Best/Worst Soaps to Work on(through the years)

[will81]

Yeah I remember VM talking about being in storyline wilderness for her first 6 months on the show, after Brad and Leslie worked out their issues. I think this was when JLB got more focus.

[quartermainefan]

The Eckerts sucked for the most part, but I give Monty a lot of credit. She had a vision and she rolled the dice. One time it worked, the other time it didn't. At least she rolled the dice. That deserves more respect than focus group approved corporate toady EP's who have no creative vision and only know how to pack shows with their friends and lace their show with their own hangups about women and age.

[John]

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,314802_2,00.html

NEWS ARTICLE

Trauma at General Hospital

Behind the scenes drama -- In ABC's most popular ER room, the soap survives hirings and firings

By Mark Harris on Jul 12, 1991

• It's 3 p.m. Do you know where your ambulance is? Sure you do — it's racing toward the emergency room of General Hospital in Port Charles, N.Y., its siren screaming the promise of romance, adventure, and the occasional medical catastrophe through the hokiest opening credits and most hyperventilating theme music in daytime TV. Since the first appearance of GHin antique black-and-white on April 1, 1963, that ambulance has made the same trip 7,192 times, give or take a national disaster, which is about the only thing that can keep the ABC serial off the air. At General Hospital's peak in 1981, Luke and Laura, its heavy-breathing stars, were household names, and the show's ratings were actually better than those of many prime-time series.

Ten years later, the soap is no longer an essential pit stop on pop culture's fast track, but take another look. GH still simmers with gripping reconciliations and partings, romantic plot twists, mysterious villains, and steady doses of treachery. The only problem: Much of the high drama now takes place off camera. The backstage turmoil at General Hospital, in fact, has become the talk of the industry, juicier than any mere daytime drama.

The tumult began in December, when ABC rehired Gloria Monty, the innovative executive producer who spurred GH from the brink of cancellation to first place during her initial tenure (1978-87). After Monty quit four years ago to develop new series, GH's ratings fell. The Young and the Restless overtook General Hospital as daytime's top series in 1989, and other soaps won attention for their flashy plot lines.Hospital, in second place, rehashed old stories and lost its young audience. The show simply ''flattened out,'' says ABC daytime vice president Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin. ''It was tired, no longer the jewel of the late afternoon.''

Monty's value to ABC as a proven show fixer was matched only by her skill as a big-game hunter; within weeks, she bagged Tony Geary, who had left his starring role as GH's Luke Spencer in 1983, with a yearlong contract to play a new role, blue-collar hero Bill Eckert.

If Monty specialized in happy endings, General Hospital would have soared to No. 1, and everyone would be smiling. But this is a soap, not a fairy tale. Four months after Monty's arrival, General Hospital has slipped to third — and sometimes fourth — among daytime dramas, reports of backstage strife are rampant, and everyone is smiling through gritted teeth. ''Viewers may be really frustrated, but I guarantee you they're talking about it,'' Dwyer-Dobbin says hopefully. But talk alone won't keep General Hospitalrunning as a multimillion-dollar profit machine for ABC. Once again, the show must reinvent itself to survive.

In her Hollywood office five stories above the catacombs that house General Hospital's dressing rooms and studios, Gloria Monty is surrounded by memorabilia of the glory years — a 1983 gold record for one of the show's love themes, Patti Austin and James Ingram's ''Baby, Come to Me''; a shelf of industry awards; snapshots of guest star Elizabeth Taylor, a golden-ringleted Geary (yes, folks, the Luke look was a perm), and famous GH alumni Richard Dean Anderson, Emma Samms, Demi Moore, and Mark Hamill; and a 1981 Newsweek cover trumpeting the soap as ''TV's Hottest Show.'' The bounty is evidence of GH's heyday, when every episode drew 40 percent of the daytime audience, and the wedding of felon Luke Spencer (Geary) to murderess Laura Webber (Genie Francis) was watched by 52 percent of daytime viewers, the largest audience in soap opera history.

Ten years later, Luke and Laura are both gone (Francis is now a regular on ABC's All My Children), along with about half of the show's audience. But Monty says she isn't unnerved by the slippage in the show's ratings. At the moment, she is more concerned with an alarmingly tall stack of paper she has labeled ''Unaccepted Scripts.'' ''It's too long,'' she may say of a scene she dislikes. ''It won't hold.'' Or: ''It's a downer.'' Or: ''You've lost the suspense.'' Or: ''Without your realizing it, this character is becoming terriblyunpleasant.''

''Good heavens,'' she says, eyeing the pile. ''I have to read all that.''

At 69, Gloria Monty is tiny and often described as frail-looking, except by anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of one of her orders. They have been plentiful recently. More humor in the scripts! (She got it.) More contemporary language! (They're working on it.) More sophistication! (Well, everything's relative.) ''When I returned,'' she says, ''I realized that I had no story to work with. Everything was over.'' So she decided to clear the decks.

