HEY! You can now (January 2011) see Darcy in action at my YouTube channel.
I was home during the day for much of 1984. I could easily have seen her entire story arc, if I'd known she was on it, which she was from maybe May through August. But, I had no idea. So I'd never seen any of Robin Johnson on Guiding Light, until last month.
There's a summary of the story she was involved in, and a couple of pictures, at this Vincent Irizarry fan site.
In one episode, an APB goes out over the radio. Darcy is described as "a red-haired woman, about five foot six inches tall, in her late teens... armed and considered dangerous." She's also been described as having "a fog-horn voice and all the charm of a Heavy Metal nightmare." 1
Darcy has massive abandonment issues, and a screwed-up relationship with her remaining parent. She's what Nicky from Times Square would have become if she hadn't met Pammy. Her family is the gang she's in, the Galahads, and her boyfriend is its leader, Lujack. Unfortunately for her, Lujack has discovered he's really the long-lost son of the richest woman in town, and he's falling in love with the local blonde ingenue... so what else can Darcy do, but attack the members of Lujack's new family, pistol-whip him and send him to the hospital, and kidnap his new mom and girlfriend and hold them at gunpoint? Huh? What else?
Of course, it's Lujack's story, not Darcy's, so she's not allowed to become too human... every so often she has a moment where she's not scheming some violent act ("Talk to me!" "You got a problem, unload it on me!" "... then I won't have nobody..."), but they're fleeting.
Someone was working on Ms. Johnson's behalf, because it looks like she stepped from this right into being Guest Star of the Week on the biggest tv show of the 80s.
An irrelevant detail... apparently, when Guiding Light was shown in Italy, Robin Johnson's voice was supplied by Dania Cericola, and finding a site devoted to her was easy! To find a site devoted to Robin Johnson I had to make one myself.
Dig that Sigue Sigue Sputnik 'do!
Images from Guiding Light ©1984 Procter & Gamble Productions.