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Access Atlanta > Blog > Archives > 2006 > June > 28 > Entry
‘General Hospital’ to reunite Luke, Laura
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ABC announced Tuesday that “General Hospital” actress Genie Francis has agreed to resume her iconic role as Laura Spencer this fall to commemorate Luke and Laura’s (wanna feel really old?) 25th wedding anniversary.
The soap couple’s 1981 wedding made Nielsen ratings history by attracting 30 million viewers at the show’s height of popularity.
While Luke Spencer portrayer Anthony Geary has remained on the show (he won his fifth Daytime Emmy for the role this year), Francis, 44, last left the series in 2002 after Laura whacked her father Rick Webber, lapsed into a catatonic state and was shipped off to a sanitarium.
ABC reps tell us that the actress is scheduled to resume her role in October and will appear on-air “at least” through November sweeps. Laura’s return marks the latest of the venerable soap’s classic characters popping back up on the show. In recent months, Rick Springfield, Tristan Rogers, Emma Samms and Finola Hughes have all made popular reappearances in the fictional Port Charles.
Via a statement released by ABC, Francis says: “I am very happy to be returning to my ‘General Hospital’ family and look forward to portraying a role that means a lot to me as well as the fans who have supported the character throughout the years.”
Says ABC Daytime President Brian Frons: “We are very excited about Genie’s return as we gear up to commemorate a quarter-century since the biggest milestone in the history of daytime television. The return of Laura Spencer to the show’s canvas will solidify the show’s already strong and poignant storytelling.”
Celebrity docket
Alleged BlackBerry-heaving supermodel Naomi Campbell appeared Tuesday in a Manhattan courtroom, where prosecutors said a plea bargain was possible in her cellphone assault case. She did not speak during the brief proceeding.
The real action came outside the lower Manhattan courthouse, where some 50 photographers and camera crews waited for a shot of the 36-year-old catwalker after her appearance before Criminal Court Judge Evelyn Laporte on Tuesday.
Campbell, attorney David Breitbart and her small retinue were forced to hide inside the courthouse for about five minutes until a car arrived to take them away from the media horde.
When Campbell’s case was called, prosecutor Shanda Strain told the judge that no grand jury action had been taken in the case. The defense then agreed to an adjournment pending a possible plea deal, and Laporte ordered everyone to return to court Sept. 27.
Campbell was arrested March 30 for allegedly throwing a bejeweled BlackBerry device at one of her employees in a dispute over a missing pair of jeans.
She has called the allegations “completely untrue.” The employee, housekeeper Ana Scolavino, was treated at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York for an injury to the back of her head after the incident.
‘Mockingbird’ author shares
Harper Lee, author of the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has written a rare published item — a letter for Oprah Winfrey’s magazine on how she became a reader as a child in a rural, Depression-era Alabama town.
The 80-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner quit giving interviews about 40 years ago and, other than a 1983 review of an Alabama history book, has published nothing of significance in some four decades. That makes her article for O, the Oprah Magazine, something of a literary coup for the television talk show celebrity.
In a letter for the magazine’s July “special summer reading issue,” Lee tells of becoming a reader before first grade: She was read to by her older sisters and brother, a story a day by her mother, newspaper articles by her father. “Then, of course, it was Uncle Wiggly at bedtime.”
She also writes about the scarcity of books in the 1930s in Monroeville, where she grew up and where she lives part of each year. That deficit, combined with a lack of anything else to do — no movies for kids, no parks for games — made books especially treasured, she writes.
“Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books,” she writes.
Celebrity birthdays
Comedian-director Mel Brooks is 80. Actress Kathy Bates is 58. Actor John Cusack is 40. Actor Gil Bellows (“Ally McBeal”) is 39. Actress Tichina Arnold (“Everybody Hates Chris”) is 35.
Contributing: news services. If you have a tip, call 404-526-2749. Or fax 404-526-5509. Or e-mail: buzz@ajc.com.
If you have a tip, call 404-526-2749. Or fax 404-526-5509. Or e-mail: buzz@ajc.com.
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