An alien from the planet Lumina, a diamond that controls the weather,
and Richard Simmons. This isn’t a fever dream -- it’s General Hospital.
The title General Hospital may seem quite generic, but there was actually a thought process behind
naming the long-running soap opera. Before the series debuted on ABC in 1963, the network
had planned to call it Emergency Hospital, and it wasn't supposed to be a soap opera.
Armand Grant, ABC's Head of Daytime, learned that NBC would be debuting
a similar show called The Doctors on the same day. Couple Frank and Doris
Hursley were hired as creators, and they devised the premise:
a hospital as the center of a wheel and the show's characters as the spokes on the wheel.
"It's not every day you meet a lady doctor. On the day that she's facing an indictment for murder."
Thanks to the show's success, it became a franchise with two spin-offs,
"Port Charles" in the late '90s into the new millennium and "General Hospital: Night Shift."
General Hospital had been on the air for fifteen years when low viewership
threatened the series in 1978. Four weeks away from being canceled, the show needed a miracle.
The network brought in executive producer Gloria Monty, previously with CBS soap Secret
Storm. Not only did she save the franchise; the series thrived under Monty's leadership.
GH became television's highest-rated soap and won outstanding drama series
at the 1981 Daytime Emmy Awards. When Monty moved on in 1987, the ratings plummeted.
"No!!!!!
No!!!!! No!!!!!"
Four years later, she came back and once again rebooted the franchise,
firing actors and writers and leading with an iron hand.
In 2012, General Hospital again needed a new direction. The network brought
executive producer Frank Valentini over from sister soap, One Life to
Live. Valentini told CNN that his goal was to bring a contemporary edge to the show:
"Not only does it need to be entertaining,
but it also needs to be relevant. It needs to be a part of everyone's life in 2012."
In the summer of 1981, General Hospital became one of the biggest stories in entertainment.
Two of the show's main characters, Luke and Laura, were getting married. The episode
broke previous records to become the most watched daytime program ever at 30 million
viewers. Amazingly, this major series event almost never happened. At the last minute,
the nuptials took place thanks in part to an intervention from a Hollywood icon.
"My curse on you, Laura and Luke. My curse on both of you."
Movie legend Elizabeth Taylor was a big GH fan and
wanted to appear on the show. But she gave the network an ultimatum:
she wouldn't guest star unless Luke and Laura tied the knot. Of course, producers obliged.
General Hospital revisited the Luke and Laura relationship in
later seasons but had to grapple with the dark reality of the
original storyline. Prior to their storybook romance, Luke raped Laura.
For years afterward, the writers insisted on describing the assault as seduction. But
on 2020's Soaps in Quarantine, Anthony Geary, who played Luke, acknowledged,
"They tried to rewrite the history of what we all knew."
Fortunately, producers and writers addressed the injustice in the late '90s. As then-executive
producer Wendy Riche explained in an interview with the Associated Press,
"The times are different. What the audience perceives and what
they expect is very different from what it was 20 years ago."
"Well, if you look at the way it started, it was fated to end badly. In a soap,
you can't just have them go off into the sunset together."
In an effort to make the Luke character own his crime, the writers had the character
return to tell his onscreen son, Lucky, the truth: that he had raped Laura in the past.
Fitness guru Richard Simmons was well-known in the '70s and '80s for his bubbly
personality and approach to health. He used his acting talents as a guest on General Hospital
beginning in 1979. Clips from his appearances on the series show Simmons teaching exercise classes.
"Aunt Alice said I was going to atrophy just sitting around home all the time."
"That's funny. I thought you already had."
Thirty years later, Simmons returned to General Hospital playing himself.
It's not often that a major movie star appears on a soap opera, especially after becoming famous.
One notable exception was when James Franco swung by the set of General Hospital. More
than just a brief cameo, Franco appeared in 54 episodes between 2009 and 2012. In the series,
he played a mysterious artist and serial killer named Franco. Instead of the show
reaching out to Franco, the actor called up and asked to be a part of the show.
"It's not going to happen for you. Not in a million years."
"But after that?"
In an interview with Vulture, Franco explained,
"I said, 'I want to play an artist, and I want him to be crazy.'"
He also insisted on bringing a film crew to document his time on the show. Franco's
interest in soap operas started as a kid. He reminisced to Vulture:
"I was home sick a lot because I didn't like school when I was little."
At home in the daytime, he could only watch the two movies his family had recorded on VHS,
Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Jumpin' Jack Flash. If he got bored of those films,
he'd watch soap operas. After Franco left the show, actor Roger Howarth
filled in to play Franco. The character ultimately died on the show in 2021.
