GH Pulls A DS

DS is no longer the only soap in which an actor plays 2 different roles & no one notices any resemblance.

General Hospital has 2 contract players, Kelly Monaco & Kent Masters King, who were on the now defunt sister soap Port Charles.
Both actors play different characters on each show, even though both shows are set in the same town, same hospital.
But no one notices the resemblances, including characters who appeared on both shows!

David

Interesting observation, but I believe DOOL actually beat 'em too it, with Josh Taylor.  He has played two long-term roles -- Chris Kosichek and Roman Brady.  And as you mentioned -- none of the other characters even noticed.

To be honest, I am sure many other soaps have done the same thing.  Although the Roman Brady recast is known as the most glaring re-use of an actor, there are other less infamous, yet similar situations on soaps.  AW -- Both Vic Hastings and Reginald Love were played by John Considine.  On DOOL, both Bonnie Lockhart and Adrienne Johnson were played by Judy Evans. 

Although I don't like the idea of casting actors in more than one role on a soap, it seems to be an increasingly popular trend.  Yuck.  But, it didn't begin, nor end with DS.

In the ordinary course of things I probably would have just understood that the same actors were playing the roles in different time periods and assume that only we recognized them, that they would be completely different people to the characters.  But, with Vicki telling everyone she met in 1795 how they looked like someone she knew, it sort of set a precedent that the family likenesses were passed down almost exactly.  And, I believe Barnabas once mentioned that Elizabeth reminded him of his mother (and Burke of Jeremiah).  Of course that could have been different in the other time periods, but once that pattern was set, I just believed it was the same in all of the other times, too.

Only when someone says so.    Barnabas was astonished at how similar Quentin 1 looked to Quentin 2, and he wouldn't have been surprised if he'd spent a couple years time travelling and had seen this sort of thing ad nauseum already.   

To be honest, I am sure many other soaps have done the same thing. 

Indeed, GL also did this.  In the late 1970's, actor Jordan Clarke played Dr. Tim Ryan.  He now plays Billy Lewis (has played Lewis for the better part of 20 years now) and no one in fictional Springfield ever said to Billy, "Gee, you REALLY look like this doctor that used to work at Ceder's Hospital!"

This is nothing new- it was coomon practice on the Procter & Gamble soaps during the 50s and 60s.   Actress Millette Alexander played THREE major characters on "The Edge of Night" in the 1960s (Gail Armstrong, murderess Laura Hillyer and her saintly lookalike cousin Julie Jamison), the latter two while DS was on the air!

On Port Charles, Monaco played a vampire & King played a female werwolf who was falling in love with another vampire~~with characters like that, someone at General Hospital should have remembered them, LOL!

David

I don't really think much of the PC and GH actors making the crossover and no one noticing. I didn't really think that anyone from GH save for Lucy, Scotty (and Kevin? the psychiatristic, whatever his name was) crossed over to PC. I may have seen one or two other people like Mac Scorpio, but other than that, I don't remember any big wigs like Sonny, Carly, Jason, Jax, Nickolas, Emily, Lucky, Liz, etc etc, ever going over to PC. If they did then I just missed it because I didn't watch PC much when it was on, but I catch it on SoapNet every now and then when I'm home.

Another soap that did this was OLTL. I'm not sure it's the same category though. Because IIRC, the guy that plays' Al on there is playing Al still but he looks like someone else. IIRC Al died, then came back in someone else's body or something like that. I don't quite remember, but it's the same actor, and AFAIK it's a different character.

And while we're on the subject, who does King play on GH?

Scott Baldwin & the Quartermaines were on both shows,
Scott was a regular during the first 2 years, the Quatermaines did a show here, a show there.

David

On One Life to Live Roy Thinnes (from the 1991 DS) played Alex Crown and then Sloan Carpenter.  Both characters were in love with Victoria Buchanan!

On GH, Kevin Bernhardt temporarily played Frisco Jones in December 1984 and returned a few months later as Kevin O'Connor.  John Ingle was the NY state police commissioner in  the late 80's and is now Edward Quartermaine.

By the way, everyone thought Sebastion Shaw looked like Jeb.

By the way, everyone thought Sebastion Shaw looked like Jeb.

OMG!  That's right, they did!  I'd forgotten. 

I totally forgot about the Jeb/Sebastian thing too! I'm getting ready to approach those episodes here soon. Hopefully I'll have my collection rounded out by the end of the holiday season.

Thought of another instance when GL used the same actor in a different role.  An actress named Deborah May played French doctor Rene DuBois, got killed off, then came back like a year or two later as FBI Special Agent Ivy Pierce.  Of course, ppl DID remark that she closely resembled Rene.
 

A little useless trivia here: one of the producers on GH is Jonathan Frid's former co-producer and manager - Mary O'Leary.

Nancy

Hmmmm...maybe Mary can lure Jonathan out of retirement to play one of the infamous Cassadines!