"As the World Turns" Matriarch Helen Wagner Dies at 91

[Zoneboy]

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NEW YORK (AP) — Actress Helen Wagner, who played mild-mannered Nancy Hughes on the CBS soap opera "As the World Turns" for more than a half-century, has died at age 91.

She died Saturday, said New York-based CBS, which didn't say where she died or what was the cause of her death.

Wagner spoke the first words on "As the World Turns" when the show premiered on April 2, 1956, and she held the Guinness World Record for playing the same role on television for the longest amount of time, CBS said.

While Wagner, who was born in Lubbuck, Texas, was seen less often in later decades, no other network television performer came close to her run playing a single character.


"It has been fun to keep the character true to herself, no matter who is writing it at the moment," she said in 1998.

Her first words on the show's premiere were "Good morning, dear." She was still part of the cast, though with a small presence, in December 2009, when CBS announced that "As the World Turns" was being canceled and its last episode would air in September 2010.

The show was the first daytime TV drama to run a full half-hour rather than 15 minutes. It rose to No. 1 in the daytime ratings and, in the 1970s, was expended to an hour.

In a 1968 New York Times interview, Wagner called Nancy Hughes "a tentpole character."

"Nothing ever happens to Nancy," Wagner said. "She's the one the others come and talk to."

Nancy was morally upright, too: The Web site soaps.com put a one-word entry under her "flings and relationships": None.

Fans often mixed up Wagner with the character she portrayed, sending her letters carping about Nancy's homemaking or what they saw as her meddling in her children's lives.

But the many fans who liked Nancy Hughes/Helen Wagner could also be a problem. She told the Times in 1977 that a woman once ran up and kissed her as she shopped at a suburban supermarket. "She said, 'Oh, Nancy, I've loved you so long I really must kiss you again,' but at that point I managed to escape."

Real life intruded on the show in historic fashion on Nov. 22, 1963, when "ATWT" was still performed live on air. Wagner's character was talking about upcoming Thanksgiving plans ("I've thought about it and I gave it a great deal of thought...") when the broadcast was interrupted midsentence with a "CBS News Bulletin" sign.

Viewers then heard Walter Cronkite announcing that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. The actors themselves weren't told at the time.

In a 1998 Associated Press interview, Wagner said she wished her character hadn't receded into the background in later years while most of the plot developments happened to the younger characters.

"I don't like the making of Nancy into only an extra figure at parties," she said. "She is too dynamic a person to be made into a ghost."

She thought Nancy, by then twice-widowed, could provide a moral compass for younger characters on the show, giving another generation's perspective.

"The characters now are destructive, mean, immoral, unattractive and selfish," she said. "They care about nothing but themselves — me, me, me. That's a dead end. That's no life."

Still, she loved the storytelling of daytime television and remembered the maze of complex plots from decades earlier.

"Daytime drama is like the tribes gathering around the fire at night, with the storyteller telling stories," she told The New York Times in 1991. "The story continues night after night. This kind of entertainment has always been around. And it always will."

Don MacLaughlin, who played Nancy's first husband, Chris Hughes, died in 1986 at age 79, not long after the show celebrated its 30th anniversary with a special program devoted to Chris and Nancy Hughes' 50th wedding anniversary.

Chris' death was then written into the plotline, and Nancy later married a detective named Dan McClosky, played by Dan Frazer. McClosky's battle with Alzheimer's disease gave Wagner/Hughes a meaty problem onscreen for a few years, but the producers eventually killed him off, too.

In 2006, Wagner told the Times that many of her newest fans were male college students who wrote to say she reminded them of their mothers and grandmothers. (Meanwhile, one of the soap's young adult characters was Nancy's great-grandson Casey Hughes.)

"The show today may be very au courant, but Nancy isn't, which is a good thing," she told the Times. "Her values are still about honesty, integrity and courtesy."

Wagner, born in 1918, studied drama and music at Monmouth College in Illinois, graduating in 1938. She later helped the college raise money for a new theater.

She appeared on Broadway in the 1940s including a small role in the musical "Oklahoma!" and in off-Broadway and summer stock productions.

Before gaining her "As the World Turns" gig, she also appeared on early television shows such as "The Philco Television Playhouse" and a series called "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.

[catlover79]

...and right before the show faded to black. I hope ATWT will find a way to honor its matriarch before it goes off the air. What a sweet lady and fine actress. She will definitely be missed!!

[MickeyMac]

This broke my heart when I first heard this. I was so hoping she would make it to ATWT's final in September.


I havent stopped crying since I heard the news.

[catlover79]

She was born the same year as my grandparents, who have both since passed on. It is so sad.

[80sTrivia]

Oh, no... I was so praying that Helen would be alive to participate in the final episode of ATWT... just devastating news, and I'm sure the entire cast is heartbroken, as I am...

[James28]

The death of Helen Wagner...Hmmm...I didn't expect this until after ATWT had ended, which is going to be a few months from now. But it had to be shifted to May 1, right before the series' scheduled ending.

Dedicate the final episode of As the World Turns to her memory.

[Retro4Life]

Very sad news. I remember watching Wagner on ATWT with my mom since...well, forever it seems. I can't help but think of my mom during this time and all the conservations we had about the show and its characters.

She seems like such a warm and wise lady. We really need to take note of the passing of people like this, from this generation because we won't see their like again, and we're all the poorer for it.

[catlover79]

Originally Posted by Retro4Life

Very sad news. I remember watching Wagner on ATWT with my mom since...well, forever it seems. I can't help but think of my mom during this time and all the conservations we had about the show and its characters.

She seems like such a warm and wise lady. We really need to take note of the passing of people like this, from this generation because we won't see their like again, and we're all the poorer for it.

AMEN!!!!

[MickeyMac]

I am still in mouring over this.