Young Once

How Summer Storylines Have Changed

Young lovebirds dominated the soap landscape during the late 1970s and through out the ’80s, but summer stories like Scotty and Laura tying the knot on GH in July 1979, GH’s Luke and Laura famously going on the run in 1980, ALL MY CHILDREN’s Jesse and Jenny leaving Pine Valley for New York City in 1982, and Bo and Hope finding romance in New Orleans on DAYS in 1984 are few and far between today. And, at the time, focusing on “the kids” was a departure from the norm.

“Gloria [Monty, then-GH executive producer] fought hard to get the network to give that kind of attention to a young storyline,” recalls Kin Shriner (Scott). “That was groundbreaking back then, putting the younger characters front and center. I think Gloria absolutely thought that kids who were out of school, who were home in the afternoon, might get into this storyline with Genie [Francis, Laura] and Jackie [Zeman, Bobbie] and me, and she was right! We got a lot of attention, and that started the rise [of the show’s popularity]. Everybody was watching us!” Their popularity didn’t wane in the fall, either: “When school was back, the kids were running home from school to watch Laura and her trials and tribulations!”