@slick jones I'm posting this here, rather than clutter up the Soap Hoppers thread. Hopefully you can pass it on to Robert Heitman's grandson. Unfortunately, at this point I can't locate the rest of the article but will keep trying.
Sunday Journal-News Rockland County Sun Feb 19 1984
‘Doctor’ is always on call By JOHN DALMAS
When actor Robert Heitman is in a room full of doctors and someone walks in wanting a doctor, they invariably go up to Heitman first. “You conform to a pre-conceived look, a three piece-suit look’ that convinces people you’re the type,” said the 48-year-old Piermont resident, who has never been within a mile of a medical school, yet portrays an obstetrician on two current soap operas on television. For five years Heitman has been Dr. Stan Clader on ABC’s “All My Children.” Then, nine months ago, he joined “As the World Turns” on CBS as Dr. George Erhlich “I’m delivering babies in two hospitals on two channels. All I need is NBC to call, and they can develop a story of a traveling doctor who makes network house calls,” quipped the six-foot-tall former paratrooper and onetime vice-president of his father’s construction firm who gave up the family business 14 years ago to become an actor full time.
Playing what are known as “recurring” roles on both soaps, “whenever the story line calls for the good doctor to come and deliver another baby,” Heitman spends his time in between appearances auditioning for television commercials, his main source of income, he said. “Most of what I do are ‘voice overs,’ where you hear my voice but don’t see me.” He mentioned two commercials currently on television where he can be heard, for Seagram’s Mixers and Bausch & Lomb. Though lending only his voice to television is nott exactly what he had in mind when he quit his father’s business, Heitman is doing what he always wanted to do, he said. “All through high school and the army I had the desire to be in the theater. It was always around the house when I was growing up. My mother was a concert pianist and sang, and my aunt and uncle were in the business. But when it came time to go to college (he went to MIT) it was the 1950s, and in those days you were going to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer. Nothing else was even considered.
Hte first real taste of what it would be like to be a successful actor, he said, came when he was stationed with the army in France. "I was stationed with a support group in Orleans when the Army put on an all European play festival and contest. Our unit did 'Death of a Salesman' (he was Biff) and we won."
Joining his father's business anyway after his discharges (he had gotten a divorce while overseas, but had 3 children to support), Heitman remarried and settled down to suburban living in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.
But the itch to act would not go away, and after a year performing with the Bergen County Players, a community theater group in Oradell, Heitman told his father he was leaving the business. He has never regretted that decision. Heitman said, even though he was forced to sell the house in Woodcliff Lake and move into his grandmother's home in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens “It was a struggle. I thought I was going to take Broadway by storm, but there were some lean years.” A stroke of luck, when his first television commercial (for Primateen Mist), lasted six-and-ahalf years, helped him stay the course. “It took a while, but gradually one thing led to another,” he said.
Ten years ago, he made his first appearance on a soap, playing a neurosurgeon briefly on All My Children. "Then I played a businessman named Bill Mendell on Search For Tomorrow. That lasted a year and a half" He also appeared in an off Broadway production of 'The Glass Menagerie' (he was the gentleman caller)....
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Paul Raven ·
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