouple, but Juanin Clay was excellent, too. Yes, her death was unfortunate and sad.



Jody was indeed played by Lori Loughlin during most of the involvement with Preacher, then was played by Karrie Emerson when Jody went to college and became more 'mainstream'. She and Preacher gradually 'outgrew' each other and she ended up with photographer Jeremy Rhodes while Preacher left town with free spirited artist Liz Corell...

If you have any more questions about those last plot threads, I'd be happy to recap. Remembering Edge is always a pleasure.

There's a TV museum in NY where you can watch old episodes of EON? Where? Where? Do they have other soaps?