I'll Be Damned by Eric Braeden

Author:Eric Braeden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

8

MEETING VICTOR NEWMAN

It was at one of Arthur Jacobs’s parties in the early 1970s that I had a casual conversation with a man who happened to be the head of daytime at NBC. He wondered if I would ever consider doing a soap opera.

“What’s a soap opera?” I asked him.

He briefly explained—they were serialized stories that aired five days a week during the day, and they were quite popular.

“I’ve got two of them right now, Days of Our Lives and Bright Promise, and they’re doing very well for us,” he said. “You should stop by NBC one of these days and take a look.”

I rarely pass up a chance to educate myself and satisfy my curiosity, so several days later I drove to Burbank to see what this soap-opera thing was all about. I was headed up the hallways of NBC in search of the right sound stage when a familiar voice chimed in behind me.

“What are you doing here? Slumming?”

I turned to see Dabney Coleman focusing that wry grin of his on me. Dabney and I both played tennis at the Riviera Country Club. I liked and respected him, and he was arguably the best of the celebrity tennis players at Riviera.

I explained why I was there and added, “So that’s my excuse. What are you doing here?”

As luck would have it, Dabney was actually doing the NBC soap opera Bright Promise. We talked while he showed me around and told me about soaps from an actor’s point of view. I honestly didn’t pay that much attention, but he was encouraging about the work itself, and for me, as a new father, the steady paycheck sounded good.

“You should think about it,” he told me as we said good-bye.

“I’ll do that,” I said, and then proceeded to get so busy, between guest-star work and my family, that I never gave soap operas another thought until that phone call from my agent in 1980 saying that someone wanted to see me about a soap called The Young and the Restless.

Dabney’s encouragement carried a lot of weight with me, and I hadn’t had the luxury of a steady paycheck since The Rat Patrol. So sure, why not go check it out? It wasn’t as if it was going to be some long-term commitment.

I met with producers Ed Scott and John Conboy and a network executive named Nancy Wiard. After a few moments of the usual pleasantries, they had me read a couple of scenes for them and then asked if I’d mind letting them put the scenes on tape. I agreed, did the taped scenes, and left, not nervous about whether or not I’d get the job but very nervous about the idea of signing on for any length of time.

My tape was sent to Chicago for a final decision by the show’s creators, a married couple named William and Lee Phillip Bell. They liked what they saw, gave me a thumbs-up, and next thing I knew, I was offered a three-month contract to appear in The Young and the Restless as a new character named Victor Newman.

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