GH: Classic Thread

[Contessa Donatella]

https://archive.org/details/soapworld00lagu

SOAP WORLD by Robert LaGuardia has some very early story descriptions. This is a copy in the Internet Archive that is borrowable, like a library book, for free. If you don't have an acct there, you'll need to register for a free one. Then just log in, click BORROW & begin to read.

One caveat: It's been years since I looked at any of LaGuardia's books. No idea if they contain errors. 

There's also quite a lot about Gloria Monty "saving the show". That, of course, is later, 1978 & following, but I mention it in case you're interested. 

Hope this helps! 

[janea4old]

May 2025: Stephanie Sloane interviews Kirsten Storms about all of Maxie's romances in the past 20 years:
https://www.swooon.com/gallery/general-hospital-maxie-romances-spinelli-johnny-nathan-kirsten-storms/

[MissPalmer]

Thank you very much!!!! I really appreciate it!!! I also have read the GH coffee table book from the 90s!!!

[janea4old]

CurlyQGrl has DVDs of some episodes, that they can sell, but that doesn't matter.
What is helpful: they describe the scenes on the tapes, so you can read that as recaps without ordering anything.
Doesn't really give storylines, though, which is what you asked for.  Here's the links anyhow.

full menu
https://www.angelfire.com/tv/curlyqgrl/menu.html

GH page
https://www.angelfire.com/tv/curlyqgrl/gh/menu.html

GH 1960s
https://www.angelfire.com/tv/curlyqgrl/gh/eps/gheps1960s.htm

Edited May 12 by janea4old

[Contessa Donatella]

Yes, Stacy does this both for early DAYS & early GH. I have written some for her, for DAYS. But just one tiny point & that is that she only deals with DVDs. I realize that is not the point of your posting but it seemed the right thing to clarify. I know that you know that video tapes is past, not present.

Edited May 12 by Contessa Donatella

[MissPalmer]

Thank you very much for the information!!! All the episodes that person sells are the ones which appear or have appeared in youtube, and some have wrong dates. 

Due to that, I guess some people, who have rare and inedite episodes, refuse to upload them in internet, because then, others make money.

I hope ABC create a place in the net where we can see all the available episodes they must have, as Retro tv did with the Doctors!!!!

Retro tv did an awesome job!!!! Have a look :

 

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Edited May 12 by MissPalmer

[Contessa Donatella]

Well Disney owns the archive of all ABC soaps plus Santa Barbara. There are no known plans for Disney to do anything at all with the archive. Some of us are very excited because GH has done modern digitizing of original scenes of young Lucky & young Liz to use as flashbacks now & the past few months.

Jerome Dobson last year teased that Santa Barbara might be streamed sometime. It had been tied up in some litigation & that is over now. The reason Disney owns it: it was owned by New World. FOX bought them. Disney bought all of FOX.

The people I know who have episodes that they do not upload do it because they themselves sell not as you are suggesting that others might sell. They have a cottage industry that they are protecting. Now I am not speaking of Stacy. All she charges is to cover costs. And she doesn't in any way try to restrict episodes from being widely shared with fans.

Edited May 13 by Contessa Donatella

[Hunnibunni4447]

Why do I feel like (or remember possible

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) Mark Dante operated on Jeff? Also, I was under the impression that Jeff shot himself accidentally. In his drunken stupor he saw Rick and Monica together and he thought hevwas shooting at them.

[Paul Raven]

GH 1976 . A transition as the show went to 45 mins and the revamp continued.

From the Daytime serial Newletter 

PT 1

Since 1963 General Hospital, the story of the staff of the seventh floor at General Hospital in the town of Port Charles, has endeavored to show the personal problems and emotional conflicts faced by the members of a medical team, who must at all times be ready to save lives.

Dr. Steve Hardy, his staff’s source of emotional support and advice as well as their professional chief,
is increasingly upset by the marital problems of Dr. Jim Hobart and his wife, Audrey, Steve was once married to Audrey and still has strong although concealed feelings for her, and he resents Hobart’s futile efforts to stop drinking and straighten out his life, as his failures are dragging Audrey down with him.
Dr. Leslie Faulkner is married to business tycoon Cameron Faulkner, who recently financed a free clinic for her at General Hospital. But Leslie’s professional life has been overshadowed by the shocking discovery that her illegitimate child, born when Leslie was a college student, didn’t die at birth, as she had been told, but rather, on her domineering father’s instructions,
was substituted for the stillborn child of a Mrs. Barbara Vining. Cam has helped Leslie locate the child but is definitely resentful of the intrusion of another focus for Leslie’s love into their lives. 
Young med student Bobby Chandler has just married nurse Samantha Livingstone but is concealing his recent discovery that his life-insurance application was rejected because of a suspicious blood-test result.
Psychiatrist Peter Taylor has reconciled his emotional upheaval at the discovery that Martha, the child of his wife, Diana, was fathered by the late Dr. Phil Brewer (by rape) and that Diana will not be able to  have another child, as a hysterectomy was necessary after Martha’s birth. Diana suffers feelings of inadequacy, believing she is beneath Peter socially, as she was a waitress before successfully completing nurses’training.

