Frequently Asked Questions For information on cast changes or about what an actor/actress is doing now, please refer to the Internet Movie Database's Ryan's Hope cast list.
What is the birth order of the Ryan siblings?
Where was Siobhan in the early years of the show?
Did Mary die? If so, when, and why?
To whom was Delia married? How many children did she have?
Did Pat and Faith ever finally get together?
What is the story on Johnny's illegitimate son, Dakota?
What is the birth order of the Ryan siblings?
Not counting Dakota, it is Frank, Kathleen, Sean (who died as an infant), Patrick, Mary and then Siobhan. Dakota was born, apparently, within a few months of Pat. Maeve also had one miscarriage somewhere along the way. Supposedly, all of the children were born over the course of nine years.
Where was Siobhan in the early years of the show?
Siobhan did not appear on Ryan's Hope until 1978, three years after it had premiered. It is hard to piece together exactly what she was doing during that time, as her history was obviously rewritten at some point along the way. When the show premiered, Siobhan was said to be working as a teacher in Oregon. Yet, later on, it was established that Siobhan was the youngest in the family, though Mary had supposedly graduated from college three weeks before the show premiered, so obviously Siobhan, who would have to be younger than Mary, was not old enough to be a teacher at that time. When Jack and Mary got married, Siobhan was still supposed to be in Oregon, but did not return home for the wedding like Kathleen did because she had the measles. At some point, it seemed to have been decided that Siobhan was in college in those early years, presumably in Oregon still. In fact, I believe I have read that, when she returned, it was established that she had been arrested in some form of student protest. Of course, any inclination toward teaching was forgotten by the time she appeared on screen; Siobhan worked for Planned Parenthood, then became a police officer and then a private investigator.
Incidentally, I have read an article outlining the Ryan's Hope characters that was published several months before it premiered. It said that Siobhan was a homemaker who lived in Pittsburgh (like Kathleen actually was established to be on the show) and Kathleen was off in a convent becoming a nun. Presumably, the powers that be decided not to tie any of the Ryan siblings, in Riverside or elsewhere, to a religious calling, lest they wanted to write them into the story at some point in the future. Then, when it became obvious that Kate Mulgrew (Mary) would not be staying with the show for the long haul, perhaps the writers fudged Siobhan's history so she could eventually be brought in as the new young Ryan heroine when Mulgrew left. (Even though, for a year or two, Siobhan and a series of Mary recasts co-existed together on the show.)
Did Mary die? If so, when, and why?
Mary died in December 1979. At this point, she was being played by Nicolette Goulet (Robert Goulet's daughter, btw). This was the third actress to play Mary since Kate Mulgrew left the role in late 1977. None of the recasts caught on, so the character was finally killed off (as the writers/producers had wanted to do when Mulgrew left, but the network initially balked at the idea). On the day Siobhan married Joe Novak, Mary went to investigate Joe's ties to his Uncle Tiso. In so doing, she stumbled upon their drug smuggling operation, and so Tiso's thugs arranged for her to be killed, and made it look like a car accident. When she did not show up at the wedding (she was supposed to be Siobhan's matron of honor), Siobhan and Jack assumed Mary was still mad at them for almost having an affair some time earlier (which Mary had found out about when she overheard them discussing it at Siobhan and Joe's engagement party).
When Mary was finally found, her last words were a clue about who had killed her, which Jack deciphered several months later. Joe did not even learn of Tiso's involvement in Mary's death until a while after it happened, but Siobhan was nevertheless furious with him when she found out and took a long time to forgive him for it. Meanwhile, Jack drank himself into oblivion for a while after Mary's death, and dumped Ryan (then about two years old) on Maeve and Johnny. Ryan subsequently became sick with the flu and Maeve made a point of telling Jack all about it, which reawakened his parental instinct and triggered his first step back to the land of the living. Then at some point, I don't know the details, but Jack and Ryan apparently ended up living with the Ryans for a while.
To whom was Delia married? How many children did she have?
Delia's full name was Delia Reid Ryan Ryan Coleridge Crane Coleridge. She married Frank Ryan circa 1969 or 1970 (before Ryan's Hope premiered, of course) and they were divorced in early 1977 (and then got an annulment several years later). She married Pat Ryan in 1977, and their marriage was annulled in 1978. She married Roger Coleridge in 1978, and they were divorced in approximately 1980. She married Matthew Crane, a rich tycoon who was not on the show for very long, in 1984; their marriage ended within the year. Finally she remarried Roger in January 1989, in the last week of the show.
John Reid Ryan was the only child she carried to term - he was born around 1974 (again, before the show was on the air), and his father was, of course, Frank. Delia did, however, miscarry Pat's baby in 1977 (and neglected to inform him of the miscarriage before their shotgun wedding a few weeks later). In remarrying Roger, she also became a stepmother to his and Maggie's infant daughter, Olivia, whom Delia had previously helped deliver after her attempt to kidnap a pregnant Maggie went awry. The three became a family, of sorts, at least until the final episode when Maggie returned to New York and vowed to sue for custody.
