After playing Marie Horton on Days of our Lives from the first episode in 1965 through 1973, founding cast member Maree Cheatham has been making on-and-off appearances since 1994. Fans loved seeing her during this week’s anniversary episodes, especially when she spilled the tea about that time she accidentally fell in love with her presumed-dead brother. Hey, he’d had plastic surgery! And amnesia! It was nobody’s fault!
But while Marie was away from Salem, Maree spent a decade, from 1974 to 1984, on Search For Tomorrow as the very different Stephanie. In the new book, Super Soap Scenes: A Time Capsule of Daytime Drama’s Greatest Moments, Maree shares who Stephanie was… and what future DAYS co-star she loved to share scenes with!
Key Takeaways
- Stephanie was a Search For Tomorrow bad girl.
- She was a nemesis to heroine, Jo, played by Mary Stuart.
- One of Stephanie’s men was a future DAYS villain/
Maree Cheatham Says
Stephanie married all the wrong men and slept with the best of the rest. She said all the things you wish you could have said — if you weren’t constrained by “polite society,” and she did it with a wicked sense of humor and in high heels.
In soaps, the favorite way to end a scene has always been on a close-up of the character driving the scene. Sometimes Stephanie was so evil, I imagined she had a pet snake in her pocket. When the scene ended with a close-up of me, I’d ask if they wanted me to “pet the snake.” It became shorthand for a withering look.
Coast to Coast
Stephanie was written into the show to be the nemesis of Joanne, played by Mary Stuart. I came from California in the dead of winter to play the part. I was constantly cold on the soundstage and wore big, fuzzy bedroom slippers to keep my feet warm. I overheard Mary comment as I went by her dressing room, “There goes our sex symbol!”
The first time I felt the stage shake, I dove under a desk, thinking we were having an earthquake. No one told me the 57th Street studio was built over a subway station!
Familiar Faces
I had a grand time paying homage to the larger-than-life actresses I adored from films: Bette Davis, Loretta Young, and Joan Crawford, among others. My scenes with John Aniston (Martin on SFT, Victor on DAYS) are a Bette Davis tribute.
Stephanie also got up to high jinks. My favorite comic scene was a tribute to the film, It Happened One Night. Peter Haskell was playing my love interest at the time, and we were snowbound way out in the country. We took shelter with a farmer and his wife and had to share a room. Stephanie tried to divide the freezing room with a quilt (one of mine, I’d brought to NY from Texas.) Stephanie commandeered the only bed, which left Peter out in the cold, making do with a pallet on top of a dresser. His antics trying to get into bed with Stephanie are priceless. You hardly ever get a chance to play that kind of pillow-fight comedy in soaps.
Hear more from Maree about her SFT co-stars and other behind-the-scenes hijinks in Super Soap Scene: A Time Capsule of Daytime Drama’s Greatest Moments.
