| Victor Lord, Sr. | |||||||||||||||||
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| Ernest Graves as Victor Lord (1968) | |||||||||||||||||
| One Life to Live | |||||||||||||||||
| Portrayed by | Ernest Graves (and others) |
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| Duration | 1968–1976, 1985, 1987, 1995, 2003, 2004 | ||||||||||||||||
| First appearance | Episode 2, July 16, 1968 |
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| Last appearance | June 16, 1976 (apparent death) March 4, 2003 (death) May 19, 2004 |
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| Cause/reason | Appeared to Viki in a vision | ||||||||||||||||
| Created by | Agnes Nixon | ||||||||||||||||
| Profile | |||||||||||||||||
| Gender | Male | ||||||||||||||||
| Cause of death | Heart failure | ||||||||||||||||
| Occupation | Founder of The Banner | ||||||||||||||||
| Residence | Llanfair, 1177 Regency Drive, Llanview, Pennsylvania |
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| William Stone Mahoney as Victor Lord (2003) | |||||||||||||||||
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Victor Dalby Lord, Sr. is an original fictional character and patriarch of the Lord family on the American soap opera One Life to Live. The role was originated and most notably portrayed by Ernest Graves, who played the role from the second episode airing July 16, 1968 through 1974.
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Ernest Graves originated the role since the show's second episode in 1968 through March 1974. Shepperd Strudwick took over the role in December 1974, playing it through Victor's apparent death on June 16, 1976. Tom O'Rourke stepped into the role as a mirage in 1985, and Les Tremayne played the role of Victor in Heaven in 1987. Bill Moor briefly appeared in the role in 1995. William Stone Mahoney briefly portrayed the role of Victor in 2003, dying on-screen in March of that year and reappearing for an episode in 2004.
In the summer of 1968, Victor Lord is introduced as the founder and publisher of the Philadelphia Main Line newspaper, The Banner, serving the fictional town of Llanview, Pennsylvania. A widower, he is the domineering single father of daughters Victoria (personally called "Viki" by all but her father) and Meredith (referred to as "Merrie" by all but her father). Having accumulated great wealth owning and operating the community's mass media, the family inhabits Victor's inherited family estate, Llanfair. His late wife, Eugenia Randolph Lord, was unable to produce a male heir to his estate and thereby went about grooming his eldest child, Viki, to assume the role of running the estate by hiring her as an editor for his newspaper.
Harboring a great electra complex toward her father, Victoria greatly sought her father's approval and gleefully assumed the role of heiress to the family fortune. Upon working at the family newspaper, Victor grew weary of Victoria's admiration for one of his star reporters, working class executive editor Joe Riley. In the early years, family patriarch was also unhappy at the growing relationship of his younger daughter, stern level-headed socialite Meredith, with upwardly-mobile doctor Larry Wolek. The over-protective Victor greatly meddled in the personal relationships of his daughters, for which it was not an issue for Meredith but was the cause of great schism and travail for Victoria. In November 1968, unable to reconcile her feeling for reporter Joe and displeased father, the first signs of what-would-become Victoria's long struggle with multiple-personality disorder is uncovered with the introduction of her longtime alter-ego, "Niki Smith."
As the 1960s draws down and upon Victoria's recovery from her first bout with multiple personalities, Victor concedes to the relationships of his white collar daughters to working class gentlemen when he uncovers that he was a long-lost son, and into the 1970s embarks on the search for the son which long yearned for. Viki and Joe first marry in December 1969, and Merrie and Larry in June 1970. Victoria's happiness with Joe would be short-lived when he apparently dies in a car crash while reporting in California, causing much distress to Viki but giving Victor the opportunity to set his widowed daughter up with a suitor more to his liking. With a vacant editor-in-chief position available, Victor replaces Joe with promoted upper-crust writer Steve Burke.
The new decade commenced and, in 1971, Victoria announced her engagement to Steve to her father elated approval; Victor is, however, unhappy when he uncovers his continually frail daughter Meredith seeking to conceive a child with Larry, a pregnant wrought with fatal risk. To his shock, Merrie is prescribed bedrest and later gives birth to Victor's first grandchildren, twins (one which dies a childbirth and the other, a grandson named Daniel). In the summer of 1973, in the midst of Victor's great search for a son, Meredith is held hostage in the Llanfair carriage house with brother-in-law Vinny when burglars sought to steal Victor's prized art collection. A distressed Victor pleads with the robbers to release his Meredith during hostage negotiations between Llanview Police Department Lt. Ed Hall and the takers. After calling to his bound daughter, Meredith responds to Victor and gravely assaulted by the thieves, (who are killed by the police) leading to Meredith's death at Llanview Hospital. Her death leads to great sorrow for Viki and Larry and profound guilt for Victor. Victor leaves Llanview in 1974 in search for his heir-presumptive son.
