Eileen Herlie

Eileen Herlie, born Eileen Isobel Herlihy on 8 March 1918 in Glasgow, Scotland, was a stage, film, and television actress whose career spanned seven decades. The daughter of an Irish Catholic father, Patrick Herlihy, and a Scottish Protestant mother, Isobel Cowden, she was one of five children and received her early education at Shawlands Academy on the south side of Glasgow. She died on 8 October 2008, at the age of 90, from complications from pneumonia.

Herlie began her acting career in 1938 by joining the Scottish National Players, a non-professional touring company, against the wishes of her parents. She subsequently worked with the semi-professional Rutherglen Repertory Company before relocating to England in 1942 to pursue professional acting. Her first London stage role that year was as the second Mrs. de Winter in Daphne du Maurier's own stage adaptation of her novel Rebecca. Among her West End successes was The Eagle Has Two Heads by Jean Cocteau. In 1945, at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, she played Gertrude opposite Peter Glenville's Hamlet, with Glenville also directing the production. At 27, Herlie was four years younger than her 31-year-old stage son.

Her film career began in 1946 with a supporting role as Katherine in a screen adaptation of du Maurier's Hungry Hill. That same year, Sir Alexander Korda signed her to his London Films company, for which she made The Angel with the Trumpet in 1949 and The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan in 1952. Her remaining British films — Isn't Life Wonderful!, For Better, for Worse, and She Didn't Say No! — were produced by the Associated British Picture Corporation. Her most prominent early film role came when Laurence Olivier cast her as Gertrude in his 1947 screen adaptation of Hamlet. At 29, she was eleven years younger than Olivier, who was 40. She played Gertrude a third time in the 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet starring Richard Burton, and again in the 1964 film version of that production, by which point she was 46 to Burton's 38. In 1951, she made her first television appearance in the leading role of Regina in a BBC adaptation of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes.

Herlie moved permanently to the United States in 1955, the same year she made her Broadway debut as Irene Molloy in The Matchmaker, a play later adapted into the musical Hello, Dolly!. Her Broadway career continued through 1973 and included productions such as The Makropoulos Secret, Epitaph for George Dillon, Emperor Henry IV, and Halfway Up the Tree. In 1960, she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical for Take Me Along, an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!, in which she appeared opposite Jackie Gleason. In 1962, she co-starred with Ray Bolger in All American, the two performing the song "Once Upon a Time" together. She appeared in Photo Finish in 1963 and Halfway Up the Tree in 1967, both written by Peter Ustinov. In 1973, she appeared in Crown Matrimonial, playing Queen Mary — a role she had also portrayed in the 1972 television film The Woman I Love, which starred Richard Chamberlain as Edward VIII and Faye Dunaway as Wallis Simpson. When Crown Matrimonial was broadcast on the Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1974, the role of Queen Mary was taken by Greer Garson.

Her American film work in the 1960s included roles in Freud: The Secret Passion in 1962 and The Sea Gull in 1968, the latter being the first major English-language film adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play and her final feature film.

On 18 May 1976, Herlie joined the cast of the ABC daytime drama All My Children as Myrtle Fargate, a role she continued to play for the remainder of her life. In the 1980s, she received three consecutive Daytime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, in 1984, 1985, and 1986. In 1993, she reprised the character of Myrtle on the All My Children companion soap Loving, and beginning in December 2000, she made crossover appearances as Myrtle on One Life to Live. Her final appearance on All My Children aired in June 2008, a few months before her death. On 19 December 2008, All My Children dedicated an episode to Herlie and her character, with All My Children creator Agnes Nixon appearing at the conclusion of the tribute.

Herlie was married twice, first to Philip Barrett in 1942 and then to Witold Kuncewicz in 1951, with both marriages ending in divorce. She had no children.