Nurse Jessie Brewer, who was married to Phil years ago, has tried to show Diana that her present accomplishments have overcome her disadvantaged origins.

 

Dr. Leslie Faulkner, driven by the recent knowledge that her baby daughter was taken from her at birth, has learned that thirteen-year-old Laura Vining is that child. When Laura’s mother expresses concern at the attention and gifts that a total stranger is showering upon her daughter, Laura points out that Leslie is not really a stranger—the news magazines are always carrying articles about international business magnate Cameron Faulkner and his doctor wife. Barbara is even more upset when she realizes that Cameron Faulkner is having his employees check on them.
Cam himself is upset by Leslie’s preoccupation with the girl, and warns Leslie that many lives could be irreparably harmed if Laura finds out she’s illegitimate. Leslie retains an attorney, Curtis Baxter, whose reputation doesn’t stress ethics. He advises her to sue for custody if a personal appeal to the Vinings to relinquish the child doesn’t produce results.
Barbara’s fears are more than realized when she returns Leslie’s extravagant Christmas gift to Laura—an electric typewriter—and Leslie, pressed by Barbara to explain her interest in Laura, reveals that she just recently learned that her own father bribed her nurse to switch her newborn daughter for Barbara’s stillborn child, to “protect” his unwed daughter.
At home, Barbara tells her husband, Jason, that she didn’t see their baby until the day after she was born, as the delivery was long and difficult, and she now remembers that Nurse Roach was somewhat reluctant to hand her the child.

But the biggest fear they  face is that Laura might somehow learn that her parents weren’t married when she was born, as Jason was on military service in the Pacific. Baxter serves the Vinings with a writ of habeas corpus, requiring them to have Laura in court on the specified day. Cam assures them he will make sure there is no painful press coverage and that all efforts are taken to prevent Laura from being emotionally upset. The Vinings then find that they must submit to blood tests to determine whose blood groupings match Laura’s.
In court, Leslie again painfully explains the circumstances of her birth and the recent revelations by a dying Nurse Roach which led to her search for Laura. The Vinings are horrified to learn that the blood tests have revealed that neither of their blood types matches Laura’s. Medically this means that Jason can’t be Laura’s father—but Barbara could still be
her mother. But Barbara has assured Jason that he is the only man she has ever been intimate with.

Faced with this incontrovertible evidence, the Vinings realize that Leslie’s claim has basis; and since Barbara is too emotional to tell Laura what they have learned, Jason tells her. Laura is told she will have to decide whether she wants to make her home with the Vinings or with
the woman she has just been told is her real mother. When Laura level headedly replies that she doesn’t know Leslie well enough to make this decision, the judge rules favorably on a one-month temporary custody order for the Faulkners and explains that Laura may decide then.
Cam is upset at the way Leslie uses this month to give Laura a whirlwind introduction to the jet-set life, managing to quickly arrange a round-the-country tour with parties and social events including movie stars and other celebrities. He warns that Leslie is trying to win
Laura by the material things she can give her and that she is obviously counting on Laura’s deciding to live with them. 
At the end of the month Laura is still unable to come to a decision, so the temporary custody is extended for another month. But Laura is now torn between the glamor of the Faulkners’ life and her love for the Vinings, who are forbidden by the court order to contact her during the decision period. Leslie is spending so much time with Laura that her medical career is suffering, but she tells Cam it doesn’t matter, as she is planning to leave medicine to devote her full attention to her daughter. Cam warns her that she’s risking heartbreak by assuming she will get permanent custody of Laura, and again suggests she is trying to buy the girl’s love with possessions. Leslie retorts that Cam’s objections seem to stem from the selfish
desire to have their life return to the glittering comfort they had when there were just the two of them to consider. 
But when Laura falls ill with influenza meningitis she deliriously calls for her “real mother,” rejecting Leslie’s presence. Leslie is horrified when Barbara shows up, summoned by Cam, and demands to see her daughter. Leslie tells Dr. Steve Hardy she’s going to lose Laura and it’s Cam who is taking her away.
In Laura’s best interest, Barbara and Leslie join forces to help the child’s recovery. But her doctors are puzzled when her symptomatic fever and convulsions continue after the meningitis is overcome. Leslie’s emotional condition isn’t helped when Cam insists ‘that her constant vigil over Laura is obsessive and she’s neglecting him. He makes it clear that she
is going to have to choose. Needing help with these pressures, she consults psychiatrist Peter Taylor, who helps her see Cam’s side, and they make up. But Peter’s probing has made Leslie face another truth that Laura’s illness may be psychosomatic, due to the
choice she must make.