The hostage crisis of Meredith and Vinny in 1973 saw the introduction of newly-minted Dr. Dorian Cramer, someone whom Victoria did not take a liking to from the beginning of their relationship. When a patient dies at Llanview Hospital in summer 1974, medical malpractice is thought to be the reason and Dorian's integrity is called into question. All of the hospital board of directors except for Viki vote to terminate Dorian's contract with the hospital, but Dorian assumes Viki to have been deciding vote to fire her. When Victor reappears in December 1974, he suffers a heart attack and an unemployed Dorian realizes a way to vengeance for the lost of her reputation and career by wooing her way into the Lord family.
Dorian becomes Victor's personal physician in 1975, and the two quickly elope in May, much to the dismay of Victoria and Llanview residents who recognized her with disdain. Soon afterward, Tony Harris arrives in Llanview, with Dorian quickly realizing him to be Victor's long-sought son. Tony quickly becomes friends with Victor, and when Tony uncovers a diary from Viki and Meredith's mother, Eugenia, and realizing Victor to be his estranged father, to the chagrin of a greedy Dorian. Dorian connives and succeeds in creating a rift between Victor and his new son. When Tony and Victor learn of Dorian's scheme, Tony first confronts the denying Dorian. When Victor begins questioning Dorian, the ensuing argument leads Victor to have a debilitating stroke. When an ailing Victor pleads with Dorian to give him life-saving medication, she refuses. Falling unconscious, Dorian takes Victor to the hospital, where he suffers a subsequent strokes which leaves him which leaves him unable to speak or dictate alterations to his will. Victor apparently dies in June 1976, to the delight of Dorian who succeeded in her quest of usurping Victor's wealth and retaliating against Viki.
In 1985, Viki commenced celebrations of the 50th anniversary of her father's newspaper. During preparations for the celebration, Viki's goddaughter, Tina, happened upon a hidden door in the Llanfair library, leading to secret room. While in the room, Tina stumbled upon a letter written by Victor addressed to Viki, telling of his affair with Viki's former college friend Irene Manning Clayton and the siring of his daughter Tina. When Tina divulged the revelations, Viki reverted to alter-ego Niki Smith and Tina, for the following year, embarked on a mission to gain what she believed to be rightfully her's as a member of the Lord family. Recovered, Viki later uncovers in 1988 that she had a daughter, Megan Gordon, while under the insisted hypnosis of Victor and delivered by longtime friend and brother-in-law Larry. Megan later dies of lupus in 1992.
Viki engaged in an extramarital affair in 1993 with writer Sloan Carpenter, who authors the biography of Victor, "Lord of The Banner". While penning the book, Dorian nervously plotted to prevent its publication as Sloan's papers alluded to Dorian's complicity in Victor's death, a tale which had become a Llanview urban legend in the years following the apparent death of Viki's father. Intrigued by Dorian's intense interest in the book, Viki went to Llanview Police Department to investigate the circumstances of Victor's death, which led to the arrest (and conviction, after trial) of Dorian for Victor's murder. When Dorian is sentenced to death by lethal injection, con man David Vickers arrives to town in 1994 claiming to possess the alleged diary of Viki's late friend and Tina's mother, Irene. Later uncovered to be a forgery, the diary claims dead Irene to have smothered Victor, exonerating Dorian at the eleventh hour. Soon afterward, an actual diary entry from Irene uncovers that she bore Victor another son, reformed rapist Todd Manning.
When Viki learns of the initial forgery, Viki, still loyal to her late father, vows to send Dorian back to jail for Victor's death in 1995. It is then when Dorian divulges that the source of Viki's multiple personalities--that Victor had long molested his eldest daughter Victoria and that the repression of the molestation led to the creation of her initial alter-ego. Victoria then suffered a recurrence of her multiple personality disorder, subsequently releasing several new personalities who accost Dorian and hold her hostage in Victor's secret room. Upon recovery, Viki comes to terms with her father's inappropriate behaviors.
Finally, in 2003, following the arrival of Viki's long-lost daughter Natalie (fraternal twin of Jessica, whom she delivered as Niki Smith during the 1986 storyline involving Tina's revelation of her paternity and Mitch Laurence), an ailing Victor resurfaces. It is during this time where Mitch Laurence marries Natalie in a plot spearheaded by Victor to kill his granddaughter and harvest her heart, as he was dying of old age and heart disease. Viki foils Victor and Mitch's plot, saving Natalie from impending death. Victor is again rushed to the hospital. Larry tells Viki and brother Todd (Trevor St. John, later Victor, Jr.), to say their final goodbyes to their dying father. Victor dies on-screen in March 2003, a month before the return of a shocked Dorian to Llanview.