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A Year After His Suicide, We Fondly Remember a Beloved Soap Vet — and the Lasting Impact Made by His Character
Wednesday, October 6th, 2021
Ben Jorgensen died on October 6, 2020.
When All My Children alum Ben Jorgensen passed away, it was a tragedy in an already tough year. The actor played gay teen Kevin Sheffield on the soap, at a time when daytime and television in general had little LGBTQ representation.
Though few details have emerged, Jorgensen’s All My Children co-star and friend Brian Gaskill shared in a Facebook post at the time that “my understanding is it was suicide. I have heard he suffered from bipolar disorder, but as I have not spoken to him in years, I do not know all the details.”
More: Beloved soap vet dead at 73
Born in London and raised briefly in Australia, Jorgensen moved to New York City with his mother at the age of 8. He got his start in Calvin Klein’s Obsession campaign and moved on to star in The Basketball Diaries with Leonardo DiCaprio. It didn’t take long after that for him to land his Pine Valley role in 1996 before heading over to Oakdale for a stint as one of the many Chris Hugheses on As The World Turns.
During Jorgensen’s time on All My Children, the show took home GLAAD Media Awards for Outstanding Daytime Drama three years in a row — years before Eden Riegel played Bianca’s own groundbreaking coming-out story. (Check out Jorgensen in action below.)
In those early days of on-screen representation, LGBTQ characters didn’t find a lot of happiness. Kevin struggled with his sexuality, and when he came out to his family, his parents disowned him. They also blamed him for his brother ending up in jail for murder, because why not kick your son when he’s down?
Things finally seemed to be turning around for Kevin when Opal and Palmer Cortlandt took him in, only for the teen to endure a psychiatrist who tried to “cure” his homosexuality. And his attempt to force a relationship with Joe Martin’s granddaughter, Kelsey Jefferson, was, to put it mildly, a disaster. The last we saw Kevin, he was working at Holidays when the restaurant blew up on the Fourth of July.
We never learned if he survived or not.
More: Tribute to the stars we’ve lost in 2021 [PHOTOS]
It was a sad conclusion to a character who had a tough time in life, right up until the end. It sounds like that’s something he may have had in common with Jorgensen himself. But the actor, also known as Ben Monk, was clearly proud of his groundbreaking role. In 2012, he told We Love Soaps that All My Children’s “writing was so good. It was like a movie going by. My coming-out scene was the best.”
Jorgensen’s last role was in 2020’s true crime mini-series on FX, A Wilderness of Error. His final episode aired less than two weeks before his death. We can only hope he’s resting easy, knowing he had the courage to tackle an important role at a time when few actors would have had been brave enough to go near it.
Though he’s now gone, Jorgensen’s legacy still remains. So, too, does All My Children’s, so to help on this painful anniversary, why not check out some rare photos from the show and remember all the good that it brought to our lives.
Video: YouTube/Steven Capsuto
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Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
1/30
<p>It just wasn’t <em>All My Children</em> without a family album of one kind or another to welcome us to Pine Valley. We only wish that its pages were still being filled today. (Are you listening, ABC?)</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
2/30
<p>In the 1970s, dance instructor Nick Davis (Larry Keith) tried to waltz his way into the overstuffed purse of filthy-rich society dame Phoebe Tyler (Ruth Warrick). He stood a pretty good chance of it, too — she liked a good compliment as much as she did a bad boy.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
3/30
<p>Although Susan Lucci is said to have auditioned for good girl Tara Martin, she definitely wound up with the better role: that of indomitable glamorpuss Erica Kane, which the eventual Emmy winner played for the entirety of the soap’s 1970-2011 network run.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
4/30
<p>Machiavellian Palmer Cortlandt (James Mitchell) so disapproved of the relationship between daughter Nina (Taylor Miller) and upstanding doctor Cliff Warner (Peter Bergman) that he let her believe she was going blind in hopes of getting her to stop, ahem, <em>seeing</em> him.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
5/30
