No one better understands what it was like to be the heartthrob star of General Hospital back in its heyday than Rick Springfield. The \u201cJessie\u2019s Girl\u201d singer was a fresh-faced 31-year-old when he joined the cast in 1981 as hunky Dr. Noah Drake. He became an instant viewer favorite. His co-star, Anthony Geary, had already played Luke Spencer for three years on the ABC daytime drama and had developed a rabid fan following of his own. When Luke finally tied the knot with Genie Francis\u2019 Laura (whom Luke had once raped), 30 million viewers tuned in to catch the nuptials.<\/p>\n
Geary died Sunday at 78<\/a> of complications from a surgical procedure three days prior. Springfield, 76, reminisced by phone with The Hollywood Reporter about Geary and those heady days when General Hospital ruled the airwaves.<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n It was bigger than prime time. That\u2019s what I remember of Luke and you and that early-\u201980s golden era of General Hospital. Tell me how you ended up on the show and bonding with Anthony.<\/p>\n I already had my album Working Class Dog recorded, but I didn\u2019t have a lot of faith in it. I got called up on this audition and I didn\u2019t think much of it. I just went in and did my reading. They must have seen something that I didn\u2019t see and picked me for the part. It was a game changer because of Tony Geary and [exec producer] Gloria Monty. Tony was very involved with her in the direction of the show. It became a bigger than primetime show, like you said.<\/p>\n I imagine the production schedule was grueling?<\/p>\n It was very fast. I was kind of thrown into it and just kind of learned by watching others and doing my best. It was more a line memorization thing than an actual acting gig, because there was just so much dialogue. It\u2019s a different art form, the soap opera, from a nighttime show or a movie. And it\u2019s really the actors don\u2019t get the credit that they deserve. Tony was one of the greats.<\/p>\n Did he show you the ropes, teach you how to become a great soap actor?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if \u201cgreat\u201d and \u201csoap opera\u201d actually go together, but he was very welcoming to me. He was already a big star when I came on the show. I didn\u2019t really know much about the show. I thought it was just going to be blue-haired ladies ironing in the afternoon who would watch it. I didn\u2019t realize it was about to kind of explode into this college campus thing where they had to change classes because people wouldn\u2019t show up when General Hospital was on. It just became a phenomenon. And when my star started to rise, Tony never gave me any trouble with it or anything. He was always just really a sweet guy.<\/p>\n In reading his obituary, I was surprised to learn that he had been married to a man for 30 years. Did you know he was gay when you were working together?<\/p>\n Yeah. We knew he was gay. There\u2019s nothing you really can hide on a show like that. I think he moved to Amsterdam because it was more acceptable to be gay there. It didn\u2019t have quite the stigma that it had in America. But back then, it was much more tolerated in the artistic community than in the general public. It was no big deal to us. You really had to be focused on being ready to film your scenes or it could go down pretty fast.<\/p>\n In terms of the Luke and Laura wedding, weren\u2019t major celebrities involved? Could you talk a bit about that moment in General Hospital history?<\/p>\n We all knew it was a big moment, the wedding. Elizabeth Taylor was on the show at that point. I did a couple of scenes with her and she actually had a great sense of humor. I didn\u2019t have a big part. I was just in the audience of the wedding, from what I remember. But it was like a real royal wedding. It was pretty nuts, actually. That\u2019s the strength of the degree of connection that people had to the show.<\/p>\n Thank you so much. I\u2019m sorry for your loss. Anthony was a different kind of soap actor \u2014\u00a0one you never forget.<\/p>\n You think of soaps, you think of Tony as one of the first. He had a great life, and he loved living in Amsterdam. But it\u2019s always sad when someone leaves before their time.<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No one better understands what it was like to be the heartthrob star of General Hospital back in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[59573,236,88,21033,174860,1255,2816],"class_list":["post-351427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-anthony-geary","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-general-hospital","tag-luke-spencer","tag-rick-springfield","tag-the-hollywood-reporter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}