Inside General Hospital Star Genie Francis’s Special Bond with Richard Simmons

The late Richard Simmons joined General Hospital in 1979 as the show was already on its way to becoming a pop culture phenomenon. He recounted how a case of mistaken identity delayed his meeting Genie Francis, who plays Laura.

Tiffany & Company

In the late 1970s, Simmons made an appearance on a local talk show on ABC that was hosted by the late Regis Philbin and Cindy Garvey, wife of baseball player Steve Garvey. A few days later, he received a phone call from an ABC executive who asked Simmons if he’d like to be on a soap opera. Oddly, Simmons had never seen one.

“I am not an actor although I have acted up quite a few times,” the fitness guru posted on his website. Simmons was told he’d be playing a version of himself, and he would be working with actress Louise Hoven, whose character Beverly, a friend of Laura’s, wanted to lose some weight.

Before appearing on the show, he was asked to show up at the studio to do some promotional photographs. On his way there, Simmons was pulled over by the police and brought into the station for questioning. “I was handcuffed and put in the back of the police car,” Simmons recalled.

About a half an hour later, Simmons was told by an officer that he was free to go. (Simmons had been driving a car that was similar to one driven by a person who was suspected of robbing a 7-11 convenience store.)

That ordeal in his rearview mirror, Simmons made his way to the GH studios courtesy of a police escort so he could be on time! “The first [actor] that I met was Genie Francis,” Simmons recalled. “Her father was Ivor Francis [ex-Dr. Eric Lombard], an actor who had been on Broadway and many TV shows. Genie was so young and innocent looking. I clicked immediately with her.”

After receiving his first paycheck from GH, Simmons headed over to famous jewelry store Tiffany & Co. to make a very special purchase. “[I] bought her a pair of earrings,” he says. “When I gave her the blue box…the famous blue box…she opened up a second blue box [and] then, gazed at the earrings.

“‘For me?'” Richard Simmons recalls Francis asking. “She later told me that she gave the earrings to her daughter.”