Sarah Curtis - best Dynasty character ever?

yes, but my aim is getting better.

 

Forsythe made it harder for Collins by demanding that he get paid even a dollar more than she did (per his contract), even though obviously she was the center of gravity of the DYNASTY universe once she arrived. I know Evans was nice, and I am not saying Forsythe was a bad person, but he made demands ("soften the character" in season 1, even though that was part of what had gotten Peppard fired; "no break-up for Blake and Krystle" later on) which showed he wasn't above considering himself a diva with demands. Nor did he try to hide his disdain for Collins when she posed for Playboy either--he loved playing the puritanical patriarch even when the cameras were not rolling. Forsythe maybe was nice to Spelling and Evans and some others, but "to everybody" I think not.

I don't know whether Spelling cared about etiquette and behavior, because he was ruthless with actors, whether they wanted their character to not turn into a circus (Corley) or to ask for a modest raise (Oxenberg). He was all about the bottom line, for instance when he insisted that if they were going to bring Adam Carrington, Mark Jennings, and Kirby Anders then Cecil Colby, Nick Toscanni, and Claudia Blaisdel had to go (and he was good about letting Cramer take the fall with the press). I think he cared about precedent, and Collins established the pattern that you can blackmail your way to a higher salary, which was a terrible precedent considering he was now producing two expensive prime time soap operas, DYNASTY and THE COLBYS (his paranoia over the pattern is probably what got Oxenberg fired). From what I read later, Collins also handled the actual correspondence terribly, or rather her boy toy at the time did, making the whole thing more than an ultimatum than a negotiation.

I have no love lost for Joan Collins as a person (or her politics). But it comes down to my agreement with your statement that

 

As Nader said, Forsythe didn't think Joan's self-centeredness was necessarily good for the show (at least, behind the camera). But JF and Linda both had original cast clauses which prevented any new actor from receiving a salary as high as theirs (unless stipulated as a "special guest star", which is why Heather maintained that title for 8 years of MELROSE PLACE).

 

And yet, I never heard a story of Evans making a federal case out of that contract clause, whereas I have heard stories of Forsythe doing so. Then again, I have never heard a bad story about Evans, period.
What's interesting is that when it came to THE COLBYS, Evans listened to Collins' input, not Forsythe's, and kept away.

 

I always thought they kept Linda away from spin-off because they didn't know how to integrate Rita's crazy storyline into quite normal world of Colbys. The Colbys viewers, who hadn't watched Dynasty would have had a total mess in their heads watching any crossover with her.
Not to mention it would have been weird watching fake Fallon accusing Rita of being fake Krystle.

 

The Rita storyline ended by mid-season. There were still plenty of COLBYS episodes left, including the Fallon's wedding one where Krystle and Alexis' planes were mysteriously both unable to take off.

 

They should have come up with something more creative like Krystle and Alexis having the same flight and getting into the catfight on the board. As a result the plane is turned around and they both are asked to get off.

 

I suspect Linda made her own decisions about not appearing in the spin-off.

 

I can't say I really know. I just remember how much Collins had campaigned against any cross-overs as being problematic to the parent show.

 

^
And she was right, because all that money should have been spent on Linda Evans playing Krystle, Rita, Rita's twin-sister and a fan of Rita who's spent all her money on plastic surgery in order to look exactly like her favourite actress.

 

Listen, I hated Rita and Joel, but if that's what it took to have never laid eyes on Frankie, then "All about Rita" it is.

 

Well...that didn't happen! Frankie was very there, for the whole world to see and enjoy. And thanks to the fabulous DVDs we can enjoy it over and over again.

I'm thinking of writing a fan letter to Joan Collins, and tell her how great she was on The Colbys.

 

So Pam isn´t the only supersoap character who has a twin sister aside from Bobby Ewing from the Ewings of California...?

 

I´m as amnesiac as Fallon Samms and Maggie Gioberti together, plus a touch of Sue Ellen with hangover...