Edmond Strong Coleridge was the biological son of Frank Ryan and Jillian Coleridge, although for a time everyone thought that Seneca Beaulac was his father. Jill and Seneca had a one-night stand at her beach house. (For the purpose of determining an exact timeframe to count the months of the pregnancy, I checked the dates on SoapNet's synopses - this episode originally aired on July 30, 1976.) At the time, Frank had ended his extramarital affair with Jill to try to make things work with Delia. Frank and Jill made love less than a month later on the August 27, 1976 episode, for the first time in almost a year. Jill began showing symptoms of pregnancy before she went back to Frank, but thought nothing of them since - being the classic uptight and slightly neurotic overachiever - she'd had those same symptoms (headaches, dizziness, nausea) throughout her life as the result of stress. It took a long, long time for Jill to figure out that she was pregnant, at which point she could not remember if she had had a period since her affair with Seneca because, as she phrased it, her cycle had always been "irregular." Due to the technology of the time (no Ultrasound) her doctor determined that Seneca was the father, based on the onset of the symptoms.
Frank learned that Jill was pregnant while she was unconscious and assumed the baby was his. Jill took a very long time to set him straight due to many (many, many, many) pregnancy complications that kept her in a hospital bed, weeping and shrieking and afraid that any upset might cause a miscarriage, for what seemed like years. (Though she later admitted to herself that it was her own cowardice that kept her from telling the truth, and if she'd really wanted to she would have found a way to tell Frank.) So for a few months everyone thought Frank was the father, but Jill finally told the truth (or so she thought) shortly before Edmond was born. Jill gave birth prematurely in early March of 1977, which (seemingly) confirmed that Seneca was the father, as it seemed against all odds that the baby could have survived had he been born at only six months. It was eventually determined, however, that Frank was the father after all and the baby had miraculously survived in spite of being born so early. Jill had been right - the initial symptoms were not morning sickness, just stress.
Seneca was the one to discover this (his blood type made it impossible for Edmond to be his son) and he too kept putting off telling the truth, not wanting to lose Edmond or Jill, even to the point of being blackmailed by Roger. So, again, everybody mistakenly believed Seneca was the father for quite a while as well. By early in 1978, it had been revealed to all that Frank was the father, but it would be quite a few years before Frank and Jill finally got back together, due to innumerable misunderstandings and downright selfish and immature actions on the part of both of them. (One of which, ironically, was Frank's reticence to be with Jill if it meant taking part in raising Edmond, when he still thought that Edmond was Seneca's son.)
Baby Edmond died circa spring 1979 in an accidental gas explosion at the Coleridge beach house.
Although Justin Deas (Bucky) was part of the original cast, his airtime diminished progressively after a while. It is unclear why, although the sphere of the show in which he was introduced did effectively cease to exist. When the show first premiered, he had a family of sorts (with Nell and Seneca), but Diana van der Vlis, the actress who played Nell, had to be written out of the story in the first year due to medical problems. This left Seneca to pursue Jillian, to whom Bucky had no connection whatsoever. Also, when Ryan's Hope first premiered, it was a cross between a hospital drama, originally slated to be titled "A Rage to Love" (like the mock soap opera in Nurse Betty) that the network wanted, and the story of the Ryans and their bar that creators Labine and Mayer wanted, with Bucky being a part of the former. For whatever reason, around the time of Jack and Mary's wedding in the summer of 1976, the hospital aspect was de-emphasized and most of the story shifted to a game of musical beds between the Ryans and the Coleridges.
Overall this was a step in the right direction for the show, but unfortunately Bucky was not with anyone from either family, and so he was sort of the odd man out. Bucky's love interest, Reenie, suddenly left New York within mere months of arriving, without even any denouement for her and Bucky's story. (The height of her scheming to get her hands on Bucky and his fortune thus far had been impersonating a lhaso apso aficionado.) Bucky was eventually phased out of the show, though Justin Deas remained with Ryan's Hope for the duration of his three-year contract. In his last couple of years, Bucky was mainly a friend to Pat and Faith and Seneca, Mary and Jack's secret benefactor (after Jack's accident when it turned out he had no medical insurace), and Delia's biggest detractor (though he barely spoke two words to her).
Did Pat and Faith ever finally get together?
