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Denise Alexander, Star of GH and DAYS, Dies at 85

Denise Alexander, the beloved actress best known for her portrayal of Susan Hunter Martin on Days of Our Lives and Lesley Webber on General Hospital, has passed away. One of the most significant stars of daytime television in the 1960s and 1970s, Alexander was 85 years old at the time of her death. Born in New York City, Alexander began acting as a child, appearing in radio shows like I Remember Mama and Perry Mason.

A Life In Full
In 1952, Alexander made her Broadway debut in The Children’s Hour, starring as Evelyn Munn. Her first film role followed four years later; at the age of 14 she co-starred with Sal Mineo in Crime in the Streets. The actress was also a frequent guest star on prime-time TV shows, appearing in episodes of Father Knows Best, The Twilight Zone, The Danny Kaye Show and many others.

Alexander’s daytime career began in 1960 on The Clear Horizon, a short-lived CBS soap in which she played Lois Adams. Soon after that, she landed the role of Emily Sanders on another short-lived serial, Ben Jerrod, on NBC. Ben Jerrod premiered on the same day as GH (April 1, 1963), and Alexander actually made a brief appearance in GH’s unaired 1962 pilot episode, as well; at the time, the show was titled Emergency Hospital. In 1965, she played the short-term role of Lorna Hill on GH.

The actress’s star truly began to rise in 1966, when she landed the role of Susan Martin on DAYS. In 2015, Alexander recalled how she came to join the show in an interview with Soap Opera Digest, explaining, “[DAYS Creators] “Betty and Ted Corday were darling people and they knew my father [a talent agent]. When they were creating the show, they wanted it to be multigenerational, and they called my dad about me coming on, but I didn’t want a long contract. Not quite six months into the show, we got another call, about a character who was a bad influence on Julie and brought chaos into her life and the Horton family. They said, ‘It’s just for the summer.’ I didn’t often get cast as the bad girls and it was the Cordays, so I thought, ‘Oh, that’d be fun!’ Seven-and-a-half years later, I was still there. I worked that whole period of time without a signed contract! It was home to me.”

The character of Susan was a driving force in many major storylines over the course of Alexander’s DAYS career, who played out dramatic twists that included rape, murder, love affairs, the death of a child and mental illness. Alexander marveled to Digest, “To have the wonderful, amazing [then-Head writer] Bill Bell writing for me — every day was a gift.”

While at DAYS, Alexander created lasting friendships with co-stars like Susan Flannery (ex-Laura), Seaforth Hayes (Julie), the late Bill Hayes (ex-Doug), and also met her future husband, Richard Colla. Alexander shared with Digest in 2015, “The Cordays were having a terrible time casting a young leading man when they were launching the show. Ted [Corday] met him through Macdonald Carey [ex-Tom] and immediately wanted him to read for the part of Tony Merritt, who was Maree Cheatham’s character’s boyfriend. He wanted to be a director, but they offered him the part and they promised him he’d get a chance to direct, so when Days of Our Lives went on the air, their young romantic leading man was Richard Colla, who’d never acted professionally in his life. By the time I got there, which was about six months in, we looked at each other and went, ‘Huh.’ We weren’t connected on the show. Seven years later, we met again—and 40 years later, we’re still together.” Colla passed away in 2021.

In 1973, Alexander’s decision to leave DAYS to join GH as Lesley sent shockwaves through the industry. How it came about, Alexander explained to Digest, was that “Bill [Bell] was in the process of creating Young and Restless. We had made an agreement of honor that Susan Martin would take a vacation while he got the other show up and running before he created a new story for me. Then I got a call from ABC about coming to their show. I called Betty [Corday] and I said, ‘They’re throwing figures at me. They’re telling me not to talk to you guys, but I can’t do that. I have to tell you what’s going on.’ Betty being Betty, she said to me, ‘You have to do this. They’re offering you four times what we can give you.’ So that was kind of the beginning of the end of Days of Our Lives for me. It was difficult because of how I felt about the show and about the people and not really wanting to leave this lovely, cozy, loving nest. But they were telling me I had to go and I knew Betty loved me, as I loved her, and I had to listen to people who cared about me. There was a lot of stuff in the trades, a big press uproar. It was something I’d never experienced before.”

GH was struggling both creatively and in the ratings in the early years of Alexander’s time there, but the tide began to turn when Douglas Marland was tapped as head writer in 1977 and Gloria Monty was named executive producer in 1978. Lesley’s love affair with Chris Robinson’s Rick (which became a triangle with Leslie Charleson’s Monica) and the dramatic trial that ensued when Lesley took the rap for daughter Laura’s murder of David Hamilton were “just as important as the Luke and Laura love story in bringing General Hospital to number one in the ratings,” as soap historian Christopher Schemering put it in The Soap Opera Encyclopedia.

Alexander left GH in 1984 and Lesley was killed off in a car accident, leading to massive viewer outcry. Reflecting on her exit, Alexander told Digest in 2013 that after falling in love with Colla, “I then began to look at my life away from work, which I had never done before. I’d been working since I was a kid, and I got weary. I wanted to create a home and a family, and I didn’t know who I was when I wasn’t Lesley. The only thing I wanted was maybe going from a three-day-a-week guarantee to a two. Apparently, they had an exciting long-term story coming up, and they kept saying they’d give me more money. It was never about that. I was happy with what I was making. There were problems in the negotiations. There were chaotic events behind the scenes. A lot of people tried to turn it around, but it simply wasn’t possible. I never believed it would really go away, but it did send out shockwaves.”

Her departure from the show was covered by The New York Times, “which was stunning,” Alexander noted to Digest. “I was very touched when the fans protested. But I did not grieve…. I did have the life I had hoped to experience. I did have my forever after with my soulmate.”

From 1986-89, Alexander played the role of Mary McKinnon on Another World, where she was reunited with former GH husband Chris Robinson, who played Jason Frame. Then, in 1996, Alexander returned to GH; Lesley was revealed to be very much alive and reunited with daughter Laura. Of working with Genie Francis (Laura), Alexander told Digest in 2018, “The connection that you make with some actors, as with some human beings, is just beyond explanation and that is what I have always felt with Genie.”

The actress continued to appear on GH through 2009, then came back again in 2013 as the show marked its 50th anniversary. “What I love the most is, there hasn’t been a single time they called that I couldn’t go back,” Alexander said to Digest that year. “I was traveling the world, producing and developing things, and yet with all of that, I never got a call where I couldn’t say yes. It’s as if it was ordered by the universe.”

Her next GH comeback took place in 2017. Alexander told Digest she was “purely delighted” to be asked back by Executive Producer Frank Valentini, smiling, “These are people I love, work I love doing, a setting that I know with every centimeter of my body. I am comfortable and happy and rejoicing in the midst of all of that. I walked into the studio and it smells the same! It feels like home. I was a very happy camper.” She also noted how much it meant to her that fans responded so enthusiastically to the news of her return, saying it “made my day, truly. I am just plain grateful that they remember Lesley and that it meant enough that it has stayed with them.”

The actress made her final appearances as Lesley in 2019 and 2021