GH’s Grandma Laura Collins: Soaps’ First Action Heroine And Still The Best

Before Laura Collins — then Laura Vining Webber Baldwin — rose to legendary popularity on General Hospital in the late 1970s and early 1980s, soap heroines stayed home and let the men take care of the crimes and the bad guys. All that changed when Laura teamed up with Luke Spencer, and they experienced one adventure after another as they fell in love.

Laura Collins: From Ice Princess To So Much More

Certainly, the most famous of Luke (Tony Geary) and Laura’s (Genie Francis) love-on-the-run adventures was when they saved the world from madman Mikkos Cassadine’s weather machine in the original Ice Princess story. Who can ever forget that iconic image of Laura in a pink evening gown holding a machine gun ready to save the world from carbonic snow? That story led to Mikkos’s death, Luke and Laura’s wedding, and Helena Cassadine (then played by Elizabeth Taylor, now Constance Towers) gifting them The Haunted Star and placing a curse on them.

As Luke and Laura battled mobster Frank Smith, they were always ready to go on the run at a moment’s notice, even after they became parents. Life also got in the way, and eventually, Luke and Laura finally realized they were better off apart. By 2015, Luke left town, and Laura returned from Europe. Without Luke around, she settled into life as Dr. Kevin Collins’s (Jon Lindstrom) wife, mother to her adult children, mayor of Port Charles, and of course, grandmother. And that grandmother was easily able to call upon her old self when her grandsons needed her most.

Grandma Laura Collins To The General Hospital Rescue

Old habits die hard, and Laura knew that she still had it in her when Mikkos’s madman brother Victor (Charles Shaughnessy) kidnapped her grandson Spencer (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and his little brother, Big Baby Ace. She was not about to trust anyone else to complete this all-important mission and led the way with her hapless band of male helpers, Valentin (James Patrick Stuart), Curtis (Donnell Turner), and Drew (Cameron Mathison).

Like the Laura of four decades ago, Grandma Laura showed no fear and demonstrated how clever she was every step of the way in this battle of wits against Victor. Her grandsons’ lives were at stake, and she was going to bring them home safely no matter what. She also looked like she was having fun, and we had fun right along with her.

Who cares that a random weather machine seemed to appear in Victor’s bunker out of nowhere, and Port Charles got only a few minutes of snow? It was an absolute hoot to watch Laura call upon her past and her memories to come up with the formula for carbonic snow and stop a second weather machine during her lifetime. How many soap heroines can say that?

Throughout this adventure, we knew one thing. Laura was doing this all for her grandsons. She took charge, she did what had to be done, and she even saved humanity in the process. That is why GH’s Laura is the best soap opera action-adventure heroine of all time.

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