It’s one of the great injustices of the Daytime Emmy system that Susan Flannery has never been nominated for The Bold And The Beautiful. The widely adored grande dame is hardly lacking metal on her mantle – in the 70´s, she won an Emmy for Days Of Our Lives and a Golden Globe for “The Towering Inferno” – but her 12 year run as B&B control freak Stephanie Forrester has been the pièce de résistance of her career, an accomplishment blindingly superior to the work done by most actresses who do get nominated. And, says B&B chief Bradley Bell, we ain´t seen nothing yet: Stephanie, pathologically obsessed with the sexlives of her two hunky sons, recently suffered a paralysing stroke when she discovered that her precious baby Thorne (Winsor Harmon) is romancing her bitchy archenemy Brooke (Katherine Kelly Lang).
“This will be a great showcase for Susan,” Bell promises. “Stephanie is a pit bull when it comes to control, so we´re going to examine how it feels to suddenly find herself so physically vulnerable.” Flannery expresses no dismay over the Emmy slight – at least publicly. “It´s always nice to be recognized but whatever happens,” she says. “To pine away or worry about it is not my style. To sound like sour grapes only turns people off.” But Bell says the actress does feel let down. And she´s not the only one. Because B&B is a half hour show, it has half of the personnel and therefore half the voting power of the hour-long soaps and is thus usually ignored in the major Emmy categories.
“Every year, I have great actors like Susan who are disappointed, and great directors and writers, too,” says Bell., who last May, took out ads in the Hollywood trade papers decrying the inequity. This promoted a meeting between Bell and Emmy officials, who, he says, “admitted B&B is at a disadvantage and does not get a fair shake.” But so far those officials – known for sitting on issues until they grow mold – have done nothing about it. “I don´t know if there´s more fight in me,” Bell admits. “Our ratings mean more than any award.” They should, too: B&B is the No. 2 soap in the U.S. and the most widely seen TV show in the world.
- Michael Logan, TV Guide, October 1999.