SweetPea36

So you're resurrecting the Rappaports for this one? That should be interesting. Viki and Clint are in this one. Good. I'm thrilled that Kendall is dead-dead, not soap opera dead. Erica Kane in NH being a co-host? How will a narcissist like Erica handle that? Happy to see Blair without all of her co-dependents. I'm looking forward to more. Thanks.

I think I wanted to like Emily more than I actually did. I never did warm up to NL in the role.

Sorry. I misread the question.

Awww, I loved Stone. Stone and BJ's heart were two of GH's best stories.

Louella and Hedda got too big for their britches when they realized they could break careers with their insider knowledge about sexual conduct. At least they were a thorn in the side of the movie studios, which is more than I can say for their successors today. I agree with you. With a stronger soap press, networks, EPs and HWs would have been called out for bad behavior years ago. Instead, they were allowed to get by with it and now we're watching the death of a favorite genre.

They were the closest a viewer got to knowing about stars' personal lives in those pre-Internet days. I sometimes forget how much things have changed since the days of Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons and Sheila Graham. The soap rags now are unreadable. I doubt they ever publish anything the networks don't want them to say because they're dependent on the networks for their livelihood. It's a shame when they could be a real source of information for readers.

Thanks, CarlD2. I had forgotten Modern Screen. I don't have any idea when it went away, do you?

Strange is a charitable way to describe Judith Chapman's Ginny. I don't know if it was Chapman, who is a tic factory, or if they never figured out who they wanted Ginny to be. I mostly wanted her to go away. This is what a commenter on YT said about the Luke/Emma Luts scenes: "I think those scenes are from right after Laura's presumed death in 1982. Luke started seeing Laura in different places and he and Robert went looking for her. Actually it wasn't the real Laura that Luke saw, but holograms planted by the evil David Gray who had kidnapped Laura and shipped her to the Helena Cassadine's island in Greece." Emma Luts was on GH for three years, so there were many more scenes with her. I think she was a good Luke foil and they used her at various times. As always, GH threw away the baby with the bath water. The show definitely declined. There were characters like Heather and Scott who were played by good actors who could have been put to good use to help drive other stories. I was never impressed with Lesley or Blackie, so that wasn't much of a loss.

Merrie Lynn Ross played Emma Luts when GH was trying to make Luke an exciting antihero Philip Marlow kind of guy. Jeanna Michaels was Connie Atkins/Constance Townsend and was thrown in to make Robert look more exciting.

She reminded me of Thelma Ritter, but mostly in a good way.

Of course Monica and Rick's great love story was trash. Monica was total lowlife trash, so how could it have been any different? GH worked at redeeming her for a time and she has become a Carly-level hypocrite now, but she was as bad as Carly back when she was younger. One of the things I liked about pre-John Ingle Edward was that he loved to remind Monica about her past. I loved Sikking on Hill Street Blues, one of my favorite shows of all times. I was never quite sure what his purpose on GH was supposed to be. He was an alcoholic doctor who was enabled by Audrey and then when he sobered up he got ugly and turned on her, if I recall. He was gone shortly after that in one of those big character purges. I think it was a case where the actor was better than the character so they probably hated to cut him loose. I also think he and Rachel Ames played off each other well. Audrey always did that thing where she looked like your best friend's church lady mother, but she was tough as nails underneath that. Didn't she and Steve get all hot and heavy as soon as Hobart was gone? I liked the organ music on soaps. I hate that wheezy asthmatic sounds organs make, but for some reason it worked with soap operas. Given a choice between Starr's singing and a wheezy old organ, I would choose the organ any day. I'd rather listen to an organ than Dave Koz' sexaphone.

I know it's blasphemy on this site, but I never liked Lesley or Denise Alexander. When she came on, it was usually my cue to go do the dishes or something. Because of that, I probably should not talk about some of her stories. I honestly don't remember a demonic fetus, but why not? Watching the YTs of the L&L rape and seeing some of the scenes with Alexander's Lesley and Chris Robinson's Rick, I was reminded of how awful I always thought they were. Although I generally liked the Lesley character, Denise had some acting tics and weaknesses that always bothered me. I never minded Laura as much, although I never thought she was very interesting and I always wondered why so many men were willing to jump into the volcano for her. Vapid doesn't blow my skirt up. Terri's only purpose was to deliver the reveal about Steve Hardy being Jeff's father, wasn't it? I think they tried to do a big romantic story for her but it kind of fizzled and I don't remember why. I was working at the time and didn't get to see GH as often, so I missed some of her story. I remember she was standard-issue pretty, not much else. I was fine with bringing on the Webbers because I prefer a family-centered soap and it was time for Steve Hardy to have a family to anchor him. For the first years when the hospital stories were big drama and everybody was playing musical chairs and pairing off with each other, it was different but eventually that wasn't solid enough. Emily being an alcoholic explains a lot of things that always puzzled me about her. Who was the husband she was supposedly pining for, Robert Lansing? I saw a tape ages ago of John Beradino talking about Emily, I think when GH finally said Jessie had died. At the time I wondered why Beradino sounded so sympathetic but her problems explain that. It was probably painful for him to work that closely with her knowing what was going on with her and then watching her be let go. He was probably worried about her. Of course his character had that brazen temptress Audrey to fill her shoes. What I always heard about Gloria Monty is that she was a huge control freak who did not work and play well with others. It was Gloria's way or the wrong way. She had no use for anyone who preceded or succeeded her, so she probably wrote them all off without a second thought. It was all about Gloria. She locked horns with everybody and was quite disrespectful of anyone who did not agree with her.

No wonder Marland and Monty locked horns.

I was okay when they cleared out that bunch of characters. It got too busy for a while there, with too many characters who didn't really belong and had a tenuous connection. I come from a long line of women who love soaps. My grandmothers used to listen to radio soaps, so I tend to have a preference for the old family oriented shows and I thought they were diluting that too much. GH was tighter after that, so it was good. I had a major crush on Roy Thinnes' Phil. Anyone trying to replace him would have needed to bring in a tub of water and walk on it before I would have totally accepted him, even though I knew Thinnes wanted to leave. To be fair, West did a good job in the role. His only major fault was that he wasn't Thinnes. I far preferred Starett because I didn't like how they changed Diana but I can understand why they did it. Bundy was better at who Diana became. I'm not sure Starett could have played that. An online friend and I have some lively arguments over that hussy Audrey taking Steve away from Jessie. It gets pretty funny sometimes. I only found out very recently that Emily McLaughlin is believed to have been an alcoholic. That was probably her attraction to Jeffrey Hunter, her last husband. She was also his last wife because he died not long after they were married. That also may be why Jessie Brewer disappeared from GH and was only dragged out of mothballs a couple of times a year. They never wrote her out.

The first day it aired. And you? You've obviously been watching for a while. I'm amazed at how well some of you remember the old P&G soaps especially.