As Leslie faces the growing realization that she is the cause of her daughter’s illness and she may have to give her up to make her well, Cam secretly visits the judge and asks that he decide to return Laura to the Vinings in order to save Leslie from the guilt of giving up her daughter herself.
:

[Paul Raven]

GH 1976 Pt 2

Medical student Bobby Chandler’s bone-marrow test results are in, and Steve Hardy has the difficult task of telling him he has Malenkov’s Disease, a rare and fatal blood disease. Bobby, newly married Samantha, hears his one-year-maximum prognosis and insists that Steve not tell anyone, as he has to have time to work out his own feelings. To cover up the treatments he’ll be starting immediately, Bobby, with Steve, decides to tell his family he has mononucleosis. His wife and his mother, Caroline, accept this story, but attorney Lee Baldwin senses it’s much more and presses Bobby for the truth, then promising to keep Bobby’s secret.

Even though Bobby moves into a state of remission, Lee realizes the gravity of the problem and moves his wedding to Caroline forward, assuring Bobby that he will always be there for both Caroline and Sammi. But Bobby’s remission is short-lived, and his symptoms are now more severe, requiring frequent whole-blood transfusions. And a new experimental drug he is taking holds the threat of serious side effects. Sammi learns that Bobby’s attempt to buy life insurance was turned down and, herself a nurse, realizes that his symptoms are more severe than mono. She tries to press Leslie for the truth, but Leslie can’t violate a patient’s confidence. She does, however, pressure Bobby to let Sammi share is with him. Bobby insists that he can’t; he won’t send her into mourning while he’s still there to watch. But Sammi, angry at being treated like a child, presses the issue and manages to find out the truth. She then asks Lee to convince Bobby that his mother must be told so they can all show him the love they have for him before it’s too late and they have only  regrets for what went unsaid. Lee agrees, and after the wedding he protectively tells Caroline the truth.

Sammi then tells Bobby that she is pregnant, news that he receives with very mixed emotions. Steve hits an optimistic note when he tells Bobby that a new breakthrough in leukemia chemotherapy may help him in his fight for life. This new treatment calls for more extensive testing, and Steve is overjoyed to find that there has been a variation in Bobby’s condition which indicates that he -doesn’t have Malenkov’s Disease after all. His condition, while serious, can be successfully treated  extensive drug therapy in New York, and Lee quickly arranges for all of them to move there so they can support Bobby during the extensive treatment and long recovery. 

Dr. Jim Hobart and his wife, Audrey, are continuing their therapy sessions, trying to decide if they have a future together. Audrey admits she has stayed with Jim only because he needed her while he was drinking, and he in turn admits that he knows Audrey married him not out of love but out of gratitude for saving her son Tommy’s life in surgery. When Jim finally tells Audrey that he created his own alcoholic abyss and blamed her only because she was conveniently close, she wonders what will happen to: her when he recovers. If he doesn’t need her, can she go on? Does she need so much to be needed?

When Jim, improving, starts teaching at the local college, he finds his self-image improving. But Audrey, worn out from therapy, suggests that she take a short vacation alone. Jim sees this as a way of undermining his recent strides and is angry. He relates this situation to his recent impotence, caused by his emotional problems. Jim reacts to his own feelings of inadequacy by withdrawing from Audrey, treating her impersonally and coldly. She takes this as an indication of her own failure. But when Jim reacts enthusiastically to one of his students, lovely young Sally Grimes, Audrey questions her own responsibility for the situation and accepts a dinner invitation with Steve Hardy, her first husband. Steve’s reassurance that she’s been a paragon of tolerance is negated when Jim walks in late and showing signs of drinking. When she asks how he could do it, he bitterly replies, “It’s a way to help me escape from you,” and turns and leaves.

