By Paul Freeman [May 2011 Interview]

If we were going to crown a queen of daytime drama, Eileen Fulton would be the obvious choice. For 50 years, she brought life to the character “As The World Turns” audiences loved to hate - Lisa Grimaldi.

Fulton’s colorful, nuanced, richly textured performance made the character consistently fascinating for half a century.

Fulton was born Margaret Elizabeth McLarty in Asheville, North Carolina. A minister’s daughter, she studied drama and music at Greensboro College.

After studying with some of New York’s top acting teachers and making memorable stage, film and TV appearances, Fulton was cast on the CBS soap “As The World Turns” in 1960. She remained a lovely fixture of daytime TV until the show’s last broadcast, September 17, 2010. In 2003, at the Daytime Emmys, she was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

She has written autobiographies and mystery novels and has recorded several albums, including the recent CD “Along For The Ride.”

Fulton will be presenting her acclaimed one-woman show “Blame It On My Youth” at San Francisco’s intimate Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko, Sunday, June 5, at 3 p.m. For ticket information, phone 415-394-1189 or go to www.therrazzroom.com.

In addition to the tune “Blame It On My Youth,” Fulton will be singing such favorites as “I Wished On The Moon,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and, naturally, “As The World Turns.” The show also features her entertaining anecdotes.

Prior to her San Francisco visit, Ms. Fulton graciously chatted with Pop Culture Classics.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
So please tell us a little bit about your one-woman show.

EILEEN FULTON:
Well, the name of the show is ‘Blame It On My Youth.’ I take it from my desire to be an actress when I was a little girl, all the way up till now... and the craziness in life.

PCC:
And it’s told in stories and song?

EF:
Stories and song, yes.

PCC:
So what was it about the stage that fascinated you at such an early age?

EF:
It’s an inborn thing. When I see an audience. They have to be entertained [Laughs]. My dad was a preacher and I was growing up at the end of the Depression. People would come over to the house, I remember I was about three years old, and everybody looked so depressed. It was a meeting where you get all your finances together... or not. And I thought, ‘These people need to be entertained.’ I just came out and did a little song and dance and passed out marshmallows. And they were much happier. So I got encouraged.

PCC:
And were your parents encouraging of this talent?

EF:
Very much so. Mother was a school teacher. See, mother had her audience, Daddy had his. So I had to have mine. And every time we moved to a new church, I would ask Daddy, ‘Does the church have a stage?’ And he would say ‘Well, if it doesn’t, Old Girl, I’ll build you one.’ They were very hip [Laughs].

PCC:
How did you go about making this dream of entering show business a reality?

EF:
I performed in school. I did plays and concerts, too. I remember coming back from doing a play and Daddy had come to see it. Mother was in the hospital, so she was unable. Daddy was driving me home at Thanksgiving. And he said, ‘You were really good.’ And I said, ‘Wonderful, because I really have to go to New York City and study at the Neighborhood Playhouse.’ He said, ‘Okay.’

PCC:
So he had no fears about you going to New York?

EF:
No, Daddy and Mother were both theatrical. He made sure that I had a safe place to live in New York, at the Alma Matthews Home of Immigrant Girls. It was on West 11th Street. So I was there for a year.

PCC:
You were involved in both music and acting. Did you see both crafts as requiring a similar approach?

EF:
Oh, yes. Acting is just singing on a sustained tone.

PCC:
Were there particular actresses or singers that you wanted to emulate when you were starting out?

EF:
I loved so many of the singers. I adore Billie Holiday. Rosemary Clooney. Ella Fitzgerald. The names of my dogs are Rosemary Clooney and Ella Fitzgerald. They’re little Pekingese. They’re precious. And I thought Madame Tibaldi was fierce, really loved her. Rise Stevens. I loved the opera and the blues, pop music. I love it all.

PCC:
One of your early screen appearances comes in “Girl of the Night” with Anne Francis. What was that experience like?

EF:
Oh, that was wonderful. She was so kind. She was so good. I loved her. I wished that we could have known each other better. But it was a wonderful experience. I was extraordinarily Method... and she respected it.

PCC:
Your role in that, did you enjoy that challenge?

EF:
Oh, my gosh, yes. I played a hooker. Preacher’s daughters always get these parts. I played a call girl, as we nicely called her. And Kay Medford was in it. She was wonderful.

PCC:
And then you did a ‘Naked City’? That was one of the top series of the day.

EF:
Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about that. I played a bride who comes screaming out of the church in her wedding dress and yells at her poor dead father, ‘I’m glad! I’’m glad you’re dead!’ And I prepared for that for two days. I was worn out by the first day and I hadn’t even played it. Karl Malden was the father. I screamed and hollered over him, in tears. And it was like opening up a Pandora’s Box, when I finally got ready to come out and do that. I’d been standing up in the upstairs of this church for two days.

