Ben Warren Tribute

I don’t know why (it might be the incredible talent of Hunt Block), but Ben Warren has long held a soft spot in my heart, much like the one Roger Thorpe held. I just felt Ben could have been happy if only he’d been given his chance to have a family, a combination of terrible circumstance and his own greed and arrogance kept him from having that chance. It was finally taken from him forever when he allowed himself to get caught up in Pilar Santos’ plan to get him out of her mother’s life. As Ben falls out of the episode guide now, I’m taking this opportunity to thank the character of Ben Warren and his portrayer Hunt Block for an entertaining ride.

I feel to truly understand the character of Ben Warren you need to watch two key scenes. I want to thank BenWarrenFan for helping me find the exact ones I was looking for.

The first sequence is when Ben and his good friend Beth Raines Spaulding talk about their dreams. Beth talks about a magical night she’d like to recreate with Phillip. Ben responds with a dream about being in someone’s silver picture frame in their home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgwQBJWTkXU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvJOH2mVRZA&feature=related

In this second clip, we learn about Ben’s abusive childhood and the disfiguring scars that defined so much of his life and still effected him. (Start the 1st clip at 6:00)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RSqAXWtMQU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgVYwxJQuyE

I offer a third clip, not that it tells you much about Ben, but it does help sum up the Bloss-Blen triangle and is such a well done fantasy sequence I still remember it from the first time I saw it over a decade ago now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcRgDecf0W8

I also would like to share this clip from Max’s custody trial where Ben said a lot of good things about Drew and Drew said a lot of nice stuff about Ben. I hope Drew could hold onto this in later years after his death. Ben was a lot of things, but he really loved Drew and I think might have turned his life around if he had just had a little longer. Rest in Peace Ben.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2PqmV8kB5w

If you want to know more about Ben, check out the following links and my description of him from the Supporting Characters Page.

Ben Warren Transcript Site –
http://web.archive.org/web/20050327172011/members.tripod.com/~soapfan10/bentranscripts.html

Ben Warren Fan’s YouTube Channel has all of Ben Warren’s scenes from the beginning until roughly Jan. 1999
http://www.youtube.com/user/BenWarrenFan

Bias towards Ben Warren –
https://glmanny.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/bias-towards-ben-warren

Summary of Ben Warren’s murder –
https://glmanny.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/ben-warren-a-m-lucy-wedding

Spauldingfield’s Character Profile of his daughter Drew Jacobs(which includes the story of her finding him) –
http://tinyurl.com/DrewJacobs

Spauldingfield’s coverage of the actual murder, best footage of it I’ve found so far (Start about at 1:00 in)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We1Emwn4_Y8

Ben Warren ~ Ben Warren led a very complicated life. He was the younger half-brother of Ross, Justin, and Lainie Marler, the product of an affair their mother had. Ross, then young teen, pushed his mother to hide the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption. He later discouraged her from ever trying to find or even check up on Ben and didn’t himself until Ben was in law school. By that time Ben had grown up badly abused emotionally and physically by his adoptive parents, including boiling water being poured over him giving him extreme facial scars which he carried for many years until surgery corrected him to a normal appearance at some point after he had started college. Ross took the young perspective lawyer on and served as his mentor, not telling them of their true relationship. I infer that Ross knew nothing about the childhood abuse or scaring from his reactions to Ben, so I believe Ben had the corrective plastic surgery sometime between when he fathered Drew as a college student (Selena described his scars & didn’t recognize him) and when he first met Ross as a law student. When Ben found out who Ross really was to him, he saw this as a double betrayal especially since their mother had only recently died and they could now never reconcile. Ben came to Springfield specifically to get revenge on Ross.

