GH: Classic Thread

[Khan]

I guess what he meant was he was there 'til '84 but not as HW?  At least, not officially?

[Vee]

That's my suspicion. Likely it was a multi-HW team. I've gone back digging into an interview he did with DC in 2015 about it.

He also goes so far as to say he was 'involved already' at the time of the Wyndham's department store stuff in... summer? '80, which is news to me.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Vee

[Khan]

It might have been one of those situations where he was involved but, for whatever reasons, he didn't receive on-air credit - like, he was a "consultant" or something?  I dunno, it's weird, lol.

[Vee]

I guess it's partly a question of how far back did they know the WGA strike was going to happen, and what are the exact dates? I thought it was only 3 months. Racina has always said he was approached because Jackie Smith and Monty knew the strike would come. Of course, part of this is all the fog of war, and possibly people embellishing their resumes.

[Khan]

And, of course, @Vee, you had veteran comedy writer A.J. Russell on staff as creative consultant or some such as well.

[Vee]

On the podcast he does essentially go on to say that Monty felt the WGA would frown on his and Laiman being named HWs or being too visible, and so kept their names lower-profile. So there's that. Whether that's credible or not I leave to others.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Vee

[Khan]

I do know this much: between the time PFS left, in '81, until the time when she returned, in '85, GH was a mess creatively, despite the show being number-one.  I've tried watching some of that stuff when I can find it on YT, and it's just a slog.

Similarly, Laiman and Racina might have worked longer on GH, but I think DAYS was where they (and Sheri Anderson) did their best work.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Khan

[Vee]

It definitely was a wilder and often sillier show as it drifted from Marland to PFS to the others, from what I've seen. I enjoy a lot of the action-adventure and sweeping action-romance, and I think they wove the older characters in well for a long time, but I also don't think the Alan/Monica/Rick/Lesley quad or the original Heather, Diana Taylor, etc. psychodrama can easily be topped.

[Khan]

I know I'm supposed to love that period of GH history, because there's so much rich material there - and God knows, too, it's like watching Shakespeare when compared to the show today - but...I dunno...I feel like the "heart" is missing.  It's all cops and robbers, and spies and super-spies, but there's no "heart," or not enough of it.  That's what I love about (what I've seen of) PFS' work.  When she was on her game, she knew how to balance the '80's need for action with the '60's and '70's reliance on emotion AND keep it all within the realm of possibility, as either @vetsoapfan or @saynotoursoap once said on this board.  And it's why, for the most part, I tended to prefer watching DAYS, because I feel like, in daytime, there's need to be more at stake than just whether or not the good guys will detonate the bomb in time, or rescue the heroine from being pushed out of the ski-lift by the crazed psychopath who wants to rule the world.

(Man, if only PFS and Marland had teamed up, lol!)

To me, GH in the mid-'80's is less a testament to good storytelling than it is to Gloria Monty's skills as a producer, director and editor.

[Paul Raven]

Excerpts from Racina's WLS interview

Gloria said to me, “We’ve got this headwriter...,” and she muttered, “That bitch.”  I should have taken that as a lesson that that’s how they think about headwriters.  She said, “We’ve got something called The Ice Princess.  It’s starting to air, and we don’t know what that is, and the bitch won’t tell us. There’s going to be a writer’s strike, and I’ll be damned if we’re going to have this show die.” And she said, “I need a long term story written now, because you can’t write it once the strike starts.”  I just happened to have a hardcover novel of mine that I brought her from years before as a gift called “The Great Los Angeles Blizzard” about a snow storm that hits L.A.  We stole that to be Port Charles.  That’s how the whole Luke and Laura thing happened and we got up to the wedding.  I wrote this long term story that was like seven hundred pages.  I mean, detailed scenes which they did all through the strike.  I sat home watching going, “No, no, that’s not how I meant it, it’s all wrong!”

[titan1978]

There would be pockets of good stuff but overall I agree with @Khanthat it is much better when PFS is there.  It’s like they stayed number one by flying by the seat of their pants and having an incredibly charismatic group of actors that Monty knew how to showcase.  Because the stories were very hit and miss.

Once Anna is introduced and Robin arrives, the show does get very good again.  It has those same action stories (although tighter), but with some of that heart and stakes that were often missing.

 

[Khan]

In a way, that's also how I feel about SANTA BARBARA.  With both shows, the acting, directing and production values are there, but, with the exception of Patrick Mulcahey and Frank Salisbury's scripts, the writing often lets them all down.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Khan

[Planet Soap]

That's where the Riche/Labine/Guza/Levinson 90s era succeeded. There was emotional weight to the stories. 

Edited March 12, 2022 by ironlion

[Vee]

This is the most I've ever seen of Meg minus the '70s clip that's been around awhile. Invaluable.

I actually tried digging around for any discussion of Meg dating back to the terrible DV Bordisso story on Port Charles, where DV the psychic spy was revealed to be Scott's bio-dad. I hadn't watched any of that mess since it aired and it was hard to find clips being detailed about the backstory. It's very difficult to pin down any substantive remembrance of Meg from Scott in the last however many decades, and I wish we could.

Edited March 12, 2022 by Vee

[AMCOLTLLover]

Holy moly. I had to save the videos. 60‘s GH is what I would love to see complete. 
 

I’m currently in January 1981 in the middle of the Heather/Diana/Anne/Jeff/Alice story

You could really tell that Richard Dean Anderson was so over General Hospital and his character of Jeff and ready to move on.

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i think Alice acted way out of character during that time. She was crying all year long in 1980 about her beloved daughter Heather. But the minute she is back home at Lesley‘s she is having a go with her and treating her like the devil in person. That was not the Alice I saw during the 1980 months. I mean ofc she was right about Heather just pretending and stuff but it still felt out of character!

Robert just appeared for like 3 episodes in December before being back every day in January without really moving the story along of the ice Princess. 2 months in and we still haven’t made progress. Ugh!

Anne getting more and more on my nerves!