Marco Dane

I always just had this little anecdote running through my head about Marco Dane from some soap opera in the 80s. A private investigator is asked if he has any suspects in Marco's murder. He tosses a phone book across the desk "Anyone who knew Marco Dane for more than five minutes had a motive for killing him."  I thought it was a great line. The name was familiar to me at the time from a similar circumstance. Working on a state hospital unit, the TV was just running nonstop in those days, and the afternoons were usually taken up with soap operas. There was even a rehab specialist who ran a group of watching one and talking about it, reasoning that this was an actually useful skill for these women who had been locked away from society from a week to ten years in reintegrating to talking with other women when they got out.  Makes sense, but I never heard any reports back about it. It is possible she just wanted an excuse to watch some herself. I will note she never had trouble recruiting a unit staff member, a nurse or a mental health worker to be the second staff at the group.

So I must have heard his name in the preceding years and remembered that he was a villain. Yet it had been years since I had been on a shift and unit where it could have been on.  I noted that characters must last a long time on these shows, and time proceed slowly. Years after that I mentioned the slow passage of time and brought up the story of Marco and the phone book. "Oh, he's back!" a woman in the group laughed. "He had an identical twin brother!"

So on a whim I just looked him up to see if I could find out what the story was, and my goodness what a mess. His Wikipedia entry tells me that he was on "One Life To Live," from the late 70s to the mid 80s, then had two reprises in the late 80s and early 90s. Con man, blackmailer, you name it. The following is only a section of the description of his doings.

Viki proceeded to share and publish the story of Marco's business dealings with the help of her husband and editor-in-chief, Joe Riley (Lee Patterson). Before the story could be published, Marco finds the murdered corpse of his brother, Dr. Mario Corelli (Anthony). Marco soon devises a plan to assume the identity of his dead brother in an effort to frame Viki for his apparent murder.Known for her recurrent bouts with multiple personalities (most notably, "Niki Smith"), Viki's apparent motive of revenge for the damaged reputations of her dear Tina and close friend Karen leads Llanview Police Lieutenant Ed Hall (Al Freeman, Jr.) to arrest the town heroine. Viki is later indicted and charged with the murder of Marco, unbeknownst to anyone Marco had an identical twin brother. When Viki is put on trial for the murder of Marco, Llanview District Attorney Herb Callison (Anthony Call) brings surprise witness "Dr. Mario Corelli" (Marco masquerading as his dead brother) to the witness stand. "Mario" then presents forged letters of threats from Viki to Marco as evidence. Karen convinces her friend and fellow prostitute Katrina Karr (Nancy Snyder) as to the true identity of Marco's murderer, and Katrina directs Karen to a post office box with a letter about the killer. Upon arrival to the post office to retrieve the letter uncovering Marco's murderer, the letter is mysteriously lost and Katrina subsequently hit by a car, resulting in Katrina going into a coma. After a month of trial, Katrina recovers and testifies that Karen's extramarital lover, Talbot Huddleston (Byron Sanders), was Marco's murderer, exonerating Viki at the eleventh hour.^[4]

Got that? Me neither.  But if it's all unfolding over years I suppose it's easier to incorporate the twists and turns into the plot. So after this I am still mostly no wiser, though I have ornaments festooning the Marco Dane tree, I suppose. And I do still have that great line with the phone book.