It’s been an eventful 25 years for Laura Spencer since marrying Luke in a fairy-tale wedding seen on television by 30 million people.
She died, and was brought back to life. She killed her stepfather. She gave birth to a son by an adulterous affair, and now Nikolas is a single dad after the baby’s mother died of a virus. Her other son, Lucky, is addicted to painkillers. Her daughter, Lulu, recently aborted a child after being impregnated by a stepbrother.
And Laura spent the last four years in a catatonic state, waking just in time to marry Luke again on “General Hospital,” (2 p.m. Thursday on KMGH- Channel 7) 25 years to the day after their first wedding.
This is a soap opera, after all. Nothing is easy, including ABC’s attempt to relive the show’s glory days, which has a bittersweet feel because of the actors’ conflicted feelings and the slow decline of daytime drama.
There had never been a more influential soap opera moment than Luke and Laura’s wedding. There never will be again.
“You could walk down the hallway and talk to anyone on our daytime staff and they could tell you where they were when Luke and Laura got married,” said Brian Frons, president of daytime TV for the Disney-ABC Television Group.
The relationship had creepy overtones, since Luke had raped Laura two years earlier, yet it captured the imagination. Francis and her TV husband, Anthony Geary, landed on the cover of Newsweek.
Elizabeth Taylor appeared on their show. Princess Diana reportedly sent champagne.
“I didn’t really understand how big it was,” Francis said. “I really enjoyed all my time at work. The hard time was when I was not working. Fortunately, there were not many of those hours.” She was still a teenager, idolized by her peers. Yet, she was lonely.
Geary had an even tougher time. “It just wasn’t anything that I was prepared to deal with as an actor, because I was in daytime,” he said.
Seeking a place where he could walk unrecognized, he moved all the way to Amsterdam, where he still lives.
Neither Francis nor Geary were enthusiastic when ABC suggested another wedding. Producers, writers and other actors didn’t like it, either, Geary said.
There were complicating factors, like Luke being married to another woman, but that’s barely a distraction when you’ve already resurrected a dead character (a soap opera, remember?). The actors came around to appreciating the new story, and Francis was coaxed into returning.
“General Hospital” averaged 3.4 million viewers last season, less than a third of the 11.8 million who typically tuned in during the year of the wedding, according to Nielsen Media Research. Other soaps have posted similar losses.
Lifestyle changes have a lot to do with it; more women are working and those that aren’t have more TV choices. Frons was encouraged that the first day of Francis’ return to the show boosted the “General Hospital” audience by 20 percent.
Geary and Francis are disheartened with the creative shape of daytime dramas today. Soaps have “stumbled around for quite a while,” Geary said.
Francis, who now runs a furniture and gifts store in Maine, said soaps seem to have lost touch with real life and no longer have characters that the audience can relate to.
Meanwhile, prime-time shows that owe a lot to the genre, like “Desperate Housewives,” are thriving.
“Daytime television seems to be disappearing,” Francis said. “It doesn’t seem to be re-creating or reinventing itself. It seems to be eroding.”
