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D uring the summer of 1984, there was one particular promotional photo for NBC's upcoming new soap opera SANTA BARBARA that held the promise of a rich and bountiful story to be told.  It showcased three generations of women bound together as the show's very own Three Graces: grandmother Minx, daughter-in-law Augusta and granddaughter Laken, respectively represented by a film and stage legend, a veteran actress, and a fresh-faced newcomer.  The pyramidal positioning of this impenetrable female circle couldn't have been more picture-perfect: Dame Judith Anderson reigning as Pride Lioness, complete with a Mona Lisa smile; Louise Sorel looking like a Cat On A Hot Tin Roof that just ate the canary; and kittenish Julie Ronnie as the fey-like lamb in a den full of foxes.  This little lamb, however, had the potential of being their littlest fox, for she secretly held the most power in that photo.  This future fox was the promise holding past and present together in the enac...
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I, AUGUSTA

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W hen Joan Collins swept into that courtroom as an 11th hour witness to DYNASTY 's 1981 murder trial cliffhanger, she brought with her a whole new look for two problematic classics: the middle-aged woman and the villainess.  The solution was combining them both in a modern upgrade of an old trope and creating a new face for feminism: the matriarch sexualized, the femme fatale maternalized, pre-meditated woman politicized, all-in-one.  Women's roles on the domestic front were undergoing a change as well.  Washing windows became passé , for there were glass ceilings downtown to smash.  Ladies of the 80s were drinking martinis for power lunches instead of mixing them.  Soon, one fictional woman's dramatic use of a courtroom setting became the hope of a new reality for women in the workforce of America.  Henceforth, Alexis Carrington became the top model of a new kind of character, and every soap followed suit to offer up its own contestant in a drag race for ...
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