Since then Monty has razed sets, terminated story lines, revamped the writing staff (bringing seven new faces in to work with her sister, head writer Norma Monty), and swung the ax at enough actors and actresses to fill General Hospital's emergency ward for months to come. A dozen cast members, almost all of whom Monty says had reached the end of their contracts, their usefulness, or their interest in remaining, picked up their scripts and found themselves taking bullets, developing mysterious illnesses, or leaving town. It was a housecleaning of unprecedented thoroughness, and it bred resentment and rumors: Monty removes her property from the studio...Monty walks off the set in a rage...Actors ready to mutiny. And in the small-verging-on-incestuous world of soaps, they spread fast. ''She's in terrible trouble, isn't she?'' murmured one soap queen on a rival show. ''I haven't watched, but I hear awful, awful things.''

''There is a smear campaign against me,'' Monty declares. ''It's an attempt to sabotage me, and I have more than a good idea where it comes from: people who are no longer with us — who were never part of the family. And it's deplorable — it's hurting people who were their colleagues. It's vicious!'' she snaps. ''Petty! Petty, petty, petty.''

The most extravagant rumor is that GH's lurching story lines have grown so chaotic (Monty got rid of a brownstone set she hated by having the writers pencil in a New York earthquake) that ABC might put the soap on hiatus. Monty greets that one with a harsh laugh: ''My God! Hiatus! You'd think we'd sunk to the bottom of the sea. ABC is backing me unconditionally.'' But she admits some plot developments were handled too abruptly — recently, one character was shot but showed no wound in a bedroom scene minutes later — and that ''it's taking longer than I thought'' to renovate General Hospital.

One reason is the swift audience rejection of the Eckert clan, a working-class family Monty introduced to contrast with the show's money-soaked Quartermaines, daytime's equivalents of Dynasty's Carringtons. ''I'd always wanted to do Rich Man, Poor Man,'' says Monty. ''And I will. Eventually.'' For now, the Eckerts' prominence has been hastily scaled back, although Geary, as Bill Eckert, will remain central to the show. ''I know Gloria came in with high hopes for [the Eckerts],'' says Dwyer-Dobbin, ''but she's the first to admit it didn't work.''

''What was unusual was that the Eckerts got so much action,'' observes Soap Opera Digest editor Lynn Leahey. ''Viewers were very excited to have Tony Geary back, but the Eckerts came on too strong. Viewers hated the fact that some of their old favorites were getting pushed aside.'' Monty says things weren't helped by a series of anonymous, identically worded phone calls to ABC — once as many as 24 in a day — complaining that the Eckerts were hogging the spotlight. ''The curious thing,'' she says, ''is that the Eckerts weren't even on [the day those 24 calls came].'' More of the smear campaign? ''It's not a new tactic,'' she says. ''It's dreadful. But I have a very tough skin.''

If Monty's detractors are numerous, her support among the show's veteran cast members seems strong enough to belie the talk of revolt for now. On its vast, cavernous soundstage, the fictional Port Charles, like all sets, looks like a burg contrived by a madman. Since murder trials are a constant, a courtroom is at the ready; it incongruously abuts a one-bed intensive-care unit equipped with a Spacelabs cardiac monitor that can flatline at the drop of a cliff- hanger. Across the way stands Kelly's waterfront diner, where coffee is still 35 cents and the jukebox contains not a single song. In the distance looms the Quartermaine foyer, with an elegant curving staircase that leads absolutely nowhere. It's schizophrenic terrain, and the longer an actor has navigated it, the more he respects Monty.

"I probably had the biggest experience as a soap opera phenomenon in the '80s that anyone could have, and I'm telling you, it's not a lot of fun," says Geary of his days as Luke. "I ended up as a product. That's what drove me away, and I was not looking to come back." What changed his mind? "It's all about her for me. I liked Gloria's ideas, and she's a tremendous creative force." And this time, says the 43-year-old actor, "I have no naive notions. It's almost like not acting — it's more like creating an alter ego to live inside."

"The last four years have not been particularly happy ones," says Tristan Rogers, whose role as Australian-born secret agent Robert Scorpio has made him one of daytime's most popular leading men for more than a decade. "My character's been through the mill. I've done everything that can be done on the show at least 500 times. I was ready to leave, and then I was approached by Glo with an idea for the best story I'd heard in a while," namely a romance with his long-standing costar Finola Hughes (this year's Daytime Emmy-winning Best Actress). Though Rogers, 45, whose affable grumpiness is mythic in daytime circles, can get so bored he doesn't bother to memorize his lines until the last minute ("Instant Acting," he calls it), he's enjoying the new love story, and he staunchly defends both Monty's innovations and her missteps.

"Being able to know when something isn't working and shifting gears has always been her style," he says. "There'll be a few mistakes, but let's face it, we're not doing Pinter here. We're cranking out 90 pages a day. Just to get that done is amazing. So to say, 'I want a bit of art here...'" He snorts. Even the actors who have gotten the short end of Monty's pencil lately are taking a wait-and-see attitude. Jacklyn Zeman, 38, who has played Bobbie Spencer for 14 years with both major and back-burner story lines, finds herself temporarily sidelined. "She knows what she wants," Zeman says. "I have my own feelings, but she's the executive producer. I'm in a bit of a holding pattern, but that happens. I'm in this for the longevity. I hope to be on this show 15 years from now."

