‘General Hospital’ Looks Back On Luke-Laura Romance
Fifteen years ago, almost to the day, the volatile little borough of Port Charles, N.Y., stood momentarily entranced as its own Charles and Di took the proverbial plunge.
The nuptials were an affair to remember: antique cars, a lavish estate. The bride was an innocent babe with honey-colored mane; the groom a street-smart reformed thug with a gnarly white-guy ‘fro.
It was a fairy tale, a dream-come-true, a love that triumphed against all odds.
Yes! Yes! Yes! It was Luke and Laura, together at last!
The marriage of daytime drama’s most happenin’ couple drew an estimated 30 million viewers to “General Hospital” on Nov. 16-17, 1981. A generation of soap gluttons sat hypnotized. Well, most did, anyway.
“At the time, I could never really understand the immense popularity of those two characters, considering the fact that Laura (Genie Francis) was always this little milquetoast and Luke (Anthony Geary) was actually a bad guy,” says syndicated soap opera columnist Nancy Reichardt.
Today’s episode of “GH” will take a sentimental journey back through the rocky courtship and hair-raising adventures of the romantic duo (who returned to the show in 1993): from Laura Webber’s rocky marriage to the low-life attorney Scotty Baldwin (Kin Shriner), her first encounter with Luke Spencer at his popular discotheque, their frantic cross-country search for the left-handed boy, and (who could forget?) their daredevil hunt for the Ice Princess Diamond.
Of course, there was that nasty little detail early on, in which then-slime ball Luke forced himself upon the naive Laura.
“It was such a terrible thing,” Reichardt says. “Nobody would ever turn around and marry their rapist! If anything, you want to see the guy dead, not your husband.”
But daytime drama never let a felony assault stand in the way of love, right?
Reichardt says the popularity of Luke and Laura derived more from the actors’ chemistry than the characters’ interaction. For years, Geary and Francis made “GH” the soap to follow.
Have any soap weddings since captured the popular imagination like that of Luke and Laura?
Reichardt thinks not. The only ones that come close might be the Bo-Hope nuptials in 1985 on “Days of Our Lives,” and maybe the 1988 Cliff-Nina affair on “All My Children.”