“GH”‘s Anthony Geary, 1947-2025: He Changed Our Soap World

I started watching “General Hospital” in 1978, at the beginning of my career as a soap journalist. That was the year that Anthony Geary made his debut on “GH” as Luke Spencer. I liked Luke immediately. He was charming, funny, and true. And Geary was a terrific actor who won over his already approving audience with his character’s warmth and openness. Luke, who grew up in a poor family, had loving relationships with his sister Bobbie (played by Jackie Zeman), a hooker turned nurse, and his Aunt Ruby (played by Norma Connolly), also a former hooker, who was his surrogate mother. As we got to know him, Luke’s complexity was revealed.

Luke managed the Campus Disco. One day a teenager named Laura Webber (played by Genie Francis), who was married to Scotty Baldwin (played by Kin Shriner), applied for a job as a waitress. Luke hired her, and it wasn’t long before sparks were flying between them. Then one night, to the tune of Herb Alpert’s throbbing “Rise,” he raped her on the disco floor.

It was 1981, and I had just become the editor of Afternoon TV Magazine. I got a phone call from an ABC publicist who said, “We want to call what happened between Luke and Laura in 1979 a seduction. Not a rape.” The relationship between the two was soon written into a genuine and consensual romance. It proved so successful that L&L became a national obsession.

On the morning of November 16, 1981, the first of the two days when Luke and Laura’s wedding aired, ABC invited us to a press conference with Tony at their headquarters. He was typically glib and most charming. But it was obvious to me that he was having trouble coping with becoming a national obsession. It was 10 a.m., and he appeared to be high as a kite.

So what? In the early ’80s a lot of soap actors did drugs. But that day, Tony also seemed to be highly conflicted. He had set out to be a serious actor, and he had chalked up some wonderful primetime credits. On “All in the Family,” he had famously played a friend of Archie Bunker’s son-in-law, Mike Stivic (played by Rob Reiner). Archie sarcastically mislabeled him as gay. (Amazingly Geary and Reiner died a day apart.) It was reported later that director Oliver Stone auditioned Tony for a role in “Salvador” but rejected him — because he was a “soap guy.” That was generally considered a bad thing in those days. So there Tony was, America’s most famous actor du jour, but he was pigeonholed as a soap opera character, probably for the rest of his life. Imagine his frustration!

Still, what a treat he and Genie were on “GH” in those days. “GH” executive producer Gloria Monty — Tony’s surrogate mother when he worked for her on his first soap, “Bright Promise” — was especially adept at fashioning plot devices that had fun with quotes from favorite movies. Foremost among these was her L&L On the Run story inspired by “It Happened One Night,” the 1934 Clark Gable/ Claudette Colbert classic. Early in the Luke and Laura story, the pair fled Port Charles and wound up on a farm in a town called Beecher’s Corner’s. They holed up in Whittaker’s Barn, where Luke hung a sheet between their beds — just like in the movie. The “Walls of Jericho” fell one night, and Luke and Laura made real love for the first time after the rape — oh, pardon me, the “seduction.”

Although Monty, who really was brilliant (I interviewed her twice), got most of the credit for the Luke and Laura success, there was another key player on the creative team. It was “GH’s” headwriter, Douglas Marland, who created the characters in the first place. I knew this warm, loving, and talented man very well, and he was unhappy that Gloria Monty took all the credit for the success of Luke and Laura. (He later fled to “Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns,” for which he won multiple Emmys.)

But back in Port Charles, L&L thrived through many action-adventure stories. First, Luke saved the world from a weather machine made by international criminal Mikkos Cassidine (played by John Colico). Later, at Luke and Laura’s wedding, Cassidine’s widow, Helena (played by the great movie star Elizabeth Taylor, who was a huge “GH” fan), declared her famous curse on Luke and Laura.

I was lucky enough to talk to Ms. Taylor about her appearance at Luke and Laura’s wedding. She was warm and lovely, and she giggled her way through the interview. At the time, she was having a much-heralded romance with Tony. Because Tony was gay (another story altogether!) some thought this romance was a put-on. When I talked to Ms. Taylor, though, she seemed like a woman truly in love. And when he was asked about it on the “Wendy Williams Show,” Tony said, “ I was sort of her boy toy for a couple of years.”

I think the real reason that Tony was so beloved as Luke was that he worked wonderfully with his fellow actors. Remember when Aussie Robert Scorpio (played by Tristan Rogers) came to town, and he and Luke became best friends? What chemistry these two actors had! (Sadly, the actors died within months of each other.)

How close were Tony and Genie? (Think of the age difference.) The two really were magical together. Genie, whose father, Ivor Francis, had been a well-known character actor, was an advanced actress for her age (19 at the start of her storyline with Tony.) After Tony died, Genie went on Facebook and said she could feel the loss of his presence in her sleep. Tony worked very well with other leading ladies, including a very young and raw Demi Moore (that deep gravelly voice) who played Luke’s girlfriend Jackie Templeton for a while. And he was tremendous in later years when Luke was married to Tracy Quartermaine (the great Jane Elliot).

Whatever Tony’s feelings at being stuck in a soap opera, he nonetheless gave back tremendously to the medium and to all in it. It is said that he taught the actor who played Luke and Laura’s son Lucky how to act, which Jonathan Jackson acknowledged in a grateful post upon Geary’s death. Thanking him similarly was Jacob Young, who also played Lucky.

In the end, Tony appears to have found resolution and happiness in his life, which was full of complex emotions and conflicting experiences. He met and married Claudio Gama, and they spent Tony’s retirement living in their beloved Amsterdam. Last week, we in daytime lost him.

Can Marlena say something important from her personal observation of the early days of the soap world? When I first started out as a reporter in 1978, daytime drama was so looked down upon by the real world that it was as if we soap lovers were living in a ghetto of our own. Then Luke and Laura came along, and suddenly soaps got tons of national mainstream publicity. At last, we were welcome in polite society. Soaps were recognized as a worthy popular art genre! I was so happy to be an eyewitness to the transition.

During his glorious years at “GH” and through a bravissimo career that earned him a record eight Emmys, the late, great Anthony Geary truly changed the soap world. He made us soap fans feel legitimate.