Denise Alexander, Veteran Television and Soap Opera Star, Dead at 85

Veteran television star Denise Alexander has died at 85. Her stepson, Anthony Colla, confirmed the tragic news to The Hollywood Reporter. Alexander passed away on March 5 in Boulder, CO, due to natural causes.

Alexander was best known for her roles on two immensely popular daytime soap operas. Beginning in 1966, she portrayed Susan Hunter Martin on NBC’s Days of Our Lives. After leaving that series, she moved over to ABC’s General Hospital, in which she played Dr. Lisa Weber. She was with the series from 1973 until 1984, when an off-screen contractual dispute resulted in Dr. Weber’s on-screen death.

“When you work that closely with a character for 12 years, she’s become my closest companion, and I like her,” she told Good Morning America at the time of her departure. “She is a lot of things I’m not, like neat and organized and always cheerful…well, not always.”

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Alexander briefly joined the cast of Another World from 1986 until 1989 before rejoining General Hospital in 1996. She remained on the series until 2009. “She broke barriers onscreen and off- portraying Dr. Lesley Webber — one of the first female doctors on daytime television — for nearly five decades,” General Hospital executive producer Frank Valentini said in a statement. “It meant so much to have her reprise her role in recent years, and I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with her.”

In addition to her soap opera work, Alexander appeared in many famous series from the early days of television. These included Father Knows Best, The Danny Thomas Show, and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis; but her most remembered guest spot was in the classic first-season Twilight Zone episode “Third from the Son.”

In a 2010 interview with I Love Soaps, Alexander reflected on her days of soap-opera super stardom. “The audience would surround your car and scream when you would try to drive away from some appearance,” she recalled. “Financially, it was great. And I didn’t have to go out on audition and be told I was too young, too old, too short, too fat, too boring, nothing. It was a great place to be and a great job and a great gift for an actor. And everybody got famous and that was fun.”