GH: Classic Thread

[Franko]

It was actually part of the 30th anniversary celebration. Wednesday, April 7 according to the 1993 summaries.

[Dion]

Oh yes. I automatically read the date on the video as Day Month Year instead of Month Day Year so thought it was from July 4, 1993 lol

[Khan]

Man, I hate how Stephen Burleigh (ex-Ray Conway) kept getting wasted in dead-end roles.  Not the world's greatest actor, but definitely someone I wouldn't have minded seeing in a regular, "good guy" part that didn't end either with him dead or leaving town.

[Vee]

Re: Genie Francis and sometimes beyond her wheelhouse performances in other roles, discussed in the recast thread, I wanted to comment on this a bit:

I'm pretty sure I've always been a party of one on liking some of Genie's wilder or more off-brand performances. I thought she should've gotten an Emmy for her performance at the end of the reviled Rick Webber attic storyline, where Laura had had a complete psychotic break and was shambling around in the attic in her old wedding dress hallucinating and out of her mind - the storyline was so dark and such a rotten end for the character, but she was mesmerizing to me.

I also loved her the day she re-froze RKK's Stavros in his cryochamber in 2013 and just howled incoherently at the screen through the glass window., shaking as it cut to black, thinking he had murdered her daughter. (Another great bit was whoever in the room had her defy Luke, who did the usual paternalistic 'my daughter' thing he'd been doing with Lulu for years, and had Laura push him off and say 'our daughter!') But most people roasted that sequence at the time, or the scene shortly before it where Stavros pounded the dining table during his captive banquet for her and Luke, and Laura just started screaming in terror right then and there. A lot of people thought it was OTT but to me it was a very real approximation of how she'd react to the return of her undead rapist husband who had abused and terrorized her for several years on that island. (These are both timestamped)

Anyway: I liked the idea of Genie playing a vixen or schemer like on AMC or Y&R, but I don't think anyone can say that her performance as, say, Genevieve on Y&R worked at all. I think she could do darker or more spiky stuff at times, but when I've seen her try it often doesn't turn out like the moments above that I like (and no one else does!) - she often goes to cartoon. I love her but she's not the first talent on soaps whose scope sometime exceeds their grasp.

[Taoboi]

Hate to disagree, but I actually LIKED her stuff around the 50th anniversary with Starvos (and rewind the cliffhanger of his appearance at the tail end of that one episode a few times). Because like you said, how can you NOT react to seeing the undead rapist husband you used to have?

 

Didn't bug me at all.

 

Now as for her Rick Webber exit...well...good or bad, Genie can be fascinating to watch. BUT I admit that I liked a lot of what she did on Y&R, hammy or not. If anything let her down, it was the writing and the timing (MAB trying to push out the older female vets). 

Edited February 21, 2022 by Taoboi

[Khan]

No matter what else I have said in the past about Tony Geary, or will say about him in the future, I'll go on record right now and say how much I love him for calling the Ice Princess exactly what it is: a "chunk of crap."

I don't have a problem with Genie Francis "playing crazy" or raging at madmen who terrorize her or her family, but I do have a problem buying her as a b***h or temptress, which is what AMC and Y&R attempted to sell her as before realizing she couldn't sell that kind of character convincingly and reversed course.

Edited February 21, 2022 by Khan

[Vee]

What I don't understand is why there seems to be some mystery about the Ice Princess on the show today of some sort. For years in the 90s and 2000s we were told Luke kept himself very wealthy by chipping off pieces of the thing and selling it on the black market.

[Khan]

*snort*

You mean that lump of coal is still worth money?  Gawd, soap villains can be so gullible, lol.

I'd still love to know what Pat Falken Smith's intentions for the original story were.  She made it ABUNDANTLY clear how much she hated the "carbonic snow" element (although, she could have just said that out of hostility toward Gloria Monty), so what did SHE have in mind?  Was the Ice Princess just a soap opera equivalent of a McGuffin, or was there another, less comic book-ish purpose for it?

Edited February 21, 2022 by Khan

[Marco Dane]

Take a look at the retro opening!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yqD0_181o

Edited February 21, 2022 by Marco Dane

[Kristin]

I think I know the answer, but did any of the things Alan and Monica discuss actually happen on screen?

 

[Khan]

Yeah, Alan really tried to kill Rick and Monica before saving them at the last moment.  Collapsed roof and all.

 

[Planet Soap]

To make it more less cartoonish (if possible) they could have said he tried to freeze just the city instead of the world.

Or since it was the 80s, they could have said Milkos got hold of a substance to power a nuclear weapon to give it a reliastic Cold War flare. 

Edited February 22, 2022 by ironlion

[Vee]

Nope. I did a double-take about this in this thread or another a few months back.

[Kristin]

Yes, I was aware of that and actually remember when it happened. I was specifically referring to the conversation Alan and Monica had about the night Rick died.

Thank you!

[Vee]

I know there were a lot of rumors about how the Rick return story was originally supposed to go differently in '02*, something about that consortium he was involved with buying the hospital as well, and maybe they had intended to actually do a beat with Monica and restarting their affair, who knows. But it never happened onscreen. I just found it unspeakably lazy to do that with such central characters and such an iconic past story. And they started doing that kind of offhand backstory stuff more and more in that period, and it got worse over time.

(* - The attic story itself was a pretty blatant ripoff of Charles Pratt and co.'s own story on Melrose Place, where Alison rediscovers her own childhood trauma in the family home and I think the attic, where she was molested by her father. I don't know if they ever originally intended to suggest Rick had molested Laura, but it was def my fear at the time because I knew Melrose Place well and knew Pratt was from MP. I believe there was also a rumor that originally the woman in the attic in Laura's visions, Rick's mistress, was supposed to be the young Bobbie Spencer but that got vetoed and it somehow became the murdered Theresa Carter. I have no idea what's true or not, I'd love for someone to tell us someday. Any or all of that is a pretty huge reach IMO, but Rick's sexual obsession with Monica did last years so it's not like he's incapable of infidelity.)