<p>Obviously, Palmer’s plot to separate Cliff and Nina failed miserably. Almost as miserably as the show’s attempt to recast Nina in the mid-1980s and move Cliff on to other love interests. (Shortly after his portrayer was let go — which might have been the best thing that ever happened to him — <em>The Young and the Restless</em> hired him as a recast for conniving Jack Abbott.)</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
6/30
<p>Everything you need to know about this love triangle, you can tell from this one photo: Dr. Charles Tyler (Hugh Franklin) wanted to be with Erica’s long-suffering mother, Mona (Frances Heflin), but wife Phoebe refused to let him go.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
7/30
<p>When you think of the greatest TV parents ever, you think of Ozzie and Harriet, Mike and Carol Brady, Cliff and Clair Huxtable — <em>and</em> Ruth (Mary Fickett) and Dr. Joe Martin (Ray MacDonnell).</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
8/30
<p>Erica’s half brother, Mark Dalton (Mark LaMura), and Ellen Shepherd (Kathleen Noone) overcame their age difference to embark on what should have been a blissfully happy marriage. Spoiler alert: It was not (and, worse, it pointed her toward an even more disastrous union with Ross Chandler).</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
9/30
<p>As Erica’s modeling career took off in the 1980s, she gave a leg up to Jenny Gardner (Kim Delaney), who at some point was going to have to get used to taking pictures without preppy boyfriend Greg Nelson (Laurence Lau) in them.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
10/30
<p>Jenny’s brother, “Tad the Cad” Martin (Michael E. Knight), genuinely cared for troublemaker Liza Colby (Marcy Walker). But when she learned that he’d also been carrying on with her mother, she would neither forgive nor forget — not until years later, when she became “the other woman” during one of his 204 marriages to Dixie Cooney.</p>
Image: Donna Svennevik/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
11/30
<p>Mainly from 1983-84 (but off and on until 2011), <em>All My Children</em> fan Carol Burnett recurred as Verla Grubbs, the secret daughter of Phoebe’s third husband, Langley Wallingford (Louis Edmonds), a reformed con artist that boutique owner Myrtle Fargate (Eileen Herlie) knew from her days on the carnival circuit.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
12/30
<p>Sweethearts since they were teenagers, Frankie’s parents — the former Angie Baxter (Debbi Morgan) and Jesse Hubbard (Darnell Williams) — became so popular that when he was killed off, <em>Loving</em> paired his widow with look-alike Jacob Foster. Of course, in 2007, <em>All My Children</em> decided that Jesse hadn’t died at all, rehired Williams and reunited the supercouple.</p>
Image: Virginia Sherwood/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
13/30
<p>You could always count on ambitious Erica to affix herself to the arm of the richest, most powerful man at any soiree. Clearly, the winner at <em>this</em> highfalutin hootenanny was sharp-dressed Palmer.</p>
Image: Donna Svennevik/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
14/30
<p>It’s just sleazy schemer Adam Chandler (David Canary) keeping an especially close eye on Dixie (Cady McClain), the doe-eyed innocent he’d knocked up and would eventually institutionalize in hopes of gaining control of their son, JR.</p>
Image: Cathy Blaivas/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
15/30
<p>Why, that’s the long-lost Eric Kane (Albert Stratton), whom daughter Erica found working in the circus in 1989 — and whom she soon wished she hadn’t bothered to find. He turned out to be every bit the lowlife her mother had always said he was.</p>
Image: Cathy Blaivas/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
16/30
<p>Rough-around-the-edges Trevor Dillon (James Kiberd) wasn’t at all the kind of man that money-hungry Natalie Marlowe (Kate Collins) thought that she wanted. But he was most definitely the kind of man that she <em>needed</em>. If only he hadn’t also caught the eye of her sister, loco “Janet From Another Planet” Green.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
17/30
<p>Politician Travis Montgomery (Larkin Malloy) was married to Erica when he allowed back into his life estranged brother Jackson (Walt Willey)… who turned out to be — sorry, Mike Roy — the love of her life.</p>
Image: Bill Morris/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
18/30
<p>The stuff that dreams are made of filled the romance of Dr. Maria Santos and Edmund Grey — whose portrayers, Eva LaRue and the late John Callahan, were wed from 1996-2005. Too bad we always have to wake up from dreams. The couple’s marriage hit the skids after they were forced to give back their adopted son, and Maria had a one-night stand with her brother-in-law.</p>
