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Lynn Herring was flabbergasted when she found out she’d be donning Lucy’s iconic red dress from the character’s 1990 wedding to Stuart Damon’s Alan for GH’s prime-time special, GENERAL HOSPTIAL: 60 YEARS OF STARS & STORYTELLING. One day she recalls, “I was in the hall [at the studio] and I saw Finola [Hughes, Anna]. She said, ‘They’re looking for my purple dress [from Anna’s second wedding to Robert, which aired in 1991] but they can’t find it.’ I said, ‘What?!’ She said, ‘We are doing a wedding dress segment.’ And I went, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ I’ve known all along that they had the red dress because everybody in the wardrobe department knew where it was, knew where we were keeping it. I guess the wardrobe person before Shawn [Reeves, GH’s current costume designer] had really had to clear space and gotten rid of many things — out of necessity, not disrespect. But everyone knew where the red dress was hanging and they kept saying, ‘You should see it. You should go and look at it.’ And it’s so sentimental to me, I just thought, ‘No, it’s safe, I don’t want to, it’s too sentimental.’ Anyway, flash-forward to Shawn going, ‘Lynn, we’re going to put the red dress on!’ ”
Due to a real-life experience, Herring was skeptical that the dress would fit. “My sister found my real wedding dress, my 42-year-old dress, from when I married Wayne [Northrop, ex-Roman, DAYS],” she explains. “What happened is that when it was stored in my grandmother’s house and she passed away, the people that were her caregivers threw away the dress in a box, so I thought it was gone. My sister’s husband went with his friend to Jennings, LA’s dump because they also had thrown away my sister’s dress. They go to the dump, they find my dress in the trash pile, the box still intact. This dress is saved! Anyway, I get the dress back from my sister and I put it on and I can’t zip it up because I was 23 and very, very tiny! So in my mind, I’m thinking, ‘The red dress?! There’s no way this red dress is going to fit!’ I said, ‘Sean, what are we going to do? There’s no way!’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll just put a panel in the back.’ I said, ‘Great.’ So, we put the dress on — and it actually zips up! This dress is from 1990! It was like magic. I thought, ‘Somehow, after two children and life and things shifting, the powers-that-be upstairs are going, “Oh, it’ll fit” ’ — and it fit! We were all stunned. Then Kristina [Wagner, Felicia] comes to me in the hall and says, ‘When I could actually zip up my dress…,’ the beautiful Spanish lace dress [she wore when Felicia wed Frisco in 1986] and the two of us were just laughing hysterically in the hall.”
Reconnecting with the dress soon took on an even deeper meaning for the actress. “The very next day, we found out that Bob Miller, who designed both dresses, had passed,” Herring shares. “It was during the time we were being fit for our dresses. So the magic continues, that we got to honor Bob by showing his artistry and his creative genius. So now the next day, we’re hugging and crying in the hall again. But tell me there’s not some force out there that is recognizing and honoring all these people that we love and that we think are brilliant! It was unbelievable. The day we wore them for the special, which we shot on a Friday, it felt like we were standing in Bob’s love, in his love for the art of designing and how much he loved dressing us and how much we appreciated him. And on top of that, we were flooded with all the memories of the life we’ve lived since then. What a ride since we’ve worn those dresses! It just felt like such a gift.”
Craig Sjodin/ABC
Seeing Red: Herring with then on-screen spouse Stuart Damon (ex-Alan) in 1990.
