Many Americans, soap stars included, can still remember where they were on the day that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States of America, was shot and killed. But for one of these actors, it was a memorable day for another reason.
Which Soap Star Was It?
All of these actors are either an alum of a long-ago classic – like All My Children, Another World, or As the World Turns – or they are currently staring in, or alums of, one of the four remaining daytime dramas – The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless. However, only one of them was born on one of the most tragic days in U.S. history.
But who can that actor be? Was it Christopher Lawford (ex-Charlie Brent, AMC), Ricky Paul Goldin (ex-Dean Frame, Another World), Noelle Beck (ex-Lily Walsh Snyder, ATWT), Winsor Harmon (ex-Thorne Forrester, BB), or Jessica Tuck (ex-Cassandra Pierce, GH)?
Christopher Lawford
Lawford – a future author, actor and activist – was already a boy of 8 when his uncle met an untimely end. Though he would eventually earn a law degree from Boston College and a master’s certificate in Clinical Psychology from Harvard University, Lawford’s first love seemed to be acting.
He appeared in a plethora of feature films – including The Doors and Terminator 3 – and television programs and he even spent three and half years portraying legacy character Charlie Brent on AMC.
Charlie spent an inordinate amount of his time romancing Kelly Ripa’s Hayley Vaughan, a situation Lawford would later remember with good humor during an interview with Larry King. “[She] was the last virgin in daytime and I had to take her virginity.” In summation, Lawford called his daytime experiences – which also included a role on GH – a “great job.”
Ricky Paul Goldin
Goldin was born on January 5, 1965 – 14 months after JFK’s assassination. The budding thespian’s first true brush with success came courtesy of NBC’s Another World, a soap which came dangerously close to being cancelled before it even reached the airwaves.
A group of executives had gathered together on November 22, 1963, to discuss Irna Phillips’ recently submitted outline – which began with the death of William Matthews – when the news of another death – that of President John F. Kennedy – broke.
For a time, there was discussion that perhaps the premier of AW should be postponed, or cancelled altogether, since it was feared that the opening storyline would greatly offend the still grieving, viewing public.
Noelle Beck
Beck was born four years and one month after that fateful day in Dallas, Texas – but the incident provided fodder for one of the actress’s future projects. The Fairchilds, one of the main family’s featured in the 1995 serial Central Park West, were unabashedly patterned after the Kennedys.
Though the patriarch died from lung cancer rather than an assassin’s bullet, there existed far more obvious parallels. The man’s widow remarried a much older, tycoon type (shades of Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis) and his son was a successful attorney turned Senate hopeful (remind anyone of JFK Jr. or at least what people had hoped for had he survived?).
Jessica Tuck
Tuck was born on February 19, 1963 – a full nine months and three days before JFK’s passing. However, the actress does have a tangible connection to the slain President. In 1991, she starred as Lorraine Murrey in the three-episode mini-series A Woman Named Jackie, which purported to tell the true, unvarnished tale of Kennedy’s young widow.
Winsor Harmon
Though they were separated by some distance, Harmon was born on November 22, 1963, in Louisiana, at the exact moment that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
So, if you guessed that soap star in question was Winsor Harmon, then you were absolutely correct.
