It's been a tough couple of days after the deaths of Tony Geary and Rob Reiner...I was always a GL viewer first and foremost, but I did keep up with GH through the magic of the VCR back in the day.
I came across something really interesting, the very first scene where Geary appeared on GH. This is very brief (and there's also a sweet little tribute to Geary from the late Jackie Zeman at the end...man, that show has had a lot of major losses), but I immediately got Tony and Nola Reardon vibes from it:
I believe Marland was the writer at the time (I've seen conflicting dates, but he was definitely there in 1978).
And it got me thinking...Geary and Zeman were on their show as long as they wanted to be on the show, the characters stayed on for DECADES. Shouldn't that have been true of the Reardons, too? Of course, I don't compare Beecroft to Geary, but Lisa Brown was a breakout star on GL, and it's just frustrating that they couldn't figure out a way to keep her on the show as much as she wanted to be on it. She deserved that as much as Zimmer ever did, IMO. And also Mo, of course, we've talked about that a million times.
As much as I've criticized Marland about certain things, he created some incredible characters on the various soaps he worked on. I just wish GL had found a way to keep his best ones on more consistently over the years.
By
DeeVee ·