All Victor's Children

"Cold and debonair," says forward Robert Horry. "Very sure of himself."

"Man with that much power coulda married anyone," Cassell says. "But he fell in love with a blind woman. Not for what she is, but who she's about."

On the road Horry, Maxwell and Cassell watch Victor in the privacy of their hotel rooms. "You need to be lying on your bed," says Horry.

"Stretched out," interjects Maxwell.

"Buck naked," says Cassell.

The three were initiated into the Newman cult as teenagers. Cassell would skip class at Florida State to watch the show. Happily, his political science professor taught the same course at night. "I didn't tell him why I needed to take a later class," Cassell says. "I couldn't. What would I say? 'I got to see my Victor?' "

Cassell claims to have sighted his hero a few years ago in the Memphis airport. "He was talking on the phone," Cassell recalls. "I screamed, 'That's my man right there! That is Victor!' He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. He's Victor Newman."

"Victor Newman is the kind of guy I wouldn't put up with," says 31-year-old golfer Cathy Johnston-Forbes. "He's too controlling. I'd tell him to go jump in a lake. It probably wouldn't come out like that, though."

The 10-year LPGA veteran has been hooked on The Young and the Restless since 1973. But Newman still perplexes her. "Sometimes I like him," she says, "sometimes I hate him. He has everything he ever wanted, except satisfaction."

She doesn't see why women find Victor so irresistible. "He's not that handsome," she protests. "Maybe they like being treated like queens. As domineering as Victor Newman is, he can be sensitive, a gentleman. He treats women like a crystal—he never wants to hurt them. But in the end, he hurts them anyway."