With this week’s news that Dick Van Dyke will guest on Days of Our Lives next fall, it’s time to remember other screen stars who have guested on soaps.
Yes, real stars, like, for example, Elizabeth Taylor, who played the original Helena Cassadine on General Hospital in 1981. I was fortunate enough to interview her at the time. She was giggly, sweet and thoroughly unpretentious — surprising for such a gigantic movie star.
But she was not the first movie star I saw on soaps.
Remember the great classic film star Joan Crawford? Her actress daughter Christina Crawford was a regular on The Secret Storm, playing Joan Borman Kane. In 1968, Christina had emergency surgery for a ruptured ovarian tumor, and her mother volunteered to fill in — to hold the part for Christina so it wouldn’t be recast. CBS Daytime took her up on her offer, and soon realized the decision was a big mistake. Crawford was a notorious drunk, and fully lived up to her reputation during her time on the show. I was 14 at the time, just beginning what would become my lifelong devotion to soaps, and I was shocked at the spectacle. I can only imagine what went on behind the scenes.
Joan Crawford, who spent decades as a top star in the Hollywood studio system, was one tough dame. She loved her daughter, but she also abused her.
Christina later wrote a best-seller about the abuse she and her brother, Christopher, suffered at her mother’s hands that was famously titled Mommie Dearest. The Secret Storm incident was portrayed vividly in the movie version of the book starring Faye Dunaway.
Joan Crawford’s career was recounted in an excellent 2002 Turner Classic Movies documentary, Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star, that was recently rebroadcast. She began working in silent movies in 1925, but it was her role in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) that truly launched her career. She became a major star in the 1930s, and made remarkable movies such as Grand Hotel (1932), The Women (1939), Mildred Pierce (1945) and the horror classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) (co-starring one-time rival Bette Davis). Her performance on The Secret Storm came in the later declining years of her career.
Ms. Crawford passed away in 1977. She was only 73 when she died. But what a remarkable Hollywood life, which included her little-remembered appearance on a New York-based soap opera called The Secret Storm.
The Secret Storm aired from 1954 to 1974, and its credits are filled with familiar soap names. The most famous, of course, is one of its directors, Gloria Monty, who later became the executive producer of General Hospital in the 1980s and brought us the glory days of Luke and Laura. (I was honored to interview her at the time.)
The tradition of movie and TV stars being on soap operas continued after Crawford’s stint. Carol Burnett played the maid Verla Grubbs on All My Children. The Hollywood (and early German movie) character actor Walter Slezak was on One Life to Live as Viki’s godfather (star Erika Slezak was his daughter), and Sammy Davis Jr. played Chip Warren on One Life to Live. Chip was a friend of Karen Wolek (the housewife hooker played by the dynamic Judith Light). Davis’s singing on OLTL, combined with his dramatic talents, made him a terrific guest star.
Marlena asks: Who was your favorite celebrity guest star on soaps?
This was a fun one! Personally, I’d have to say Julianne Moore returning to ATWT in the last days, paying her respect to the show that helped launch her career (though she WAS on Edge prior to ATWT).
Oh I agree with you dear Esther about Julianne. What a nice woman. When she won an Oscar she was unashamed to say she started on Doug Marland’s “As the World Turns.”
Marlena says: Doug Marland was an actor himself and loved to write for his favorite performers. Years later when Julianne won an Oscar she was unashamed to say that her first job was on “As the World Turns”