Here’s How DAYS Legend Deidre Hall Helped Bring Jane Elliot to General Hospital

Jane Elliot joined the cast of General Hospital in 1978 as Tracy Anjelica Quartermaine. Much to the delight of TV viewers, she’s been stirring up trouble in Port Charles on and off ever since. What you may not know is that another daytime legend, Deidre Hall, who portrays Marlena on Days of our Lives, played a significant role in Elliot joining the genre.

Jane Elliot: From Cleopatra to Tracy

Producer Gloria Monty and head writer Douglas Marland were at the creative helm when the show cast Elliot as polarizing Tracy, Alan’s (Stuart Damon) volatile sister. The spoiled heiress never missed an opportunity to needle her sister-in-law Monica (Leslie Charleson) and insinuate that Rick Webber (Chris Robinson) — not Alan — was the father of her son, A.J.

Tracy didn’t get to prove A.J. wasn’t a true Quartermaine (the Bombay phenotype syndrome proved her wrong!), but her portrayer walked away with a nice consolation prize after she exited the show. Elliot won a Daytime Emmy in 1980 for playing Tracy. In January’s primetime GH special, General Hospital: 60 Years of Stars and Storytelling, viewers saw a clip of Tracy withholding heart medication from her father, Edward (David Lewis).

However, Elliot might never have been interested in the soap opera world had she not done a guest spot on the children’s Saturday morning live-action series Electra Woman and Dyna Girl as villainess Cleopatra. Hall, who starred in the series as Electra Woman along with Judy Strangis (Dyna Girl), explained how Elliot’s passion for soaps was generated.

“I remember one of the villains, [Princess Cleopatra]…played by my best friend, Jane Elliot. We met on the show,” Hall recounted to a group of fans who attended an Electra Woman and Dyna Girl reunion panel at the Hollywood Show in Burbank over the weekend.

“[Jane] had not done soaps at that point. We started a wonderful friendship,” Hall explains. “We became fast friends. She said, ‘I keep seeing stacks of scripts on your desk.'” Elliot let her pal know that she wanted to have piles of scripts to work on, too.

“She called her agent and said, ‘I want to do a soap,'” Hall added. “She’d just come off a nighttime series.” (Elliot played savvy attorney Jessica Hornesby on the short-lived legal drama Rosetti and Ryan.) “But she said I want to do a soap [and] she’s still on it!”

In between her runs as Tracy, Elliot has gone to other daytime serials including Guiding Light where she played Carrie Todd, All My Children as Cynthia Preston, and Days of our Lives as Anjelica Deveraux. The actress also brought Tracy Quartermaine to the New York-based serial The City, the series on which she also served as a producer.