Image: Robert Milazzo/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
19/30
<p>Erica’s marriage to Count Dimitri Marick put in one another’s orbit her illegitimate daughter, vindictive Kendall Hart (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and his illegitimate son, Anton Lang (Rudolf Martin). Fun fact: The actors reunited years later on Gellar’s series, <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em>, when Martin made a guest appearance as Dracula. Yes, <em>the</em> Dracula!</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
20/30
<p>Whoa. A <em>lot</em> to unpack in this photo, in which vixenish Skye Chandler (Robin Christopher), who’d eventually take up residence in the Port Charles of <em>General Hospital</em> fame, was on a date with good-guy artist Jeremy Hunter (Jean LeClerc), who after crossing over to <em>Loving</em> died when a serial killer turned him into a statue. Oddly, Trevor looks more perturbed to see them than his “doll,” Natalie, who spent years obsessed with her former stepson, Jeremy. See? Told ya it was a lot!</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
21/30
<p>Anytime Erica got within dissing distance of longtime nemesis Brooke English (Julia Barr), shade was sure to be thrown. Over the decades, they fought over the men of Pine Valley the way we do the last French fry on the plate.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
22/30
<p>Don’t let this picture fool you: Julia Santos (Sydney Penny) and Noah Keefer (Keith Hamilton Cobb) weren’t <em>always</em> this happy. In fact, they only even met when she ran away to Center City after being scarred by a chandelier that fell during a tornado.</p>
Image: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
23/30
<p><em>All My Children</em> got it right and then some when it cast Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa as poor boy/rich girl love interests Matéo Santos and Hayley Vaughan in the mid-1990s. They fell in love for real, tied the knot in 1996 and now rank among Hollywood’s prettiest power couples.</p>
Image: Ann Limongello/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
24/30
<p>After a car accident with Dr. David Hayward (Vincent Irizarry) left Erica’s famous face scarred — for life, she feared — she wound up overcoming her hunger for revenge to fall for the conniver.</p>
Image: Steve Fenn/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
25/30
<p>Although Greenlee Smythe (Rebecca Budig) and Leo du Pres (Josh Duhamel) were both naughtier than nice, they brought out the best in one another — to the point that viewers were crushed when he died protecting his sweetheart from his homicidal mother, Vanessa.</p>
Image: Ann Limongello/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
26/30
<p>One of the most tragic couples of the late 1990s, Ryan Lavery (Cameron Mathison) and Gillian Andrassy (Esta TerBlanche) had scarcely said “I do” when the Grim Reaper replied, “You think <em>so</em>, do you?” Adding insult to injury, Gillian was killed by a hitman who thought he was taking aim at <em>General Hospital</em> heroine Anna Devane.</p>
Image: Howard Wise/JPI
27/30
<p>Only after killing off Elizabeth Hendrickson as Frankie Stone did <em>All My Children</em> realize that it had in the character’s pairing with Eden Riegel’s Bianca Montgomery the potential for daytime’s first same-sex supercouple. Quicker than you could say, “Oops!” Hendrickson was rehired as Frankie’s twin sister, Maggie. (Later, <em>The Young and the Restless</em> would try to capitalize on the actresses’ popularity, too, by casting them as Chloe Mitchell and Heather Stevens. Alas, since they weren’t paired up, the reunion fell flat.)</p>
Image: Donna Svennevik/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
28/30
<p>Yeah, these expressions do a pretty good job of capturing the way that Babe Carey (Alexa Havins) and JR Chandler (Jacob Young) felt throughout most of their marriage: tense, concerned, ticked and slightly manipulative. If we recall correctly, their wedding vows even included a line about “… through good schemes and bad.”</p>
Image: Heidi Gutmann/ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
29/30
<p>Arguably, <em>All My Children</em>’s last great supercouple was Kendall (by then played by Alicia Minshew) and Zach Slater (Thorsten Kaye, now Ridge, <em>The Bold and the Beautiful</em>). Though initially, their marriage was a sham, they were really only fooling themselves: We could tell from the start that they were made for one another!</p>
Image: ABC screenshot
30/30
