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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarky Oracle!" data-source="post: 354321" data-attributes="member: 57984">Yes, the ROYAL BAY/DELLA pilot has been posted a couple of times in different threads; I think it was shot, technically, in 1963, and obviously never went to series -- I think Joan Crawford was only going to appear occasionally -- like the stars of hit THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW and the failed THE BARBARA STANWYCK SHOW (although Missy got her first Emmy for it), only ROYAL BAY would have been more of a soap than an anthology, as the Young/Stanwyck programs were.And, yes, those sets would become the Barkley ranch mansion interiors.Crawford was known to bleat, "Oh, why don't they give me a series??" and Bette Davis shot eight different pilots, none of which ever sold. So the two women were quite willing to do series television, but neither of these two uber-diva dragon ladies were known for being as easy to work with as Barbara Stanwyck, so perhaps that had something to with it. And by the mid-'60s, Crawford's drinking was becoming known as affecting her on the job in a way it hadn't previously. Even on STRAIT-JACKET, shot the same year as ROYAL BAY/DELLA, Diane Baker said that Crawford's drinking on the set, or at least at the end of the workday, caused Joan to "not handle things well."Crawford was indeed offered the role played by "my friend Joan Bennett" in DARK SHADOWS, but likely turned it down because it was a cheapy, low-stature videotaped daytime soap -- although Dan Curtis had wanted it to be a 35mm nighttime series and told ABC's Leonard Goldberg that.The mind reels what might have happened with DARK SHADOWS had it been the primetime soap, like PEYTON PLACE, that Curtis imagined, let alone one starring Joan Crawford. Daytime television was far less competitive then, and the series might have been cancelled much more quickly, tucked away at 10pm on Friday nights, and perhaps not permitted to be as non-sexually sexually provocative as daytime TV was kinda/sorta allowed at the time... If it had not been brought down so early for those reasons, I could picture a primtetime DARK SHADOWS with La Crawford -- one which looked better, with that Halloweenish late-'60s color scheme, and a narrative more focused than the daytime show tended to be. But somehow, the flickering, rambling ambience of the actual DARK SHADOWS was probably karmically inseparable from what the show was meant to be.Bennett disappears from DARK SHADOWS for long periods of time, so the program could have probably accommodated Crawford's absences as she toured with Pepsi and recovered from her benders. But, as some SHADOWS fans have pointed out, Crawford would likely have demanded that every handsome fellow who drove through Collins Port fall in love with her, so that might have created problems for the series.Anyway, I, too, rather liked the look of ROYAL BAY. But it's hard to see how it could have turned into a successful ongoing project with an on-again/off-again Crawford and a daughter at the bottom of that ravine which consumed Joel Abrigore and Rita Lesley.And, besides, I want Joan Crawford in a baroque Hammer Film, circa 1966 or '67, playing twin sisters, one good and the other evil, which never happened.<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/08/f1/44/08f144bade6a89ffc82fa48d0e843228.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?