Helen Gallagher Dies: Two-Time Tony Winner & ‘Ryan’s Hope’ Matriarch Was 98

Helen Gallagher, who won Tony Awards for Pal Joey and No, No, Nanette before starring as Maeve Ryan for all 13 seasons of daytime soap Ryan’s Hope, died November 24. She was 98.

Playbill confirmed the news of social media.

Gallagher already was a singing, dancing and acting veteran of numerous Broadway shows when she was cast as Gladys Bumps in the Chicago-set 1952 musical Pal Joey. Starring opposite Harold Lang and Vivienne Segal, she won the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

She went on to appear in such Golden Age Broadway musicals as The Pajama Game, Mame, Finian’s Rainbow and Sweet Charity, earning a second Featured Actress Tony nom for playing Mickie alongside Gwen Verdon and Ruth Buzzi. She also performed in revivals of such classics as Guys and Dolls and Brigadoon.

In 1970 she was cast as the original Lucille Early in Broadway’s No, No, Nanette, earning a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The show ran from January 1971-February 1973 at the 46th Street Theatre (noew the Richard Rodgers Theatre).

She returned to Broadway in the 1972-73 production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing before landing her biggest screen role.

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Gallagher was cast as the patriarch of an American Irish family in New York City in the ABC soap opera Ryan’s Hope, which debuted in July 1975. Her Maeve Ryan and husband Johnny (Bernard Barrow) coowned Ryan’s Bar across from a hospital and had five children. They were the cornerstone of the daytime drama that wrapped in early 1989, with Gallagher singing “Danny Boy” in the final episode, as she had many times before on the show.

Gallagher won back-to-back Daytime Emmys as Outstanding Actress in a Daytime Drama Series in 1976 and 1977 and added a third 11 years later. She also scored two other nominations in the category in 1979 and 1981.

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