Don MacLaughlin

William Donald MacLaughlin was born on November 24, 1906, in Webster, Iowa, the son of a physician. He pursued studies in speech and English at Iowa Wesleyan University, Northwestern University, and the University of Arizona. Coming from a family with a long ministerial tradition, MacLaughlin initially intended to enter the ministry before turning to a career in performance.

MacLaughlin began his professional work in radio in 1933 and became a prominent presence in the medium over the following decades. He took on the title role of David Harding in David Harding, Counterspy, which ran through the 1940s and 1950s. In 1945 he joined The Romance of Helen Trent, portraying Dwight Swanson, described as a rancher who develops an interest in Helen Trent. He was also a cast member of Buck Private and His Girl and appeared on Gang Busters.

His Broadway career spanned 1947 to 1949 and included three productions. MacLaughlin appeared in Virginia in 1947 and in The Respectful Prostitute, followed by the original production of South Pacific. The external record also notes his appearance in a 1948 Broadway staging of Thornton Wilder's The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden.

MacLaughlin's most enduring professional achievement came in television. In 1956 he originated the role of attorney Chris Hughes on the CBS daytime drama As the World Turns, a part he continued to play until his death thirty years later. Contract disputes temporarily removed him and his on-screen wife, played by Helen Wagner, from the series in the early 1980s, but both actors returned for a major storyline that coincided with the program's thirtieth anniversary on the air, in which the characters of Chris and Nancy Hughes marked their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

In his personal life, MacLaughlin was married to Mary Prugh, a newspaperwoman, and the couple had three children. He died on May 28, 1986, after a brief illness, at his daughter's home in Goshen, Connecticut, and is buried in Dover, Vermont.