By TERRY MORROW
Sunday, November 19, 2006
When the idea arose to have "General Hospital's" Luke and Laura mark their 25th anniversary by walking down the aisle again, actors Tony Geary and Genie Francis got cold feet.
"I was terrified of trying to redo it," says Geary, who has won five Daytime Emmys for his portrayal of the daytime "anti-hero."
After all, when their "General Hospital" characters exchanged vows on Nov. 16, 1981, it was more than just another soap opera development. It was the apex of a pop-culture phenomenon.
Back then, "General Hospital" daily pulled in the same size audience that "American Idol" does these days. Their wedding is still the most-watched event in daytime TV history.
But ABC wanted to capitalize on the anniversary, hoping to lure back an audience that is nostalgic for the couple, but has since stopped watching the show.
Geary and Francis are attending fan events, doing talk shows and interviews with dozens of print outlets.
SoapNet, the cable channel that shows "General Hospital" three times a day, is offering the retrospective special "Luke and Laura: The Love Story Revealed" (11 p.m. Friday, Nov. 24). It precedes four key episodes of the couple in their heyday, including their first wedding and the birth of their daughter in 1994.
"Luke and Laura revolutionized daytime," says Ed Martin, who reports on the television industry for the Myers Report. "They were the templates for the way characters are written even today. Their first wedding was truly a milestone in daytime television."Even with all this fuss, Geary and Francis were leery about renewing the vows nonetheless.
"There's no way we could escape being compared to the first time around," Geary says. "I thought it was a terrible idea, but I think they found a way to do it that made it different."
Unlike the first time the characters married, this is a sad story. Laura, awakened from catatonia, is living on borrowed time. Luke restages their wedding to make her fleeting moments happy ones.
"It's tragic," Geary says. "It's extremely emotional, which is great for daytime."
Francis, who left the soap four years ago and is now "retired" from acting, was more concerned with being "rusty" after her time away. She also wondered if she still had chemistry with Geary.
"I did not want to do the wedding at all," she says. "The good news is that this (story) has (more) to do with me returning rather than us redoing the wedding. We can never recapture that first lightning in a bottle."
Like the ever-optimistic Laura, Francis, whose temporary return to the show is ending around Thanksgiving, sees an upside to all the suffering her alter ego is enduring for the sake of a big November sweeps storyline.
"If enough people like what they see, that means we'll (be reunited)," she says, "and then we'll have time to flesh all this out."
