Out on the Town - March 19, 2008

1 Former THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL actress Maeve Quinlan attended the Los Angeles Premiere of Nosebleed at the Mann's Chinese 6 in Los Angeles. Ryan Phillippe, who played gay teen Billy Douglas on ONE LIFE TO LIVE, was on hand at the Stop-Loss press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. He plays Brandon King in the film.

Out on the Town - March 20, 2008

1 AS THE WORLD TURNS superstar Martha Byrne participated in an "Annie" orphan reunion and signed the DVD "Life After Tomorrow" after a performance and question and answer session at Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Triangle in New York City. Among the former "Annie" cast joining Martha at the event was Kristen Vigard, who was wonderful as the original Morgan Richards on GUIDING LIGHT. She later played Joy O'Neill on ONE LIFE TO LIVE.

Flashback: The Bold and the Beautiful Debuts 1987

Bill Bell rings in `Bold & Beautiful' by Robert Feder Chicago Sun-Times March 23, 1987 Fourteen years after they changed the face of daytime television with "The Young and the Restless," Bill Bell and Lee Phillip are at it again. This time, the Chicago husband-and-wife team's combined efforts have brought forth "The Bold and the Beautiful," a provocative new CBS soap opera that will debut at 12:30 p.m. today on WBBM-Channel 2. Set in the "glamorous world of fashion design," the half-hour serial will revolve around two Los Angeles families whose business and personal relationships, according to the poop from CBS, are "linked by past history and complicated by present alliances." Just as their earlier soap ushered in a new era of sensational daytime stories dramatized by a youthful, sexy cast, Bell and Phillip hope their new creation will live up to its title as bold and beautiful. "I think the new show will have an awful lot of impact from the very first day," said Bell, who will serve simultaneously as executive producer and head writer of both "The Bold and the Beautiful" and "The Young and the Restless." "We will start out backstage at a fashion show, with all the vitality, mystique and sensuality surrounding the fashion industry. We will end with the start of a very interesting and powerful love story. And there's a very significant development in the very first show - but I don't want to give the surprise away." As part of Bell's goal to cast "as many new faces as possible" on the soap, 11 of its 15 principal players are newcomers to daytime television, including Ethan Wayne, the son of John Wayne, and Carrie Mitchum, the granddaughter of Robert Mitchum. The two will portray brother and sister Storm and Donna Logan. Another notable newcomer is Nancy Sloan, who was discovered by a Hollywood agent during a talent competition at a Kansas college. Sloan will portray Storm and Donna's younger sister, Katie, a shy teenager plagued with pimples. "Acne is still prevalent, but it's never been done on daytime before," Bell said. "We'll show how it affects Katie's life and her relationships." In creating the new soap, Bell and Phillip consciously avoided repeating the formula they devised for "The Young and the Restless." "I always felt the startup of `Restless' was as good as you could possibly do in terms of the characters, their `back stories' and their interrelationships. But I decided to make this one totally different. So I've given a different feel to the show and given it a separate identity. Although they're written and produced by the same people, you won't see them overlap in any way," Bell said. Even after more than 30 years of writing daily soap operas - including "Guiding Light," "Another World," "As the World Turns" and "Days of Our Lives" - Bell still bursts with new ideas. "The scariest moment in my life is when I'm about to do a series and I hit Page 1 of Scene 1 of Script 1. That's an awesome moment. But then as you write, the characters come alive. "It's a very exciting, stimulating, adrenalin-pumping experience, believe me. I totally control their destiny - what they do, what they say, how they react, how they don't react. You can't imagine what an exciting thing it is. And, of course, in daytime television, like nowhere else, every day is opening night. Every day it comes alive for you. There are no reruns and, if you're as fortunate as I've been, there are no closing nights." Asked if he's had any nightmares about the debut of his new show, Bell laughed. "I work until 11 o'clock each night and I'm always awake by 4 a.m. My trouble is, I don't sleep long enough to have nightmares."

Friday Nights Lights at the Paley Center

1 Scott Porter, Minka Kelly, Connie Britton, Adrianne Palicki and Aimee Teegarden and actor Zach Gilford attended an evening celebrating FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS at the Paley Center for Media's 25th annual Paley Television Festival at the Arclight Cinema on March 17th in Hollywood. The Paley center now has video from this event available to watch online.