I would come across some word or phrase in Katherine’s dialogue that seemed completely foreign to me, and if it became too awkward for me to shrug off, I wouldn’t hesitate to march upstairs into Bill’s face.
“What the hell is this line supposed to mean?” I would roar. “I’ve never heard this word [or phrase] in my life, and I would certainly never use it.”
“This isn’t The Jeanne Cooper Story,” he would roar back. “I don’t care what you would or wouldn’t say, I care what Katherine Chancellor would or wouldn’t say.” He would then point out the countless differences between Katherine’s history and mine, including the fact that she was a Midwestern woman, remind me that he knew Midwestern idiomatic speech infinitely better than I did, and end with a firm, usually loud “The line stays as written.”
On rare occasions he might be a little flexible, particularly if the alternate dialogue an actor suggested was an improvement and was clearly thought through. But Bill had one unconditional rule: his “tag lines,” the lines that ended a scene, were never to be tampered with, as Jess Walton once found out despite my warning that she’d be fighting a losing battle if she spoke up about it.
For some reason, she dug in her heels about a tag line in which Jill was supposed to say, “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a distended bladder.” Jess didn’t want to say it. She thought saying something about excusing herself to go to the ladies’ room, or to powder her nose, would be much more natural, and she felt strongly enough about it that she insisted on confronting Bill.
“Forget it. It’s a tag line,” I told her. “He’ll never let you change it.”
“We’ll just see about that,” she said, and she marched upstairs to his office.
She was back a few minutes later, and, while I’m sure it was under protest, delivered the line as written. That was probably in the late 1980s. And as recently as the Y&R fan event in 2011, viewers from all over the world were still taking delight in quoting what’s become known as “the distended bladder line.”
As fiercely as Bill could take one of us on at any given moment, his ferocity multiplied when he was fighting with CBS for the success and integrity of his beloved show. He knew The Young and the Restless was making a fortune, and he knew it earned every dime it made for the network thanks to the blood, sweat, and tears he and his cast and crew were investing in it. We were no fluke, no passing stroke of luck, and he wasn’t about to let us be treated as if we were. He and his creation changed the face of daytime. If CBS didn’t care to give us the support and respect we deserved, he left no doubt in executives’ minds that he was fully prepared to go elsewhere. Having been on the losing end of more arguments with Bill than I can count, I’ve never been surprised that we started on CBS in 1973 and we’re still there almost forty years later.
Bill and his “real life” family were also among the most generous people I’ve ever met, and we lucky recipients of that generosity were treated to some truly memorable parties. The annual Christmas festivities at the Bell house were as spectacular as the house itself: five-course sit-down dinners for the cast and our guests. The show’s anniversary celebrations invariably took place at the stunning Bel-Air Bay Club overlooking the ocean. There were so many cake parties on the set that I think we stopped just short of celebrating someone’s successful trip to the mailroom, and in every case, no expense was ever spared. I wish to this day that the “suits” would learn from Bill’s example and recognize what a difference gestures like those can make when it comes to cast and crew morale. The issue isn’t how much money is being spent to show us a good time. It’s our bosses simply understanding that everyone who works for them would appreciate a thank-you here and there in the midst of the current, much more frequent “There’s no room in the budget.”
In my educated opinion, the soap opera world has never known a more dedicated, more gifted head writer than Bill Bell. He was an artist with uncanny instincts and a brilliance for weaving several carefully constructed storylines together into a balanced, compelling tapestry. He and I had our disagreements, some of which you’ll read about, and I often accused him, as did many of my castmates, of spying on us when our fictional storylines hit a little too close to home in our personal lives. But we all owe the last thirty-eight years on the air, and our twenty-three years as the number-one daytime drama, to him. I thank you, I miss you, and God bless you, Bill.
Along with my deep feelings for Bill, I fell in love with Katherine Chancellor and the cast and crew of The Young and the Restless the instant I met them. In so many ways, they saved my life, challenging me and stimulating me and becoming a ready-made group of friends to look forward to seeing four or five days a week . . . even if a couple of those friendships got off to a rocky start.
