General Hospital: Encyclopedia II - General Hospital - Title sequences

General Hospital - Title sequences

Ever since the series' debut in 1963, General Hospital has had only three opening sequences in its 40+ year history.

In the early years in 1963, General Hospital used a scene of doctors and nurses in the hospital, then it freezes and turns into negative image, then the titles appears in Craw Clarendon Condensed font (which remained the same until 1993). Around late 1964 to 1975 after the prologue, the background faded to black with GENERAL HOSPITAL in Craw Clarendon Condensed, but when the show moved to color in 1967, the background changed to blue, it was used the same for the closing sequence. It was used until April 1975.

The exterior shot of the hospital in the opening and ending credits is the General Hospital of the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, located just east of Downtown Los Angeles. This shot was used from 1975 to 1993 and remained relatively unchanged between those years. The sequence's theme song was led prominantly by George Wright's piano theme from April 25, 1975 until July 23, 1976 with the ambulance entering the hospital then the shows titles zooms throwd us. Then on July 26, 1976 the theme music was changed to Autumn Breeze by Jack Urbont with the horns throughout the opening sequence (1975 opening sequence remains the same, an the lettering of the shows' title went smaller). That was used until March 31, 1993.

In the spring of 1993, the opening sequence changed for the first time in the show's history with a new mellow jazz theme song led mainly by saxophone. It featured video headshots of the show's cast in front of a red background. Tinted action clips from the show were also seen in this sequence including a clip of Luke rushing trying to rescue then-wife Laura. A new logo was introduced at the end of the show's open, still written vertically and it would fade into the foreground at the end of the sequence. At least 10 different versions of this open were used from 1993 to 2004. Beginning in the late 1990s, the names of the show's characters would accompany the headshots themselves.

The theme song was revamped on May 31, 2004, and accompanied a new set of visuals (all ABC soaps revamped their titles this year). The opening was styled after the commercial break bumpers that were used on all of ABC's soaps at the time. All My Children and One Life to Live's openings were done in similar ways to the GH opening. It began with brief flashes of some of the cast members then showing a brief shot of the Port Charles skyline transitioning to headshots of cast members. The new opening sequence was letterboxed and it was accompanied by an updated version of the 1993 theme song. The new theme song however was much less mellow than the 1993 theme but was very hard-hitting accompanied by saxophone and electric guitar. The end of the sequence featured all of the male cast members sitting or standing in front of a white background. As the camera pans to show all of them, Luke Spencer (played by Anthony Geary) is then seen getting up and leaving from his chair and then a black background with the letters "GH" in large letters appear fades on to the screen with each individual letter in the General Hospital logo cascading to the center of the screen forming the title.

One thing about the opening was that all cast members (which is usually around 30 people) were included all in one sequence with some cast members being shown two at a time. Maurice Benard (Sonny Corinthos) was given a nod as his picture was always first. The new sequence also featured a new style of the show's title. For the first 40 years, the title was written vertically, with both words on a line, but the new logo had the entire title written horizontally in the same typeface as the 1993 open.

Recently, the show had been slow to update the sequence removing Reese (Kari Wuhrer) from the opening sequence despite the fact the character was killed off in November 2005. It took two months before this change was made. This most likely happened because there were so many characters coming and going and they probably just wanted to get it all done at once. This way the crew didn't have to go back in and re-edit the sequence again and again.

As of January 16, 2006, Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary) is now the last to be seen in the opening sequence. Also, headshots of Carly Benson (Laura Wright), Lesley Lu "Lulu" Spencer (Julie Marie Berman), Lainey Winters (Kent Masters-King), Dr. Patrick Drake (Jason Thompson) and Robin Scorpio (Kimberly McCullough) were added to the opening sequence.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Title sequences", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki