Four-time Daytime Emmy nominee joined show in 1977
Legendary soap opera star Leslie Charleson has died at the age of 79.
Charleson, who became a daytime icon thanks to her role as Monica Quartermaine on General Hospital, died Sunday after a brief illness.
After getting her start on TV with appearances on A Flame in the Wind, As the World Turns, The Rockford Files, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, Happy Days (where she played a love interest for Ron Howard’s Richie Cunningham), and other programs, Charleson was tapped to replace Patsy Rahn as Monica in August 1977.
Alongside the late Stuart Damon (who played Monica’s husband Alan Quartermaine), Charleson formed one half of one of TV’s best-loved showmances.
“And no matter what they’d gone through, they always found their way back to each other. They were each other’s one great love,” she said.
Charleson also played Monica on the show’s spinoffs Port Charles and General Hospital: Night Shift.
But spending the bulk of her career becoming a fixture on daytime television wasn’t something that she envisioned for herself when she first inked a deal to join General Hospital.