The role of Katherine Chancellor’s nemesis, Jill Foster, was originally played by a sexy, feisty actress named Brenda Dickson. In our first scene together, Katherine, in a full-length mink coat, swept grandly into the salon where Jill was working as a manicurist. During rehearsal I accidentally dropped the coat on the floor at Brenda’s feet and asked her to please pick it up and hand it to me. You would have thought I’d asked her to please wash and kiss my ass. I picked the coat up myself and walked away without saying a word—which, as those who know me will tell you, took every ounce of restraint I could muster. But she was interesting to work with, full of surprises, with an offbeat delivery unlike anything I’d ever seen before, so at least, I decided, there was something to be said for her.
Unfortunately, our next encounter was no warmer or fuzzier. We had a very important, difficult scene to shoot, and Brenda was nowhere to be found. I was getting angrier and more anxious by the moment as the search for Brenda spread throughout the building, so that finally, when she came flying in at the last possible instant, I blew.
“How you treat your other castmates is none of my business,” I snarled in her face. “But when you have a scene with me, don’t you ever pull this shit again.”
She took a step toward me, glared into my eyes, and said unapologetically, “I’ve never been spoken to like that in my life. How dare you?”
I wasn’t done yet, stepping even closer to her without losing eye contact. “I don’t know what your background is,” I said, “but mine is theater. I’m a very disciplined actress, and I don’t appreciate being panicked right before a scene begins. It shows in the performance, which means the audience gets less than they deserve. That may be okay with you, but it’s sure as hell not okay with me, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you get away with it when we’re onstage together.”
In my very early days on Y&R, Brenda mentioned that she’d seen and loved Let No Man Write My Epitaph, a dark, gritty movie costarring Shelley Winters as a tough, troubled barmaid who becomes a heroin addict. Brenda was especially taken with Fran, the redheaded prostitute in that film, and she was impressed to hear that I was the actress who’d played Fran.
And so, wanting to be sure I’d made a lasting impression on her, I couldn’t resist finishing what I’ll politely call our little ground rules discussion with a firm, pointed “Or, to put it another way, pretend I’m Shelley Winters.”
Her eyes widened, then she turned and stormed away without saying a word. For the next three days we didn’t speak to each other except as Katherine and Jill. She stared menacingly at me at every opportunity, and, depending on my mood, I either stared back or ignored her completely.
Finally, on the morning of the fourth day, there was a knock on my dressing room door. To my surprise, it was Brenda, and she didn’t seem to be holding a weapon. After a long moment of silence between us she said, simply and quietly, “You were right. I apologize. It won’t happen again.”
And thus began a friendship I cherish to this day. I loved working with her, and I love her. I always will. Under all that attitude and bravado, I found her to be tender, generous, and sometimes heartbreakingly fragile. One night I’ll never forget because it touched me so deeply: she called in t
ears and asked if I could please come to her house as soon as possible. I arrived to find her in the midst of a full-blown meltdown over the fact that her fiancé had broken up with her with no warning at all, just a few short weeks before the wedding.
“What am I going to do with these?” she sobbed, pointing to four hundred beautifully engraved wedding invitations.
“You’re one of the stars of the number-one show in daytime,” I told her. “I’ll bet you could sell them for five dollars apiece minimum.” She smiled for the only time during that long, sad night. I ached to see her in that much pain, and watching the tenacity and determination with which she pulled herself out of that darkness made me proud to be her friend.
She left Y&R amid a flurry of rumors and tabloid publicity. Her reasons for leaving belong in her book, not mine. Even after all these years, while I don’t see her or talk to her as often as I should, I hope she knows how fondly I remember her and wish her the best.
