TVSquad

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Lilyan Chauvin: She was a veteran actress you might remember as Joey's grandmother on Friends and the woman in the pilot of The Pretender who asks "Are you a doctor?" (Jarrod's response: "I am today"). She appeared on a ton of other shows over the years, including ER, Alias, Frasier, Star Trek: DS9, Ugly Betty, Malcolm in the Middle, The X-Files, Baywatch, The Young and the Restless, Falcon Crest, Fantasy Island, Man From Atlantis, The Bob Newhart Show, Mannix, The Adventures of Superman, Studio One, and many, many others. She died of cancer and heart disease at age 82.

I always imagined that being a Hilton is like living in a soap opera--wealth, scandal, and the occasional arrest. Apparently real life isn't dramatic enough for one member of the Hilton clan. Paris' mother, Kathy Hilton, will appear on The Young and the Restless as herself. The episode, which will air on May 13, was filmed on Wednesday.

Hilton's fictional self will ruffle some feathers in her Y&R cameo by taking over a magazine photo shoot. I'm not sure where that falls on a soap opera's bad behavior scale, but I'm sure that such workplace antics will at least earn Kathy a few dirty looks. The Hiltons have had plenty of TV exposure over the last month. Paris just did a cameo on a recent episode of My Name is Earl. Barron Hilton, Paris' brother, became a gossip show regular following his DUI arrest.

If shows that are shown only once a week and have around 22 episodes a year are affected by the strike, then the soaps, which have new shows five days a week, 52 weeks a year must be even more affected, right? Right?

For some reason, not yet. The shows haven't divulged how many scripts they have stockpiled and how long they will last, but the soaps haven't gone into reruns, "classic episodes" or other programming yet. Most soaps have anywhere from six to a dozen a writers or more, and most of those writers are on the picket line. A few writers (though not all) on four of the soaps, CBS' The Young and the Restless and ABC's All My Children, One Life To Live, and General Hospital, have crossed the picket lines and returned to work on the show because of something called "financial core," which means financial need, another example of how I don't quite understand what's going on with this strike.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Lois Maxwell: She is probably best known for playing Miss Moneypenny in all the James Bond movies up until Roger Moore's last (A View To A Kill), but she also appeared in several TV shows, including The Avengers, UFO, The Saint, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (80s version), Zero One, Danger Man, One Step Beyond, and Adventures in Rainbow Country. She died of cancer at age 80 in Australia.

Here's some good news for fans of The Young and the Restless, As the World Turns and Guiding Light: CBS is now streaming full episodes on its site. New episodes will hit the Web every day at 6:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., but only for one week.

I predict that bored office workers who never cared about these soaps before will feel compelled to watch them online, resulting in a whole new breed of soap fanatics. I see five men stuffed into one cubicle, each one holding a box of Kleenex and snacking on Pringles as they become more and more engrossed in the storyline. Productivity will plummet, and companies around the United States will be forced to shut down, resulting in massive layoffs and rioting in the streets. I guess what I'm saying is that CBS will destroy us all with this new venture. Or maybe I'm overreacting.

Oh yeah, here's a great idea: allow obsessive soap opera fans to be on stage about ten feet from actors and actresses.

That's the plan for the Daytime Emmy Awards this Friday (9pm on CBS, right after Bob Barker's final episode on The Price Is Right). They're going to have a special red carpet bleacher section on stage, where selected fans will be able to scream and yell and take pictures. And if you think my headline isn't true, here's a quote from Young and the Restless veteran Peter Bergman:

"Just presenting, you could be accosted. Lucky me...it ends up being almost silliness. It's not how I want to celebrate a career achievement."

That's not all. They're also asking fans to send in comments via the web site, and some of these comments will be inserted into award introductions.

Those cruel Emmy bastards. Here Regis Philbin is today, recuperating from his heart bypass surgery (unless it's still going on, which is possible), and he doesn't even get a nomination for Best Talk Show or Host!

Ellen got a nod though, and she led all nominees with 12 nominations. Going up against her for Best Talk Show are Dr. Phil, The View, Tyra Banks, and Rachael Ray. If she's not the winner out of that group, something is wrong somewhere. She's also up for Best Talk Show Host, with the same nominees and also Lisa Rinna, who apparently hosts something called Soap Talk.

The shows up for Best Soap are Guiding Light, The Young and the Restless, One Life To Live, and The Bold and the Beautiful. Bob Barker got a nomination for The Price Is Right. His last day on that show is in June.

Oh, and that Today Show "It's a New Day" theme? It got a nom too.

Here is the full list of nominees.

• Hiccup girl goes on The Today Show, so Good Morning America calls her 57 times for an interview.
• I can't tell if Time's James Poniewozik likes Heroes or not.
• Ken Levine was once on The Dating Game?!
• Irwin Handleman gives his opinion on the whole Joe Rogan/Carlos Mencia controversy.
• The original Jill Abbott on The Young and the Restless is in an Hawaiian jail.
• In case you missed it, here's George Takei's answer to Tim Hardaway's rant against gays, from Jimmy Kimmel Live.
• BuddyTV is having an Oscars contest.
• I think Tom Shales is on a wild goose chase here.

Bold and the Beautiful star Darlene Conley died of stomach cancer on Sunday in Los Angeles.

She has starred on the show as Sally Spectra for 20 years, and was diagnosed with cancer only three months ago. Producers and writers were actually developing a storyline for her to deal with the diagnosis.

Besides The Bold and the Beautiful and three other soaps (Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless, and General Hospital), Conley guest-starred on several other TV shows, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Murder, She Wrote, Highway To Heaven, The Jeffersons, Little House on the Prairie, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Gunsmoke, Cagney and Lacey, and Ironside. She also did the voice of Mrs. Claus in Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July.

Professional bullshit artist psychic and non-clipper of fingernails Sylvia Browne will be appearing in a three-episode arc on the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless starting December 7. Browne will be playing herself. There's no word on what exactly her role will entail, and I won't know afterward either, because I'm not going to watch the damn thing. Still, I have to say that placing Browne in a fictional setting does kind of make sense, considering everything that comes out of her mouth is fiction anyway.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed in this post are solely those of the author, and not those of TV Squad's parent company AOL, which conducts all its business deals with the dead through the new AOL Instant Crop Circle Messenger and Digital Ouija Board. Remember, just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't stay in touch.

[via James Randi]