Seven Soap Stars Who Survived Working For Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock — Master of the Macabre, maestro of horror — was a prolific director specializing in chill-inducing, paranoiac thrillers. And even though he was well known for his associations with illustrious Hollywood luminaries — Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman to name a few — the suspense impresario also corralled a bevy of future daytime and primetime soap stars.

Soap Stars In Alfred Hitchock Films

Actor: Macdonald Carey
Hitchcock Properties: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Coyote Moon (1959), and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour – House Guest (1962)

Although Carey is best known as the Days of Our Lives crotchety but loveable Horton patriarch, his burgeoning acting career received quite the boost when Hitchcock cast him opposite Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright in Universal’s Shadow of a Doubt.

In a plotline that would seemingly be invoked decades later during DAYS’ “serial crime-spree period,” Carey played undercover detective Jack Graham who romanced young Charlotte Newton while investigating her father for suspicion of multiple murders.

Actor: John Forsythe
Hitchcock Properties: The Trouble with Harry (1955), Topaz (1969), Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Premonition (1955), and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour – I Saw the Whole Thing (1962)

For viewers in the 1970s, Forsythe was smooth operator Charlie Townsend — the never seen but always heard boss who doled out assignments to his private detecting “angels” — and years later he was even smoother as Blake Carrington on Dynasty.

In the 1950s, Forsythe began his association with Hitchcock in one of the director’s most delightful films, The Trouble with Harry, which concerned a corpse that troubles a motley crew of misfits who all believe they are the cause of its owner’s passing.

Blast From the Past

Actor: Farley Granger
Alfred Hitchcock Properties: Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951)

Granger, who portrayed As the World Turns Earl Mitchell — and became husband number six to Lisa — was a particular favorite of Hitchcock who cast him in two of his all-time greatest pictures.

In Rope, Granger portrayed one half of a sociopathic duo who throttle a classmate to death then invite his nearest and dearest to a party held in the same room where they committed the crime and stored the corpse.

Three years later, Hitchcock hired Granger to play the put-upon protagonist of Strangers on a Train, who accidentally gets himself involved in a double-murder plot.

Actor: Darlene Conley
Hitchcock Property: The Birds (1963)

Though Conley is best known for her portrayal of Sally Spectra on The Bold and the Beautiful — a character with a booming voice impossible to ignore — she made her feature film debut in Hitchcock’s classic film about a predatory avian invasion.

Conley’s part, a bespectacled waitress who tends to the customers at Tides Restaurant, amounted to little more than a glorified walk-on and her performance went uncredited.

Actor: Jane Wyman
Hitchcock Property: Stage Fright (1950)

Following her meteoric ascent into the upper echelon of Hollywoodland, Academy Award-winning actress Jane Wyman found her star on the wane during the 1960s and 70s. Through her starring role in the 1980s sin-filled serial Falcon Crest — which concerned itself with infighting wine vintners — Wyman enjoyed renewed career success.

Three decades earlier, she had performed for Hitchcock in his film Stage Fright — a late entry in the still popular film noir genre. Wyman’s character, Eve Gill, a pupil at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, finds herself becoming increasingly embroiled in the drama surrounding fellow performer Jonathan Cooper (Richard Todd), who is accused of committing a particularly vicious homicide.

Actor: Tippi Hedren
Hitchcock Properties: The Birds (1964), Marnie (1964), and Shadow of a Doubt (1991)

When Hedren joined the cast of The Bold and the Beautiful in 1990 as Helen MacLaine, mother to Lauren Koslow’s Margo and Todd McKee’s Jake, she already had a ready-made buddy in co-star Darlene Conley, who had a brief part in The Birds, the film in which Hedren played the lead role.

Hedren, who typified Hitchcock’s preferred “ice blonde” protagonist,- had been placed under exclusive contract by the director in the early 1960s and was almost immediately thrust into the raucous filming of The Birds, which eventually left her so emotionally and physically spent that she required doctor-mandated rest.

The starring role in Marnie followed but Hedren revealed the continued irrespective and inappropriate behavior on Hitchcock’s part led her to request an immediate release from her contract. Hitchcock refused and spent the next two years arbitrarily turning down incoming job offers on Hedren’s behalf.

Actor: Melody Thomas Scott
Alfred Hitchcock Property: Marnie (1964)

When Tippi Hedren’s eponymous Marnie remembered a traumatic moment from her girlhood, the actress chosen to play the character’s younger self was none other than future The Young and the Restless star, Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki).

On her association with the notoriously prickly Hitchcock, Thomas Scott told Soap Opera Digest, “I was only 8 years old and he was hard to please. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.”