Eileen Herlie

At 90 years old, Eileen Herlie has this physical status:

Eileen Herlie (March 8, 1918 – October 8, 2008) was a Scottish-American actress.

Personal life

Eileen Herlie was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to Patrick Herlihy, an Irish Catholic father, and Isobel Cowden, a Scottish Protestant mother, Isobel Cowden. She attended Shawlands Academy, on the city's southside. Herlie was trained as a stage actress. Jean Cocteau's The Eagle Has Two Heads was one of her West End London theatre hits. She married twice, to Philip Barrett (m 1942) and Witold Kuncewicz (m 1951), both marriages ending in divorce. She had no children. She immigrated to the United States in 1955, where she lived and worked for the last fifty-three years of her life.

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Career

She decided to become an actress when she joined the non-professional touring company Scottish National Players in 1938, despite her parents' wishes. She then toured with the Rutherglen Repertory Company, a semi-professional group. In 1942, she moved to England to work as a professional actress.

Mrs de Winter was the second in the Daphne du Maurier's stage version of her own book Rebecca's first appearance in the London theatre in 1942.

She appeared at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon for the first time in 1945, opposite the Hamlet of Peter Glenville, who also directed the performance. At 27, she was four years younger than her 31-year-old stage son.

In 1946, she made her first film appearance in the supporting role of Katherine in Daphne du Maurier's version of her own book Hungry Hill.

Sir Alexander Korda landed her under his London Films company's control in the same year. However, she would make only two films for him: The Angel with the Trumpet in 1949 and The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan in 1952. Isn't Life Wonderful!, shot in 1952, For Better, for Worse, shot in 1954, and She Didn't Say No!, shot in 1957, were three of her remaining three British films (ABPC). She made her first television appearance in Regina's leading role in Lillian Hellman's stage play The Little Foxes in 1951.

Laurence Olivier was casting William Shakespeare's Hamlet in his screen version, which was shot in 1947. Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, appeared for the second time. On this occasion, she was eleven years younger than her 40-year-old stage son (Olivier), who was 29 years old.

Herlie appeared in the 1964 Broadway revival starring Richard Burton and then in the 1964 film version of the performance. She was older than her stage father (Burton), who was 38, but only by eight years.

Herlie's other American film appearances in the 1960s were in Freud: The Secret Passion (1962) and The Sea Gull (1968), the first major film version in English of Anton Chekhov's celebrated performance. (The second was her last feature film.)

Irene Molloy in The Matchmaker made her Broadway debut in 1955 (which was later turned into the musical Hello, Dolly!). For 'Best Actress in a Musical,' she was nominated for a Tony Award in 1960, a film version of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! in which she appeared opposite Jackie Gleason. She co-starred with Ray Bolger in All American, where they performed "Once Upon a Time" in 1962. She appeared on Broadway (1963) and Halfway Up the Tree (1967), both written by Peter Ustinov and Crown Matrimonial, in which she played Queen Mary (1973). She appeared in The Woman I Love, a 1972 made-for-television film starring Richard Chamberlain as Edward VIII and Faye Dunaway as Wallis Simpson. The role of Queen Mary was not announced on the Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1974, but it was directed to film actress Greer Garson.

Herlie made the transition to television soap operas in May 1976, playing the role of Myrtle Fargate on All My Children, effectively ending her life. Herlie was nominated for three consecutive Daytime Emmy Awards (1984, 1985, and 1986). Louis Edmonds, a fellow cast member, became close friends with her and mourned his funeral in 2001. Herlie was one of the few actresses to appear on three separate soaps before the late 1990s. Soap Loving's Myrtle appeared on the All My Children stage in 1993. Where a 'Who's the Daddy?' began appearing in Myrtle in crossover appearances on the soap opera One Life to Live in December 2000. On all four ABC soaps (All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital, and the now-cancelled Port Charles) the storyline was playing out. She last appeared in June 2008, a few months before her death.

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