The role of Jill Foster Abbott passed from Brenda Dickson to Jess Walton in 1987, and I’m not sure any two actresses could have been more different. As intriguing and professional as Jess was from the very beginning, with a great track record from her days on the CBS daytime soap Capitol, it wasn’t the world’s smoothest adjustment for me, a little like making the transition from working with a Vegas showgirl to acting opposite a classical ballerina. In an earnest effort to be helpful, I gave Jess several hours of Brenda-as-Jill tapes, for backstory and some idea of the stilettos she’d been hired to fill. She never watched them. She wasn’t interested in portraying Brenda Dickson playing Jill Foster Abbott. She was interested in playing Jill Foster Abbott, and doing it her way. At first I was annoyed at her for ignoring what I thought was a very generous, embracing gesture on my part. Looking back, and being brutally honest with myself, I doubt if I would have appreciated being handed a pile of tapes of someone else playing Katherine Chancellor with an implied subtext of “Here’s how to portray this character.” I came on board to make Katherine Chancellor mine, as surely as Jess came on board to make Jill Foster Abbott hers, and I respect her enormously for that despite my initial reaction to the contrary.
The relationship between Katherine and Jill has always been a fascinating one: brilliantly conceived by Bill Bell, a great rivalry between two strong-willed, passionate women who have every reason to despise each other but, underneath it all, might take a bullet for each other under the right circumstances. The only period in which it was less than a joy for Jess and me to play the roles was that bizarre, and thankfully temporary, twist that had Katherine and Jill believing they were mother and daughter, news that sent Katherine into an instantaneous, cataclysmic stroke. It was one thing for Jill to use her favorite term of endearment—“you old bat”—on her nemesis. It was quite another, as far as the audience, Jess, and I were concerned, for Jill to say such a thing to her mother. A cake fight between two women who’ve spent decades torturing and loving each other is understandable if not downright entertaining. But a cake fight between a mother and daughter? Really? It was a tough emotional tightrope for us to play, and we did our damnedest to make it work, but we couldn’t have been happier or more relieved when the writers saw fit to let that notoriously unreliable Genoa City DNA lab discover yet another of its mistakes and announce that Katherine and Jill weren’t really related after all.
There are times when I think, “Bill Bell would be spinning in his grave.” That was one of those times.
As far as I was concerned, from that moment in 1974, when I packed up Harry’s belongings and had them delivered to his office, I was a single woman and fully intending to stay that way. I was ready to enjoy my life, heal my eroded self-confidence, and rediscover what it was like to live without that constant dull, sad ache of mistrust in my soul. If never fully trusting anyone again was the best way to guard against a repeat performance of all those years with a man whose motto was “Don’t tell Jeanne,” that was fine with me. But it didn’t have to stop me from having a good time, both onstage and off.
There was, for example, the broodingly handsome Donnelly Rhodes, aka Phillip Chancellor II, Katherine’s husband when Y&R began. This was around the time when Phillip’s affair with Jill led to their marriage, and Katherine, attempting to win him back, caused a car accident that inevitably resulted in his death. The short version of that story: somewhere in there, Donnelly and I spent a couple of perfectly lovely afternoons together at a friend’s apartment. It was far too brief and uncomplicated to be called an affair, but it was memorable enough for me to still be smiling about it almost forty years later.
Come to think of it, that storyline inspired one of my more amusing moments at an airport too. I was waiting for my luggage at the baggage claim carousel when a woman who was clearly a Young and the Restless fan stepped over to me and said in a rather loud voice, “Admit it, you deliberately killed your husband, didn’t you?” I smiled and gave her a noncommittal shrug. As my bag arrived and I started toward the exit, I noticed a couple and their child gaping at me with more than a little concern—clearly not Young and the Restless fans, clearly not having a clue who I was, and clearly having overheard the woman’s question. Rather than disappoint them, I passed them quickly and quietly said, “Of course I deliberately killed him, and I’d do it again.” To this day I wonder how many news broadcasts they watched trying to get a glimpse of that strange lady at the airport so that they could alert the authorities that I’d confessed to them on my way to the exit.
