Paper Dolls | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Genre | Soap opera |
Created by |
|
Written by | Stephen Black Jill Gordon Jennifer Miller Don Roos Henry Stern |
Directed by | Edward Parone Leo Penn Arthur Allan Seidelman Ralph Senensky |
Starring | Lloyd Bridges Jennifer Warren Brenda Vaccaro Dack Rambo Mimi Rogers Richard Beymer Anne Schedeen John Bennett Perry Nancy Olson Nicollette Sheridan Terry Farrell Lauren Hutton Morgan Fairchild |
Theme music composer | Mark Snow Andy Summers |
Composer | Mark Snow |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 14 (+ 1 TV film) |
Production | |
Executive producer | Leonard Goldberg |
Producer | John Ziffren |
Cinematography | John C. Flinn III |
Editor | Jack Harnish |
Production companies |
|
Original release | |
Network | ABC |
Release | September 23 – December 25, 1984 |
Paper Dolls is an American primetime television soap opera that aired for 14 episodes on ABC from September 23 to December 25, 1984. Set in New York's fashion industry, the show centered on top modeling agency owner Racine (Morgan Fairchild), her conflicts with the family of cosmetics tycoon Grant Harper (Lloyd Bridges), and the careers of two teenaged models (Terry Farrell and Nicollette Sheridan). The series was based on a 1982 television film of the same name. The show suffered in the ratings, despite positive reviews, and was cancelled midway through the first season. [1]
Paper Dolls first aired on May 24, 1982 as an ABC Monday Night Movie, which revolved around the lives of two teenage models, Taryn and Laurie, and their strong-willed mothers. The cast included Joan Hackett as Julia Blake, Jennifer Warren as Dinah Caswell, Daryl Hannah as Julia's daughter Taryn, Marc Singer as Wesley Myles, Antonio Fargas as photographer Oliver, Barry Primus as Alan (credited as "also starring"), Alexandra Paul as Dinah's daughter Laurie (in her first role, credited as "introducing") and Craig T. Nelson as husband Michael. Joan Collins appeared as Racine, the conniving owner of Taryn and Laurie's modelling agency, credited in the opening as a "special guest star". Eric Stoltz, William Brian Curran, Jeffrey Richman and Lillibet Stern appeared in co-starring roles. The film was directed by Edward Zwick and written by Casey T. Mitchell and Leah Markus, with a theme song written by Mark Snow and performed by Brock Walsh. It garnered 20.5 million viewers.
In 1984, MGM decided to produce a weekly series based on the original film. Jennifer Warren and Jeffrey Richman (in the minor role of Conrad) were the only actors to reprise their roles, with Hackett (who died unexpectedly before production), Hannah, Paul, Nelson and Collins replaced by Brenda Vaccaro, Nicollette Sheridan, Terry Farrell, John Bennett Perry and Morgan Fairchild respectively.
New characters included Grant Harper (Lloyd Bridges), the manipulative chairman of the conglomerate Harper World Wide, [2] who was frequently at odds with Racine (Fairchild); his second wife Marjorie (Nancy Olson); his son Wesley (Dack Rambo), chief executive of Harper Cosmetics, who allied with Racine against his father, blaming him for the accidental death of his mother, Virginia, Grant's first wife; his daughter, Blair Harper Fenton (Mimi Rogers), Racine's top model; and Blair's husband David Fenton (Richard Beymer), head of Tempus Sportswear, a business rival to Grant.
During the series, Blair is 30 years old, pregnant and fearing the end of her modelling career. Despite health problems, she was determined to carry her baby to full term. David is too proud to accept financial assistance, and resorts to accepting money from loan sharks to fund his upcoming collection, putting him and Blair in danger. Eventually, he is forced to ask his father in-law for help, resulting in Tempus being brought under the Harper World Wide banner, paying off the loan in full, and also the interest.
Meanwhile, Racine struggles to manage Taryn Blake (Sheridan), the top teen model in the business, who has problems with drugs and alcohol, and a sensationalized romance with 1980s pop star John Waite (playing himself in a recurring role). To keep Taryn and her demanding mother Julia (Vaccaro) in line, Racine decides to promote a new fresh teen face, a young woman named Laurie Caswell (Farrell). The naive and innocent Laurie still attends public school in Stonehurst in Long Island and is not prepared for the fast life, despite her mother Dinah Anderson Caswell's (Warren) best efforts to keep her grounded. Dinah, a former model herself, focuses too much time on her daughter's career, putting a strain on her marriage to Michael Caswell (Perry), Laurie's stepfather.
Despite their vast differences, Taryn and Laurie become good friends, while the rivalry between their two mothers, Julia and Dinah, intensifies. The vindictive and mean-spirited Julia sees her daughter as a meal ticket, and dreads the day Taryn that turns 17 and becomes more financially independent. Rounding out the cast is Blair's friend Sara Frank (Anne Schedeen), a sensible lawyer, who is involved with Mark Bailey (Roscoe Born in a recurring role), a reporter doing a story on the fashion industry. Mark becomes enamored with Racine, much to the horror of Sara, who despite agreeing that she's "done well for a girl named off of a map of Wisconsin", warns that Racine has "been in more beds than a hotel breakfast tray!"
