Daytime TV Legend Helen Wagner Passes
The renowned actress stared on As the World Turns for 54 years, earning a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Helen Wagner, who for 54 years starred as matriarch Nancy Hughes on the daytime drama As the World Turns, died May 1, 2010. She was 91.
Wagner, who spoke the first words on the long-running serial when it premiered on April 2, 1956, holds the Guinness world record for playing the same role on television for the longest amount of time.
Wagner, born in 1918, studied drama and music at Monmouth College in Illinois. She graduated in 1938 and moved to New York to become a performer. She appeared on Broadway in the 1940s, including a small role in the musical Oklahoma! and in off-Broadway and summer stock productions.
Before As the World Turns, she appeared on early television shows such as The Philco Television Playhouse and The World of Mr. Sweeney.
She married producer Robert Willey in 1954, and over the years he served as her manager and agent as well as producing some of her stage appearances. They were married 55 years until his death in May of 2009.
In 2004, Wagner was awarded a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
On October 6, 2004, Wagner had the distinction of being interviewed by the Television Academy Foundation’s Archive of American Television. During the two-hour interview, conducted in Mount Kisco, New York, by Karen Herman, Wagner began by describing how she broke into acting on the New York stage and in experimental television.
She also talked about her appearance as a regular on the short-lived Charlie Ruggles sitcom The World of Mr. Sweeney. She then discussed the role for which she is most associated, Nancy Hughes on As the World Turns, whom she played for more than fifty years, the longest-running character to date in the history of television.
She described the production of As the World Turns including its transition from “live” to tape, story plotlines and working with her longtime co-stars. She also addressed various moments from the show, from uttering the series’ very first line (“Good morning dear, what would you like for breakfast?”) to playing a scene “live” while, unbeknownst to her, CBS broke in to announce the shooting of President Kennedy.
In addition, she discussed her continued work on the series and how the show evolved over the years.
The entire interview is available online here.