PCC:
You mentioned the Neighborhood Playhouse. Studying with Sanford Meisner, what did you gain from his teaching?

EF:
He was the best teacher ever. I studied with him for two years. And I learned to trust myself, which is pretty good. And to observe other people. As he used to say, there are no small parts, only small actors. And then I studied for a short time with Strasberg. And also with Milton Katselas. And I loved him, too.

PCC:
And when the opportunity came up with ‘As The World Turns,’ it was only supposed to be a three-month arc?

EF:
That’s right. It was a summer romance for Bob. I was interviewed with about 250 other girls and we all looked alike. But I talked with Ted Corday, who was the executive producer and we just clicked. I had fun. Talking with him was sort of like being with Sandy Meisner. Just great. And I just knew I was going to get that part. Still auditioned at least five times.

PCC:
How did the run expand into an ongoing character?

EF:
Well, they asked me to sign a seven-year contract and I said, ‘No way,because I have to do other things.’ And I threw out my 50 years being on that show [Laughs]. I quit three times forever to go out and do things. I’ve done plays all over the country, and, of course, club work.

PCC:
Did you feel tied down?

EF:
Yes, I really did. They had one line in the contract, years ago, that said, if you get another job and you want to go out for a few weeks to do a show, we will treat it with compassion. And I remember laughing to myself, ‘You don’t know compassion. Compassion means when it suits you.’ I said, ‘I will not sign that.’

PCC:
And you were able to reshape the character? She was originally written as more of a girl-next-door type?

EF:
Reshaped her. I made her into a, well, a bitch. She was supposed to be the sweet girl next door and Bob’s girlfriend. I remember sitting, doing this first scene we had. Of course, we were live at the time. And Ronnie Welch played Bob, when I first came on. And we sat out on his balcony as his mother came over and cooked dinner for us and we rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed these couple of scenes that we had. I was so nervous. And so was he.

And then, I thought, ‘If I just think some pretty bad thoughts about him... ‘ I was saying the lines they had written, more or less. I just had different thoughts. And it came across. The audience said, ‘If that bitch Lisa marries our sweet Bob, we will never watch the show again.’ Hence, the bitch was born.

PCC:
What do you think it was about this character that the audience embraced, despite the fact that she was a bad girl?

EF:
That she had guts. And that she knew what wanted and she went after it. And just to hell with anybody who got in her way. After about 10 years of being on the show, I went out and, when I made appearances, like in shopping malls, these women would bring their little girls up and say, ‘I named my daughter for you.’ And I said, ‘Oh, hello Eileen.’ And a little kid said, ‘My name is Lisa!’ And gave me a kick. And I said, ‘You’re living up to your name.’

Over about a 20-year period, so many people named their daughters Lisa, simply because they wanted their daughter to be a survivor. I found out that that was what it was, because I couldn’t understand it, at first.

PCC:
Is that also part of what appealed to you about the character - her strength?

EF:
Her strength. And not letting people walk on her. But she was also vulnerable. And that’s very important, to keep it in balance. So the people would feel very sorry for Lisa, but they also felt that she deserved whatever she got. But I feel really sorry for her [Laughs]

PCC:
The fact that she was so multi-dimensional, that must have made it rewarding to play over the years.

EF:
Oh, it was. It truly was.

PCC:
And did you end up having some input into the writing for your character?

EF:
Sometimes I did, especially when I realized that they were growing up my son over the summer holidays [a soap opera phenomenon where a child can become a teen overnight]. And I was in a full-blown story with this romance. And I was in my late thirties. And watching the show one day, in the control room, the woman who played Claire Cassen, they grew up her children really fast. And her grandchildren. And they were talking in the control room and said, ‘Do you realize that Claire Cassen is going to be a great-grandmother?’ ‘Oh, we’ve got to kill her.’ And they hit her with a truck. And I said, ‘That’s not going to happen to me.’ So I hadn’t signed my contract. And I said, ‘I’m not signing, unless you put a clause in, saying I will not be a grandmother.’ Because they would take away the romance. They figured, at that time, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, just can’t have romance. So I didn’t sign the contract until they put that clause in. And I had the clause for about 20 years.

PCC:
I read that, at one point, your character’s daughter-in-law miscarried and that caused you to receive hate mail?

EF:
Oh, yes. I had threat mail. That was serious. It was in ‘85. We now have fan magazines. And people know it isn’t really happening. But when I started, a lot of viewers thought these things were really going on to the people they loved. And when Margo lost her baby, I got letters saying, ‘You bitch! You baby killer! We’ll fix you. We know where you work. We’ll fix it so you never work again.’ And it didn’t just come to me. It came to CBS. It came to the directors. It came to the writers. It came to everybody. I was overwhelmed with hate mail. And that’s not good. So I had a bodyguard. At that time, these people thought it was really real. I guess that’s quite a compliment.