No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | Viewers (millions) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | "Pilot" | Harry Winer | Story by : Jennifer Miller, Casey T. Mitchell & Leah Markus Teleplay by : Jennifer Miller | September 23, 1984 | 18.4 [3] |
2 | "Episode One" | Harry Winer | Jennifer Miller | September 25, 1984 | 13.6 |
3 | "Episode Two" | Ralph Senensky | Donald Paul Roos | October 9, 1984 | 12.7 |
4 | "Episode Three" | Alan Smithers & Arthur Allen Siedelman | Jeff Stuart | October 16, 1984 | 12.1 |
5 | "Episode Four" | Ralph Senensky | Michael L. Grace | October 23, 1984 | 14.8 |
6 | "Episode Five" | Edward Parone | Stephen Black & Henry Stern | October 30, 1984 | 10.4 |
7 | "Episode Six" | Ralph Senensky | Jill Gordon | November 13, 1984 | 12.0 |
8 | "Episode Seven" | Leo Penn | Stephen Black & Henry Stern | November 20, 1984 | 12.1 |
9 | "Episode Eight" | Edward Parone | Donald Paul Roos | November 27, 1984 | 9.9 |
10 | "Episode Nine" | Leo Penn | Stephen Black & Henry Stern | December 4, 1984 | 12.6 |
11 | "Episode Ten" | Edward Parone | Carol Saraceno | December 11, 1984 | 9.3 |
12 | "Episode Eleven" | Leo Penn | Jill Gordon | December 18, 1984 | 9.9 |
13 | "Episode Twelve" | Edward Parone | Donald Paul Roos | December 25, 1984 | 10.1 |
Reruns of the series have been shown on the SOAPnet cable channel in the United States. The series was also shown in the United Kingdom by the ITV network in the mid-1980s, though schedules varied per region. It was also shown in Italy on Canale 5 under the name Il profumo del successo (The Taste of Success), and in Germany under the title Karussell der Puppen (Doll Carousel). In South America and Spain, it was broadcast as Muñecas de Papel. In Sweden, it was broadcast 1986 on TV2 under the name Modedockorna (The Fashion Dolls).
The series attempted to ride the wave of popular glossy nighttime soaps, such as Dallas and Dynasty . When Paper Dolls premiered in September 1984, the first episode achieved an 18.4 rating, and featured the requisite stock pleasures of the genre, such as big business, glamour, intrigue, catfights and verbal spats (particularly between Racine and the other cast members). In one scene, Mark enters Racine's office while she is getting a massage, asking "Do you want me to wait outside until you're decent?" Racine responds "How much time do you have?" In another scene, an irate Julia, brandishing a Barbie-style fashion doll of her daughter, storms into Racine's office. "This will not be the new Taryn Blake doll!" she barks. "The eyes are brown!" Coolly, Racine quips, "I guess they couldn't quite match that bloodshot tone."
Even with a series of rave reviews in People urging viewers to give the show a chance, [4] ratings were low and the series was not able to find an audience, due in large part because it had been pre-empted on some weeks by the baseball playoffs. The final episode of the series found David on the verge of failure after an influential fashion critic is blackmailed by Wesley and Racine to pan his new sportswear collection; Marjorie is feared dead in a plane crash; and Racine receives a call from Mark intimating that his digging into her secretive past and had uncovered something very interesting. The cliffhangers were left unresolved.
Terry Farrell is an American actress and fashion model. She is best known for her roles as Jadzia Dax in the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and as Regina "Reggie" Kostas in the comedy series Becker.
Morgan Fairchild is an American actress. She began acting in the early 1970s and has had roles in several television series ever since.
The City is an American television soap opera that aired on ABC from November 13, 1995, to March 28, 1997. The series was a continuation of the serial Loving, which ran from 1983 until 1995, and featured the surviving central characters of the latter's final major story arc, which saw most of the show's characters fall victim to a serial killer. The characters that survived moved from Corinth, Pennsylvania, to New York City and settled in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo.
Loni Kaye Anderson is an American actress. She played receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on the CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–1982), which earned her three Golden Globe Awards and two Emmy Award nominations.
Linda Ann Gray is an American film, stage and television actress, director, producer and former model, best known for her role as Sue Ellen Ewing, the long-suffering wife of Larry Hagman's character J.R. Ewing on the CBS television drama series Dallas, for which she was nominated for the 1981 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. The role also earned her two Golden Globe Awards nominations.
Donna Mills is an American actress. She began her television career in 1966 with a recurring role on The Secret Storm, and in the same year appeared on Broadway in Woody Allen's comedy Don't Drink the Water. She made her film debut the next year in The Incident. She then starred for three years on the soap opera Love is a Many Splendored Thing (1967–70), before starring as Tobie Williams, the girlfriend of Clint Eastwood's character in the 1971 cult thriller Play Misty for Me. Mills played the female lead in the heist film Murph the Surf (1975), and had starring roles in a number of made-for-television movies during the 1970s.
