Volume I, Issue ii

October 1998

The Floating Rib: Justus Ward Has Fallen and He Can't Get Up by Joan Roseman

Justus Ward is in deep trouble, and for the first time in years, I do not care whether he lives or dies.

My indifference is related in part to the way the character of Justus Ward, grandson of the late Mary Mae Ward and the very much alive Edward Quartermaine, is now being written and directed. Much relates directly to the decision to replace the former incumbent, Joseph C. Phillips, with the Emmy-winning Monti Sharp. Whatever the reason, one would think that having realized how little I care what Justus--this Justus--does with his sorry life, I would feel a sense of relief, of release from the burden of caring about what was from the first a difficult and at times non-user-friendly character. Guess what? I don't. I feel angry.

I am angry that I don't have Justus--the old Justus--around. Every time I see what passes for him in a scene now, I think: "What, are you still here? What is the point of you? Justus, you are dead; you just don't know enough to lie down." And as I think it, I find myself hearing Mary Mae's voice in my head, chiming in: "Get your sorryass old self out of Port Charles, child, and don't you dare Granny Mae me!"

How could she say that (all right, how could I have her say that) to her own son Bradley's boy? Let's go back a few years, to examine who Justus Ward was, and how, in spite of myself, he became so important to me. If I can write it out, maybe I can exorcise my demon, and perhaps your own.

The moment I saw Justus Ward, I disliked him. At first I thought I was prejudiced--not that kind of prejudice--because the actor playing this new character was Joseph C. Phillips, my least favorite member of the Cosby Show cast. It didn't take more than a few days of air time to show me that my bad feelings weren't stemming from the actor; in fact, this time around I found the older, slightly heavier Phillips to be, in his own right, an attractive man. No, my problem with Justus was that he was a stick, and a dull stick at that.

For months I watched the warm, gracious Earth-Mother Mary Mae talk solemnly with her stiff, sober, eminently worthy grandson in the Ward House living room and wished that a bomb would lie ticking under the couch. Not to blow up, you understand--there were children upstairs. But gosh, a bomb would sure have livened things up. Anything to keep me from dozing off. I was so not into Mr. Justus Ward I resented any screen time he got. But one day, all that changed.

For me, Justus Ward came to life on "General Hospital" months after he hit town. The stick became a walking, breathing man when he learned that his father, barely remembered in the flesh but exalted in the collective memory of his family, friends and community, had feet of clay. The day Justus learned that Congressman Bradley Ward, minister, activist and pillar of his community, was an adulterer was the day this young, self-righteous and slightly pompous man truly became a person. Hallelujah

I like complex men, men who walk the earth aware that their path through life will seldom be wide and straight. As I saw Joseph Phillips work with the late Rosalind Cash and the excellent Brynn Thayer (one of Bradley's mistresses), I noticed that he had stopped being a stick himself. Phillips was showing nuances and colors that I had never suspected he possessed. I started watching him more closely, and what I saw surprised and delighted me. I admired how delicately he could move, given his size, and how effective and economical his movements and general physicality were. I enjoyed the deep timbre of his voice and his unexpectedly free laugh, a real down-home laugh from the belly.

Slowly I understood that it was no accident that I had disliked Justus. Claire and Matt Labine had written him that way on purpose. We were supposed to follow Justus on a journey, to be there as he stopped trying to be a substitute for Bradley and began to be his own Justus. I surprised myself by looking forward to his scenes, and discovered that I genuinely gave a damn about Justus Ward, who seemed almost frail as revelation after revelation stripped away his preconceptions about his sacred icon of a father.

Here's the thing about frailty. I learned its value, as I learned much in my youth, from the movies. In the wonderful 1940 film comedy "The Philadelphia Story," socialite Tracy Lord (no, not the porn star) is pretty much of a stick herself. She has a failed marriage behind her and a strained relationship with her father, whom she drove out of their home--and her mother's life--because his extra-marital dalliance with a younger woman offended her high moral standards. She is inflexible, self-important, slightly ridiculous and unaware that she is very, very unhappy. At one point, her sadder and wiser father tells her that despite all her fine qualities she lacks compassion. I hope I am not misquoting too badly in rendering his next words:

You will never be a first class woman or a first class human being
Until you learn to have a little regard for human frailty

We expect to pity the fallen, or, if we are less tolerant, to shun them. In the case of Justus Ward, inspired writing and sensitive acting conspired to make this character achingly sympathetic. Here was a man who had killed--even such a man as Damian Smith--and stayed silent when another was tried in his place. Worse, he served as her attorney, thus compounding his sin every day. He let his friend--his grandmother's friend--languish in jail, separated from her husband and children, for a crime he had committed. How could we ache for him? We did, I did, because he was a great, great character undergoing the fiery furnace for our entertainment.

And what do you do for an encore? If you are Justus, you become a stand-up comedian. In some of the most delicious months before the Labines departed Port Charles, they and dialog writer Patrick Mulcahey turned Justus into the tallest, biggest court jester the Quartermaines had ever seen. Self-exiled into the bosom of his other family as house counsel, Justus developed a wickedly mordant sense of humor as his chief line of defense. Like the Monty Python troupe's vision of the Spanish Inquisition, he used irony as his weapon of choice. Bravo, writers, bravo, Mr. Phillips. I know I still haven't stopped laughing over that epic first encounter, When Tracey Met Justus, in which she mistook him for a lawn jockey and he set her straight with a drawled "Jassum, Miz Tracey."

Justus had substance, weight, authority, and that little something extra that made him dear to me: he could stand outside himself, hold an unpopular position and then take responsibility for his actions. He knew he was frail--his betrayal of Laura showed him just how much--but he had developed his own code of honor. Strangely, it led him to employment with Jason Morgan.

When the decision was made to replace Joseph Phillips with the younger, award winning Monti Sharp, it was a shock (and not just for the viewers; Phillips was reportedly told at the end of a day's shoot that he was fired). Monti Sharp's work as David on Guiding Light earned him not only that Emmy, but the admiration and respect of his peers. He is a very likeable personality, and not bad to look at, either. With the best will in the world, I decided to bide my time and see if the old saw "We're taking the character in another direction" was true. Unfortunately, it was.

Today's Justus Ward is not even in the same universe as the man I once knew. Recasts I can deal with--I can think of several roles where a change of actor has improved my appreciation of the character--but this is no descendant of Mary Mae and Edward. This is no Philadelphia lawyer who came into the world trailing an unbearable train of familial expectations and potential. This is no African-American consigliere to the mob. This is no lover who sat on his passions not out of disinterest but rather of deep feelings of unworthiness. This is no literal black sheep of a powerful family who found common ground with fellow fish-out-of-water (Lois, Emily) and was nourished by the association. This is no man of honor who found his own way to preserve his dignity and his pride within the confines of a life outside the law.

This is no Justus.

I am sure that there is another actor in Los Angeles who is capable of finding the character of Justus Ward, but sadly, Monti Sharp isn't he. Dressing him up in too-big suits (with excessively padded shoulders) can't disguise the sad truth that the only frailty the present Justus exhibits is that of body, not of soul. He is truly a lightweight. Whatever it takes to make Justus breathe and walk and talk like the man we have come to admire isn't there for me in Sharp's performance. I can't engage. I don't sympathize. I don't care. Whew. Talk amongst yourselves.