Thanks so much @Paul Raven I had heard the drunk quotes but not the rest of the article. I appreciate how much detail she goes into about how the soaps helped her (just another reason New York soaps being gone have done such damage to the industry). The story about how she connected with her grief when playing the death of Nola's mother only for the performance to look horrible onscreen is really fascinating. Did any of you see those scenes? What did you think of them?

Was she suggesting she quit the role of Nola? I thought she was let go. I can't remember.

5 hours ago, Khan said:

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like she would've had a more positive experience working on soaps had she worked on a show with better writing.

Seeing her on Lemay-era AW would have been interesting.

Honestly, I think she thought the medium was beneath her and it wouldn’t have mattered which serial she was on. I’ve seen her interviewed many times over the years, and she doesn’t exactly scream “down to earth”.

3 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Seeing her on Lemay-era AW would have been interesting.

Definitely. Or maybe on OLTL or even Y&R? Just imagine if she had played Lorie Brooks, lol.

Edited Thursday at 01:34 AM4 days by Khan

12 minutes ago, Khan said:

Definitely. Or maybe on OLTL or even Y&R? Just imagine if she had played Lorie Brooks, lol.

That would have been something.

In another universe I could also see her as Karen Wolek.

1 minute ago, DRW50 said:

In another universe I could also see her as Karen Wolek.

Except, I don't think as Karen would've been as sympathetic as Judith Light's turned out to be. Audiences would've loved to hate her, rather than just love her, lol.

10 minutes ago, Khan said:

Except, I don't think as Karen would've been as sympathetic as Judith Light's turned out to be. Audiences would've loved to hate her, rather than just love her, lol.

I think Kathleen was capable of sympathetic moments, but I agree Judith was the stronger choice. Kathleen just reminds me of some of the original core of the character.

I feel like Henry Slesar would have loved to have written for Kathleen.

10 hours ago, Khan said:

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like she would've had a more positive experience working on soaps had she worked on a show with better writing.

She must have been around when they kept recasting Mary Ryan on RH. I've always thought she would have been very good in the role. But she would have ended up leaving for movies in the end, so...

BUFFALO COURIER - EXPRESS, Sunday, July 21, 1968

Soap Opera Star Wants Broadway Hit

Elizabeth Hubbard, Heroine of "The Doctors,' Sets Sights

NEW YORK—Can a beautiful blonde doctor, who is also a divorcee, a mother and a woman with the emotional range of a candy thermometer, find happiness as the wife of a boorish neurosurgeon who suffers on and off from hysterical paralysis? Can a beautiful actress who is highly educated, critically acclaimed and blissfully newlywed, become a Broadway star even though she performs regularly in this TV soap opera?

THE ANSWERS to these cliffhanging questions (in the first instance, definitely not, in the second, let's hope so) are of absorbing interest to Mrs. David Bennett, a fur designer's bride who is known to millions of merican women as Dr. Althea Davis, the tormented heroine of "The Doctor," the nation's number 2 daytime serial drama. A smaller 'and definitely ample as well as female audience of legitimate theater goers recognize Mrs. Bennett as Elizabeth Hubbard, a featured player during the last decade in such short-running ventures as "The Affair," "The Physicists," and one hit, "Joe Egg," which expired during the recent Actors Equity strike.

WHEN THE real-life protagonist stands up to be counted, she reveals herself to be confident, optimistic and not at all apologetic about her continuing commitment to the sudsy clean but professionally impure world of afternoon television melodrama. After all, it isn't as if she had stooped to doing commercials. And hasn't "The Doctors," in which she has been starring on NBC since August, 1964, given a case of the jitters to a rival network that formerly monopolized the daytime field?

Miss Hubbard comes across as one of those rare examples of artistocratic whistlebait. Perfect Anglo-Saxon bone structure, Wedgwood-blue eyes, 18-karat gold hair, milky complexion, unexpectedly sturdy fingers and knees coexist with such proper credentials as an English father (retired director of extracurricular activities at Columbia College), feminist American mother (the late Elizabeth Wright Hubbard was a homeopathic physician) and a cum laude diploma fn:m Radcliffe, class of 1955.

GIVEN SUCH a background along with such merit badges as the Silver Medal from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and the Clarence Derwent award for her Nurse Monika in "The Physicists," an actress like Elizabeth Hubbard can affect the dross with which she is confronted In soap opera script form. "There are 50 ways you could play a certain line. And it's how you play it that counts. Soap opera, after all, is human drama," she said.

IN ITS VOYAGE from radio to television, soap opera seems to be catching up rather tardily with the sexual revolution. "They're sort of working sin in," said Miss Hubbard gleefully. "But I'm for showing sin not as sin but as life, and doing it honestly." Not that "The Doctors", is to be confused with a Swedish movie. The audience realized what had transpired between the doctors one evening from a morning-after scene in which they crawled around looking for their shoes. "Oh, I've done a few things in my slip for kicks," Miss Hubbard added.

IT'S A MEDIUM for an experienced actor, she said, turning dead serious. 'The director hasn't time to teach you to act, the way many Broadway directors take it on themselves to do." She stepped into "The Physicists" on 24 hours' notice and learned the part perfectly, proof of the quick-study experience that soap opera affords. Soap opera also gives an actress a soul-warming, national identity. "You're like an old-fashioned actress with a following in each city," she said. Fans stop her on the street, write profusely, send gifts and seek advice: "should a 24-year-old girl have a spinal fusion'" Miss Hubbard has learned not to advise.

"I'VE GOT a standing in the community, which is a nice feeling." she said. "Now I wish a standing in the theater community. I've done a play a year. I've never had a bad review. All of them were good plays, although, until 'Joe Egg,' I never had a nit. Now I'd like top billing in a play that rings in one's heart somehow. I've never done a movie, but I hope that's going to happen soon."