Ben’s first attempt involved defending Roy Meecham as Ross was prosecuting him for attacking Abby Blume Bauer. When Roy threatened Abby after he was cleared, Abby shot him and Ross resigned his position to defend her. Ben’s second attempt was his prosecution of Abby Blume Bauer (who Ross was representing) for the murder of her attacker Roy. Ben hid a video that proved Roy had threatened to kill Abby right before she shot him to win the case. Eventually he came clean, but only after trying to blackmail Ross’ wife Blake into sleeping with him to get it. Blake didn’t go through with it then, but slowly developed feelings for Ben, even leaving Ross for awhile to have an affair with Ben. (They are together at the time of Michelle’s Thanksgiving party when Michelle accuses Danny of kidnapping the girls.) Ben truly loved Blake and it’s through her that we learn most of Ben’s history.

Ben was an early victim of Mick’s on screen. Mick accidentally found the tape of Ben and Blake in bed and blackmailed them to keep it from being made public. After sacrificing his position in the DA’s office in an effort to protect Lizzie Spaulding and her mother Beth Raines from Carl Stevens’s murder, Ben was hired by Alan Spaulding with the understanding that if Ben freed Annie Dutton, Alan would make him a powerful executive within Spaulding Enterprises. Ben freed Annie, but Phillip broke the deal on a technicality and Ben thirsted for revenge. When Danny was able to steal the real set of family account books from the family attorney to help protect Michelle from Carmen, Carmen fired their long time family lawyer and hired Ben. Ben was conflicted because he knew Blake would never stand for his involvement with the Santos family, but his desire for revenge won out and he took the job with the understanding that Carmen would help him get his revenge on the Spauldings.

Unfortunately for Ben, he had always won by cheating while other people played by the rules, he was way in over his head in the Santos household, especially after he began to sleep with Carmen. Danny tried to get Ben arrested and failed, before giving up and turning his back on the family business to escape to Michelle. Pilar equally wanted Ben out, especially because Ben’s reaction to Danny’s plan had led to her boyfriend Bill Lewis’s arrest. She told Dietz to set up an accident for Ben, but unfortunately Selena Davis, there to talk to Ben about her suspicion he was Drew’s biological father, was paralyzed instead. Ben found out about Pilar’s involvement and blackmailed Pilar to get her to support his relationship with Carmen, but Pilar slowly built another plan, this time to make her mother think that Ben was seducing Pilar, in hopes that Carmen would dump him. The plan worked, but Carmen shot Ben instead, he also hit his head as he fell, and Carmen and Pilar believed he was dead. When Vanessa Chamberlain Reardon showed up at his hotel room shortly there after, Ben had come to and they struggled over the gun Carmen had left behind. A second shot really did kill Ben. Carmen framed Michelle for Ben’s murder and Michelle was actually convicted of the crime, before Danny was able to find new evidence which cleared her. Michelle had motive because of what he had done to her sister-in-law Abby, his giving Teresa drugs to try to get Danny to sleep with her to break up his marriage which nearly killed him, and her belief in Pilar’s set up that Ben was seducing her. Overwhelmed one day at Company shortly after the incident with Danny, Michelle had held a knife to Ben’s throat to try to get him to confess, but she dropped it in horror when Danny said her name and snapped her back to reality.

The timing of Ben’s death was especially sad because he had only recently discovered that Drew Jacobs was his biological daughter with Selena Davis. They truly connected and he might have finally walked away from power and revenge and had the life he really wanted deep down all the time at last (listen to the dream he shares with Beth the night they made love), but he had already hurt too many people and he never got his chance to make it right. Unfortunately, Danny and Michelle never knew most of this backstory and saw Ben only as someone who had attacked her family, damaged his, and almost cost Danny his life. (See Drew Jacobs, Ross Marler, and Blake Marler)
http://www.soapcentral.com/gl/whoswho/ben.php

UPDATE: I was surprised to find this version of Manny highlights includes part of Ben’s funeral, so I’ll add it here. Sadly Ross’ eulogy is not included, but Drew’s which Ross read is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa2W37Sqo3c&feature=related

UPDATE: Found the clip where Phillip pulls the double cross and refuses to give Ben Lewis Oil on a technologically.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqrugqtTzTQ&NR=1

UPDATE: Ben Warren Character Profile:
https://glmanny.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/ben-warren-character-profile

Tags: Ben Warren, Beth Raines, Drew Jacobs, GL, Guiding Light