PCC:
In the early days, the soaps were all based in New York and used theatre actors, so you really had quality performers in the cast.

EF:
We really did. Our cast was always a good cast. And very sincere in their acting and really striving to be the best, never taking it for granted. That comes from being live. That comes from studying theatre.

PCC:
Working live, what sorts of mishaps did you encounter along the way?

EF:
Oh, I set the place on fire once. [Laughs] With flaming Cherries Jubilee. There were accidents. I remember walking into my new apartment and the pictures fell off the wall. And you just have to keep going. But you acknowledge it. I said, ‘Oh, we’ll have to call Grandpa. He can fix that.’

PCC:
You have to be quick.

EF:
You do. And you have to include it. You can’t ignore. That’s stupid. The audience sees it. One time, for another actor, when the father, Chris, opened the door of the refrigerator, the whole insides fell out. And he was having a scene with Rosemary Prinz, his daughter, Penny. And so they just continued to do this very heartrending scene while all the broken glass was there. They’re cleaning it up. And Chris cut himself and started bleeding coast to coast. And Rosemary grabbed a cloth and they finished the scene, but also incorporating it into the scene. You have to. You can’t ignore it.

PCC:
There was so much dialogue. Did they use teleprompters in those days?

EF:
We had teleprompters. I rarely used them, because they were off to the side. And at that time, people smoked. I remember having a very wordy, wordy scene and just knowing the teleprompter’s there, if the other actor goes up, you can say, ‘Oh, what you really mean is blah, blah, blah...’ and save the line and save the show. But I couldn’t read them, because, if I was so crazed as to forget, we always helped each other out, fed each other their lines. It was just there, in case. I remember a guy holding a teleprompter and he paused to light a cigarette. I see that out of my peripheral. And when he does, suddenly I realize, it’s not really happening and I’m on the stage.

To me, it has to be real. It has to feel like it’s happening. That was like pulling off the floorboards and just letting you fall. Horrible feeling. I don’t like teleprompters.

PCC:
Of the co-stars, who made a lasting impression on you?

EF:
Oh, of course, Helen Wagner, Don Hastings, Kathy Hays, my dear friend Colleen [Zenk Pinter], Scotty Holmes, who played my son. This is family.

PCC:
I read that Helen Wagner wasn’t fond of your use of colorful language.

EF:
Oh, yes. She used to say, ‘Eileen Fulton, you watch your language!’ Oh, I didn’t. We even shared a dressing room together and she’d get so mad at me. She didn’t like my hair spray, back when we didn’t have hair dressers. She said, ‘I hate that hair spray. I just hate it!’ And one day, she gave me a gift and it was a wonderful hair spray from her beauty salon. I thought that was the sweetest thing. People say, ‘You thought that was nice?’ I said, ‘Yes, I loved it!’ The other stuff I had cost 99 cents.

PCC:
And what were your impressions of Irna Phillips [the show’s creator]?

EF:
Irna and I fought and loved each other at the same time. I remember the first time I quit forever. She came to the studio and came in my dressing and everybody, I understand, was standing around, going, ‘Oooh, she’s going to give it to Eileen now. Poor Eileen.’ And when I came out, I had tears in my eyes and they thought, ‘Oh, boy, Irna really gave it to her.’

And what Irna really did was, say, ‘I really appreciate your sticking up for your craft. I wish I were an actress like you.’ And she gave me a hug and a kiss. Now that moved me beyond anything. She wished me very good luck. Made sure I had a nighttime show for a few minutes. [“As The World Turns” was spun off into a prime time series, ‘Our Private World,’ for 38 episodes, in 1965.]

PCC:
Yes, the prime time version of ‘World,’ did that seem like a huge opportunity?

EF:
Yes, it certainly did. They had a lot of problems with it. I think the first problem was, the show was on Wednesdays and Fridays. On Wednesday night, it came on at 9:30. And then when everybody turned the show on Friday, to see the 9:30 show, they were just looking at the end, because it came on at 9. That’s bad programming. So it just didn’t catch on. And it was the first time I had ever worked on a set that was beautiful to look at, because it was geared for going to color. And I just thought it was gorgeous. I loved the set. Hated the story, but loved the set.

Irna quit. Originally the series was supposed to be called, ‘The Woman Lisa.’ And then they went off on the other characters and I was just in the background. And I was livid. I was really annoyed. So, ha! It didn’t work.

PCC:
So did you end up feeling comfortable in the daytime situation? Or did it seem confining?

EF:
No, I always got angry with everybody, mainly about storylines. There were some storylines that I loved. I loved some that Irna did. I certainly loved the things that Doug Marland did. Oh, what a talent he was. And I enjoyed doing those things. They were well thought-out. The characters were strong. Everybody was. Later on, things got so fast. And characters were not fully developed. And then it seemed to me that, in the stories, they wanted to resolve it before they had a chance to fully explore it. You don’t get to see characters develop why they do what they do.