Many years later there was the divinely fun, brilliant, multitalented Quinn Redeker, who played Brian Romalotti (father of Danny and Gina), a con man Jill hired in yet another plot against Katherine. Brian underwent a makeover, funded by Jill, and was introduced to Katherine as the fabulously wealthy Rex Sterling. To Jill’s profound chagrin, Katherine and Rex ended up sincerely falling in love. They probably would have lived happily ever after if Katherine hadn’t been kidnapped and replaced by a diner waitress named Marge Catrooke, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Katherine Chancellor. (Don’t you hate it when that happens?) Rex, unaware of the switch, found his beloved “Katherine” to be increasingly obnoxious and not nearly as appealing as the woman he married, and he ultimately divorced her and married, of all people, Jill.
Quinn Redeker and I spent a hilariously fun weekend in San Diego together, just the two of us. It was romantic and silly and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, nor would either Quinn or I have wanted to take it one bit more seriously than we did.
One thing that always bothered me about that storyline, by the way, and about similar storylines on Y&R and other soaps in which an imposter has infiltrated a relationship, is the apparent inability of a character to tell that the person with whom they’re being intimate isn’t the same person with whom they were being intimate just hours or days before. I don’t care how identical the imposter is to the person they’re pretending to be—I will never believe that, when bedtime rolls around, the differences wouldn’t be immediately apparent. Wouldn’t you think at some point pretty early in the proceedings the words “Wait a minute, who are you?!” would enter the picture? I know. Soap operas, suspension of disbelief, blah, blah, but still, wouldn’t you love for the writers, just once, to either acknowledge that problem or find a way to explain it?
I’ve said it a thousand times in interviews, and I’ll say it again: I loved playing the dual roles of Katherine and Marge. And the greatest acting challenge of my career was playing the blue-collar, plainspoken Marge pretending to be the insanely wealthy, grammatically precise Katherine Chancellor. I always made it a point to keep Marge’s impersonation of Katherine slightly, subtly imperfect but still close enough to fool Katherine’s family and friends. I was and am proud of those performances, and it’s the one Emmy I didn’t win that I truly felt I deserved. I’ve never forgotten Crystal Chappell, who was on Days of Our Lives at the time, making a point of telling me at a pre-Emmy gathering that year (1990, I believe), “If you don’t win this ye
ar, you got robbed—you more than earned it.” When I finally did win my first Emmy, in 2008, I made it a point to find Crystal in the crowd and wink at her on my way to the stage. It’s not as common as it should be in this insanely competitive business for actors to be generous with their compliments to each other, and I’ll always appreciate her for that.
I did have one genuine love affair with a castmate on The Young and the Restless. It lasted more than a year and ended gently and mutually. To this day I can count on less than one hand the members of the cast and crew who won’t be surprised when they read this.
I still remember my first impressions of him—tall and strong, with a handsomely kind face, the sweetest smile, and the gentle heart of a hippie. In the beginning it was just a lot of long, relaxing, pretty dinners at the beach. It evolved into much more. In fact, he, with his guitar perpetually in hand, was the first man I’d brought home to my children and my bed since Harry moved out, and he and my children loved each other. To this day I can picture him, Corbin, and Collin cutting down a rubber tree in our yard, singing and laughing and having the best time together. I wondered then and I wonder now why I hadn’t insisted many years earlier on a house for my sons and my daughter that was filled with more fun than tension.
We talked about marriage. My disinterest in it had nothing to do with him.
I wasn’t nearly ready to be his or anyone’s wife again. I still had far too much healing to do, and I shudder to think how much misdirected surplus anger and mistrust I might have aimed at him, despite the fact that he’d done absolutely nothing to deserve it. Through no fault of his, it would never have worked. I’m as sure of that as I am grateful for the fact that we still are and will always be good friends.
And while it didn’t bother him in the slightest, our age difference bothered me. As I pointed out to him more than once, “When I’m eighty, you’ll only be sixty.” He meant it when he said it wasn’t an issue for him—not long after our romantic relationship ended, he briefly married a woman ten years older than I was.
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