He goes to Sally’s, where they make love. When Sally later expresses regret at interfering in his marriage, Jim assures her there was nothing left to spoil—his wife is frigid but has blamed their sexual failure on him; thanks to Sally, he now knows he’s not inadequate. Since Sally won’t have an affair with a married man, Jim decides to make the break with Audrey. He bit- _ terly tells her Sally proved to him that he never had a problem—all he needed was a real woman, not one who was all burned out. He scathingly says that she takes men and castrates them; cases in point, her three husbands: Steve Hardy, Tom Baldwin, and himself. Shocked and horribly hurt by his accusations, Audrey swallows sleeping pills but immediately realizes the folly of her actions and tries to get help. Steve, meanwhile, senses something wrong and on a hunch goes to her apartment, where he finds her unconscious. He rushes her to the hospital for treatment, and after sixteen hours she begins to come around. She tearfully repeats Jim’s accusations while still groggy, and Steve reassures her that nothing Jim said was in any way true. As she dozes in the security of his presence, he whispers to her, “There’s a lot of woman in you, there was and there is, my sweet, lovely Audrey.”

 Nurse Beth Maynard, despite her frequent pronouncements that she’s immune to emotional involvement, has fallen in love with resident Kyle Bradley. Beth’s sister, Nurse Diana Taylor, feels that Kyle treats Beth as if she were a casual conquest, however, rather than a woman he loves. Kyle’s life is now complicated by the arrival of Nurse Kate Marshall in town. She is staying with her godmother, Jessie Brewer, R.N., while. she recovers from a painful divorce. She and Kyle had an affair a few years ago, and she knows he’s married but keeps his wife “under wraps.” Kyle, in turn, knows that the discovery of Kate’s affair with Dr. John McAllister drove his wife to suicide. Kyle and Kate resume their affair. Despite the fact that Kyle is now living with Beth, Diana has seen enough to convince her that Kyle is deceiving her sister. But Beth won’t believe this, until she sees them embracing herself. When she confronts Kate, Kate bitterly tells Beth everything past and present about herself and Kyle, including the interesting fact that he’s married. Beth, shocked and hurt, throws Kyle out, and Jessie, who overheard Kate’s vindictive diatribe to Beth, arranges her transfer to another hospital. 

 

 

[Paul Raven]

GH 1976 Pt 3 

Peter’s new patient, sculptress Patricia Lambert, begins to accept that her suicide attempt was due to her believing herself unlovable. When Peter tries to help her see that she can find love, she replies that the only man who could love her is her psychiatrist. Peter has warned his wife, Diana, to avoid involvement with Pat, but since Pat has done a sculpture of Diana’s daughter Martha, she feels she must show appreciation.

Pat pumps Diana about her personal life, and Diana allows that she and Peter have been through hell, but they came through still loving each other and have a happy marriage. When a local newspaper dredges up the murder of Phil Brewer, Diana is upset that the pain isn’t behind them yet. Phil fathered Martha, by rape, and Peter and Diana hope the child won’t have to know. Pat,  with an artist’s eye, notices the resemblance between the newspaper picture of Phil and Martha, and decides to see what she can dig up, to see how good the Taylors’ marriage really is. Pat uses Beth as an unknowing pawn in her attempt to hurt Diana, by asking Beth to pose for her, then stealing Peter’s gold penknife and leaving it where Beth will find it.

Beth, now suspicious of all men, rushes off to tell Diana. Diana assures Beth that she’s wrong, but asks to borrow Peter’s knife. He replies that he lost it. Her anger surprises Peter. Deciding she  has given Beth enough time, Pat manages to return the knife to Peter’s office unseen, and pretends to find it on the floor. When Diana admits why she was so angry, Peter asks Pat if she borrowed it. But she’s ready for this; she has purchased an identical knife, right down to the monogrammed initials, and explains that it’s a gift for a Peter Talbot. Then she hysterically cries that perhaps she should slash her throat with it instead, and dramatically runs from his office.

As Pat had hoped, Peter blames Diana for lack of faith. He is interrupted by Pat’s carefully timed phoned-in suicide threat. Guilt-ridden, Peter rushes to her assistance.  Seeing her through this, Peter decides there is too much personal involvement in this case and tells Pat he'll have to turn her case over to another therapist, for her own good as well as the good of his marriage. But Pat is not letting him go that easily, and manages to interrupt a celebration between Peter and Diana (they are toasting their solution to the Pat problem) with yet another suicide declaration. Despite Diana’s insistence this is another trick, Peter rushes to Pat. But Diana follows, and walks in to find Pat trying to seduce Peter. She angrily denounces Pat as Peter orders her to leave. He then tells Pat that many patients fall in love with their doctors but he can’t treat her any longer.

Peter considers Diana’s following him to Pat’s a shocking exhibition of lack of trust, and tells Leslie he’s available to be psychiatric consultant for her free clinic. When she reminds him that this work, together with his regular practice, will leave him almost no free time, he makes it clear that that’s just what  he wants.

