Helen Gallagher, a Tony Award winner best known for her role as Maeve Ryan in all 13 seasons of the daytime soap Ryan’s Hope, has passed away. Gallagher died on November 24, but no cause of death has been disclosed. The actress was 98.
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Playbill confirmed the news on Instagram.
Born on July 19, 1926, in New York City, Gallagher was already a seasoned performer in singing, dancing, and acting on numerous Broadway shows when she was cast as Gladys Bumps in the 1952 Chicago-based musical Pal Joey. Co-starring with Harold Lang and Vivienne Segal, she earned the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, per Deadline.
She continued her career with roles in iconic Golden Age Broadway musicals like The Pajama Game, Mame, Finian’s Rainbow, and Sweet Charity, where she earned a second Tony nomination for Featured Actress, sharing the stage with Gwen Verdon and Ruth Buzzi as Mickie.
She also performed in revivals of classic shows like Guys and Dolls and Brigadoon.
Farewell to the glorious Helen Gallagher, who defined "musical comedy". pic.twitter.com/WF88XhbQrf
— Jon Maas (@jondmaas) November 26, 2024
In 1970, she was cast as the original Lucille Early in Broadway’s No, No, Nanette. The performance earned her a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The production ran from January 1971 to February 1973 at the 46th Street Theatre, now known as the Richard Rodgers Theatre.
She made her return to Broadway in the 1972-73 production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
Helen Gallagher Lands Her Most Iconic Role
However, perhaps her most well-known role was for TV.
Gallagher was cast as the matriarch of an Irish American family in New York City in the ABC soap opera Ryan’s Hope. The soap premiered in July 1975.
Her character, Maeve Ryan, and her husband Johnny (played by Bernard Barrow) owned Ryan’s Bar, situated across from a hospital, and they had five children. They served as the foundation of the daytime drama, which concluded in early 1989. In the final episode, Gallagher sang “Danny Boy,” a song she had performed many times throughout the series.
She won consecutive Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Actress in a Daytime Drama Series in 1976 and 1977. Gallagher also subsequently earned a third award 11 years later. She was also nominated in the same category in 1979 and 1981.
Gallagher later appeared in various daytime dramas, including Another World, All My Children, and One Life to Live. Her TV credits also include Law & Order and The Cosby Mysteries.
Meanwhile, Gallagher also graced the big screen. She starred in the 1960 film Strangers When We Meet, starring alongside Kirk Douglas, Kim Novak, and Walter Matthau. She later appeared in James Ivory’s Roseland (1977) and the Manhattan-set Neptune’s Rocking Horse (1997).
In her later years, Gallagher served as a faculty member at the Herbert Berghof Studio.