GH’s Steve Bond Looks Back at Jimmy Lee Holt’s Lost Love (EXCLUSIVE)
Actor Steve Bond says that while portraying Edward Quartermaine’s illegitimate son, Jimmy Lee Holt, on GENERAL HOSPITAL, his favorite plot was his character’s pursuit of Celia Quartermaine. “The way I played it was that she was the one he really loved,” he recalled to Soaps In Depth. “They were distant cousins so they weren’t that close, but still, it was forbidden fruit.”
The duo might never have met, had Jimmy Lee’s mother, Beatrice LeSeur, not brought him to Port Charles. “He saw Celia at a party at the Quartermaine mansion,” Bond recalled, “and it was one of those thunderbolt moments…” Throwing caution to the wind, the two began a passionate affair. But at the same time, Celia remained engaged to Grant Putnam, the doctor with whom she’d reconciled after it was revealed that he’d been impersonated by DVX operative Grant Andrews.
The beauty chose to honor her commitment to Grant, but on her 1985 wedding day, she was kidnapped and held on a remote farm by a desperate Jimmy Lee. In comical scenes, she escaped and hoofed along a dirt road before catching a ride back on a chicken truck! Speaking in character, Bond reflected, “I remember that Grant punched me — we had that fight on the stairs of the chapel.”
Jimmy Lee ultimately bowed out, only to rebound with other women. However, when Celia wrongly thought that Grant was trying to kill her, she ran back to her lost love’s arms. “My recollection was that the fans wanted to see Jimmy Lee and Celia together,” Bond said.
Their elaborate nuptials were to be held on a train, but a recently-exonerated Grant stole Aztec treasure from Sean Donely in the hope of impressing Celia and plotted to use the train to transport it! Alas, what eventually cost Jimmy Lee his bride was his financial downfall. Unwilling to struggle, Celia took off! Just as Jimmy Lee never saw her again, Bond hasn’t seen her portrayer, Sherilyn Wolter, either. “She’s fallen off the grid,” he admitted of the star who moved to Hawaii. “I remember that she was just lovely.”
Reeling from his loss, Jimmy Lee wound up marrying half sibling Alan’s former squeeze, country-store owner Charity Gatlin, and moving to Pautuck to help her run the business. Much like viewers, Bond was stumped by the story twist. “I mean, he goes and steals his brother’s girl?” he laughed. “How stupid was that?”
Today, Bond still regrets that things didn’t turn out differently. “I thought that the Jimmy Lee/Celia story should have been the frontburner one,” he admitted. “The double-Grant thing never really worked for me.”
This story originally appeared in our print magazine
Love GH? Be sure to join our We Love General Hospital Facebook group to chat about all the latest storylines and juicy gossip!