To help her over the loss of her daughter, Cam presents Leslie with the penthouse apartment in the exclusive new Top of the Towers residence skyscraper and plans a trip to Europe. But after a period of happiness and good health at home, Laura seems to be suffering asthmatic attacks, and Barbara finally calls Leslie, saying it might be best for Laura if visits from Leslie become a regular part of Laura’s routine. Cam returns from a business trip to find Leslie once more immersed in Laura’s life, and is furious when she informs him she can’t make the international-merger celebration in Hong Kong, where she is to be guest of honor, because Laura has a school play that day. He angrily tells her he can’t, as she suggests, change the date, and he leaves for another business trip in a fury.

When Leslie calls to tell him she has reconsidered and will be with him in Hong Kong, she’s unaware that her call has found him in bed with his secretary—a long-standing and frequent situation. But when Cam returns from New York, Leslie tells him she has changed her mind again; she can’t disappoint Laura. The final blow to Cam is when Leslie greets his news about a secluded mountain retreat with the rejoinder that Laura will spend the summer there with  them. Cam, who purchased the place so he and Leslie could spend weekends there alone, decides to get Laura out of their lives once and for all.

Audrey has recovered from her suicide attempt physically but not emotionally. Realizing that she needs to come to terms with her sense of failure, she decides to take a short vacation alone. Tommy, upset by the separation from Jim, takes the news of her plans badly, claiming that first she got rid of the only father he’s ever known and now she’s walking out on him. Steve tells Jessie he can’t tell Audrey he loves her at this time, as she would assume that it was pity he felt. Audrey’s vacation serves its purpose when she realizes she has fallen into the trap of self-pity. She arranges to return immediately and take over as superintendent of student nurses.

Steve Hardy is pleased to welcome Drs. Jeff and Monica Webber to the General Hospital staff as the first appointees to the newly created “Mr. and Mrs. Intern team.” Steve can see that Jeff is tense and upset every time Steve mentions Rick, Jeff’s brother, who was reported killed in a plane crash in Africa last year. Rick and Monica had been in love, but shortly after Rick’s reported death, she married Jeff. Nobody knows that Rick, part of a medical-mission team, has been kept prisoner by Lamundan revolutionaries for the past ten months, following the crash near the guerrilla headquarters. Jeff’s angry accusation of Dr. Rex Pearson for making passes at Monica is the first of many indications that the Webber marriage isn’t perfect. Jeff makes a fast enemy when Pearson’s needling him about a prescription error and Monica result in Jeff’s flooring Rex with one swing.

Terri Arnett, Jeff’s widowed sister, opens a nightclub, Terri’s Place, in Port Charles, with financial backing from Cam. She and Leslie have become good friends. Terri is overcome on being notified that Rick is alive; he was found and freed by government troops when they overran the revolutionaries’ headquarters. Monica’s happiness at the news is clouded by her  apprehension about the lie she told Jeff following the news of Rick’s death. Rick had written her saying it was all over, she should find someone else. When Me the report came, Monica read the letter to Jeff, substituting a marriage commitment for his good-bye. Monica desperately arranges to meet Rick en route, to beg his silence. She doesn’t know, of course, that Rick wrote this letter to free her because his mission was long and dangerous, or that it was only the memory of her that kept him alive during the months of captivity.

Monica, having told Jeff she is going to St. Louis to see a friend, meets Rick in New York, where he’s changing planes, and painfully explains the situation. Rick conceals the fact that he still loves her and was - coming home to marry her, and assures her that Jeff and Terri will not learn the truth from him. But Jeff quickly learns that Monica was in New York to meet Rick’s plane, and he takes his bitterness out on his brother. Rick is very upset by this but can’t go back on his promise to Monica and explain. Steve, an old family friend, offers Rick an appointment as a senior staff doctor, but Rick, now not knowing what his life will be, since his plans have all been destroyed, is reluctant to commit himself.

[DRW50]

Thanks @Paul Raven 

That Pat story sounds like a lot of trash. Not sure why there was a glut of middle-aged female patients scheming to get men on soaps at this time. I guess at least Pat didn't have Diana raped, like on The Doctors. 

Did Leslie stay in that penthouse? 

I sometimes forget what a cheesy introduction Monica had to the show. Mr and Mrs Intern indeed.

Edited 1 hour ago by DRW50

[Paul Raven]

re the penthouse. 

I can't recall exactly but I think that it was used  for several years. Leslie moved to the cottage.

Was that when she married Rick or before?

Anyway, maybe Tracey took up residence? Don't know whether she bought it from Lesley, or they just re-used the set pretending it was a different place.