General Hospital producers pay close attention to the show's
budget to ensure the soap remains profitable enough to stay on the
air. This means finding clever ways to keep the cost down while filming.
That's the reason shows stick with the same sets for many years. However, in the 1990s,
according to The Official General Hospital Trivia Book,
an earthquake storyline gave General Hospital the chance to renovate.
A sharp-eyed Reddit user pointed out repurposed sets,
like a house that exploded but came back as another character's home. Or an apartment
set that served as the residence of at least three different characters over the years.
In the ubiquitous hospital scenes, set dressers turn the ER into ICU with a
change of props and the flip of a sign. The pens in cups around the fictional hospital
are glued in place to ensure actors and crew don't wander off with them. Actors pretend
to drink from nonoperating water fountains with sound added in post. Every penny helps!
Some General Hospital storylines are more memorable than others. The Ice Princess diamond
story, for example, has recurred on the show several times since its debut in the early '80s.
This wild story initially involved a hostile confrontation between characters
Luke Spencer and Robert Scorpio. Tristan Rogers, who played Scorpio for years,
remembers the Ice Princess storyline as his favorite of the entire series.
Kimberly McCullough joined the cast as Scorpio's daughter Robin when she was only 7 years old,
and earned the first of two Daytime Emmys for her performance when she was 11.
But McCullough's acting skills couldn't save what was perhaps the soap's strangest storyline
ever. Young Robin became friends with a man named Casey. Only he wasn't exactly a man,
more like an alien from the planet Lumina who happened to land in Port Charles.
Robin's mission was to retrieve the magic crystal that would allow Casey to return
to his home planet. The role of Casey was created for actor Bradley Lockerman,
after he was passed over for the 100% human role of Duke Lavery on the show.
General Hospital viewers often feel stressed from all the drama and intense action. The
behind-the-scenes struggle of making the show is also very real. Typically, a primetime TV drama
requires directors and actors to complete around 10 pages of dialogue in a single day of filming.
In contrast, General Hospital typically films around 80 pages of dialogue per day.
That's five days a week. There's almost no time for do-overs or retakes. There are
no teleprompters. Actors rehearse lines with scripts in hand right up until the
director calls, "Action." Longtime GH actor Nancy Lee Grahn told CNN,
"There's no room for someone that cannot take the pace, the speed; you have to be on your game."
Romantic relationships are at the core of any soap opera, especially General Hospital. Often,
soap characters find love multiple times throughout the series. For example,
costume designer Lori Ann Robinson explained on The View that she had designed a third wedding
dress for Tamara Braun's character, Carly. The same dress could have come
in handy for other couples that met on the show and continued the romance off screen.
In 2016, actors Bryan Craig and Kelly Thiebaud announced their engagement on
The Talk. They had plans to get married the following year. As is often the case
on soap operas, the couple didn't last. Craig ended up with Daniela Lopez Osorio,
who posted a video of her kissing Craig on his 30th birthday.
Similarly, actors Chad Duell and Kristen Alderson met on General Hospital in 2012.
The two dated until splitting up in 2015. Later, an Instagram post hinted that Duell
was cozy with Courtney Hope, a star of The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful.
Other stars from General Hospital to couple up included Rebecca Herbst and Michael Saucedo.
Herbst was famous for playing Elizabeth Webber as a teen on GH, beginning in 1997.
Saucedo joined the show and then spin-off Port Charles in 2000. While he didn't last
long on General Hospital, he made quite the impression on Herbst.
The couple married in 2001 and have since had three children together.
In the summer of 2021, many shows resumed filming after a long hiatus due to restrictions from
the COVID-19 pandemic. General Hospital actors returned to set, but some of the veteran stars
were not happy with the working conditions. Nancy Lee Grahn tweeted about her discontent:
"I work on a set with unmasked,
unvaccinated actors, because my union thus far SAG-AFTRA has allowed this. Full stop."
As a result, General Hospital required all actors to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by November 1st.
"We need shots!"
Soon after the deadline, actor Ingo Rademacher found himself in
a disagreement over company COVID policies. He posted anti-vaccine
statements and transphobic messages on his social media. It wasn't long before
news broke that Rademacher would no longer be a part of the General Hospital cast.
It was a swift departure for the actor, who played the role of Jax
for 25 seasons starting in 1996. After getting the boot from the soap opera,
Rademacher sued ABC, claiming that the network's vaccine mandate was discriminatory.
Not long after Rademacher's departure, another member was dropped from the
cast. Actor Steve Burton posted a video on Instagram explaining that General Hospital
let him go for not complying with its vaccine mandate. The actor had
played Jason Morgan on the series since his debut in 1992. Burton said that he applied
for religious and medical exceptions to stay with the show, but both requests were denied.