EPISODES MAGAZINE

July/August 1992

An original cast member,
Emily McLaughlin played Nurse jessie Brewer on General Hospital
for nearly three decades.

On April 26, 1991, Emily McLaughlin lost her battle a ith cancer, and General Hospital lost Nurse Jessie Brewer, one of its original and best-loved stars.
After a career in the theater that included appearances on and off Broadway, Emily worked on such popular TV series as Studio One, Kraft Theatre and The Twilight Zone. Her first soap was Young Dr. Malone.
In 1963, she created the role of Jessie Brewer for the ABC pilot of General Hospital and she remained one of Port Charles's leading citizens for nearly three decades.
Toward the end of her life. Emily began writing her memoirs; her daughter, Mary Ann, has provided with exclusive access to the unfinished manuscript, which is excerpted here. I find the world of soap opera fascinating," Emily wrote, "as American as blue denim ... and a mirror of our society as it is-and as it would wish to be." Here, in her own words, is Emily McLaughlin's memories of life at GH, on camera and off.

FIRST REHEARSAL

It was January. It was cold. It was early morning. It was awful. A group of unshining faces turned as I walked down the hall. None of the actors who gathered in the chilly hallway of the Masonic Temple knew each other. We began to introduce ourselves John Beradino was to play Dr. Hardy, I was Nurse Jessie Brewer, Roy Thinnes was my husband, Phil Brewer, and so on.
When the director and producer arrived, we went into the rehearsal room, where tape marks on the floor represented the set. One taped square was the nurses' station, another the elevator; long tapes running down the floor were the corridor.
The actors were poised to begin, and our director had his hand raised to say "cue" when suddenly the door opened with an ominous creak and in filed a long parade of people. It was a group we all knew as the ABC brass. Single file, they walked to a row of folding chairs and sat. In silence.
We stumbled through half of the first act. As I was trying to comfort the ingenue, Jana Taylor (whose character, Angie Costello Weeks, had been badly disfigured in an auto accident ), we suddenly became aware of considerable movement in the direction of the folding chairs. The entire congregation of ABC brass had risen and was in the process of leaving, as silently as possible, which, considering the nature of folding chairs, handbags, and briefcases, wasn't very silent at all.
We got on with rehearsal. Jessie and Phil had an argument. Mr. Costello (Ralph Manza) arrived at the hospital terribly upset about his daughter, Angie. Jessie told Steve her troubles and was duly comforted. It was all something of a blur. Comparing notes later, we realized that we had all been wondering if we would be cancelled before we even got on the air.
Actually, the pilot for General Hospital sold rather quickly.

During the first year, many of the actors-all eight or ten of us-worked four and five-day weeks. John Beradino and I worked five days rim week. John developed an ulcer, and I began to cry when I had to get out of bed in the morning. I was running a home, raising a child, shopping, cooking, and threatening baby sitters in order to get them to arrive at my house by 6:00 A.M. every day. I was soon exhausted.

The repetitious scripts were especially trying for all of us. Our minds boggled trying to remember to whom we had told what, when, and in what detail. The reason for the repetition was the network's belief that viewers tuned in 1.5 times a week. Repetitious scripts were necessary so that viewers-who had been out leading happy, normal lives, as we certainly had not, could tune in almost any time and find the story reasonably familiar. Our reply to that theory was that if the story wasn't quite so familiar, viewers might be tempted to tune in, say, 4.5 times a week. In the script, an invitation to have a cup of coffee was greeted by us with a shudder: It meant more "recap," as we fondly called it. Tempers became frayed. And then came the day of the door.
John Beradino was furious about something, and his anger focused on his character's office door, which stuck during rehearsal. He walked clown the corridor toward the offending door, and put his list through it. We regrouped, the door was replaced, and we continued. The next day was a repeat: The door refused to open, John punched it, we regrouped, the door was replaced, and we continued.


