History of All My Children (1970-1979)
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| History of All My Children series | |
When All My Children first premiered on January 5, 1970, the core families on the program were the Martins, the Tylers, the Brents, and the Kanes. One stand-out character was Susan Lucci's Erica Kane, destined to break up the romance of classmates Tara Martin (Karen Lynn Gorney) and Phil Brent (Richard Hatch) so she could have Phil all to herself.
Erica found out that Phil was not Ruth's (Mary Fickett) son, but the son of Ruth's sister Amy (Rosemary Prinz). In an attempt to break up Phil and Tara, she told everyone the truth, and he ran away from Pine Valley in shame. Tara, in her time of crisis, turned to Phil's best friend Chuck Tyler (Jack Stauffer, then Richard Van Vleet), and they fell in love. As they were going to be married, Chuck collapsed at the altar with a kidney ailment. By this time, Phil had returned to Pine Valley, and while Chuck lay in a hospital bed, Tara had begun to pick up the pieces of her old romance with Phil.
Suddenly, however, Phil was drafted, and the night before he left, the two went to a church in the mountains and exchanged a vow of marriage while, although legally invalid, was binding in their hearts. A snowstorm stranded them, and they made love in the empty church.
Phil was listed as missing in action in Vietnam, and was presumed dead. In reality, he was found wounded by a Vietnamese family (for the first time on a soap, played by actual Vietnamese actors, although the "Vietnam" location shoot was shot merely in a suburb of New York City) and was nursed back to health by them. Many characters on the show, such as Amy and Ruth, spoke out against the war. Ruth's monologue against the war won Mary Fickett a special Daytime Emmy in 1972.
By this time, Tara was pregnant with Phil's child. She accepted Chuck's advances and became engaged to him for a second time. After a long while, she decided to move on, marrying Chuck and naming her child "little Philip". When Phil returned, he saw that he couldn't have Tara and turned to Erica instead, who he married because she ended up pregnant. When she had a miscarriage, Phil divorced her.
Little Philip's paternity was not known (Chuck had assumed that the baby was his, although Tara was sure otherwise) until he became ill and needed a blood transfusion. Phil's blood matched, not Chuck's, and Tara eventually divorced Chuck and married Phil, this time legally. Tara had kept the secret that Phil was Philip's biological father, and Little Philip kept rejecting Phil, opting for Chuck instead, as he had raised him. The child kept bringing Tara and Chuck together, to Phil's chagrin. Tara had become unhappy in her marriage to Phil as his job as a police officer ensured that he would never spend quality time with her. Naturally, she turned to Chuck, who naturally responded, even though he was married to Donna Beck (Candice Earley) at the time. With Erica out of the picture, Donna had now become an unwilling participant in a complex quadrangle that played out for the rest of the 1970s.
Another pivotal character was wealthy, alcoholic Phoebe English Tyler (Ruth Warrick). Brash and cruel, she was married to a more kind gentleman, Dr. Charles Tyler (Hugh Franklin). In the earlier years, Phoebe was preoccupied with the task of having her children, Ann (Judith Barcroft) and Lincoln (most notably played by Peter White), marry into respectable families like the one they were raised in.
Ann married dance instructor Nick Davis (Larry Keith), which embarrassed her mother horribly because Nick was regarded as a shady lowlife. She divorced him and married attorney Paul Martin (Ken Rabat 1970 -72 then William Mooney) instead, but had a massive breakdown when her young daughter died of SIDS.
Lincoln married Amy Parker, who left town when it was known that Phil Brent was her son and not her sister Ruth's. He remarried to Kitty Shea (Francesca James), which made his mother unhappy as well. Kitty was regarded as unstable by Phoebe, and was of poor repute as she had previously been married to Nick Davis. In an attempt to break the two up, Phoebe hired a woman to play the part of Kitty's long-lost mother, hoping that her entrance will cause Kitty to go live with the mother away from Pine Valley. After many events, which included the fake death and funeral of the "mother", the truth came out. Kitty ended up befriending the actress who played her mother, and had her live with them until Kitty's untimely death of a brain tumor. Francesca James would return to the show later as Kitty's long-lost twin sister Kelly.
Phoebe also disapproved of her grandson Chuck's marriage to Donna Beck, who had once been a prostitute. To smear her name, she enlisted the aid of Donna's former pimp, but to no avail. (The pimp's name was Billy Clyde Tuggle. In real life married to actress Christine Baranski at the time. His name is Matthew Cowles and he has done about 40 major motion pictures. I could not find any recent photos anywhere n the web. He was the most interesting character the show ever had.) Around this time, Phoebe's husband Charles had gotten close to Mona Kane (Frances Heflin), Erica's mother and his secretary at the hospital. The two fell in love and Charles divorced Phoebe, even though she tried to blackmail Mona and even faked paralysis. In the end, Phoebe was a divorcée and Mona Kane became the new Mrs. Tyler.
Main article: All My Children
