The Night Susan Lucci Won the Best Actress Emmy on Her 19th Nomination, plus Jacklyn Zeman: In Memorium

I’ve had the privilege of interviewing three of the most beautiful entertainers in the world: Kim Kardashian, Elizabeth Taylor (by phone) and Susan Lucci (Erica Kane, All My Children), the latter many, many times.

Who could ever forget May 21, 1999, the night at Madison Square Garden when Susan won the Best Actress Emmy on her 19^th nomination?  Here is a personal eyewitness account of both that night and memories of the supreme soap opera star we rightly call Our Queen.  Lucci will forever be the most important soap opera star in daytime history.

Lucci is, of course, heart stoppingly beautiful. When she comes into a room, as she did at our many interviews, and that night at the Emmys, her pure beauty stopped the room.

Lucci played daytime’s greatest villainess/heroine) Erica Kane on my very favorite soap All My Children which was created by and written for most of its run (1970-2011) by the incomparable Agnes Nixon.   The character had 13 husbands (Marlena used to recite their names to put herself to sleep), an amazing mother Mona Kane (played by Fra Heflin) and daughter Bianca Montgomery, who was proudly one of daytime’s first lesbians.  At the time of Lucci’s Emmy win, r, Bianca was played by Lacey Chabert and later by Eden Riegel.

Lucci, who in IMHO deserved the prize each of the 19 times she was nominated, wrongly became a long-standing media joke (as a loser) until that wonderful night at Madison Square Garden. I was in the audience that night covering it for Newsday, the Long Island newspaper where Lucci and her family called home. I had a premonition it would happen. When it was announced you NEVER heard an audience scream so in your life. It was like an earthquake.

Let’s set the scene: Shemar Moore (who incidentally played his old part Malcolm Winters last week on The Young and Restless) announced the award by famously exclaiming, “The streak is over!  Susan Lucci has won our Top Diva Award!”

Despite the outpouring of congratulations, however, the win was controversial in some quarters.  For many years, it was assumed by some non-soap viewers that any woman as beautiful as Lucci couldn’t possibly act. AMC fans knew better, of course, but in those days, that particular stereotype was hard to overcome. The fact was that she was a superior actress who brought her character vividly and engagingly to life year in and year out, naysayers be damned.

About a week prior to the 1999 ceremony, I was especially fed up with the negative way the non-soap kibitzers portrayed Susan as a pretty woman whose talent was only skin deep. I wrote a Marlena column as the critic for Soap Opera Weekly headlined “The Last Time Susan Lucci Loses the Emmy.”  I enumerated all her strong points.  And reported what a gracious woman Lucci was to me and to everyone else, too.

After her memorable acceptance speech, Susan withdrew to the press room here and where I had joined the throng of print and broadcast reporters waiting for her. She was quizzed by dozens, patiently repeating how good it felt to win the cherished statuette at last. During all that, she found a moment to pull me aside and say, “Connie, I don’t know how to thank you.  The column you wrote in Weekly helped me more than you will ever know.”

I was incredulous.  From her earliest day on the show, I worshipped the way such a supremely gorgeous woman could play both drama and comedy with equal skill. Her award also got me the first and only Page one in a newspaper (Newsday) of my long journalistic career.  Plus, I loved the pleasure the award gave supportive on-lookers that night, including Susan’s friends Rosie O’Donnell, who cried, and Oprah Winfrey, who cheered endlessly.

I’m very, very, very excited about this year’s Emmys.  But for me, nothing will ever top the night the world stopped and Susan Lucci won.  What a tribute it was to a great lady, and the definitive soap opera star!

Jacklyn Zeman: In Memorium

What a shock on the recent morning when local New York media, which rarely covers daytime drama, reported the passing of Jacklyn (“Jackie”) Zeman at age 70. For more than four decades, the world has known her as Nurse Barbara “Bobbie” Spencer on General Hospital. Her family said she was the victim of a short-term cancer.

I’ve always felt a sense of connectedness to her because when I was a kid, I saw her often on stage at the family-owned Fox Movie and Stage Theater in downtown Brooklyn, where my great-aunt Ruth was box office manager. The theater used to stage rock and roll shows hosted by a New York disc jockey “Murray the K” Kaufman, a local radio DJ.  Zeman was his go-go girl and he was her first husband.

In 1976 Zeman made her major soap opera debut on One Life to Live as Lana McClain, who committed suicide when her boyfriend betrayed her.  We were all shocked.

The same year, she made her debut on General Hospital, where she never played anyone but Bobbie.  The character was the sister of Luke (Tony Geary) and mother of Carly (Laura Wright). Her Bobbie -– Barbara Jean, as Luke called her — was always caring and understanding, and everyone loved her.

She leaves two daughters, Cassidy Zee Gorden (born 1990) and Lacey Rose Gorden (born 1990.)

How shocking it is when a daytime soap opera star passes away.  We soap fans have spent decades of our lives with them.

When a soap opera star we have known so long suddenly passes away, it breaks our hearts.  Oh, how we loved both Bobbie Spencer and Ms. Zeman. She was always loving, and brightened every story she was in.

And how we OLTL and GH fans loved her in return. May she rest in peace.