The third day looked very much like a repeat of the first, except that, unbeknown to us, the carpenter's shop had come up with a durable, actor-proof door of solid wood, instead of plywood. So this time, when John punched the door, he made a strangled noise and clutched his hand. There was no hole in the door. It didn't take us long to realize that John's hand was broken. There was an attempt at sympathy, a good deal of muffled laughter, and a frantic stage manager. John, like the trouper he is, had his hand set in a cast and continued.

Emily rehearses a scene with a "patient" on the hospital set
during the early days of GH

Dr. Steve Hardy was Jessie Brewer's confident

Roy Thinnes on the set with Emily.
He played Phil Brewer from 1963-66.

Jessie was in costant turmoil over the affairs
of her philandering husband, Phil,
a doctor at General Hospital

MY BLUE SWEATER

During that first year, the set was kept at arctic temperatures because of the equipment, and we rehearsed wearing coats. During taping, however, the coats had to come off, so the cast became expert at concealing the fact that we were all freezing. The engineers swore that the air conditioning was uncontrollable; we swore at the engineers.
Eventually, I tired of shaking with cold and I did something I should have done earlier: I went to the wardrobe department and asked for a sweater. They gave me a navy blue one and, gratefully, I wore it. Although it was the height of summer, I thought if I wore the same sweater every day, it might be accepted as an appendage to Jessie.
One day a new actor stopped me on the set and asked, "Why do you wear the blue sweater?" I was astonished. I answered, "Because I'm cold." He laughed, not believing me, and the legend of the blue sweater bad begun. Fan mail came in asking the same question. My daughter and I considered various outrageous answers because no one seemed to believe the simple fact that I was cold. Finally I learned to smile and answer the question with, "I'm fond of it," which was certainly true and seemed to satisfy the blue-sweater detectives.

The famous blue sweater kept Emily toasty
at sevent-floor nurses' station.

During those first years, we were truly the stepchildren of the industry. We had no dressing rooms-actresses dressed in women's wardrobe, actors in men's wardrobe. There were no parking spaces, no hairdressers, and very little wardrobe to draw from. Actresses accessorized with scarves and belts from their own closets. The lack of a hairdresser was painful because most of us were highly untalented with our own hair. (When I broke my arm, I gratefully retreated to a wig). For the first 11 years, we stayed messy and did the best we could.
We were very much a family, especially in the early years. We all knew each other's wives, husbands, and children, and what each other's problems were. We were a very close cast. Today, we have such a large cast, and we shoot out of sequence-that means, for instance, all the scenes in the nurses' station are shot at one time, eliminating the need to move cameras and boom mikes back and forth- so if another actor is not in the same scene with you, you may not know he is even on the show that day! For the sake of efficiency, this is, of course, necessary. But those of us who have been around for quite a while feel a little nostalgic for the days when there was more time for friendship and laughter.


Our microphones in those first years were a nightmare. They were so called RF mikes, which consisted of a small, highly sensitive microphone that women wore in their brassiere and that was connected by a cord to a transmitter. The transmitter was in a small flannel pouch sewn onto a wide elastic band, which was worn around the thigh. The whole thing was a nightmare to the audio engineers, as well as us.


I have often been asked if we learn all our dialogue or just read it. I used to be annoyed by questions like that until I thought, "That's kind of wonderful because it's supposed to look as if we just get up there and do it."
Until very recently, we had TelePrompTers on the set which, if nothing else, were a great moral support. They were seldom much more for me because I am nearsighted and can't see the machine unless it is practically in my arms.
Roy Thinnes (the original Phil Brewer) had a miraculous way of looking at a TelePrompTer if he needed one. He would pause, look at his watch as if the time of day was the most important thing in the world, then let his eyes, following the watch, go to the prompter.


