NEW YORK — Actress Helen Wagner, who played mild-mannered Nancy Hughes on the CBS soap opera “As the World Turns” for more than a half-century and spoke its first words, has died at age 91.
She died Saturday, said the show’s New York-based production company, TeleNext Media Inc., which didn’t say where she died or what was the cause of her death.
Wagner opened “As the World Turns” when it premiered on April 2, 1956, with the words: “Good morning, dear.”
She held the Guinness World Record for playing the same role on television for the longest length of time, 54 years, TeleNext Media said.
While Wagner, who was born in Lubbock, Texas, was seen less often in later decades, no other network television performer came close to her run playing a single character.
She was still part of the cast, though with a small presence, in December 2009, when CBS announced that “As the World Turns” was being canceled and its last episode would air in September.
Her final appearance aired April 5, in an episode in which Julianne Moore, a series regular in the 1980s whose two half-sister characters played Wagner’s granddaughters, returned for a guest walk-on. The episode was taped in March.
Wagner, born in 1918, studied drama and music at Monmouth College in Illinois, graduating in 1938.
She appeared on Broadway in the 1940s, including a small role in the musical “Oklahoma!” and in off- Broadway and summer-stock productions.
In 2002 Wagner received a plaque on the Buddy Holly Walk of Fame in her hometown, TeleNext Media said, and in 2004 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
