Victor Lord

Conception Series creator and then-scriptwriter Agnes Nixon originally created the character of Victor Lord based on her father, Harry Eckhardt. She crafted the role in an attempt to understand the reserved, domineering Eckhardt patriarch, an entrepreneur who financially thrived during the Great Depression manufacturing funeral garments. Casting and development Ernest Graves played the role from show's first episode in 1968 through March 1974. Shepperd Strudwick took over the role in December 1974, playing Victor continually through the character's onscreen death June 16, 1976. Tom O'Rourke briefly stepped into the role as a mirage in 1985, and Les Tremayne played the role of Victor in Heaven in 1987. Bill Moor and Terry Caza both appeared in the role in flashbacks from 1994 to 1995. The character was briefly brought back to life 26 years after his original death in January 2003, portrayed by William Stone Mahoney; the resurrection set the soap opera record for the longest span between a character's onscreen death and resurrection. Mahoney went on to play resurrected Victor through his second onscreen death in March 2003, reappearing as a vision for an episode in 2004. ==Storylines==

1968–76 In the summer of 1968, Victor Lord (Graves) is introduced as the owner of Lord Enterprises 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 or "Viki" (originally Gillian Spencer) and Meredith or "Merrie" (originally Trish Van Devere). The family inhabits Victor's inherited family estate, Llanfair. His wife, Eugenia Randolph Lord, died while giving birth to Meredith and was, ultimately, unable to produce his desired male heir to his estate (a painting of her hangs above the mantle of the Lord library in early episodes). Victor thereby goes about grooming his eldest child, Viki, to assume the role of running the estate by hiring her as an editor for his newspaper. Victoria desperately seeks her father's approval and gleefully assumes the role of heiress to the family fortune. Victor eventually grows weary of Victoria's admiration for one of his star reporters, working class executive editor Joe Riley (Lee Patterson). In the early years, Victor is also unhappy at the growing relationship of his younger daughter, Meredith, with upwardly-mobile doctor Larry Wolek (Paul Tulley, Jim Storm). A seed of doubt During an interview with TV Guide Canada in February 2009, "Dorian Lord" actress Robin Strasser, offered a belated explanation for the recent reversal about Victor's murderer: The notion that Dorian is Victor's true murderer is bolstered in the August 16, 2011 episode of One Life to Live. When David Vickers Buchanan mentions that the (albeit forged) entry from Irene Manning's diary cleared Dorian of a murder she did not commit, Dorian comments to herself, "... or so Viki chooses to believe." ==Reception==

From the outset, the original portrayal of Victor Lord by actor Ernest Graves was received as ruthless and overbearing, playing a role introduced as the powerful center of the fictional town of Llanview, and of the lives of his daughters Victoria and Meredith. ==References==