He did, actually. In the beginning, not much after.
Maybe he didn't specifically say Victor was German, but early on he was an immigrant. There was a scene on the Fourth of July where Victor was in a bar or restaurant, and some loudmouthed drunk was spewing anti-American stuff.
He told the guy off and made a speech about how proud he was to be an American citizen and how much he loved America. He may have even alluded to having escaped East Germany.
The reason I remember the speech so well is because up to this point Victor was a very dark villain, He had put his wife's lover in a cage in his basement and fed him a roasted rat.
The passion, the poignancy that Eric gave that scene (it didn't come off as "America, love it or leave it" more like gratitude) really turned around how I saw the character, as way more complex than I previously thought. I suspect I was not the only audience member who started to look at Victor that way and that might have been the beginning of making him into the major star of the show.
But, yes, they soon dropped that he was an immigrant and just basically ignored the fact that he had the accent. Just like they ignored that he fed that guy a rat.
I should have put that scene under the Iconic Soap Moments topic. More than 40 years later and still remember it.
By
DeeVee ·
