victorlord75

The date is definitely wrong on this, but I am wondering if the rest of you saw this.

Yes, Monica and Gail, not to mention Heather made it to Marland's tenure. I remember liking Cher's sister in the Heather role, but very little footage of her exists. The actress playing Alice Grant#1 was good, but she looked more like Heather's grandmother than her mother. I recall too, that around this time, someone tried to update Emily McLaughlin's hairstyle, framing her face with flipped up curls. My mother groaned, "I don't like Jessie's hair. She used to look nice!" I have seen a picture with Emily McLaughlin and John Beradino in character with a chart used as a prop, where Jessie has the "offending" hairstyle. Another memory was the abrupt change dropping the organ music. Yes it was cheesy at times, and sooner or later, it had to go, but my family missed it once it was gone. Our favorite organ cue was the gong sound effect when a character was making a shocking discovery. All these small memories show how seemingly details mattered to loyal viewers. They are nice memories. I won't burden the good readers here with too many more. Thank you for letting me share.

During Tom Donovan's reign as producer and the Pollocks as head writers, my mother completely lost interest in the show and never returned as a regular viewer. I am actually kind of amused when so many viewers that frequently post on the boards here refer to the Webbers as "legacy characters", because the Webbers got off to a very rocky start when the Pollocks wrote them in. It was no wonder the ratings were dive bombing when so many episodes (it seemed) were eaten up by Terri Webber's singing at her club. My mother missed (the recently and abruptly written out) Jane, Howie, Henry, Sharon, Lee, Caroline, and especially Lucille! "I don't know these people," my mother groaned as she watched Terri belting out another tune with brothers Jeff and Rick nearby, and finally, she just gave up on the show for good.

I don't think Martin West got the credit he deserved for his portrayal of Phil. While he had big shoes to fill compared to Phil's original portrayer, by the time Martin West took over the role, the character of Phil had such a big cart full of misdeeds that it is possible that some fans were getting tired of Jessie forgiving Phil and taking him back again and again and again. Martin West's Phil definitely a "love to hate" character. Also, another love to hate character was Augusta McLeod. I am surprised that later writers never brought Augusta and her baby back. There was still a lot of story left to tell there.

I was a child, and my mother was a fan of what we refer to today as "pre-Monty GH". Elizabeth MacRae was a very good actress playing Meg Baldwin. My memory plays tricks on me alot, but I remember reading somewhere that Meg was newly arrived Dr. Lesley Williams's (later Webber) first case at GH, which Lesley consulted on because Meg had severe hypertension. I don't remember even a stitch of that.

I just wanted to mention that I saw the 1964 version of "Once Upon a Mattress" starring Carol Burnett on YouTube, and Bill Hayes is listed as playing a minstrel in the very unique end credits to the show.

Thanks for sharing this clip. I don't know why, but the thing that amused me the most about this snippet was a much younger than we know him today, Bill O'Reilly anchoring the ABC Newsbrief in this clip.

While Bill Eckert was pretty much an unpopular character, if I had to be honest, it was probably the beginning for me for respecting Anthony Geary's work as an actor. I was part of a very small minority who did not like the Luke of the 80s. Since I was one of the viewers who could remember the fairly straight-laced professionalism displayed by doctors and nurses of the GH just a few years before (the GH that still had the organ music), I was never sure how to process the cartoonish Luke of the early 80s. While I have heard that Mr. Geary did not like the Labine take on Luke, I liked him much better under her pen, because it was shown that Luke could actually act like an adult.

This article doesn't answer any of the questions asked directly, but it might provide some clues for anyone in the know: https://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/tbt-leslie-charleson-3/ I do remember reading in the late Christopher Schemmering's Soap Opera Encyclopedia that Irving and Tex Elman were the ones responsible for pairing Laura and Scotty together.

I like Laura Wright as an actress, but I do not like Carly either. I loved LW's portrayal of Lena Spencer. For me, anyway, the character of Carly has almost become too formulaic. There are no surprises with the character anymore. Even Jennifer Bransford's Carly got into a rough and tumble brawl. I don't see today's Carly doing that.

This was the first time I had ever seen that scene. I am no misogynist or advocate of violence towards women, but, maybe I'm the only guy on this site that is not a gentleman. For some reason, I'm not angry at Alan at all after viewing him hit that woman. Based on the little I've seen of the female character in the snippet, I don't like her either.

Thanks for sharing this it was awesome! I realize too that I had the details waaaaaaaayyyyyy wrong about the scene with Lucille. I'll take my lumps for being wrong any day just to see a gem like this!

If I remember correctly, it was not meaty material. It was Lucille calling on the telephone to wish Audrey a happy birthday, and I think there was something so dramatic going on that Audrey forgot about it. I may be wrong on this, though. It was a long time ago.

Thank you for sharing this wonderful photo. I think this photo is probably the happiest I've ever seen of the vets of GH all together in the 1980s, so my interpretation is that everyone was really happy to see Lucille.

