Two hundred feet beneath the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania lies a closely guarded labyrinth, with more than 20 miles of tunnels and hundreds of unmarked rooms, where some of the most important records in the world are kept.
It's also where SoapNet executives had to venture to track down the early years of the love story between "General Hospital's" Luke and Laura.
This month fans will see classic clips that were unearthed, all-time favorite episodes that will air in their entirety, as well as a one-hour special with the actors who play the near-mythological characters, Anthony Geary and Genie Francis.
But this story doesn't begin in the former limestone mine-turned-underground-storage vault known today as the Iron Mountain Underground. It launches in Burbank in the offices of a basic cable network devoted to all things soapy and the special task force that took four months to create the monthlong Luke and Laura stunt.
It all coincides with Francis' return to the show Oct. 26 -- almost 25 years to the date after Luke and Laura were married -- and picks up where their love story left off. (That would be with a divorce and the last four years that Laura spent in a catatonic coma.)
The romantic phenomenon of Luke and Laura attracted 30 million viewers who tuned in to their wedding in November 1981, still the biggest soap audience in history.
"That was a big year because Luke and Laura got married and Prince Charles and Princess Diana got married and I got married," said Deborah Blackwell, SoapNet's general manager. "And none of those marriages lasted, so I do remember 1981 in a big way."
Every Sunday this month, during its "General Hospital" marathons of the previous week's episodes, SoapNet will air classic clips that follow the biggest soap-opera romance of all time. Fans will be able to relive the day Luke and Laura met in 1979, the summer of 1980 that they spent on the run, their marriage, the births of their children, their return to Port Charles in 1993 in a pink Cadillac, their divorce in 2001 and their emotional reunion after Laura emerged from her four-year catatonic state.
"We've all grown along with Luke and Laura and, in a way, it's like looking back at our own early years," Blackwell said. "It's that undying love that Luke had for Laura that is so emotionally satisfying to us as women. She was always his angel, and there's something so great about that.
