What are your first clear memories of your soaps?

[leevo64]

WHOA. I wish I could've seen that.

My first soap memory is from GH also: Stone asks Robin to go to the window and he sees her just before passing on. Then Sonny comes in and realizes Stone's gone. They don't make em like that anymore.

[KSlater]

AMC - Opal forcing Jenny to work at the Foxy Loxy. Jessie's arrival in Pine Valley and how he drove his aunt and uncle nuts. Jenny and Jessie's first meeting. Liza's first arrival in Pine Valley. Erica constantly being mean to her mother Mona LOL! Brooke being kidnapped by some guy who kept playing "Every Breath You Take" by the Police over and over again.

GH - Luke and Laura dancing in the department store. Monica and Alan fighting. Monica's affair with Rick. Alan's affair with Susan. Nurse Ann constantly wondering if she would or wouldn't sleep with Jeff Webber. Heather's return. My earliest memory (when I was probably about three or four years old and sitting on my mom's lap) is watching Nurse Jessie and Dr. Tom Hardy.

Days - Renee finding out she was Stefano's daughter. Liz and Neil's affair. The Salem Strangler. Roman sleeping on the floor in Marlena's apartment.

OLTL - Marco/Mario/Karen. Karen always in some state of distress LOL! Vicki and Dorian constantly at odds. Tina being a wild child and an evil little witch.

[reallyhateskateonlost]

My first soap memory was Dark Shadows. I was at my next door neighbors house and she asked me if I had ever seen this show. I'm axiously waiting for Johnny Depp in Dark Shadows.

AMC-Tara and Chuck were in the hospital cafeteria talking about something then Erica Kane walked in...

GH-There was a tornado and Leslie was running around the hospital...GH was going to get cancelled

Santa Barbara-Cruzzzzzzzzzzz

OLTL-Karen the hooker Marco the pimp

ATWT-Kim and John were married

[Shawn]

Steve and Kayla's wedding on Days. That's when I was five and fell in love with a young Christie Clark (ex-Carrie)

[Pine Charles]

AMC:

Janet luring Natalie into the woods to show off her "new look" -- and then the two of them fighting on the ground, and not knowing who was who.

[marla0518]

Dark Shadows - very first episode 06/27/1966 scary!!! and the music was different then other soap opera music

One Life to Live - 1968 - the rich Lord's, the working class Woleck's and the love story of Meredith Lord and Larry Wolek and the wonderful Gillian Spencer as Victoria Lord!

Another World - 1964 - The Matthews family of Jim and Mary with their children Russ, Pat and virginal goody goody Alice. Pat Mathews had an illegal abortion, something that was NEVER talked about on TV or in most homes. Ada Davis and her daughter Rachel, the working class mother and daughter played by Constance Ford and the one and only Robin Strasser. The second year of the show brought us George Reinholt as Steve Frame, who fell in love with virginal Alice and was having sex with Rachel. Rachel married Dr. Russ Matthews, but he was always working at the hospital, when Steve and Alice annouced their engagement, Rachel crashed the party and annouced she was pregnant by Steve.

ahhh memories of when soaps where grand and no spoilers, spumors or rumors in sight!! we watched faithfully everyday and we were shocked and amazed at the storylines, there was rape, murder, adultery and sex! we just never knew when it was going to happen!

[LeClerc]

AMC:

Palmer hiding a casette in a giant globe in the living room at Cortlandt Manor. I believe now that what was on the tape had something to do with Natalie and Silver Kane's death? I used to love when, in private, Palmer would open up the globe and play the tape. I just remember the whole thing fascinated me.

[SFK]

Those were good times, that s/l is an early yet later soap memory for me too! I remember the scene where Silver burst into Natalie's apartment and they fought over the gun and Silver got shot and killed. Natalie hid dead Silver in Timmy's toy chest!! Palmer came over and found her in there, I can still see him down on one knee looking at Silver then looking up at Natalie. He dumped the body in the pond on his property (Dixie later found her while she was swimming, "I keep my eyes open so I can see snakes!"), and of course Palmer was holding this over Natalie's head the whole time. That's what the tape was about, I think it was Natalie's answering machine tape that recorded the whole thing, it totally would have cleared Natalie from the jump. I think this was before Natalie got raped by Ross, that's another crazy early memory!

[quartermainefan]

This was some of AMC at it's peak. But I want to say this was after the rape. As I remember it (in the single greatest episode of a soap I ever saw) Ross raped Natalie, Palmer witness this, threw her out of the house because he assumed it was consensual, Julie saw and ran away, her birth mother ran after Julie but fell down a flight of stairs, and I think in the same episode Mark feared he was HIV or had a coke habit or something. It was Dynasty level drama in daytime!

Anyway, I think that is when Natalie moved into wherever and decided she wanted Jeremy (but Silver did, then Palmer blackmailed Natalie with the info, got caught, went to jail and that is where he met Mr U and started to become more of a comedy character. His last shot at greatness came when Adam stole JR from Dixie and confined her to an institution, so Palmer being even meaner than Adam bought out the entire Chandler empire and bankrupted Adam into a stroke--and then laughed over his stricken body.

James Mitchell and Palmer Courtlandt are two unsung heroes of AMC. People forget just how mean Palmer was and yet frontburning for years starring in one great story after another. Easily my favorite character in all of soaps ever. It's a shame he basically died almost 20 years ago when Opal came on the show and ruined him totally.

[Jikk77]

Bobbie/Tony/Carly story got me hooked onto GH

[Greg's GL]

I actually have two of them, both from GL:

1. Roger married to Holly and he rapes her when she tries to leave him for Ed. Brilliantly done. MZ was mesmerizing in those scenes.

2. Rita realizing that she knows Roger from years before in another town. She is raped by him and is scared shitless in her new home that Ed built for them when Roger comes knocking on the door. Great stuff.

There are others, like Rita in the Hall of Mirrors being stalked by Roger. Bat [!@#$%^&*] crazy "Mom" Lucille and her daugher Amanda/Ben.

I weep for yesterday's GL. What a great fuckin show it was.

[DRW50]

I'd love to see that stuff with Rita.

There are so many great moments in this thread I'd love to see.

[LeClerc]

Thanks for adding some context to that memory....yes, I remember now it being an answering machine recording of the confrontation and that there was a body found in a pond.

A great Palmer/Natalie scene (although I wonder if today people would be bitching about the physical violence and e-mailing the network demanding that the headwriter be fired):

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[SFK]

You're probably right about the rape happening first, that was such as... and I hate to use this overused word, but *surreal* episode. What made it so bizarre or uncomfortable to me was that there seemed to be a rather long sequence with no audio, not a montage, but like the Stuart murder sequence... only MUCH more gothic and disturbing. Sort of reminds me of an early GH memory I have, I think it was Robert Scorpio but I am not at all sure, but someone (a Cassadine?) released a scorpion into his bedroom with his wife/girlfriend and eerie music played as we watched this scorpion make its way across the floor, to the bed, and it finally stung him in the back of the neck and he grabbed his neck in agony. That and Luke and Holly making love to "Baby Come to Me" are pretty much my only early GH memories.

Oh man, Mr. U., I bet so many people have forgotten about or never even knew about him, a lot of that must have happened over the summer when I was home from school because I remember a lot of that. I remember liking him, and then he tried to kill Palmer to get Opal, so weird... These were the Cluck-Cluck Chicken Shack days.

[ChitHappens]

Karen Wolek admitting on the witness stand that she was a prostitute in from of Llanview and her doctor husband, Larry Wolek.

ANDREA