It’s just suddenly, ‘Oh, let’s just have him jump in the sack with her.’ ‘Oh, great. That’s a fun idea.’ ‘Let’s pick up a hypodermic needle in the hospital and stick somebody with it and kill them.’ Well, I want to know what it’s doing lying around in the first place. Things like that. Good writing, you have to know why somebody does something or be perplexed by it. But not just hop into bed without seeing the romance building or see the titillation of the whole thing. You need to see it build, till you just can’t stand it. You have to hop into the sack. Not just, ‘Oh, what the hell, let’s jump in the sack.’

PCC:
Do you think that was part of a general trend in soap operas?

EF:
Oh, probably. You know, fast, fast, fast. Keep the audience interested. I tell you, I think there’s a lack of respect sometimes for the audience in some of these fast shows. If it’s really good, an audience will be glued to it.

PCC:
Eight marriages for Lisa - did that keep things lively for you?

EF:
I was happy with some. But I didn’t have any the last few years. So I got extraordinarily frustrated. I was told that they couldn’t write for me, because I didn’t have a family. And I thought ‘Well, then, let me go.’ But they wouldn’t let me go. I could have walked two years ago. But then I thought, ‘Oh, let me just say I’ve been on for 50 years. Collect that money.’ They paid me to stay away. I just thought it was horrible. I really was very unhappy.

PCC:
So did it almost come as a relief then, when the show was finally canceled?

EF:
Well, for me, yes. But for my fellow actors and certainly for the crew, I was very sorry, because I loved the crew. We had the best people in wardrobe and makeup and hair. And the guys on the set. That was a really wonderful group of people. And those people I really miss more than anything.

PCC:
And you must hear constantly from the fans who were crushed by the cancellation.

EF:
Oh, yeah, I do. And I’m sorry. I do a little bit in my show about ‘As The World Turns.’ I have pictures.

PCC:
The show must be a great opportunity for you to connect with the fans.

EF:
It’s fabulous. It’s wonderful. It’s great to meet the people. And it doesn’t matter whether you have watched ‘As The World Turns.’ My show is about life and living and things that happen to all of us. And I hope that people can identify with it.

PCC:
You have another indie film about to come out? ‘The Life Zone’? It’s a great cast [including Robert Loggia and Charles Durning].

EF:
A fabulous cast. And I’ve done several movies for this group, Kenny Del Vecchio [writer/producer]. And I love doing movies.

PCC:
What else is coming up for you?

EF:
I’m going to be doing ‘My Fair Lady’ in Connecticut. I’m not going to be My Fair Lady [Laughs]. I’m going to be Mrs. Higgins, Terence Mann’s mother. And I’m looking forward to that, too.

PCC:
The Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award, was that greatly validating?

EF:
No. We were up there on the stage with nine other people or something. And I just felt like it was, ‘Oh, just give it to them, because they’ve been on so long and don’t have one.’ I felt, years ago, I actually should have gotten something. That sounds terrible. Whoever got it, that’s fine. But I didn’t get nominated and I was shocked, because I really thought I would. It was the Eduardo storyline, when they killed him. And the Johnny Dixon storyline. I really thought that was good work. I hate to sound like that [Laughs].

The one I am most proud of is the first award that was ever given in daytime. It had no name. It was just favorite, beloved actress or something wonderful, all the superlatives, given to me, by Irna Phillips. I nearly passed out on the floor. I didn’t expect that. I thought she was going to blast me, really let me have it, because we were having a fight at the time. And my mother and Daddy were coming out for this. It wasn’t televised. And I was ready for everything horrible she might say. And she said, ‘This award goes to Eileen Fulton. There is only one.’ And I will never forget that. And she was so proud to give me that. Fabulous. That’s my favorite.

PCC:
Who was putting on those awards?

EF:
I think it was one of the magazines. It was the beginning of recognizing daytime. I got two of those. Those mean more to me.

PCC:
Soap operas have been going through difficult times recently. What do you see as the future of the genre?

EF:
It doesn’t look good. But somewhere, there has to be a place for a good story in the day. It’s like picking up a book. It’s a wonderful thing, a good thing, for people to be able to look at somebody else’s story and to identify with it. It really is like a book. But it’s got to be a good book, not trashy.

PCC:
What have been the greatest satisfactions and challenges over the course of your career?

EF:
Trying to keep it real. Trying to be believable. Or just being believable... in some pretty far-fetched situations. Just being. It’s not just lines. It’s becoming. And that’s why the character has lasted. And even with just background stuff later on, she was loved and hated and all of that.

PCC:
It must be gratifying in a business with so little longevity, to have made such a lasting impact.

EF:
It really, truly is.

Learn more about the fabulous Ms. Fulton at www.eileenfultononline.com.