The thing about both JFP and Guza, Jr. that has me scratching my head to this day is that both of them were involved in one way or another on GH during its heyday, so one would think that both would have had the highest respect and esteem for GH history. Phelps was there as a music director and Guza, Jr. was part of the writing team during the 80s. So, I was shocked and really saddened by the horrible Heather Webber return where Heather was out to snag Luke (?) and how Rick Webber came back as an unrecognizable demon, only to get killed off. I know that some posters here feel that Guza, Jr. was better than the current writers, but I don't agree. I don't think the current writers have done as much damage, especially with revisionist history, like Guza, Jr. did. The new writers seem to prefer to create new characters, but that's a subject for a different thread.

While some people would call it "taking risks" for ratings, the reason why JFP was problematic as a producer was that she didn't make many of her story decisions with thought about long-term consequences to a show or its future. She made her decisions solely in the moment. Yes, killing off a long-term character can raise ratings during a sweeps period, such as Alan (GH), Maureen (GL), or Frankie (AW). She sacrificed heart and soul of her shows for short-term ratings gains during Sweeps Periods, and I think that is the main reason why so many viewers dislike her, even if she did have her strengths in the production area. I beg some forgiveness for saying what so many posters have said far better than I have here.

I missed most of the early Phelps period, but I'm guessing you're saying the show was still good because, maybe, alot of Quartermaines were still left, as opposed to now?

I likewise caught this episode on Hulu, and I had not seen the episode when it had originally aired. While I do agree about the episode "playing all the beats", for me, the biggest surprise was how bored I actually was with the episode overall. Somehow, whenever I thought of Wendy Riche's tenure on the show, I always remembered it as an era filled with great warmth and respect for characters that viewers really wanted to see. Watching this episode sort of reminded me that in some ways, I have idealized the past much more than I had thought. However, to be fair, by this time, Labine was gone as HW and Guza, Jr. was in, and I was never a big fan of his storytelling. The only "big story" he wrote that I can say I really liked was his re-activation of the Luke/Laura rape story, but not much else.

Thank you for letting me know! I have never seen the scene on YouTube anywhere, but I remember a wonderful scene where Gail ripped Tracy a new one for goading Lee into taking a drink at The Floating Rib. It was Jessie who caught the moment and alerted Gail to Tracy's shenanigans. In my opinion, the Marland era, and the Falken-Smith era before the Ice Princess nonsense began was when GH was at its best under Gloria Monty.

Wow, that Monica/Gail scene was incredible! I don't remember any of this part of the story between Monica and Gail! My question about the scene was, was Douglas Marland writing the show by this time?

I liked Falken-Smith's pre-1981 work, but not so much thereafter. I have heard that the Ice Princess story line was pitched by Associate Head Writer A.J. Russell, against the objections of Falken-Smith. I noticed in later years that Mr. Russell was a story consultant on GH for a long time. I have long wondered, given his affinity for the far-fetched, as evidenced by the Ice Princess story line, if he was the brains behind the Casey the Alien mess years later.

Speaking of unusual outfits, in the early 70s, on GH, Sharon Pinkham drove Lucille nuts by insisting on showing up for work in an orange dress paired with her nurse's cap. Sharon had become an actress at night and found the white nurse's uniform too drab for her. I had seen a picture here somewhere of Sharon wearing that get-up. Does anyone know where the photo is found here?

I remember that casting decision, and it was around the time of Luke and Laura's return in the early 90s. Though I stand totally alone, I LOVED when Sally Struthers played her. Even in the earliest days, there were whole episodes that took place outside the hospital, HOWEVER, I think the major shift took place in the early 80s, when it started to become fashionable on most soaps to have spies, secret agents, outlandish returns from the dead, and cartoon villians. Looking back now, I am wondering if the medicine room went away when Bridget and Jerome Dobson were fired as headwriters. They went through a series of writers thereafter who tried to create an almost entirely different show and knew nothing about what endeared the show to its loyal audience in the past and apparently, did not care. The more things change, the more things stay the same. Maybe so. I will say this. Out of all the Heathers, Heather#1 wins for best hair, though it doesn't show in the clip I shared.

Wow, what a story! However, I would have to disagree with Ms. Monty about Mary O'Brien being her worst actress hire. Though I will usually try to refrain from being critical to actors and actresses, I will make an exception here and list Gloria Monty's worst actress hire as the one who played Jennifer Smith#1, Lisa Marie. She was a beautiful lady, but her portrayal did not click at all for me. I don't think I could have ever accepted Michael Gregory's version of Rick cheating on Lesley with Monica, so the recast of Rick sort of worked in the favor of driving story. The place I seem to remember most from the pre-Monty GH is the little tiny medicine room right next to that big green window backdrop. So much drama occurred in that little room! Sometime after Tom Donovan took over as producer, even though the original 7th floor nurse's station was still being used, the medicine room stopped being used for scenes. I recall missing that, strange as it sounds. With perhaps, a bit of Veronica Lake thrown in!

There is a scene with Heather#1 at around 10:05 in the clip above.