More drama at GH. Gloria Monty is not mentioned specifically but once the show hit #1 and became a pop culture phenomenon, she seemed to be more at odds with headwriters. Remember she tried that no headwriter policy at one point. This time the Corringtons bailed after a brief stint.
THE JOURNAL NEWS, SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1982
General Hospital needs transfusion by Gary Deeb
John William Corrington is a respected novelist and scholar. He’s also one of television’s best writers of daytime soap opera. Partnered with his wife Joyce, Corrington was the creator and head writer of “Texas” and the head writer of “Search for Tomorrow.” And until this week, the Corringtons were the newly installed head writers of "General Hospital,” the trouble-plagued ABC soap that’s been losing viewers for the last few months. The husband-and wife team had been hired to pump some spirit into a serial that had lost most of its energy. But after only three months at the writing helm of “General Hospital,” the Corringtons have called it quits. Corrington said he’s frustrated by the constant meddling of ABC bureaucrats and fed up with “having to be an administrator instead of a writer."
So as the Corringtons wrap it up and head home to New Orleans, they join the long parade of writers who have shuffled in and out of “General Hospital” since last summer. Once among the most spectacular moneymakers in TV history, “General Hospital" now is in very deep trouble. The show is creatively bankrupt and has lost 3.5 million viewers since Christmas-time. That represents nearly 25 percent of the program’s former viewership. Many observers believe it’s only a matter of months before the show gets bumped off its four-year spot at the head of daytime audience ratings.
As a result, ABC executives are panicking. Corrington describes them as “frothing with madness" at the prospect that the $150 million a year in net profits generated by “General Hospital” may be in jeopardy “You can’t imagine how desperate things are - the show is totally out of control,” Corrington said. The confusion started last fall, when actress Genie Francis (who played the part of Laura Spencer) announced that she was leaving the soap to work for CBS. Suddenly, producer Gloria Monty had to dream up a way to get rid of the pivotal character of Laura, whose storybook romance with Luke Spencer (played by Tony Geary) had been the key to catapulting “General Hospital” to dizzying heights of popularity and media hype The trouble was, nobody could agree on how Laura should be done away with. So the program “vamped” for months, forcing the writers and actors to dance around the unexplained disappearance of the lead female character. First, Luke and Laura were hexed by a vague “curse” (delivered by Elizabeth Taylor in a foolish cameo role); later a mysterious stranger with hypnotic powers arrived on the scene and Laura disappeared, and then a lookalike for Laura (also named Laura) popped up to confuse things even further. The show’s writers were ordered to churn out daily scripts and to keep everything up in the air until Monty and ABC could get their act together and agree on a coherent storyline.
When Corrington proposed a plausible scenario to explain Laura's demise, he said it was rejected without explanation. As things now stand, Corrington said, Laura's death will be explained away simply as “an unfortunate accident,” totally ignoring all those red herrings “General Hospital” has been dishing out for months. Even Jackie Smith, ABC's vice president for daytime programs, is enraged at the idea of such a cop-out and finds it creatively unacceptable. Indeed, like the Corringtons, an increasing number of viewers are catching on to the miserable “GH” storyline.
Angered at being treated like brain less sponges, many have switched over to The Guiding Light ” on CBS, while millions more simply have turned off their TV sets entirely
By
Paul Raven ·
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