The 1980's and Gloria Monty ruined soaps

In the 1950's when The Secret Storm ran as a 15 minute serial weekdays at 4:15 pm, Gloria Monty directed the episodes. This turbid drama of the Ames family was totally absorbing, much more interesting than The Brighter Day which preceded it at 4pm. Many CBS affiliates in fact did not carry The Brighter Day. For example, when CBS expanded 15-minute Love of Life (which aired at 12:1t) to half an hour (starting at 12 noon), Miami's WTVJ which had a noon news, did not air Love of Life and put The Secret storm on in the 12:15 slot. For a long time it ran one week later than the show being aired from CBS in New York, shown via kinescope I presume since in 1958 videotaping was not generally available. My point is that of all people Gloria Monty should have known what would make a soap opera successful directing that talented cast in torrid storylines. Oddly for a daytime serial the main protagonist was a man, Peter Ames, centering on his familial and community conflicts. Up until the time Luke and Laura became the focus of General Hospital, that show had great stories. Who can forget Heather and her mechanizations? Truthfully, I feel the expansion of the 30-minute show to first 45 minutes then an hour was a grave mistake. Many successful serials in the half hour format did not fair well when expanded to an hour. (The best expansion was The Young and the Restless. The Bell family certainly knew what they were doing!)

Young and the Restless was good, but now it is a total mess. All these outlancish plots ruined that show also. Monty did a good job with Secret Storm(from what I hear, wasn't around to see it) but ruined GH with outlandish plots(freezing the world) and all those 007 type plots. Worked then, but people tired of it quickly and stopped watching soaps.

IMO,Monty didn't ruined soaps......................it was the mess from the OJ
Simpson trial that led to lots of premptions and seems it's been all downhill
from that point on!!!!

Monty brought in wooden, one-dimensional characters who were put into outlandish situations. It worked through the 80's, but people stopped watching with all the bad acting and storylines.

Yeah,right........if you think she ruined them,check some old clips on Youtube
and you might live to regret saying them,IMO!!!

I've watched the Youtube videos and I found the stories more interesting and the characters more compelling. Today, Soaps go from one action sequence to another. Who cares? Obviously, not the viewers, because they are turning off the Soaps.

As much as I adored Luke & Laura , yes I was caught up in the late 70s/early 80s craze of GH, it made me SICK when DAYS OF OUR LIVES picked up the science fiction whacko storylines and copied the DiMeras after the Cassadines. PASSIONS was even worse !

GH did have magic in the actors, chemistry, and storylines besides the Ice Princess / freezing Port Charles nonsense. The Quartermaines, the Hardys/Webbers, the Spencers, and the introduction of exciting young actors (Rick Springfield, Emma Samms, Demi Moore, John Stamos, Janine Turner, Paul Rossili - whatever happend to HIM????).

I guess that 3:00 to 4:30 block growing up was special to me. On NBC, ANOTHER WORLD and SOMERSET (and whichever soap got stuck between them) during the 1970s, then GH and THE EDGE OF NIGHT on ABC in the late 1970s thru the mid 1980s (when EDGE was cancelled).

I disagree. The 1980's were the best years on GH. Now, all GH has to offer are a couple of extremely boring Mobsters who also pose as the romantic leads. Women who fall for the beanbrained mobsters and other twisted, small minded,unfaithful and narcissitstc characters just plain bore me to death.The Guza creations since the late 90's took appealing characters and re-wrote their history and morphed them into boring drunks (Luke Spencer) and crazy women (Laura Spencer) when in the past they were the characters who raised the ratings. It is disgusting. Don't blame Gloria Monty....it s all Bob Guza's fault.