Patrika Darbo is an American actress. She made her big screen debut appearing in the 1988 romantic comedy film It Takes Two and later appeared in The 'Burbs (1989), Daddy's Dyin': Who's Got the Will? (1990), Spaced Invaders (1990), Leaving Normal (1992), In the Line of Fire (1993) and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). Darbo played Roseanne Barr in the 1994 biographical television film Roseanne & Tom: Behind the Scenes.
Central Park West is an American prime time television soap opera that ran from September 1995 to June 1996 on CBS. The series was created and executive produced by Darren Star. As the title suggests, CPW was set in New York, in the affluent Central Park West area of Manhattan. Mariel Hemingway, Mädchen Amick, and Kylie Travis portrayed three of the central characters on the show.
Alexis Carrington Colby is a fictional character on the American TV series Dynasty. She is the ex-wife of Blake Carrington whose schemes cause one problem after another for him and their children.
Jennifer Warren is an American actress, producer and film director.
Saleisha Lashawn Stowers is an American actress and model. She was cycle 9’s winner of America's Next Top Model. She portrayed the role of Lani Price on NBC's soap opera Days of Our Lives.
Patricia Blair was an American television and film actress, primarily on 1950s and 1960s television. She is best known as Rebecca Boone in all six seasons of NBC's Daniel Boone, with co-stars Fess Parker, Darby Hinton, Veronica Cartwright, and Ed Ames. She also played Lou Mallory on the ABC western series The Rifleman, in which she appeared in 22 episodes with Chuck Connors, Johnny Crawford and Paul Fix.
Nicollette Sheridan is a British-born American actress. She began her career as a fashion model before landing a role in the short-lived ABC primetime soap opera Paper Dolls in 1984, as well as starring in the romantic comedy film The Sure Thing (1985). She rose to prominence as Paige Matheson on the CBS primetime soap opera Knots Landing (1986–1993), for which she received two Soap Opera Digest Awards. Thereafter, Sheridan appeared in lead roles in numerous television films and miniseries, including Lucky Chances (1990), Virus (1995), and The People Next Door (1996). She also appeared in the feature films Noises Off (1992), Spy Hard (1996), Beverly Hills Ninja (1997), and Code Name: The Cleaner (2007).
Noddy's Toyland Adventures is a British children's television programme produced by Cosgrove Hall Films from September 1992 until April 1994 and December 1994. The show stars the voices of Susan Sheridan and Jimmy Hibbert. Each episode was written by Julia and Chris Allen respectively during its broadcast run. Paul K. Joyce composed and performed the show's opening theme.
Travis Robert Burns is an Australian actor and model. He first came to prominence with his role in the American action-drama television series, SAF3 (2013). He played Tyler Brennan in the long-running Australian television soap opera Neighbours from 2015 to 2019. After leaving Neighbours, Burns starred in the romance film Sunrise in Heaven (2019) and television films The Wrong Boy Next Door (2019), The Christmas Listing (2020), and Save the Wedding (2021).
Dynasty is an American drama television series reboot based on the 1980s prime time soap opera of the same name. Developed by Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, and Sallie Patrick, the first season stars Elizabeth Gillies as glamorous businesswoman Fallon Carrington, Grant Show as her billionaire father Blake Carrington, James Mackay as her brother Steven, and Nathalie Kelley as Blake's new wife Cristal, with Robert Christopher Riley as chauffeur Michael Culhane, Sam Adegoke as tech billionaire Jeff Colby, Rafael de la Fuente as Cristal's nephew Sam "Sammy Jo" Jones, and Alan Dale as Joseph Anders, the cunning majordomo.
The second season of Dynasty, an American television series based on the 1980s prime time soap opera of the same name, originally aired in the United States on The CW from October 12, 2018, through May 24, 2019. The season was produced by CBS Television Studios, with Sallie Patrick as showrunner and executive producer alongside executive producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. Debuting on October 11, 2017, the series was renewed for a second season on April 2, 2018. Dynasty was renewed for a third season on January 31, 2019.
Julia Rose Lester is an American actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Ashlyn Caswell in the Disney+ series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series and for her portrayal of the role of Little Red Ridinghood in the 2022 Broadway revival of Into the Woods, for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.
Ladies of the '80s: A Divas Christmas is a 2023 American Christmas comedy television film directed by Christie Will Wolf, written by James Berg and Stan Zimmerman, and executive-produced by Larry A. Thompson. It stars Loni Anderson, Morgan Fairchild, Linda Gray, Donna Mills and Nicollette Sheridan as five glamorous soap opera divas as they reunite to shoot the final Christmas episode of their long-running former (fictional) series, The Great Lakes. The supporting cast includes Travis Burns and Taylor Ann Thompson as producer and soap director, Christopher Atkins, Patrika Darbo, Alec Mapa and Donna Mills' daughter, Chloe Mills.