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AMERICAN LEGENDS

Eileen Fulton: The Queen of American Soap Opera. Cont'd.

HER OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY

EILEEN FULTON originated the role of the colorful Lisa Miller on ATWT in 1960 and temporarily brought the character to prime time in the 1965 CBS spin-off series Our Private World. In 1991, her work was recognized with Soap Opera Digest's Editor's Award, and in 1996, she received a nomination for a Soap Opera Award from Soap Opera Digest. Fulton was also named Best Actress in 1970 by Daytime TV Magazine's readers poll, and she remained in the top ten in this category for 58 of the first 80 issues, which were printed between 1970 and 1977. Fulton was inducted into the Soap Opera Hall of Fame on September 14, 1998. At one point, Fulton worked mornings at ATWT, afternoons in matinee presentations of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" on Broadway, and evenings in the Off Broadway musical "The Fantasticks." Her additional theater credits include Off Broadway productions of "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" with Hal Holbrook, "Many Loves," "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll," and "Nite Club Confidential," in which she played Kay. She has also appeared in regional theater productions such as "Plaza Suite," "It Had To Be You" by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna, "The Owl and the Pussycat," "Goodbye, Charlie" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Fulton also appeared as the lead in the theatrical film "Girl of the Night."

As a cabaret performer/song-stylist, Fulton has played singing engagements in many top nightclubs around the country and starred in several one-woman New York shows. She is also a prolific writer who has co-authored two autobiographies, "How My World Turns," and "As My World Still Turns," and has written six murder mysteries, "Take One for Murder," "Death of a Golden Girl," "Dying for Stardom," "Lights, Camera, Death," A Setting for Murder," and "Fatal Flashback." Fulton majored in music and minored in dramatics at Greensboro College in North Carolina and made her professional debut in "The Lost Colony," an annual drama presentation in Manteo, N.C. In 1956, she moved to New York City and studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. She has been an active supporter of such charities as UNICEF, the March of Dimes, Cerebral Palsy, the Lupus Foundation, and Martha's Table, an organization in Washington DC that benefits poor and homeless mothers and children. She has established a musical scholarship in her late father's name at Brevard College in North Carolina and a Fine Arts scholarship in her name and her mother's at their alma mater, Greensboro College, where she performed to raise money for the major renovation of the school's auditorium. Fulton, an avowed women's rights advocate, has also given her time and energies to numerous causes devoted to the betterment of women everywhere. Fulton, the daughter of a methodist minister and a descendant of a long line of clergymen, was born in Asheville, North Carolina. Her mother was a schoolteacher. Her given name is Margaret Elizabeth McLarty. She is divorced and currently lives in Manhattan. Her birth date is September 13, 1933.”

End of the article. Written by Maximillien  de Lafayette  lafayette@monthlyherald.com