General Hospital/Marked Personal

[Stephen Doran]

Acc to lost shows most of General Hospital are missing but all of Marked Personal is archived i was looking fwd to a DVD of GH but it seems unlikely now still lets hope MP is released.

[Deleted]

No, most of the later hour-long format episodes of General Hospital (with self-contained storylines) exist. It's the earlier 30 min continuing soap format episodes that are generally missing (a dozen or so survive including the first two). A shame as I remember the earlier format most of all. A DVD release would be possible though but it's the usual ATV archiving situation for a '70s show really; the worst of the big five ITV companies in this respect at this time.

[Brian Denton]

Ah memories - I used to watch General Hospital when I got home from school; 4.20pm it was on in Granada-land. I particularly remember the storyline where Jill Gascoigne was the fiancee of one of the doctors and was tragically killed. Her identical double (unsurprising as it was just Jill again in a different wig) was then brought into the hospital, much to the consternation of said doctor.

Went to University and found myself on same course as Parker-Brown's son.......

[Stephen Doran]

Dont recall Jill Gascoigne in GH must have been after xmas 73 as i stopped watching it after getting a stereo record player im sure there was a patient with xma played by Brian Macdermott and a female one who was obsessed with Dr Baxter played by James Kerry might have been Elizibeth Counsell .Rewatched the hour ones around 75.

[George Matthews]

Big favourite of mine when i was forced to stay off primary school during my flu ridden 70s. Does anyone know where i can hear again the outro music to this programme? Been searching for it for years

[Stephen Doran]

Theme was called The Girl In The White Coat www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wErX5n4GFM&feature=related

[George Matthews]

Stephen, you have made my day! many thanks.

[Stephen Doran]

Lynda Bellingham/Judy Buxton are only mentioned twice in the cast on BFI im sure they were in more than 2 episodes all of them seems more right

[Peter Stirling]

Nov 22, 2011 9:45:22 GMT Stephen Doran said:

Lynda Bellingham/Judy Buxton are only mentioned twice in the cast on BFI im sure they were in more than 2 episodes all of them seems more right

Yes I reckon they had a regular run of a few months or so?

but obviously trying to index every soap episode is a monumental task that probably will get done... eventually?

Who remembers Clapper the dodgy hospital porter?
A lot thought he would go on to higher things but I dont think he even appeared in the hour long GHs?

[Stephen Doran]

Yes Capper he used to put bets on for the nurses saying stuff like ere nurse got a good horse for you etc ;D

[Ian Wegg]

Thanks for the pointer to the theme. I have it on a vinyl LP somewhere, possibly the Simon Park Eye Level album which I seem to remember also has the Man About The House theme.

I found the tail end of an episode of General Hospital on one of my off-air VHS tapes recently. However this was one of the later one hour shows from 1976 which has a different theme, I believe called "Red Alert". It is credited to Johnny Pearson but frankly it might just as easily have been computer generated, it's a pretty bland bit of department store lift music.

Re: Lynda Bellingham / Judy Buxton. They are only listed twice because the BFI only have 3 episodes catalogued: ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/series/8075. The database has been closed for several years so I've no idea if it will ever be expanded.

IMDb has over 120 episodes with various details: www.imdb.com/title/tt0196249/episodes. However, their entry for the series www.imdb.com/title/tt0196249/ is in a right mess - unless it really did have a second unit director, 13 stuntmen and a bear trainer in which case it must have changed quite a bit after I stopped watching it!

~iw

[Stephen Doran]

Hi Ian, Thanks for reply yes it was called Red Alert when the programme was a hour long around 1975 Catspaw is the only Episode title I recall .

[Ian Wegg]

Thanks for the confirmation, you can hear "Red Alert" here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK8TpQadcoo (just get out at the floor you want!)

It looks like someone has been updating the wrong IMDb entry, I've submitted delete requests for all the spurious data.

~iw

[Stephen Doran]

Interesting about Simon Park as i didnt know he recorded a LP Eye Level from van der valk was the no 1 single back in 73 i might look on ebay for that LP.

[Ian Wegg]

I see an Amazon seller has one.

I found a track listing at www.discogs.com/Simon-Park-Orchestra-Eye-Level/release/742018. I was right about the Man About The House theme (side 1 track 6 "Up to Date") but there's no "Girl in the White Dress" so that must have been on a different album.

~iw