Page 60 Brooklyn Bridge article by:Robert Rorke
...Years of riding together helped form some life-time friendships among the cast in the 1970s. Victoria Wyndham, who as Rachel Davis Cory-Hutchins has been on the show longer than anyone else, used to ride with oldtimers like the late Contance Ford (Ada Davis), Hugh Marlowe (Jim Mathews and Paul Stevens (Brian Bancroft). "IT was an intimidating group of people to be with when you were 25 years old," Wyndham says. "Hughie would be pontificating. They were always arguing fiercely about old movies or who was in what or what was any good. They loved each other, but they had to argue all the time. It was a riot. And Paul Stevens would sit in the back and make snide comments about them all."
Wyndham kept quiet. "You wouldn't open your mouth unless you had something to say. And of course, Connie had a flask, Hughie had a flask. At night, Hughie was usually on his way to his Bridge Club. Connie was on her way to somewhere. Finally, one year I gave her a flask-- it was made of Beutiful cut-crystal, and she loved it,'cause hers had gotten lost or something-- And she said, 'What am I going to carry this in?' She stewed about this for a while, then I bought her a beautiful mitten. Fur on the outside, chamois on the inside, and it fit right in."
The camaraderie carried over onto the set. During thye show's heyday, from 1971 to 1983, the years when Another World was produced by Paul Rauch and written by Harding Lemay, the cast was close-knit. Rachel's marriage to MacKenzie Cory (The late Douglass Watson), a man twice her age, was the centerpiece of the show. "At that point nobody had done a May-December relationship," says Wyndham. "I was a mere twenty-five years old and he was fifty. Everybody was a little nervous about it, especially P&G. They thought it would be distasteful to the ladies, so Pete laid it in very slowly. It worked."
Rauch went after the best actors he could to fill out the cast around Wyndham and Watson. Among the actors who passed through in Rauch's era (along with Eric Roberts and Ray Liotta) was Morgan Freeman, who was hired after Rauch saw him in Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City. Freeman lasted only 2 years. As Dano says, "Morgan Freeman was Morgan Freeman even back then. This was one of the great souful actors. Damn, was he good. But he made them crazy because every three minutes he went off to the office to get off for three weeks to do a film. He made them nuts.
The cast, says Wyndham was "extraordinary." "In those days there was a lot of improvistation and hacking around," she says. "There was a great ensemble feeling. Cast members would actually run down to see certain scenes."
They held a regular poker game and had notorious shaving-cream fights. Nicholas Coster (Robert Delaney and John Considine (Vic Hastings) played outrageous practicle jokes on each other.
"We used to sunbathe up on the roof," Wyndham recalls. "One day Bob Considine and Nicky Coster were sunbathing up there and Nicky fell asleep and Considine took his clothes, leaving him starkers, locked up on the roof. Appearently, he was jumping up and down to get someone to unlock the door, and a little lady on her way to Waldbaum's with her shopping cart said to the guards, 'There's a pervert up on your thing.' And the went up and let him in."
...page 63. Wyndham , who's seen more "producer du jour" than anyone, remains optimistic. "Charlotte Savitz and I go way back," Wyndhamsays. "She's a very determined lady. She knows exactly what she wants to do. She's also a quality producer. It's not so easy to make it good when you have so many people you have to please."
Put your money on Wyndham's instincts. NBC Brooklyn is practically her home. Her relationship goes way back to her childhood, when her father, Ralph Camargo, was an announcer on The Perry Como Show and she'd amke the ride out to Midwood with him. "When I was 5, I was on The Perry Como Show and Robert Montgomery Presents, whenever they needed little kids. It used to make me so nauseous to drive out here--this is going to make me sound ancient--because all the roads were still cobblestone. It was too bumpy for me."
One has the feeling that, as long as Victoria Wyndham remains here, so will Another World