PINTER PLAY
By Alina Adams

Mark Pinter may be best known for his role as Grant Harrison on Another World (and more recently as Agent Rayner on General Hospital), but, before he came to Bay City, he appeared in two other P&G shows, Guiding Light and As The World Turns. (He was also on Love of Life, Loving and All My Children.)

On GL, Pinter had the misfortune of arriving shortly before a crippling writer's strike, so his Mark Evans went from a dashing foreign affairs expert who dated Vanessa before growing tired of her manipulative ways, to the cad who married Jennifer while seducing her daughter, Amanda, to abusive husband, to Amanda's potential killer, to a completely different guy named Samuel Pasquin who'd pushed a former love of Quint's, Mona, off a cliff years earlier. (She wasn't really dead, of course. She was living in a secret room in Quint's house. Pretending to be mute.)

Mark/Samuel eventually showed some remorse (i.e. the original writing team came back to work), genuinely fell in love with Amanda, but, alas, as these things are wont to happen, ended up taking a poetically apt dive off a cliff himself, along with Mona. This time, the fall stuck.



Jennifer ultimately gave birth to Mark's child, Matthew, but was so traumatized by the many personalities her husband had gone through, that she abandoned the boy into Amanda's care. Amanda grew deeply attached to her half-brother/dead lover's son and wanted to adopt him. When Jennifer returned to reclaim Matthew and move out of town, Amanda followed. (However, the enchantment obviously wore off quickly, because the next time she returned to Springfield, Amanda uttered nary a word about the chubby-cheeked little guy.)

After GL, Pinter moved to ATWT, where he got to play one consistent character for his entire 1984-87 run. Albeit a pretty consistently boring one. Lisa's stepson, Brian, gave up the political career his father had planned for him (don't worry, he'd still get to have it on AW, pushy father and all; guess something about the man screams whipped Daddy's boy) to chase Russian spies with his girlfriend (actress Tracy Kolis might be best known as the Seinfeld girlfriend with the Southern accent who couldn't stop talking).

Once that was thankfully over, Brian moved on to the newly widowed Barbara.



Paul hated him. A lot. On one occasion, Paul proceeded to taunt and punch his mother's boyfriend, making it look like Brian was about to hit him just as Barbara came in (apple doesn't fall far off that Stenbeck tree, does it?). Brian and Barbara broke up. Over the manipulations of a ten year old.

Barbara attempted to win Brian back, but caught him in bed with Shannon. That was the turning point for Good Barbara turning into Hell on Wheels Babs.

Earlier this year, actress Colleen Zenk told WeLoveSoaps.com about that: The hard part for me as an actor was that it happened overnight. I mean literally overnight. Barbara and Brian (Mark Pinter) were supposed to get married. Paul (Christopher Daniel Barnes) really objected to it. She listened to Paul and told Brian she couldn’t marry him. The next thing she knew Brian was shacking up with Shannon O’Hara (Margaret Reed). Barbara went over to see Brian to tell him she changed her mind. He opens the door, and there’s Shannon in Brian’s robe. So she went home, slept on it, Lisa (Eileen Fulton) showed up the next day, and Barbara opened the door and was a new woman. Literally. She said, “Hello Lisa,” and it was a whole new attitude. It was really difficult for me as an actor.

Brian's relationship with Shannon brought him into her ex, Duncan's, orbit, and that of Duncan's "sister," Beatrice. Though engaged to Shannon, Brian tried to help out the deeply disturbed Beatrice by pretending to be her dead fiancee (a sane relationship, this was not). Shannon saw that Brian was falling for Beatrice, called off her engagement and, with the reveal that Beatrice was actually Duncan's daughter, Brian went from almost being Shannon's husband to her stepson-in-law. (Like I said, not a sane relationship.) Brian and Beatrice moved to Scotland, had a daughter (breaking an old family curse along the way) and were never heard from again.

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Alina Adams is the author of Oakdale Confidential, Jonathan's Story and The Man From Oakdale.

Read the Another World Today interviews with Mark here, here, here, here and here.