ESPRIT LIBRE // Press Archive

Something To Talk About (Soap Opera Digest 5/8/07)
The Subject: Jerry verDorn (Clint)
The Interviewer: Forbes March (Nash)

March: So, Jerry, it occured to me that to make it 30 years in daytime is truly rare. How did that happen?
verDorn: I was doing theater, off-Broadway, commercials, I didn't have any kids and I had done some stints on soaps and I signed a three-month contract in 1979 [to play Ross on Guiding Light].... It sort of blurs once children and health problems come in. It's not like you're trapped, but you feel an obligation to continue in this medium, plus I like this medium.

March: How has working in daytime changed?
verDorn: As it's evolved, they've sort of eliminated rehearsal, so now it is sort of an improv with suggested lines.

March: Why did they remove rehearsal?
verDorn: I don't know. We used to have run-throughs and rehearsals and people of authority would come and give notes. Now, I go park my car, get out of the car and there's a camera there taping me [laughs].

March: How have the soaps changed?
verDorn: They've changed enormously. The scenes were so much longer, now it's rat-a-tat.... I remember doing a Ryan's Hope episode that was a half hour and it was one scene, the whole show, same set.... Production values [have changed]. In the old days, an earthquake used to be this [shakes a paper cup] and on Monday, you'd see the aftermath.

March: Why haven't you chosen to go toward directing?
verDorn: I followed a director around for a month, but then when I got in the booth, it was too much like air traffic control.

March: How did you meet your wife?
verDorn: I was a theater student at the University of Minnesota and to make money, we would be hired out to judge speech contests at high schools and she happened to be a little high-school girl, doing extemporaneous speaking --
March: You didn't!
verDorn: -- and debate, and I had to grade her --
March: You were that college guy who picked up the high-school chick?
verDorn: No, I didn't pick her up at that time! Then, she became a college woman at the same college I was at and she was in the theater department and we met and dated then. She was my college sweetheart.