Mark Miller, whose character, Randy Washburn, was in love with Audrey March (Rachel Ames) went blank one day on the set. He was sitting in a swiveled chair and had Rachel in an embrace. So he simply swiveled the chair, leaned it to the side and as far back as he could go- Rachel and all-looked at the TelePrompTer, smiled, and said to Rachel, "I love you."
There were, however, ways to get around the lack of a prompter when an actor was desperate. One involved the use of a felt-tipped pen and a chart, clipboard, or any piece of paper he could lay his hands on, plus a little innovation-and careful attention to where his blocking was going to take him. For example, the medicine room was where Marty West (the fifth and last Phil Brewer) wrote his dialogue all over the refrigerator, on the walls, on charts, on every available space. How much he used it I don't know, but the important thing was that he knew it was there. Another time Jack Betts, who played Dr. Ken Martin, had a meeting in the corridor with an extra who played a student nurse. He was to take a folder from her and read a diagnosis and treatment-very difficult dialogue. He had, of course, written it in the folder. Everything went well in rehearsal but evidently the extra thought it would be very funny to switch folders, and did so. With cameras rolling, Jack opened the folder and instead of the dialogue he expected to find, he saw a blank piece of paper. He looked up and saw a smiling student nurse. Somehow he got through the scene, but that student nurse never again graced the halls of General Hospital.

Emily flanked by costars
John Beradino (left) and Roy Thinnes (far right)
and an "extra" playng a nurse.

1978

Emily found that fans' devotion to GH could leave her feeling flattered-or flustered


Mail can be scary. Most of it is pleasant, but once in awhile it involves a person who cannot draw the line between reality and fantasy. For example, over the years a number of actors who have played philandering characters or evil influences have been attacked in supermarkets by women wielding heavy purses. It became an inside joke: If an actor had a scene in which he threatened the "good" people, everyone would warn, "Stay out of the supermarket!"
Another time, John Beradino had a long-distance call in the make-up room. It was a woman who was, she said, in Grand Central Station in New York. She was taking a train immediately to let Jessie know that Phil was cheating on her. John somehow convinced the lady not to leave New York.


Then there was the letter from a man in Pennsylvania who announced he was going to marry me. No question, fact. He must have been reading fan magazines because he knew all about my son, Bob, and my late husband. He had already sent Bob a 20-foot bookcase, and he said that my enormous diamond ring was to come any day. I shook my head until I read the second page on which he announced that he was an employer of mine, since he owned shares of ABC stock. I ran to the producer, who must have run to ABC, because after one more letter- describing the honeymoon trip he had planned-there was silence.

GLORIA DAYS

At the end of General Hospital's eleventh year, the show's ratings were way down, understandably, because nothing was happening in the scripts. We came to a collective conclusion that it was only a matter of time before we would be off the air.

Then, just as we were making the transition to an hourlong format, Gloria Monty arrived. An electric current went through the whole group. The first hour-long segments went in the trash. Hairdressers, wardrobe people, and set designers arrived. We moved to a new stage, practically twice the size of the one we had been used to, and the scenery stopped developing holes. Handsome new sets appeared. Wardrobe had its budget expanded, and clothes began to be designed and sewn for individual actors. Even a simple little dress was now of silk instead of cotton, selected off-the rack from Neiman-Marcus, Saks, or one of the better stores. I'll never forget the first time I slipped into a simple silk. There is no way to explain the difference it makes to an actress to wear silk that has been fitted instead of cotton that doesn't quite fit correctly. It not only shows in the way she feels but in the way she stands, the way she holds her head-her whole sense of self-esteem.
Our writing staff increased, and the scripts improved. There was less repetition and no more lines like, "Well, the fat's in the fire." The writers were no longer writing down to the audience.
We became number one in the ratings.
The advent of Luke and Laura, and Gloria's reworking of some famous movie plot ideas of the 1930s, made daytime history. Soap operas had begun to attract magazine coverage some time earlier, and by the time Luke and Laura were married and we were on the cover of Time, there was no longer a question of being a stepchild of the industry. We had arrived, complete with hairdresser and parking spaces.

