GH: Classic Thread

[Dion]

Once Phil came back in 1968 after almost a year away, they seemed to have never picked it up again as Phil remarried Jessie and became entangled with Polly's problems and later got involved with Diana Taylor (nee Maynard) etc while Audrey ended up married to Tom Baldwin and later Jim Hobart.

Edited February 9 by Dion

[DRW50]

Thanks. Feels like a bit of a waste, especially as it seems like they ran out of strong story for Audrey by the point they brought Jim in.

[Vee]

Why they kept Audrey and Steve apart so long is beyond me. By the time you get to Jim Hobart (or Tom Baldwin's return) it just seems like burnt embers.

[GymnastGuy]

In 1969 the show let go of Rachel Ames as Audrey.  A year later they brought her back.

[DRW50]

Such a bizarre decision, especially as I imagine she was very popular with fans. It helps explain why the writing for her seems negative in some of these episodes.

[titan1978]

Thanks for finding another lost gem @DRW50

I cannot get over how many treasures we have gotten from classic soaps this year. As someone else mentioned, we may actually see Monica and Alan’s first wedding if all these classic eps keep being found! I have to believe someone has it!

[Vee]

I knew she was gone but I didn't know why. So strange.

[Dion]

Are you sure you don't mean 1968? Audrey was gone from March 1968 to January 1969, having been written out to help war orphans in Vietnam. She was on nearly all of 1969.

Actually that explains why they never picked up with Phil and Audrey, as she left only a couple of episodes after Phil returned.

It probably was an attempt to return Steve to being the lead "eligible bachelor married to medicine" archetype that he was originally intended as. So he got a series of relationships and flirtations that didn't last long while Audrey got punished with misery marriages. Tbh they probably did marry them off too soon the first time round (after only a year). Once that was well and truly exhausted they put them back together.

Edited February 10 by Dion

[Vee]

Oh, I didn't realize they got married that first go-round. My mistake. The whole Tom Baldwin return in the mid-'70s seems ridiculous to me though.

How many doomed or dead love interests did Lee go through before Gail BTW? Not counting Meg. IIRC both his wife and teenage stepson died before Gail.

[Dion]

Well there was Jessie of course, whom Lee was dating when she fell pregnant after being raped by Phil and offered to raise the child (Nancy) as his own but they had already broken up by the time Nancy died (after struggling in the hospital for three months).

Then Meg of course.

And while married to Meg, there was Iris, Meg's old school friend who was an alcoholic, ran away from town several times and almost married Lee's brother Tom but jilted him by not showing up at the wedding. I don't think Lee and Iris ever had a full-blown affair or even a ONS and Iris seems to have abruptly been written out after three years when Lee and Meg reconciled following Scotty's kidney transplant.

Brooke, Meg's stepdaughter tried to come onto Lee when she returned following her divorce from Noel Clinton, Meg's ex-fiance. Brooke was later murdered.

Then there was Mary, a nurse Lee dated while Meg was institutionalised. She had an abusive ex-husband.

and then finally Carolyn, the adoption agent Lee married. Her son Bobby was college-aged and had been misdiagnosed with a fatal illness. Bobby eventually married his girlfriend and they were expecting a baby when they were all written out with Lee and Carolyn in a happy ending. Only for that happy ending to end in tragedy when both Bobby and Carolyn were killed off in a boating accident when Lee was brought back to the show. Happily, the wife and child were left alive (I don't think they were in the accident), bucking early GH's trend of killing babies off left right and centre.

Which reminds me that Lee was also apparently married in backstory and had a son Chuck who died onscreen in 1965 just as Lee and Jessie were starting to date.

 

[Vee]

Grim! No wonder he drank.

[AMCOLTLLover]

Now I can see why Lee actually really hates Laura for breaking Scotty’s heart LOL

[vetsoapfan]

Thanks for the heads-up, @DRW50.

It's always a nostalgic pleasure to see old soap faves from decades ago.

I adored Jessie Brewer so much.

[GymnastGuy]

1968 it is then.

[titan1978]

Steve and Audrey’s reunion may have even taken longer. Denise Alexander said GH hired her to play a doctor, and the only other thing they really had locked down was she was going to be with Steve. Once they cast her they decided it didn’t work the way they planned so they moved away from that. One of her only issues at that time was they didn’t really have a character for her and it took them months of Lesley airing to figure it out.

They really kept people apart back then. I think the assertion that married couples are boring is really a flaw in their writing. I don’t care how great Bill Bell and other giants of the genre were- married couples are capable of being written well for. It’s kind of sad that the prevailing thought is that they are so boring, stabile, and stale. Did they all think this about their own marriages?