As the World Turns star Eileen Fulton, who acted on the legendary soap opera on and off for half a century, has died at the age of 91.
She won the hearts of fans as the scenery-chewing ‘bad girl’ Lisa Grimaldi, a role she originated in 1960 and played for the last time on the show’s final episode in 2010.
Fulton has revealed that although Lisa was conceived as a ‘sweet girl next door,’ she felt the character was insufficiently interesting that way and so she delivered her lines in a ‘conniving’ fashion that prompted the writers to change course.
Over the decades her character grew from a young ‘vixen’ – whom Time magazine once branded a ‘superb****’ – into a gentler grande dame.
At one point during the show, Fulton famously had a ‘grandma clause’ installed in her contract that would prevent Lisa from having grandchildren, for fear that she would be written off the show if her character were seen as old and irrelevant.
She died July 14 in her hometown of Ashville, North Carolina ‘after a period of declining health,’ according to an obituary from the local Groce Funeral Home.
As the World Turns star Eileen Fulton, who acted on the legendary soap opera on and off for half a century, has died at the age of 91; pictured in 2011
She won the hearts of fans as the scenery-chewing ‘bad girl’ Lisa Grimaldi, who is pictured with her first husband Bob Hughes (Don Hastings) in 1962
Born Margaret McClarty in Asheville in 1933, she had a peripatetic childhood as a result of her father’s vocation as a Methodist minister.
She had the performing bug from the age of two, when she cut into one of her father’s services by singing the old folk song Shortnin’ Bread and braved the spanking she got as a result, she told the Washington Post.
Fulton majored in music at Greensboro College and her father got her a job in a church choir, but she was determined to move to New York City, harboring dreams ‘of being the greatest actress on Broadway.’
After studying under the seminal acting teachers Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg, as well as modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, she embarked on a showbiz career that finally took off in 1960 when she was cast on As the World Turns.
Over the next 50 years, she repeatedly left the show – ‘I’ve quit forever three times,’ she once drily remarked – but always wound up coming back.
In the early years of the show, Fulton worked tirelessly to juggle the soap and the stage, filming by day and acting in such shows as The Fantasticks and the original Broadway production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by night.
But her most enduring role, the one that cemented her position in showbiz history, was as the stylish and ruthlessly conniving Lisa on As the World Turns.
Lisa cycled through a dizzying succession of what eventually turned out to be eight husbands, remaining herself a consistently tantalizing presence on the show.
Fulton is pictured in character as LIsa, standing behind the central sofa, in a cast photo for the long-running CBS soap opera taken in 1962
Fulton is pictured in 1995 – during her As the World Turns years – attending the Broadway opening of the musical Victor/Victoria, starring Julie Andrews
Fulton was the one who changed the character from the ‘sweet girl’ she was originally written as into the scene-stealing villainess she became.
Since the show was filmed live, she felt she could not ‘change her lines’ but she could ‘change my intentions once we were on the air,’ she told the Television Academy.
During the live broadcasts, she said her dialogue as written but added ‘little conniving things’ she could do to her character’s first husband Bob Hughes (Don Hastings).
Producer and head writer Irna Phillips was impressed with Fulton’s agility, saying: ‘Why, look at that – that little rascal can play a b****!’
Lisa became the character fans loved to hate, so much so that she briefly got a spin-off called Our Private World for a few months of 1965.
During her on-and-off run on As the World Turns, Fulton also achieved a certain notoriety over the ‘grandma clause’ she had added to her contract in the 1970s.
Her co-star Barbara Berjer had recently gotten killed off the show after the producers realized her character had become a great-grandmother.
Fulton resolved: ‘That’s not gonna happen to me,’ and so when her own character’s son was aged up and given romantic storylines, she had her contract amended to include the stipulation that Lisa would not be made a grandmother.
Over the decades her character grew from a young ‘vixen’ – whom Time magazine once branded a ‘superb****’ – into a gentler grande dame
During the 1980s and 1990s she wrote a string of novels, including six murder mysteries and a roman à clef called Soap Opera; pictured at home in New York in 1990
News of the ‘grandma clause’ made its way into the media, and at one point became a major source of controversy for Fulton when her character’s daughter-in-law had a miscarriage on the show in the 1980s.
By that point the ‘grandma clause’ was no longer in Fulton’s contract – but viewers were unaware of the change and thought the miscarriage plot point was her fault.
‘In fact,’ she recalled later: ‘I got such threatening mail saying: “It’s because of you and your conceit, that you should have a ‘grandma clause.’ You are a baby-killer, and we’re coming to get you.” I had letters like that from all over the country.’
Fulton’s ‘very cute driver,’ who was moonlighting as a bodyguard, suggested that she needed a bit of extra protection and so he assumed responsibility for her security too.
In spite of the ups and downs, and her occasional stints off of the program, she kept coming back to the show and was on its final episode in 2010.
She left As the World Turns in 2010, the year she is pictured, 2019 she withdrew from showbiz altogether, moving back to her home state, where she spent the rest of her life
Alongside her soap work, she performed a touring cabaret act, saying: ‘I love to sing. I love to make the audience cry. Of course, then I have to cheer them up.
During the 1980s and 1990s she wrote a string of novels, including six murder mysteries and a roman à clef called Soap Opera.
Her work on As the World Turns earned her a Daytime Emmy nomination in 1988, and in 2004, she and Don Hastings – who played her first husband on the series – were given Lifetime Achievement honors at the Daytime Emmys.
Fulton’s final screen role was a straight-to-DVD anti-abortion movie called The Life Zone in 2011, and in 2019 she withdrew from showbiz altogether, moving back to her home state, where she lived for the rest of her life.
Although she was married and divorced three times – the last one for just three months – Fulton never had any children.
Her survivors include one of her two brothers, both of her sisters-in-law and her niece, as well as a grandnephew and grandniece.
Source link
