GH:- Laura and Jackie

[Andrew]

I am going true every episode of 1982 on GH, and i am really suprised at how big roles these two young women back then had, anyone remember the sisters they played Jackie and Laura Templeton?

[applcin]

I remember. Janine was the other blonde Laura that went missing around the same time as Laura Spencer. I think TPTB thought a lookalike would suffice for the hugely popular Genie. The Jackie/Luke thing got switched PDQ to Jackie/Robert. I'm thinking fans weren't ready yet to see Luke have a romance but then Holly came along.

[Cheap21]

Why did Genie Francis leave that time? How long was she goen and how long did she stay once she came back

[JackPeyton]

Robert & Jackie were great

[Vee]

WEHT the Templeton sisters?

Wasn't Laura Templeton supposed to have been mistaken for Laura somehow?

[applcin]

I'm going by memory here so it may not be 100% accurate but I'm thinking I'm pretty close.

I thought Genie left basically to pursue other opportunities. I think she did the "Bare Essence" miniseries right after that.

I believe Laura was gone 2 years or so. Laura went missing after being stalked back and forth from her modeling gigs by this hot looking guy with hypnotic (literally, hypnotic) eyes and was presumed dead. They found her boot in the water. She had been stalked by David Gray, a Helena Cassadine flunkie and he had presumably killed her or caused her death. During these couple of years, after Luke had grieved for Laura, there was a bit of a thing with Jackie but then Holly was introduced and he fell in love with her. Well, actually, he went up in the mountains, saw her swimming naked in a lake, they had sex and later fell in love, lol. Then Luke was presumed killed in an avalanche, Holly was about to be deported (she had been forced/threatened by her family into some criminal activities) and she married Robert for safety's sake but they had fallen in love by the time Luke returned from the dead. So Luke was "single" and the newly minted mayor when Laura came back. But her creepy "husband", Stavros, followed her. He tied Luke up and was going to rape Laura, Luke struck him with a bedpost, they ran off, Stavros stumbled down the mayor's mansion stairs and died (an actual "we saw it on screen" death, for what that turned out to be worth later on, lol). (Sidenote: Genie was dating the actor playing Stavros at that time, John Martinuzzi, which was a little weird, lol).

BTW, GH was making a few pop songs very popular during this time. There was Christopher Cross' "Think of Laura" and then Patti Austin's "Baby, Come To Me" was Luke and Holly's theme.

Anyway, I don't think L & L stayed very long after that. I remember some involvement in Texas with Frisco and Felicia and the Aztec treasure, and Lucky being conceived around this time. But then L & L both were gone.

In the early 90s, Tony Geary returned to play Luke's cousin, Bill Eckert, which lasted a couple of years, until Genie returned, TG resumed the Luke role and Bill was killed off. Genie stayed until Laura went crazy and Tony is obviously still there.

Yeah, there was something going about 2 missing Lauras and how they looked alike...but I think also that Laura Templeton had some kind of scheme going on with her boyfriend, Mel, and David Gray, so she wasn't a total victim of things like Laura Spencer was. I'm not too sure what happened to her. I think Jackie left after her boyfriend, Robert, married Holly.

[quartermainefan]

Hi,

I am trying to remember. Laura T was missing also, and somehow evil David Gray and his uncharismatic assistant (who was a photographer or sculptor or something) were after a magical sword. This somehow meshed with Jackie searching for her sister. When that got cleared up Jackie got dumped by Robert and became a nasty Lois Lane always out for a scoop and she lived with Tiffany and Heather for some reason. She had an ambitious editor also. This was a pretty good time for GH as the Webbers and Blackie and Noah and whatnot were around during this time.

[DevotedToAMC]

I heard it had to do with her needing to take time off to take care of a cocaine addiction (or some drug addiction).

[Sedrick]

Two main reasons for Genie leaving at that time...first of all the poor thing was totally exhausted, having pretty much been appearing daily on the show for several years at a time when the daily taping schedule kept expanding to more and more grueling hours thanks to Gloria Monty's revolutionizing GH's production; second, Genie and Tony Geary were at the time THE HOTTEST STARS in ALL of television, and NBC lured her with a very rich development deal, and the resulting series was BARE ESSENSE.

As for the Templeton sisters, it was Demi Moore as spunky reporter Jackie who got all the buzz (landing on several magazine covers PRIOR to her debut) because the initial plans were to pair her up with Tony Geary, but those plans were dropped fairly quickly and instead Jackie was paired with Scorpio, Laura T. with Blackie.