Thank You “General Hospital” for the Gift of Erika Slezak

I was very excited when it was announced that Erika Slezak, the six-time winner of a Best Actress Emmy for her 41 years on “One Life to Live” as Victoria Lord Riley Burke Buchanan, was joining “General Hospital” for a guest stint as Veronica (Ronnie) Bard, the sister of the late Monica Quartermaine (played the late Leslie Charleson.)

I watched “One Life to Live” from its premiere in 1968 and was there when Slezak took over the lead role of Victoria Lord from Gillian Spencer in 1971. Since then, I have enjoyed interviewing Slezak at least a dozen times. I still have an engraved thank you note on Erika’s stationary from the days of the cancellation of “OLTL,” saying, “No one has ever written about my life and work with more understanding than you, Marlena (Connie). This is the most sincere thank you note ever written.”

Instead of interviewing Erika this time around (not my first choice), here’s a tribute to this great actress that only Marlena could write.

I would like to thank ABC, “General Hospital”’s executive producer Frank Valentini (whom I first met when he worked for Paul Rauch on “OLTL”) and “GH” headwriters Chris Van Etten and Elizbeth Korte (who is also show historian) for giving us the gift of Erika Slezak’s return, if only for the short time she was on.  Her extraordinary talent combined with Van Etten’s and Korte’s highly intelligent and apt writing made her guest appearance the soap event of the year.

Before we talk about Ronnie, let’s talk about Erika. At 16, Erika was the youngest student of The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she was steeped in Shakespeare and other classics. Like the best of soap actors, she comes from a serious theatrical background. Her father was the great Austrian American actor and movie star Walter Slezak. How wonderful it was when Mr. Slezak guest-starred on “One Life to Life” in 1974 as an elder friend of Viki’s!

Viki, daughter of nefarious newspaper (The Banner) mogul Victor Lord (played by Ernest Graves) appeared from the beginning of the series in 1968 as written by “OLTL”’s creator/headwriter Agnes Nixon, who said she had her own father issues. At the premiere of OLTL the character lived at Llanfair with her father and her sister Meredith (played by Lynn Benesch), who died early on. Soon Viki was married to Irish newspaperman Joe Riley (played by Lee Patterson) and working at the Banner, too. A new woman in town, Dr. Dorian Kramer (played initially by Nancy Pinkerton, then by Robin Strasser) set her sights on the wealthy Victor and married him. The ongoing Viki-Dorian conflict, played by Slezak and Strasser, was one of the most entertaining conflicts in soap history.

Sound familiar? When Veronica came to “GH”’s Port Charles, she was pitted immediately against Monica’s sister-in-law Tracy Quartermaine (played by the great Jane Elliot). Tracy suspected Ronnie was a fraud, especially when it was revealed that Monica bequeathed to her the Quartermaine mansion. The two clashed so spectacularly, I was reminded of the famous Muhammed Ali-Joe Frazier match, The Thriller in Manila, of 1975.

How brilliant was the material Van Etten and Korte handed to Erika? Erika first encountered Tracy at the infamous Quartermaine crypt right after Monica’s funeral. A tea party welcome for Ronnie at the Q mansion was a scream, as someone spiked the character’s tea and Ronnie (Erika was hilarious) got drunk and took off her shoes. Someone in addition to Tracy was out to get Ronnie. It turned out to be none other than crooked lawyer Martin Grey (played by Michael E. Knight a.k.a. Tad the Cad Martin on “All Children”). He was conspiring to give the Quartermaine mansion to town bad guy Drew Cain (as played by Cameron Mathison). How I loved seeing all these ABC Daytime legends acting together!

Besides the broad comedy of it all, I loved the small, modest scenes Van Etten and Korte gave Slezak to play. One day Ronnie went to the town restaurant to get a BLT and a coke. She was waited on by Gio (played by Giovanni Mazza. (Forgive me, I love him!). Ronnie drew the young, troubled man out. By this I mean Marlena has always written that the best soap actors are those you can see think. As Ronnie and Gio talked, you could actually see Mazza as an actor learning from master/teacher Slezak. On another day Ronnie went to the Quartermaine stables and introduced herself to Cody (played by Josh Kelly), who was, of course, a cowboy. And Ronnie said, “I love cowboys.”  What an “in” joke — we all knew that on “OLTL” Slezak’s character was long married to cowboy Clint Buchanan (first played by the late Clint Ritchie and then played by Jerry ver Dorn).

Of course, in the best of all worlds, the return of Slezak’s Ronnie to the show would last a long time. But as announced it was a one-time guest appearance.

Mes amies: weren’t we fortunate to have Erika back in the soap world, if only for a little while? In the whole history of this critical column — going back its beginning to 1989 in Soap Opera Weekly — I have only used the word “genius” once. That’s what I called   the late Paul Rauch (executive producer of many soaps, but of course “One Life to Live”) when he passed away in 2012. Paul had the world’s best taste in actors. He especially loved theater-trained actors like Erika.

We don’t see genius level work on daytime television very often these days. And here it was. Again, thank you “General Hospital,” for giving us the gift of Erika Slezak.