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Although NBC's Santa Barbara is still basking in the sun from having won eight Daytime Emmy's, including Outstanding
Drama Series, there is trouble in paradise: a popular actor has left the soap, and it's two former executive producers are
waging a legal battle to come back.
Lane Davies, who has played attorney Mason Capwell since Santa Barbara's inception in 1984, left the soap in
early July. According to Mary Andersen, SB's public relations coordinator, "Lane's on a 'round the world tour
[with another former Santa Barbara cast member, Todd McKee, who played Mason's brother Ted] and we hope he will return
in six months."
But Davies' return is in doubt. Although this is not the first time he has left Santa Barbara - in recent
years, he's taken off summers to perform in Shakespearean productions in Hollywood and Atlanta - Davies has been reported
as saying his departure this time is permanent.
Davies was unable for comment at press time, but it's been reported that he had not been getting along with his costar
and on-screen wife, Nancy Lee Grahn (who recently won a Daytime Emmy for her role as attorney Julia Wainwright). Grahn
says she cried at Davies' last day of rehearsal but that working together "is like being married. You fight like you're
married. Both of us are very stubborn." She adds: "You fight and scream and kick. You spend days not
speaking to each other," Grahn says Davies left the show because "he was not loving his character anymore."
Even so, the show seems to be keeping the door open for his return. Although Mason was last seen leaving town after
a dispute with his father, a Santa Barbara insider says the idea of recasting the role is not being aggressively
pursued. "The character will remain on the show says Jackie Smith, NBC's vice president of daytime.
Critical Condition - On
Second Thought - Soap Opera Weekly April 9, 1991
I feel the Dobsons officially engraved announcement of their return came a week later with the multi-episode
Capwell dinner party scene. Mason took his just-out-of-the-mental-hospital mother Pamela (an original Dobson character,
played again by Marj Dusay) to a Capwell family dinner party, where he proceeded to put all of the Capwells "on trial" for
their past emotional crimes.
Suddenly, there he was, the real Mason, who had somehow got lost these past three years; witty, cutting,
sardonic, literate, with the trademark asides. But most importantly, beneath all the venom, this real Mason again showed
himself to be shatterinly vulnerable. Mason Capwell is as close to Hamlet or Macbeth as daytime is ever going to get.
Now the professional Marlena isn't about to get dragged into the debate as to which of the three actors who have played Mason
(Lane Davies, Terry Lester, Gordon Thomson) has been best. Each has done a fine job. The bottom line is that the
"real" Mason is the one written bu the "real" writers of SB. And you know who they are.
But it we can't have the absolutely divine Davies.......then we're fortunate to have Thomson.
In Thomson, the Dobsons have an actor eerily capable of playing their Mason. He has the crisp diction and swift delivery
needed for sophisticated, often literate lines. And, as he proved when he played Adam Carrington on Dynasty, Thomson
is adept at playing dark characters. My only very minor quibble with the fortysomething Thomson is that he's a tad too
old for the role. Am I hallucinating or do Thomson and Judith McConnell (who plays Mason's stepmother Sophia) look about
the same age?
By Marlena De Lacroix - only the Mason part of the article has been included
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