1 hour ago, Franko said:

According to the credits on March 12, 1986, the writing staff was

Credit No. 1: Pat Falken Smith and Norma Monty

Credit No. 2: James E. Reilly, Patrick Smith, and Maralyn Thoma

Credit No. 3: Robert Guza, Jr., Doris Silverton, Robert Soderberg, Thomas D. Citrano

Credit No. 4: Story Consultant A.J. Russell

Was A.J. Russell the writer who came up with Ice Princess?

I wonder if he had any role with Lucy too - she reminds me a little of some of the women of that period, like Tiffany (just darker than Tiffany).

It was Thom Racina who was involved with Ice Princess. He has mentioned it in several interviews. Here's a snippet from a Daytime Confidential interview.

DC: General Hospital, which is where you got your start in the whole soap game, revisited your Ice Princess storyline.

TR: You know, it just amazes me. Somebody sent me a clip on Valentine's Day of Luke and Laura discovering the box with the Ice Princess thing and I couldn't believe it. I said, "After all these years, they're doing that again?" and yet, it made me feel really proud.

DC: It came from your novel?

TR: Yes, it came from The Great Los Angeles Blizzard about snow on Los Angeles, and we just made it snow on Port Charles.

Just now, Paul Raven said:

It was Thom Racina who was involved with Ice Princess. He has mentioned it in several interviews.

Thanks. I couldn't remember if Russell was a part of that too.

9 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Was A.J. Russell the writer who came up with Ice Princess?

I wonder if he had any role with Lucy too - she reminds me a little of some of the women of that period, like Tiffany (just darker than Tiffany).

If I remember right, the Ice Princess is attributed to Russell. But I think Thom Racina was involved in some way.

Speaking of Lucy, I'm impressed that (to the best of my knowledge) nobody's ripped off her big reveal scene, even after all these years. I guess the closest would be Jane Sibbett's Jane on Santa Barbara (and even then, they're homaging Body Double just as much as GH), or Bruce Michael Hall's Reese on Passions (and this was a few years into the show's run, so we already knew BMH wasn't nerdy offscreen).

Yeah, we tried to puzzle this out a few years ago. According to Racina's interviews he was also part of the writing team and I think possibly one of the co-HWs from summer '80 (he claims he was there in time for the famous Wyndham's Department Store sequence) til either late '83 or '84. I can't remember which. What we surmised based on his statements is Monty kept his exact role (as well as I think Leah Laiman's) relatively quiet due to the strike in the early '80s.

IIRC Racina said the Ice Princess saga came direct from his own sci-fi/thriller novel "The Great Los Angeles Blizzard". But the original "Ice Princess" concept before that, whatever it was, was Pat Falken Smith. Monty took Racina on as a HW and dumped her in part because PFS would not tell her what the purpose of the Ice Princess was before the strike.

Edited 20 hours ago20 hr by Vee

2 hours ago, Franko said:

Laurelton was probably DOA and wouldn't really work under any circumstances, but I've been wondering how things would have gone if it was about Bobbie's youth in Florida as opposed to Terry's youth somewhere in the south.

This would have been so much more successful. Add in Ruby too, knowing the secret.

15 hours ago, Vee said:

In memory of Tristan Rogers: Luke remembers Robert on the anniversary of his 'death.'

Interesting way to reintroduce Faison to the audience just before he kidnaps Lucky.

13 minutes ago, Vee said:

Monty took Racina on as a HW and dumped her in part because PFS would not tell her what the purpose of the Ice Princess was before the strike.

IIRC what Racina brought to the table was the Carbonic Snow and weather machine. I assume she created the WSB though because as soon as she came back they dug into Robert’s past as an agent.

PFS hated Monty when she left, even though she said she was a genius. She must have made a fortune when she came back and decided to play along to get along better.

I don't know whether A.J. Russell had been responsible for what became the Ice Princess storyline, but I know he had written for "The Honeymooners" and "The Phil Silvers Show" BITD, winning an Emmy for the latter. In fact, both he and Robert J. Shaw, who also had been part of the GH writing staff at one time, wrote for many early television anthology shows.

Story Consultant seemed to be the cruziest job ever-attend a few meetings, make some suggestions which may or may not be acted upon and collect a big check.

5 hours ago, Franko said:

Speaking of Lucy, I'm impressed that (to the best of my knowledge) nobody's ripped off her big reveal scene, even after all these years. I guess the closest would be Jane Sibbett's Jane on Santa Barbara

I was thinking of "Debra London" transforming into Flame Beaufort on Santa Barbara. That was a direct copy of Lucy's transformation, but still well done!

5 hours ago, Wendy said:

I was thinking of "Debra London" transforming into Flame Beaufort on Santa Barbara. That was a direct copy of Lucy's transformation, but still well done!

Oh, wow, yeah, that's defintely inspired by the Lucy reveal.

Jacob Young's film with Joan Collins already discussed on this thread.
At the red carpet screening event, he was interviewed by Michael Maloney and talked about getting the role of Lucky on GH.
https://www.tvinsider.com/1242366/jacob-young-general-hospital-lucky-spencer-anthony-geary-interview/

With that writing staff in 1986, the show should have been much better.

It was strange in 1999 to bring back Faison without Robert and Anna. Trying to turn Faison into a Luke villain never worked. Faison's interactions with Lucky had none of the menace of his interactions with Robert and Anna. It was a waste all around.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by Jdee43

29 minutes ago, Jdee43 said:

With that writing staff in 1986, the show should have been much better.

I agree. I also think GH was facing the same problem DAYS would face not too much later: specifically, the fact that the action/adventure formula which had propelled the show to the top of the ratings was becoming tired.

3 hours ago, janea4old said:

Jacob Young's film with Joan Collins already discussed on this thread.
At the red carpet screening event, he was interviewed by Michael Maloney and talked about getting the role of Lucky on GH.
https://www.tvinsider.com/1242366/jacob-young-general-hospital-lucky-spencer-anthony-geary-interview/

He was the wrong choice to me back then, and I still think it was wrong. There was a way to soap hunk the recast Lucky without losing that more sensitive part of the character. Instead he became a generic angry pretty boy. But the casting was rough anyway around that time, Wendy Riche should not have been EP at both GH and PC, it clearly burned her out.

31 minutes ago, Jdee43 said:

It was strange in 1999 to bring back Faison without Robert and Anna. Trying to turn Faison into a Luke villain never worked. Faison's interactions with Lucky had none of the menace of his interactions with Robert and Anna. It was a waste all around.

Everything about that story was a flop. It made sense to me that Felicia would be involved, she had scenes with Faison during his original run. But not while being paired up with Luke as a romantic storyline. What was missing to me was Laura. Faison terrorizing Laura instead of Felicia would have put Stefan and Luke at odds, been more about Lucky being missing, and made Helena angry if he was becoming obsessed with Laura instead of punishing her.