Short Take: General Hospital (1978-1987)

In 1978, Gloria Monty, a veteran director of daytime-TV soap operas, was hired to be executive producer and head showrunner of General Hospital, an ABC-network soap that was on the verge of cancellation. Over the next three years, she transformed the series into a pop-culture phenomenon and the most popular daytime soap to ever air on TV. Monty moved the show's emphasis from domestic and medical melodrama to the excitement of fanciful adventure serials, pulp-crime stories, and romance among the young and glamorous. The character ensemble she established couldn't have been more compelling. Among the more notable regulars: Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary), a straddling-both-sides-of-the-law antihero adventurer; Laura Webber (Genie Francis), Luke's major love interest; Robert Scorpio (Tristan Rogers), an Australian-born espionage and law-enforcement operative; Heather Webber (Robin Mattson), a devious, disturbed young woman who was key to the show's most compelling murder mystery; Scotty Baldwin (Kin Shriner), a sleazy young attorney who was Luke's frequent nemesis; Holly Sutton (Emma Samms), a high-stakes grifter from England; Anna Devane (Finola Hughes), a one-time confederate and lover of Scorpio's who wanted to hang the gun up for good, but never did; Frisco Jones (Jack Wagner), a handsome musician turned police officer; and Felicia Cummings (Kristina Malandro), Frisco's love interest, whose beauty was only surpassed by her talent for finding danger. The series was a pastiche of probably every pulp-suspense and romantic-melodrama plot out there. (The Ice Princess storyline, the program's most famous, while best known for the Luke and Laura romance, began as a play on The Maltese Falcon and ended as a James Bond-style adventure.) The show was irresistible, and until Monty departed in January 1987, the weekday 3PM hour was must-watch TV. Looking back, the only disappointment is that one had to be there to appreciate it. The hundreds if not thousands of hours of episodes encompassing Gloria Monty's tenure have not been collected on video, and given the volume of material, they probably never will be. Only scattershot YouTube compilations remain.