Jerry Douglas (John Abbot)
MARCY WALKER (ex-Liza, All My Children; ex-Eden, Santa Barbara; ex-Tangie, Guiding Light) faced a choice: Stay on soaps, where her characters schemed and bed-hopped their way around the morality gamut, or find a better place to put her gift for communicating with people.
Walker chose the path that she believes was waiting for her to take for a long time, and now she says she couldn't be happier.
Divorced three times (one of her exes is Days of Our Lives star Billy Warlock), she's been married since 1999 to Doug Smith and is known to her fellow parishioners in the Lake Forest Community Church in Cornelius, N.C., as Marcy Smith, the director of children's ministries.
Smith had grown up in a religious home and carried her faith into her adult life. For example, she taught Sunday school while working on the New York soaps, and also filled in at bible school. But it was the death of several colleagues over the past few years that made her question why she was working as a performer when she could be doing something she felt was more important with her gift for reaching people, and that was helping children understand God.
After leaving her role as Liza Colby on AMC in 2004, she and her husband moved to Huntersville, N.C., in 2005, where she began her new life. She says her agent still calls her, and she still takes a peek at the soap magazines in the supermarket. But she believes her path is set, and she intends to stay on it.
Meanwhile, Colby Chandler, Liza's daughter with Adam (David Canary), is coming back to Pine Valley as a teenager. Word is Liza may also return at some point, but Marcy Walker (Smith) is not expected to reprise the role.
THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS
Over at The Young and the Restless, they're still celebrating the flood of Daytime Emmy nominations that found their way to Genoa City, including those for best writing. In the meantime, some changes have been made behind the cameras with Lynn Marie Latham moving up from executive story consultant to head writer. Former co-head scribes Jack Smith and Kay Alden will continue writing for the show, but under Latham's aegis. Smith's position as executive producer has been eliminated, most likely as a cost-cutting move.
Guiding Light is said to be ready to welcome back three actors who were taken off contract: Beth Chamberlin (Beth Raines), Elizabeth Keifer (Blake Marler) and Michael O'Leary (Rick Bauer). Each has reportedly been offered a 13-week contract. Although it's not the multi-year contract their fans would have preferred, it is a step in the right direction in reclaiming these longtime favorites.
On a similar note, don't be surprised if John Abbott returns to Genoa City well before his seven-year jail sentence is up. One hears Jerry Douglas could be persuaded to unretire from Y&R.
SOAP SCRAPS: Corbin Bernsen will be doing double duty for a while. He'll continue as Durant on GH and also appear in U.S.A. Network's pilot for "Psych." ... Justin Hartley went from playing Fox Crane on Passions to a plum nighttime gig on the upcoming Smallville spinoff. ... And, yes, there's already a demand for GH to resurrect Brad Maule's character, Tony.