And at least one of Monty's cast changes has been greeted warmly — her addition of dashing Mac Scorpio, a long-lost brother of Robert's who, in a typical credulity-straining Monty flourish, literally washed up on a beach one day. "I'm amazed at her focus," says John J. York, 32, who plays Mac and starred in the defunct Fox series Werewolf. "I'll feel like I have a good grip on what's going on, and then she'll come out and refine it and chip a little here and add a little there. Her insight is great. And," he adds before returning to Mac's trial for murder, "I'm not just kissing her ass." (He's acquitted.)

But off screen, the trials continue. Just when GH's cast shakeups seemed over, the boat was rocked again by the June departure of popular mainstay Jack Wagner, who had played pop star-turned-cop Frisco Jones on-and-off since 1983. But this time, the decision was not Monty's. "I had a wonderful story for him," she says sadly. "I'm sorry he couldn't wait for it. He felt that this role would destroy part of his home life." (Wagner and his GH costar, Kristina Malandro, are the parents of a baby son.) "I resent his leaving, because we have a hole to fill," Monty adds, "but we're friends." Wagner, who quickly jumped to NBC's Santa Barbara, tells it differently. "My contract was coming up for renewal at ABC and Frisco had become kind of a staid character," he says. "I had no story line and no focus."

Despite the turmoil, ABC backs Monty strongly. "Malaise is affecting every show in daytime," says Dwyer-Dobbin. "We need better production values, writing, casting — anything that will establish an impact. We even need to ask ourselves if telling stories over months will still attract an audience. Daytime is a slow process, and Gloria can give us that new perspective."

But unfortunately for ABC, even seemingly guaranteed viewers can't be counted on. "I didn't watch the show before I came on, and I don't watch it now," says Geary, without apology. "I don't even read the scripts. I'm only concerned with me. I pull out all pages that I'm not involved in."

Nonetheless, Geary is enjoying himself enough to consider sticking around after his contract expires next February. "I'm not saying I would or I wouldn't," he says, laughing. "In a year, who knows? I'm too old to be categorical."

Not to worry. If Geary decides one year is enough, Monty has an arsenal of poison darts, air crashes, brain tumors, car wrecks, comas, and snakebites with which to get rid of him. Port Charles is her town, and no one there gets out alive.

[amybrickwallace]

Interesting read - thanks for sharing.

[juppiter]

Yikes. Thanks, John. That is the one I was thinking of. Of course, she comes across as horribly out of touch, and she was. But she had so much success the first time and I get that she and the network assumed that all they needed to do was stay the course and the audience would come. But it wasn't the 70s anymore.

I had forgotten that MADD was at ABC at the time. That explains a lot.

[titan1978]

Y&R was having so much success with corporate storylines during this time, she should have spent more time on ELQ and not tried to sideline the characters.

I think she was correct that the show needed some blue collar characters and more contemporary themes. I also think her will was iron, but some of the stars of the show needed to be put in their place and the canvas needed shaking up.

She had 2 excellent head writers getting her vision in story the first time she revamped the show, in Douglas Marland and after him, Pat Falken Smith. Her second tenure had no great head writer. That could have made a significant difference.

As much as I love her, and her legacy at GH, if she had not been fired we would never have seen the Riche/Labine era. And I am happy we got those fantastic years on this show.

[Khan]

Tony Geary: "I'm only concerned with me."

That's an understatement.

[quartermainefan]

But that's why she was Gloria Monty, what other shows were doing had nothing to do with what she wanted to do on her show. Had she followed what was popular on other shows there never would have been the crazy stories and adventures that made GH GH to begin with.

[titan1978]

Truth in that. But she had lost her touch by her second tenure. She also put her sister in the HW seat. It didn't do her or the show any favors.

[amybrickwallace]

The understatement of the century!!

[juppiter]

Can I flip the question without derailing the thread? I think so since discussion has mostly died down anyway.

Question flip: What about the most toxic environment for a new EP/HW to walk into? A cast notorious for drama, a dysfunctional soap, that a new EP/HW has taken the reins of? The soap that everyone else in the business said, "ick, good luck"?

I know which soap/era I'm thinking of in my mind but I want to see what others say.

[Vee]

I often heard it was OLTL, at least for much of the late '90s and early-mid 2000s. But I'm curious to hear your take.

[DRW50]

Y&R. As Janet said - anytime, anyplace.

GH seemed rough as hell for much of the 80s and early 90s too.

[sheilaforever]

HAHA - but fact is before his GH return he was a super star who got zero mileage out of it. His "career" was in fond memories only. Not to mention the millions he made during 90s and early 200os on the show which actually do warrant such a statement

[amybrickwallace]

Does he have it written in his contract that all women on the show have to fall for Luke? I don't want to pick on anyone's looks, but...that is just not believable that all the older women in Port Chuck would even give him a second glance. Then again, he's been phoning it in for how many years, so what do I know?