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"Although he was thrown off a cliff in one episode of the TV soap opera, 'Guiding Light,' the villainous Roger Thorpe miraculously survived what no other human being has yet managed in real life, and eventually returned in good health to bedevil his TV acquaintances and aggravate faithful viewers. Actor Michael Zaslow played the fiendish Thorpe so skillfully - so smooth, so cool, so bad - that some soap fans had a hard time remembering that the slim, curly-haired, rich-voiced Roger was only a fictional creation. ... 

... News of Zaslow's death will undoubtedly sadden thousands of those who knew him through the roles he played. To his most recent audience, it will seem like the passing of a hero, the loss of a man who chose to expose his own frailties for the good of those who come after.  To those who watched him years ago, there's a feeling of disbelief.  It's hard to accept that the character who defied death so often hasn't somehow beat it one time more. Could some miracle cure smuggled in from the Orient have been administered at the very last minute to save him from doom ?

Not this time.

No writer's fanciful pen can compete with Lou Gehrig's Disease. Since no cure is on the horizon, indomitable spirits, real and fictional, must succumb."

[From TV Villain Was Hero In The End, by Maxine Ginsberg, Home Editor, Naples Daily News, Friday, December 11, 1998.]

 

If you'd like to have your own tribute, story, photo or special memory of Michael Zaslow included on this page,  please send it to zaztribute@michaelzaslow.com.

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