Soap Opera Weekly
July 16, 1996
The Gossip

The next time you have a really embarrassing experience, remember, it could have been worse. Listen to what happened to Catherine Hickland (Tess, The City) at the ABC affiliates convention at Walt Disney World.

"I stayed at the Grand Floridian, where, for some reason, they gave me the honeymoon suite. There's a honeymoon suite on every floor, and I had the one on the third floor. I left my husband (Michael E. Knight, Tad, AMC) in the room and went down to the lobby, and when I came back up I went to the wrong honeymoon suite. I'd only been there for a few hours, and I got confused. I'm jamming my key in the door and nothing's happening, and so I start banging on the door. I'm like, 'Open the door! What's going on! Open the door!' Bang, bang, bang, bang! I'm dressed in a hot minidress with this big Texas hair going, ready to go to the affiliates convention. I'm banging on the door, and this guy opens it, and he's obviously on his honeymoon--his hair's standing straight up and he's holding a towel around his waist; he'd been in bed with his new bride. I just stood there like a deer caught in headlights. I didn't know what to say. So I said the first thing that came to my mind: 'More towels, sir?' And he said: 'No.'

"I didn't have a mint to give him or anything, so I said, 'OK, then, have a very nice night.' And I went running for the elevator. I was mortified--so freaked out I had to go down to the lobby and ask what floor I was on."

Later, Catherine partied with fellow ABC soap stars Randolph Mantooth (Alex, The City), Eva La Rue, John Callahan (Maria and Edmund, AMC), Thorsten Kaye, Susan Haskell (Patrick and Marty, OLTL) and Jon Lindstrom (Kevin, GH), who brought girlfriend Eileen Davidson (Kristen, Days). "Eileen is an old, dear friend, and we hadn't seen each other in a good four, five years," Catherine says. As old, dear friends will sometimes do, Catherine says she and Eileen "tried to get a buzz on, but it’s futile in Disney World. We drank, but nothing happened. If I have a martini in Manhattan, it's everything to keep me from getting up and dancing topless on the table. But in Disney World, forget it. It was bizarre."

She and Michael decided to stay on through the weekend and teamed up with Susan and Thorsten for a one-day, whirlwind tour of the Magic Kingdom. "Thorsten is a gas, one of the funniest people I've ever known. The four of us were really worn out at the end of the night, but we had an absolute blast."