Rest in Peace, Ms. Monty

[shipperx]

I was sad to read on BAPS that Gloria Monty has died. The woman produced the most addictive camp of my childhood (that would be the 1980ish edition of General Hospital. Some kids watched cartoons... I watched GH. Oh, it was fun.)

• I remember the "Summer on the Run" with Luke and Laura investigating "the left handed boy" (and I particularly remember the transvestite mobster hitman... this is the sort of thing that makes a lasting impression!)


• I remember Luke and Laura ballroom dancing through a department store and the way Elizabeth Taylor showed up to curse the pair on their wedding day (hee!).


• I remember when Dr. Alan Quartermaine tried to blow up his heart-surgeon wife Monica for having an affair with Rick Webber (Click! Boom! That was great fun!) and how that never prevented the Alan and Monica from enjoying several decades of marriage while calling each other terrible names. (Hee!)


• How Tracy Quartermaine stood over her father, watching him having a heart attack while witholding his pills, because he was such a sexist pig that he wouldn't consider her as heir apparant to his CEO throne.


• I remember Robert Scorpio, international Austrailian spy, and his love affair with a beautiful thief named Holly (as played by a pre-Dynasty Emma Samms)


• I knew that the WSB had the 'good spies' and that the DVX the bad ones. And long before JJ Abrams created Alias, I had Anna Devane--a lovely British DVX/WSB double agent(played Finola Hughs after that travesty of "Stayin' Alive" but before "Charmed") who arrived in Port Charles to tear Robert away from Holly ... only for her to fall for a Scottish mobster named Duke (Ian Buchannan before Twin Peaks). And how, when they married, he wore a kilt.


• And I loved it when the DVX produced an evil clone (or was it a bad twin?) who either was or wasn't Grant Putnam (I can't remember who was real and who was fake, only that there were two of him and both fell for a spoiled Quartermaine heiress who in turn fell for a farmboy douf.


• I especially remember that the Ice Princess might send the world into a new ice age because it was actually a weathermachine (and had something to do with diamonds) (whee!)


• I remember a very young John Stamos being sent to prison as Blackie Parrish


• And Rick Springfield (before Jesse's Girl) as the lathario Dr. Noah Drake.


• I hated Jack Wagner (and his character) long before he unleashed his bad music (Aaaaaaalllll I Neeeeeeeeeed...) and years of Melrose Place upon the world. (I also remember his real-life wife Kristina before he married and divorced her multiple times. Uh... just to be clear, I mean marry and divorce her in real life, not just the show. )


• I remember Janine Turner before Northern Exposure, when her hair was long and blonde.


• And Demi Moore before St. Elmo's Fire, Bruce Willis, or Ashton Kutcher.

Ms. Monty created an era of campy good fun in the early 80s and populated it with pretty actors and whacky characters. These stories linger in my memory still. If only there were more like her around today, daytime tv wouldn't need Jerry Springer and it would be far more fun.

From the article posted on BAPS:

Emmy winning actress Jane Elliot (GHs Tracy Quartermaine) adds, "In the late 1970s, Gloria Monty transformed soap opera viewing from a housewives pastime to ˜the" cool thing to do. As I was a beneficiary of that transformation, I will be eternally grateful and will miss her terribly. I can't wait to see what she does with heaven."

"Gloria was one of the great innovators of daytime TV. She put GH at the top of heap in the early 1980s. More importantly, she also gave me one of the great chances of my career by turning 13 weeks into 28 years. I will be forever grateful," said Emmy winning actor Stuart Damon (GHs Dr. Alan Quartermaine).

"Gloria Monty was a pioneer with great clarity and vision. Her creative ideas had and continue to have an enormous impact for the entire daytime television industry. For those of us who knew and worked with her, we loved Gloria as family," said Jacklyn Zeman (GHs Bobbie Spencer).

Ms. Monty is survived by her sister Norma.

Comments

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

I used to watch GH in 1967, when my grandmother would babysit me. Then I stopped, and started again in college - the whole Scott/Luke/Laura thing.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

You know, I might have been sucked into the Luke and Laura thing, but I always thought that poor Scott had been done wrong! :)

[sockmonkeyhere.livejournal.com]

I felt sorry for poor old Scotty, too. Hee, I couldn't STAND Luke and Laura. But I was usually too busy feeling even sorrier for gorgeous Dr. Jeff Webber (played by a very young Richard Dean Anderson) to give much of a fart about anything else.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

When Heather was on LSD! Heh.

It really was the cracked out entertainment of my childhood.

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

You know, it sounds like she was the one responsible for making the show so addictive for me, as well... that was the era I got sucked into, drifting away when they began moving from the spy plots and more fantastical storylines (I *loved* Eugene and his visions).

[spikeylover.livejournal.com]

I hated to find that out yesterday. She really had me hooked on soaps in the eighties with that Luke/Laura storyline.

[fishsanwitt]

Thank you for the information. That's too bad.