Throughout the show's run, Patrick and Faith were apart more often than not. At first, they merely had a fling and Faith was then hung up on him while he wanted to keep his freedom. Then (after Faith was recast and stopped hiding in closets crying, "Daddy, daddy!") Pat took a second look and realized Faith wasn't half bad. Although she was still carrying a torch for him as well, the timing was just never right. First, Pat's lust/love/obsession with Delia resulted in a one-night stand and then a shotgun wedding; then Faith married Tom Desmond so he could get his green card. Then Malcolm Groome left, and Pat was (unsuccessfully) recast and subsequently paired with Nancy Feldman circa 1979, after Faith and Tom had actually fallen in love (once they had overcome the slight problem of his trying to kill her, which turned out to be the result of a brain tumor).
Tom's brain tumor eventually proved fatal but, by this point, Pat had left New York with Nancy, so Faith settled for his brother, Frank, and they became engaged. This did not last either and Frank moved to St. Louis in 1981, causing Faith to follow in the tradition of her brother and sister (as well as a certain real-life "Coleridge") and turn to substance addiction: In Faith's case, she hit the sauce. After she had recovered, Pat returned (without Nancy) in 1982 in the form of a second recast, and it appeared he and Faith would be getting involved again, but then the show's creators were forced out and new writers shifted the focus to the Kirkland family. So, the new Pat got involved with Amanda Kirkland, and the Ryans and Coleridges (including Faith) took the backseat. In 1983, Labine and Mayer returned as head writers, they persuaded Malcolm Groome to return to the role of Patrick, and he reunited briefly with Faith.
But Labine and Mayer left once again, and the second round of new powers that be, again determined to "change" Ryan's Hope, were not satisfied with merely sidelining the Ryans and Coleridges - Karen Morris-Gowdy (Faith) was actually fired in late 1983, along with several other longtime cast members. Faith left Pat again to work at the Mayo Clinic, and Patrick went on to marry Melinda Weaver and then Concetta D'Angelo. Faith did, however, return to Riverside in the final week of the show in 1989 - with a daughter, Grace, in tow. Pat immediately suspected he was the father, though the final episode ended before Faith answered his question on the matter.
When the show first premiered, viewers were led to believe that Jill was the adopted daughter of Ed and (the deceased) Judith Coleridge. Her biological father's name, I believe, was said to be "Jim" - he was supposedly a friend of Ed's whom he met while stationed in Australia in the air force. The story was that, after Jill's biological parents died, Ed had adopted Jill, who was then a toddler, and brought her to New York. I do not remember anything being said about her biological mother at that time. In 1983, after Ed had long since died, it was revealed that Jill was his biological daughter after all - the product of an extramarital affair with Bess Shelby. (I don't know who the Jim guy turned out to be.) Bess was written into the show at that time, along with her other daughter, Jill's half-sister, Maggie. In 1987, Maggie's brother Ben arrived on the scene also. Maggie eventually married Roger, to whom she was not related by blood, though they were each a half-sibling to Jillian.
What is the story on Johnny's illegitimate son, Dakota?
Many years before the show premiered, Maeve had taken the children (those that had been born thus far) to Ireland to visit her family. Johnny was missing them and a friend named Meg Smith, who was somewhat enamored of him, took it upon herself to "comfort" him. One night Johnny got drunk and had a one-night stand with her. The next morning, Johnny did not remember it and when Meg learned she was pregnant, she left New York. Years later, towards the end of 1985, Meg died and left Johnny a letter that visibly upset him. Jill took it upon herself to solve the mystery of the letter and went to find Dakota. Just when she found him working as a fisherman, she slipped on the dock and she too developed amnesia, before telling him anything. Dakota took care of her and they fell in love.
Eventually, everyone figured out that Dakota was Johnny's long-lost son and he came to New York. Jill chose Dakota over Frank even after her memory returned, which caused Frank to hate him. Patrick tried to befriend Dakota, but ultimately could not because of his underhanded deeds. Siobhan had little to do with Dakota, due to shoddy writing at the time Dakota was written into the show. Mary was dead by this point and Kathleen, of course, was off-screen. Dakota was a very self-serving person (and unlike Frank did not even have the decency to hide it under a veneer of self-righteousness and hypocrisy) and ultimately Johnny disowned him and he left New York in shame. Maeve did forgive Johnny and tried to help him make peace with Dakota, and in fact tried to reconcile father and son after Johnny finally wrote Dakota off.
Incidentally, Dakota's existence was not in the show's original bible (which covered 50-100 years of Ryan family back story) and he was introduced at a time when creators Claire Labine and Paul Avila Mayer were not writing for the program. Many viewers felt the affair was out-of-character for Johnny. Certainly, it was out-of-character for the typically groundbreaking Ryan's Hope to rely so heavily on as cliche a plot device as amnesia.
Thanks to several second-time-around viewers, particularly Faye and Sabrina from the SoapNet board, who have imparted much of this information to me (and to many other fans) over the past year. I would not have known a lot of this stuff, had they not had to answer these same questions so many times already (and, of course, had Wanda not been so generous with material from her back issues of soap magazines).