STAR TURNS

It was glorious when Elizabeth Taylor joined the cast for a brief time as Helena Cassadine. We were impressed, fascinated, and delighted. She arrived with her own retinue of people, looking every bit as beautiful as she did in pictures, and she was everv bit as friendly as any actor on the set. It didn't occur to us that Elizabeth Taylor might be nervous. We had adopted the point of view that Elizabeth wasn't human-she was larger than life.
The first indication that she might be, just a regular person after all when she kept mispronouncing her character's name as "Cassadeen" instead of, " Cassadine." That was solved, and the scene went beautifully. Then she had a brief encounter with me at the nurses' station, during which I managed to keep my pencil from shaking, and on to a scene with Tony Geary (ex-Luke Spencer, now- Bill Eckert), a very sensitive and aware gentleman who realized that even a star like Elizabeth can feel out of place. (It isn't easy to walk into a tightly knit group of people, particularly when you're a star.). So in the scene, when Elizabeth knocked on Tony's door, instead of saying. "Can I help you'" as scripted, Tony threw open the door and shouted at the top of his voice, "My God, it's Elizabeth Taylor!" Everyone on the set broke into laughter, the tension was gone, and from then on Elizabeth sailed through as if she had been doing a soap for 20 years.
After Elizabeth had finished on GH, invitations arrived to a performance of "The Little Foxes," a play in which she was appearing in Los Angeles. We also received invitations to the Actors Fund benefit to be held afterward. I thought it was a mistake, so I called the Actors Fund to tell them, but the voice on the other end said. "No, no, it's not a mistake. Compliments of Elizabeth Taylor." She had bought a block of 65 or more of the best seats in the house and invited everyone with whom she had worked at GH. both cast and crew. It was a beautiful evening, and not one word about this rather magnificent gesture was ever leaked to the press. Incidentally, her salary as an actress on GH went to charity. She was-is-quite a lady.

Elizabeth Taylor
with Rick Springfield.
On the right
there is Emily McLaughlin.

When Sammy Davis,Jr., arrived to appear as Eddie Phillips, I found him to be one of the most enchanting people I have ever known. We were introduced, and he went down on one knee, took my hand, and kissed it. I know of no other man who could do that without looking like an idiot. Sammy could pull it off, and did. And he did the same thing every time I ran into him after that. We were all getting used to a heady diet of major stars when Gloria decided enough was enough. She did not want the show to become a matter of "which star today?" It was a wise decision, but we missed them, and the excitement of it all.

THE HEART OF GENERAL HOSPITAL

By the time Luke and Laura married, the ratings for GH had risen to an all-time high. No other show had ever met or surpassed them. I stopped Gloria in the hall and congratulated her. She smiled, then sobered, and said, "But where do I go from here?".
To her credit, she never stopped or rested on her laurels-she found places to go. Along came the Cassadines, who were going to freeze the world, and assorted other strange groups. This was highly successful and, I thought, fine as long as half the show concentrated on basic human problems. Most basic humans are concerned with neither universal refrigeration nor jewel thefts. General Hospital has always been focused on interrelationships and human problems - the woman who can't have a baby and wants one, the woman who is pregnant and doesn't want a baby; a woman in love with a man or a man with a woman when love is not returned; illness, death, grief, joy. These old-fashioned quandaries and the questions they raised about values, ethics, and morals began to fade slowly, particulary under the producers who came alter Gloria left and saw, I think, only the success of science-fiction plots. I feel that those plots are valuable, but only if mixed with the basics of life. However. I just may be old-fashioned.


Old-fashioned or not, Emily McLaughlin never lost her appeal for generations of viewers. Her last appearance on GH aired several months prior to her death.

John Beradino played DR. Steve Hardy who, with Emily's Jessie,
became one of the cornerstones of GH

Jessie with Tom and Simone Hardy
(David Wallace and Laura Carrington)
1988