TRIBUTE:
Maureen Garrett Fondly Remembers
The Will and Spirit of Longtime Leading Man Michael Zaslow

Sunday, December 6, 1998, forever will be remembered as a dark date in the history of soap operas. It was then that, at the age of 54, Michael Zaslow lost his courageous battle against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and died of a heart attack at his New York City home.

To daytime outsiders, Zaslow's passing might have sounded like a tear-jerking serial plot twist, but a blip on the radar screens of their consciousness. But anyone familiar with the medium knew that a big star had fallen. Zaslow was one of soaps' most talented and revered performers. And though he was an accomplished baritone singer and stage presence too, he always would be best known for creating (and playing off and on from 1971) GUIDING LIGHT's most notorious villain, backstabbing businessman Roger Thorpe. When the actor lost his life, GL lost an immeasurable piece of its 60-plus-year history. And his longtime leading lady, Maureen Garrett, the veteran actress who played his tortured ex-wife and soulmate, Holly Reade ...she lost a piece of herself.

"I was at home when I got the call that Sunday from Steve Yates [who played Ben McFarren on GL in the 1970s], an old friend of Michael's," she recalls, her voice sad, distant. "I couldn't believe it."

Garrett admits that a black cloud seemed to have settled over GL's East Side studio the next day. Her co-stars wandered around in much the same daze as she did. They were in shock ... disbelief. "Everyone is just very sad ...very much at a loss. It's hard to believe that this happened," she says. "This is so difficult."


THE ROAD UNKNOWN

But difficult only begins to describe the uphill battle that Zaslow bravely fought the last two years of his life. Back in September 1996, he was taping a GL scene when he suddenly found himself unable to deliver without difficulty a simple line: "I'm not that man anymore."

The irony behind that statement is unparalelled; the man who just two years earlier had won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor began to physically unravel. Within months, his speech worsened, and his motor skills deteriorated.

That spring, Zaslow was asked to take a sabbatical from GL. He spent much of the following months meeting with specialists and neurologists before his condition was finally diagnosed in the fall of 1997. Instantly, he became one of the more than 5,000 people per year in the United States alone who are diagnosed with the incurable, untreatable degenerative muscle disease known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

After Garrett was informed of Zaslow's diagnosis, working became a daily struggle for her. "I went for a long time not being able to connect with the scripts, or with the acting at all," she recalls. "It was very, very difficult. He was my old working partner, my colleague for many years, and it was unbelievably sad to see someone lose the power to do what he loved the most."


SECOND ACT

Before Zaslow's diagnosis was known, the soap said in a statement that they fully expected his return. However, when it became clear that he would not be back, the role of Roger temporarily was recast with former LOVING star Dennis Parlato (Clay) , to viewer outcry , naturally. [EDITORS NOTE: This statement is incorrect. Dennis Parlato was immediately recast in the role of Roger on the same day Zaslow was asked to leave, on April 8, 1997. ] "It was my job to give it my best shot," says Garrett. "But to me, it wasn't like it was Roger, you know? It was another actor. And I know that it was very hard for the audience to accept another actor as Roger, so in the end, it didn't work."

Parlato aired for just under a year before the character of Roger was written off of the canvas in March 1998. During most of that time, Garrett found herself mentally disconnected from the onetime supercouple, especially as Holly said farewell to Parlato's Roger.  "I had to refer to 'our' past together, which was my past with Michael. And it just became impossible to play,"  she declares.  "I just tried to get through it."


THE LION ROARS

As Garrett said her farewell to Zaslow's replacement, she was flooded by memories. "The first time I had a scene with Michael, way back in 1976, he just broke the box," she laughs. "He came at me, touched me, got in my face. I knew right then that it would be a very special kind of mingling."

The chemistry that Garrett and Zaslow shared was evident right from the start. Still ... "I don't know if I had any idea at the time that Holly and Roger would become so fascinating,"  she insists. "But I knew that I loved working with Michael. And when you click like that, it usually shows.

"There was always some element of danger in working with Michael, a heightened reality. So it was very easy to tap into so many different emotions."

Over the years, Holly and Roger experienced just about every feeling that falls under the heading of the human condition, from rage to redemption, from desire to despair. "That was a strange, surreal contrast to what happened after Michael became ill,"  Garrett says. "Normally, we'd play all these highly emotional scenes, then the director would yell 'Cut', and it would be over. We'd laugh about it or cry about it, wish we had done better, or pat ourselves on the back. Then everything changed. After they'd yell 'Cut', real life was so much more frightening ... and fraught with so much more emotion than it could ever be on-screen."


PREPARING FOR BATTLE

As hard as the road before Zaslow was, he set off down it boldly. Above all else, after all, he was a fighter. In better days, he had battled about everything from lighting on the GL set and smoking in the GL building to better union health benefits for actors and for gun control. And that sparring spirit never deserted him. "He was fighting this disease with everything he had," says Garrett.

So, once legal negotiations with Procter & Gamble, GL's parent company, were settled, Zaslow went back to work in May [1998], reprising his role of ONE LIFE TO LIVE's David Renaldi, a concert pianist now living with ALS. In addition, along with his wife, Susan Hufford, and close friend and former OLTL spouse Brynn Thayer (ex-Jenny), he founded ZazAngels, an organization dedicated to raising research funds for and public awareness of ALS. As a testament to his enduring spirit, ZazAngels is continuing on the mission to find a cure for the disease by the year 2000.

Zaslow made his last public appearance at a ZazAngels benefit exactly three weeks before his death. With his mind sharp as ever, he worked the room with the help of his voice synthesizer. "The one thing Michael had in spades was charm," laughs Garrett. "He played such a strong villain, but at the same time, he had this incredible charm. So the audience could really enjoy him."


THE LAST GOODBYE

Since Zaslow's passing, every day has become an internal struggle for Garrett as she copes with her loss. Never again will she hug her dear friend and working partner. But she may act with him again, in a way, if her fondest wish is granted. "I would love it if Roger just haunted Holly forever in her dreams!"  she exclaims. "And she could get to have scenes with him as he was, coming and talking to her."

Is Garrett hoping for some kind of on-air closure between the characters of Holly and Roger?  "Maybe they don't ever have to close it," she suggests with a smile.  "Maybe he can always be around. There's a lot of tape."

-Michelle Ann Moro

SOAPS IN DEPTH
February 2, 1999

Back To
The Roger & Holly Website

Copyright © 1999 by Michael Zaslow's ZazAngels. All rights reserved.
01/04/06 05:14:22 PM