Roger Thorpe. Citizen of the universe. Avenging angel. Villain extraordinaire.  Part Superman, part Mephistopheles.  Let's face it, this is not the guy you would want to meet up with in some dark alley on a lonely night.  On a good day, he gives you the chills.  On a bad day, don't even think about it.   Yet, in spite of all that, he's managed to last for nearly a quarter of a century as Springfield's most irksome, most urbane and unquestionably most tantalizing omnipresence.  Even when he was "dead", he had more kick than the sum total of the rest of the population.  What has made  him so enduring?

Michael Zaslow, who created the infamous Mr. T and continues to play him with flawless perfection, thinks it has something to do with a kind of "everyman" quality the character seems to possess.  "I think he's got a lot of identifiable traits.   He's not purely evil.  I don't think many people are, since the second world war, anyway.  Yes, there are purely evil people, but Roger isn't one of them. He has a lot of love."   Michael Zaslow On The Life And Times Of Roger Thorpe -- Soap Opera NOW! - May 23, 1994.  

"Who is Roger Thorpe?  Well, he's a snake according to some people.  He's a desperado.  He lives outside society.   He's not socialized, and never will be, I guess.  He's a man of great appetites, great passion.  He sees something, he wants it, he goes after it.   But he's his own worst enemy.  He is not able to take responsibility for the things that go wrong in his life.  Though he's not gratuitously evil, he winds up doing a lot of very bad things.  He behaves badly."  Michael Zaslow's introduction to the 1994 video, "Roger Thorpe: The Scandal Years".

Roger Thorpe:  How It All Began ...

"The other boys in Springfield seemed callow to Holly when she compared them to Roger, who could look at a vase and know to which Chinese dynasty it had belonged. Dating him also had an edge of danger. It meant disobeying her mother and her dictatorial brother, Ken, who despised Roger almost as much as Barbara did. That, combined with Roger's black angel curls, brown-amber eyes, and strong artistic hands, meant few teenage virgins could resist him, and Holly was hardly an exception."  Soap Opera Digest, October 17, 1989

To learn more about Roger's defining relationship, click here to visit The Roger and Holly Worldwide Web Page   ... 

The Year Was 1981  ...

Douglas Marland recalled :   "...[T]hat was a wonderful plum to be handed as a writer, to devise a demise for as famous a character as Roger was. It couldn't be a small death --- like a knifing or a shooting --- it had to be spectacular."

"And so it was. Taped on location in the Dominican Republic, Roger fell to his death off the side of a cliff, his hand slipping out of Ed Bauer's.  This put an end to the sensational performance  of Michael Zaslow, who began on the show April 1, 1971 and left exactly nine years later on April Fools' Day, 1980.  Viewers never got to see the body; it was decided that to show the battered corpse would be too grotesque. Still, the audience hoped that Roger, who seemed to have more lives than a cat, would pop up in the future.

When the 1979-80 Emmy Awards rolled around, Guiding Light submitted a tape which contained scenes from three different shows: Holly shooting Roger, Roger remembering his rapes of Holly and Rita, and Roger chasing a pregnant Rita through a carnival hall of mirrors to a recording of the Barbra Streisand-Donna Summer duet "Enough is Enough".  Although Michael Zaslow obviously gave the finest performance by an actor that year, he failed to be nominated. However, Guiding Light was recognized as Outstanding Daytime Drama Series. This was to be the beginning of Guiding Light's Emmy sweep."  Christopher Schemering,  Guiding Light: A 50th Anniversary Celebration (1986).

Comments or questions?
ThorpeRenaldi@michaelzaslow.com  

Copyright © 1999 by Michael Zaslow's ZazAngels. All rights reserved.
02/15/06 10:20:34 PM