Luke and Laura Spencer
| Luke and Laura | |||||||||
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Anthony Geary and Genie Francis as Luke and Laura, 2006
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| General Hospital character | |||||||||
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| Created by | Pat Falken Smith | ||||||||
| Introduced by | Gloria Monty | ||||||||
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| Other names | L&L | ||||||||
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| Spouse | 1981–2001, 2006 |
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Luke Spencer and Laura Webber are fictional characters, and the signature supercouple from the American daytime drama General Hospital.Luke is portrayed by Anthony Geary, and Laura is portrayed by Genie Francis. Though other supercouples came before them, Luke and Laura are the best known outside of the soap opera medium and are credited with defining the term supercouple and leading other soap operas to try to duplicate their success.
Despite having been raped by a drunken Luke, Laura falls in love with him. Originally, critics of the soap opera genre panned the choice of having a rape victim fall in love with her rapist, an example of forced seduction. The unlikely pairing became popular in spite of Luke's past misdeed when the story shifted to focus on love and redemption.
The couple wed at the end of the hour-long show on November 17, 1981; the event was watched by 30 million viewers and remains the highest-rated hour in American soap opera history. Viewers watched as the show followed their marriage through two decades and gave them two children. Today, their union still has a presence in fictional town Port Charles. In 1996, TV Guide included the wedding of Luke and Laura as part of its "100 Most Memorable Moments in TV History," ranking it number 35. On Internet message boards, the couple is often referred to as "L&L" or "LnL" (for Luke and Laura).
In 1978, General Hospital was close to cancellation owing to low viewership. At that time, they were ranked lowest in the Nielsen ratings. To save the show, ABC executive Jackie Smith hired Gloria Monty as the show's executive producer and Douglas Marland as head writer. Monty wanted to attract a youth-based audience as a way of garnering higher ratings. To do this, she and Marland brought troubled teenager Laura Vining (Genie Francis) to the forefront of the series. The character went from appearing a couple of times a week to having fifty pages of script a day. "Gloria put sex and romance into Laura's life," Francis said, "and it bowled me over. Here I was doing things in front of 20 million people that I had never done in my life." Her early stories included killing her older lover, David Hamilton, for cheating on her with her mother and a popular romance with Scott "Scotty" Baldwin. In response, General Hospital's ratings rose as younger viewers began watching for Laura. Teenagers connected with her because she was their age and experienced some of the same problems they did, yet also lived "the life of a 28 year old".
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