Don't Cross Lucinda Walsh, Darling
Elizabeth Hubbard was Lucinda Walsh, the woman who owned part of Oakdale
Hi everyone, I'm crossposting today with my regular newsletter Live Your Life Live Your Life Live Your Life this week because:
I'm revising my book, I don’t have time for two newsletters at once
I want to make sure I keep both newsletters current
Darnit, everyone should know the elegance and spirit that was Elizabeth Hubbard!
If you don't know who Elizabeth Hubbard was, you might've known her as Lucinda Walsh. Or Althea Davis.
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Hubbard was born in New York City. Her mother was also named Elizabeth, actually Dr. Elizabeth Wright-Hubbard, a well-known doctor who was a leading advocate for homeopathy.
Our Liz Hubbard started on Broadway, then had small parts onGuiding Light and Edge of Night. She first became well-known as Dr. Althea Davis, the sophisticated lady doctor at Hope Memorial, aka The Doctors. I'll be honest; I never watched The Doctors. I've seen on YouTube that Dr. Davis was a good doctor, had a daughter named Penny, and had a no-nonsense attitude about her.
Hubbard was on that show through the late 1970s, then did small film parts. She was in a party scene in Ordinary People and the movie adaptation of The Bell Jar. She came back to The Doctors for its last year, then did work on One Life to Live. But her longest-running —and most known—the acting role was around the corner.
In the 70s and early 80s, daytime soaps copied nighttime soaps. When Dallas became a big hit, many soaps (OLTL’s Buchanans, GL’s Lewises) suddenly had a southern family in the oil business move into town. When Dynasty became a hit, strong-willed women of a certain age (like Alexis on Dynasty) suddenly started appearing, moving their multi-million dollar companies to small midwestern towns.
One of these women was Lucinda Walsh. She was a shrewd businesswoman, had many secrets, and called nearly everyone darling. In 1984, she moved her company Walsh Enterprises, and herself and her daughter Lily, to Oakdale, aka As The World Turns.
Lucinda also owned a newspaper, the local TV station, and God knows what else. She had enemies: Lisa McColl (Lucinda held Lisa's latest husband responsible for her husband's suicide) and Dr. John Dixon. Of course, John's foster son Dusty (Brian Bloom) and Lucinda's teenage daughter Lily (originated by Lucy Deakins, then Martha Byrne, who played the role the longest, then Heather Rattray, Byrne again, and finally Noelle Beck) became best friends. Lucinda didn't trust many people, only her loyal secretary Jane (Ann Mitchell) and her attorney Ambrose Bingham (William LeMassena). Sometimes she trusted Lily. More often, she didn't, which led to meddling in Lily’s romance and many marriages to former stablehand Holden Snyder. This created years of storylines between the two characters.
Lucinda was shrewd in business and life, and if you crossed her, oh man. Good luck. She would tear you up and spit you out. For instance, Kirk Anderson (Tom Wiggin) betrayed Lucinda in a takeover of Walsh Enterprises. I was going to write about this storyline in June because I finally got to see it unfold, but I'll give a little glimpse now:
Kirk: Lucinda, I thought we might talk.
Lucinda walks over to him and looks him over, sizing him up.
Lucinda: We might talk? About what? I have nothing to say to you.
She turns her back to him, then turns around again.
Kirk: I just want to make it really clear it was nothing personal on my part about what happened today. And I'm hoping when the dust settles, we can still count on your input.
Lucinda banged her fist on a tabletop. This says so much about the character that she will not even dignify his comment. She would rather walk on broken glass than give "input" to someone who had betrayed her.
Hubbard was nominated for several Emmys portraying Lucinda but never won (she had won one for playing Althea and one for playing Edith Wilson in a TV movie), which has always confused me because she was so good.
Even when I stopped watching ATWT regularly I'd turn it on to see how the veteran characters were doing. Lucinda was still making business deals, still worrying about Lily. When the show ended in 2010, Lucinda retired and was ready to go on an adventure with her ex-husband John Dixon. It reminds me why I admired Hubbard: Bryggman was fired in 2003. However, as the show approached its ending, Hubbard insisted Bryggman come back. The viewers needed to see him again (he had been on the show for 34 years), and Lucinda deserved a happy ending, going with a man she loved and trusted.
When I heard Hubbard died, it was emotional because I found out she was born the same year my dad was. Eighty-nine feels too young to die. I also miss what Hubbard represented in the 1980s: a woman of a certain age who walked into a room in a fur coat, then got down to business and showed her vulnerability rarely but powerfully. They don't make them like that anymore.