We soap fans love our performers because they come into our homes as our favorite characters for years. In short, fan favorites become members of our own families. When a member of our family passes away, we feel it deeply.
Last week I reprinted a memorial column for Beverlee McKinsey (Iris, “Another World” and “Texas,” Alexandra, Guiding Light) who passed away in 2008, and I got an astounding reaction. All these years later not only did you still love her, but you reveled in memories of her old soap work.
Jeanne Cooper
Tomorrow is the 13th anniversary of the death of Jeanne Cooper, another adored soap actress. She played Katherine Chancellor on “Young and the Restless” for almost 40 years. Katherine, a family matriarch, a loving mother, and friend who was also an alcoholic, was one of “Y&R”’s most pivotal characters. As played by Cooper, Katherine’s eternal tussle was with Jill Foster (first Brenda Dickson, then Jess Walton) who stole her husband Phillip (Donnelly Rhodes).She found time to mother her young friend Nikki (another alcoholic, played by Melody Thomas Scott). Her comic scenes with her sidekick maid Esther Valentine (Kate Linder) were hilarious. Occasionally Katherine would disappear as Cooper played her equally funny twin Marge, the waitress.
Here is Marlena’s fond remembrance of both Mrs. Chancellor and the great Jeanne Cooper, published on this site May 12, 2013.
By Marlena De Lacroix a.k.a. Connie Passalacqua Hayman
This week daytime television lost a great icon and a great lady: Jeanne Cooper, who played Mrs. Katherine Chancellor on “The Young and the Restless” for more than forty years, passed away on Tuesday at 84.
There was no character like Mrs. Chancellor. She was brought on six months into the show’s run in 1973 to be the spoiler in the romance of the nubile Jill Foster and the handsome older man, Phillip. Good news for fans, but bad news for the lovers: Mrs. Chancellor was a formidable woman who didn’t want to let her husband go.
Tough as she was, in the capable hands of an outstanding actress like Ms. Cooper, Mrs. Chancellor was no ogre. We were shown all sides to this very flawed human being. She always wanted to take a drink, and Ms. Cooper made you understand that unquenchable thirst. She never wanted to be left alone, and Ms. Cooper made you understand that awful loneliness, too. She wanted to be loved by all who were close to her: husband Phillip, son Brock (who called her “Duchess)” and best friend Nikki, to whom she always acted the role of loving mother.
But woe to those who drew her scorn! Enemies Katherine and Jill became legendary for their constant fighting. Ms. Cooper was good in scenes with Brenda Dickson who originated the role of Jill, but absolutely great with Jess Walton, who became a legend unto herself as the equally tempestuous and vulnerable Jill.
Jeanne Cooper’s great achievement in soap acting was to keep the character interesting and challenging for four decades. From first broadcast to last in every scene in which she appeared, Katherine was the one we watched. She definitely was one of the most understandably human characters in the history of daytime.
Off screen, Ms. Cooper was constantly human, too. In her autobiography “Not Young, Still Restless” (It Books) published last year, she admitted her own tendencies to alcoholism and detailed her many affairs. Yet, she wrote most convincingly that her best and most cherished role was mother — she had three children (including”L.A. Law”’s Corbin Bernsen) and six grandchildren.
Postscript: Before Cooper even to soaps, she had a glorious movie and TV career in films like “The Boston Strangler” and TV shows such as “Maverick.”In 40 years on “Y&R” —in a role devised by show creator Willam J. Bell—she was one of daytime’s longest running characters. Cooper’s 2013 farewell to “Y&R” is an episode Marlena and her fellow fans will never forget. In real life, Cooper was terminally ill and so was Katherine. One night her enemy Jill came by to see her. At the end of the episode, Katherine said good night and went up the stairs to die. I cried my eyes out, and I bet you did, too.
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