Helen Gallagher, Star of Ryan’s Hope and Two-Time Tony Winner, Dies at 98

Helen Gallagher has died.

Gallagher, a Broadway star who rose to fame playing Maeve Ryan on the ABC soap opera Ryan’s hope from 1975 to 1989, he died at the age of 98. Playbill announced the news on Instagram.

“We are saddened to announce that two-time Tony winner Helen Gallagher has passed away at the age of 98,” the announcement read. “Our condolences go out to her family, friends and fans.”

Edith Meeks, executive and artistic director of New York studio Herbert Berghof, said The Washington Post the actress died on Sunday, November 24 in a hospital in New York.

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Gallagher was born in New York in 1926 and grew up primarily in the Bronx. When her parents separated, she and her brother lived with her aunt. She described herself as “nervous by nature,” but she said The New York Times 1971, “I was so shy, but on stage I was completely free, there was a kind of forgiveness, to do what you couldn’t do in life.”

Helen Gallagher in 1954.

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Dancing was her first love. She made her Broadway debut in 1944 in a musical revue The Seven Lively Arts after he landed a gig because her dancing skills. Her first major breakthrough came in the 1952 revival friend joey, for which she won her first Tony Award, for Best Actress in a Musical.

She had her first leading role in 1953 Hazel Flagg as the title character. “I was petrified the first week of rehearsals,” she said The New York Times 1953. “After three days I told my agent to get me out. I couldn’t play that role.”

Helen Gallagher performs at the 1972 Tony Awards.

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“What are you doing? Keep working. You’re working hard with a director, and then you come across something and you’re like, ‘Ah, yeah, this is good,’ and off you go.”

She continued to work on Broadway for decades, including plays Make a wish, Portofino, Shoes with high buttons and Sweet Charityfor which she received another Tony nomination. When Gwen Verdon left the production, Gallagher stepped in as the main character.

Her second Tony came for her performance in the 1971 production No, no, Nanettethis time for best actress in a musical. She also appeared frequently in various TV shows.

From left: Bernard Barrow, Helen Gallagher and Daniel Hugh Kelly in ‘Ryan’s Hope’.

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In 1975, she joined the soap opera Ryan’s hope for her first season, playing Irish-American matriarch Maeve. Ryan’s hope it was unlike other soap operas in that it was set in a real place and in a real city – New York – and avoided the more fantastical, over-the-top plots of other daytime dramas.

“The head of the studio thinks that soap operas fulfill escapist fantasies of romance and glamour, but my theory is that a show like ours feeds another fantasy – of family closeness,” Gallagher said. The New York Times 1983. ”Maeve is a caring, motherly figure who stands by the children. In the soap opera, I am a friend, I am family.”

Michael Levin, star of the soap opera ‘Ryan’s Hope’, has died at 90

Gallagher remained on the show until it was canceled in 1989 and won three Daytime Emmys for her role.

Helen Gallagher in 1993.

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Gallagher also appeared in the 1977 film Roseland with Christopher Walken. In the 1990s, she appeared in two more soap operas, One life to live and All My Children.

But she considered herself a character actress and did not want to be a star. “I could have had a more powerful career, but I never wanted to be anyone’s commodity,” she told za The New York Times.

In the early 1970s, Gallagher began teaching at the Herbert Berghof School, where she studied under Ute Hagen. She taught singing for musical theater there, and in 2020 the school honored her by naming the performance space the Helen Gallagher Studio Theatre.

“HB Studio is my home, and teaching there has been one of the greatest joys of my life,” she said at the time, according to the school’s website.

Helen Gallagher in 1973.

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Gallagher married Frank Wise in 1956. According to their wedding announcement in The New York Timesthey met when he was a police officer for The Pajama game.

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Recalling their courtship in 1971, she told The Times“He never spoke to me. He finally said hello one night. I said, ‘My God, speak!’ Well, that kept him quiet for about a week, until at one matinee he said, ‘Have you ever been to Versailles, in a restaurant?’ I said, ‘No, do you have any idea who could take me?’ He said, ‘What are the qualifications?’ I said, ‘Oh, someone who speaks English, someone like you.'” That’s the kind of connection that wasn’t made in heaven.”

Gallagher and Wise divorced in 1972.

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