With the established and successful ABC daytime soap operas veering into a new trend of youth orientation and storylines with more action and adventure, soap creator
Agnes Nixon and actor/writer
Douglas Marland sought to create a new serial that would be introduced as a traditional, classic soap opera for the 1980s. Romance would be the show's key centerpiece; its original working title was
Love Without End. By early 1983, the new creation was fully developed as
Loving, with a cast set for both a
primetime premiere and a weekday run.
Loving premiered on June 26, 1983, as a two-hour primetime movie. It starred much of the original cast and featured film actors
Lloyd Bridges and
Geraldine Page. Set in the fictional town of Corinth, Pennsylvania, the early years of the show revolved around the
blue-collar Donovans and the
blue-blood Aldens. Major social issues such as
incest,
alcoholism, and
post-traumatic stress syndrome of
Vietnam veterans were covered. Marland and Nixon left the series after a few years and in spite of ABC's bumping down ''
Ryan's Hope to give Loving
a choice timeslot, and cast additions of such popular All My Children'' stars as
Debbi Morgan and
Jean LeClerc, the ratings remained low throughout the show's run.
Loving suffered from a constant revolving door of writers and producers, leading to questionable story moments such as a heroine's addiction to
cough syrup and one character's selling his soul to the
Devil. Circumstances became so desperate in the early 1990s that, in order to keep the show afloat, ABC assigned its own programming executives, network executive
Haidee Granger and later, Vice President of Daytime Programming JoAnn Emmerich, to serve as executive producers. Despite its frequent subpar ratings, on June 26, 1993,
Loving celebrated its 10th anniversary on ABC. Long-running characters included Ava Rescott (played by Patty Lotz, 1983–1984;
Roya Megnot, 1984–1988;
Lisa Peluso, 1988–1995), a schemer whose adventures ranged from stuffing a pillow in her dress to simulate pregnancy to being kidnapped at
Universal Studios to being menaced by her lover's identical twin. Other longtime favorites included Stacey Donovan Forbes (portrayed by
Lauren-Marie Taylor, the only continuously running original cast member), who was killed off via a poisoned
powder puff in summer 1995; boarding house owner Kate Rescott (
Nada Rowand), whose tenants often included teen and young adult characters in trouble, or in numerous romantic entanglements; and Gwyneth Alden (played for the majority of the run by Christine Tudor), the long-suffering
matriarch who never stopped loving her roguish ex, Clay, or her mentally disturbed children, Trisha and Curtis. In early 1995,
ABC Daytime planned to cancel the show and asked new
head writers
James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten to find a way to salvage a few components of the series. The writers embarked upon the show's last big storyline, which would be referred to as
The Loving Murders, which lasted from July to October 1995. In the storyline, a mysterious
serial killer stalked Corinth. During their rampage, they killed Stacey (poisoned powder puff), Clay (poisoned wine, passed on following sexual intercourse), Curtis (gassed), Cabot and Isabella (poisoned candles) and Jeremy (covered in quick-drying plaster) while Gwyneth and Ally avoided death by carbon monoxide. During their attempt to kill Tess, the killer was exposed to be Gwyneth, having seemingly snapped after Trisha had lost her memory and ran off with Trucker; she had believed that those she killed were suffering and she was ending their pain, only to be confronted with the realization that she killed Jeremy because he had discovered her actions. Distraught and horrified by her actions but unable to act on it due to Tess smashing her hands with a stapler, Gwyneth forces Steffi to take her life before the police arrive.
Loving characters Ally, Alex,
Angie, Buck,
Frankie, Jacob, Steffi, Jocelyn, Richard, Tony, Danny and Tess moved to New York City's
SoHo District and began a new series,
The City, which would run until the series finale on March 28, 1997. In August 2013, the serial killer storyline was revisited on
General Hospital as
Luke Spencer and
Holly Sutton found their way into the abandoned Alden mansion, in pursuit of an adversary who was hiding out in Corinth. Framed photographs of Gwyneth, Trisha and Cabot Alden could be seen, as Luke and Holly recounted the story of "The Loving Murders". Holly ruminated upon Gwyn's rationale for being the killer as being her need to "spare the people she loved from their pain." Following this, Luke found his ex-wife Laura tied up in the Alden family basement. ==Ratings history==