`PORT' STORY LINE STEEPED IN IRONY.

Byline: - Carol Bidwell

When actor Mitch Longley signed on to play Dr. Matt Harmon, one of eight young interns on the new ABC-TV soap ``Port Charles,'' he was looking forward to groundbreaking story lines.

Starting Monday, he'll star in an on-the-run tale true to the genre that made Luke and Laura on ``PC's'' big sister ``General Hospital'' America's favorite soap couple in the late 1970s.

The difference is that Longley uses a wheelchair.

``I'm very appreciative for the opportunity to do this,'' Longley said. ``There's a lot of naivete, a lot of innocent ignorance on the part of people. They don't know how independent, how mobile, how crazy (disabled people) can be. They're drug dealers, they're bank robbers, they're anything any person could be. For this character, it's exciting.''

This is the most recent physical challenge for the Santa Monica actor, who at age 17 fell asleep at the wheel of his car and plowed into a wall, suffering a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

But Longley never gave up his goal of acting, appearing on several TV shows, another soap opera (``Another World'') and on stage in a one-man show he also wrote, exploring events surrounding his 1983 injury and recovery, called ``Courting Darkness.''

Longley says he doesn't see himself as disabled, simply as a person who needs aid to get around.

``It's story lines like this that show you're not'' disabled, Longley said.

In recent months on ``PC,'' Dr. Harmon became the first surgeon at General Hospital to use a wheelchair with a hydraulic lift to hold him upright so he could perform surgery. And he dove out of his wheelchair to save a fellow doctor who had been stabbed and was bleeding to death on the floor of a hospital corridor. Now, he's wielding a gun instead of surgical instruments and staying a step ahead of the bad guys.

``I like to be tested a little bit,'' Longley said. ``This is a wonderful opportunity for this character to do some really great stuff. I told (the writers) as long as they kept it, on some level, based in reality I would be fine with it.''

Because Matt was a character whose background had never been explored, he was the perfect one to carry out this story of mob family feuds and attempted murders, said ``PC'' head writer Lynn Marie Latham.

The fact that Matt - as well as the actor who portrays him - uses a wheelchair has nothing to do with either the story or the action it dictates, she said.

``Mitch is very much an athlete, so he can do a great deal,'' Latham said. ``But he's a stellar, stellar actor, too. I'm so glad to see this on television, treating a person in a chair as a whole person. The chair is not the story; it's simply the way he gets around.''

As the story builds to a climax in late March, Matt shows that he's at home in the violent world he grew up in.

``It gets to the point where he can't run anymore,'' Longley said. ``He has to stand and fight.''

The climax is explosive and dramatic.

``The lights are off,'' hinted Lisa Lord, the Studio City actress who plays Longley's on-the-run companion. ``Shots are going off, you hear a blood-curdling scream and you don't know what's happening.''

Unless, that is, you tune in at 11 a.m. Monday through Friday for the next three weeks.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--2) Mitch Longley, above, on his ``Port Charles'' character, right: ``(People) don't know how independent, how mobile, how crazy (disabled people) can be. ... For this character, it's exciting.''