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Some sad news in entertainment. Actress Helen Gallagher, a two-time Daytime Emmy winner, passed away on Sunday, November 24 at the age of 98.

Gallagher is best known for her role as Ryan Hope’s matriarch, Maeve Ryan. The legendary performer was with the daytime drama throughout the show’s tenure from 1975 to 1989.

Helen Gallagher’s Legacy In The Industry

A Brooklyn native, Gallagher worked within the theatre on the New York stages, which spanned close to 70 years from 1944 to 2000. Her big break came in 1947, when she entered the role of ‘Nancy’ in the musical, High Button Shoes.

Gallagher was a constant figure on Broadway over the years, winning two Tonys for her performances in No, No, Nanette (1971) and Pal Joey (1952), and also scoring a Tony nomination for Sweet Charity in 1966.

Helen Gallagher’s Impact On Daytime Drama

Still, Helen may most fondly be remembered for the legendary role she played as Maeve Ryan on Ryan’s Hope.

Ryan’s Hope alum, Helen Gallagher, died on November 24. The award-winning actress was 98 years old.

A Storied Soap Opera Career

Playbill reported that Gallagher, who portrayed Maeve Ryan on the now-defunct ABC soap opera from July 1975 to January 1989 when it ended. You may remember her rendition of “Danny Boy” in the series finale. She also sang the song several times throughout the soap’s run.

For her work as Maeve, Gallagher won three Daytime Emmy Awards. A five time nominee, the actress took home the statues in 1976, 1977, and 1988. Gallagher’s other soap credits include Another World, All My Children, and One Life To Live.

Broadway Star

Throughout her career, Gallagher also appeared on Broadway’s stages 21 times. She started on Broadway as a ballerina in Seven Lively Arts and Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston. She also danced in Billion Dollar Baby and Brigadoon.

In 1947, Gallagher won the role of Nancy in High Button Shoes,...

Helen Gallagher, who won Tony Awards for Pal Joey and No, No, Nanette before starring as Maeve Ryan in all 13 seasons of daytime soap Ryan’s Hope, died November 24. She was 98.

Playbill confirmed the news on social media.

Born on July 19, 1926, in New York City, Gallagher already was a singing, dancing and acting veteran of numerous Broadway shows when she was cast as Gladys Bumps in the Chicago-set 1952 musical Pal Joey. Starring opposite Harold Lang and Vivienne Segal, she won the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

She went on to appear in such Golden Age Broadway musicals as The Pajama Game, Mame, Finian’s Rainbow and Sweet Charity, earning a second Featured Actress Tony nom for playing Mickie alongside Gwen Verdon and Ruth Buzzi. She also performed in revivals of such classics as Guys and Dolls and Brigadoon.

In 1970 she was cast as the original Lucille Early in Broadway’s No,...

Emmy winner Helen Gallagher, who played matriarch Maeve Ryan on the ABC soap Ryan’s Hope, has died at the age of 98, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Gallagher passed away on Sunday, her colleagues at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York City announced. (She taught a musical theater singing class there.)

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Gallagher first gained fame as a stage actress on Broadway, appearing in productions of Sweet Charity,...

You may not known George Schenck by name, but you know his work. He contributed to decades worth of memorable television dating back to the 1970s. He worked with various networks, and is partially responsible for keeping NCIS going strong during its first decade and a half on CBS.

Schenck passed away on August 3 at the age of 82. He died peacefully, according to Deadline, at his home in Brentwood, California. Mark Harmon who worked alongside Schenck for 16 seasons, issued a statement upon hearing the news.

Mark Harmon credits Schenck with changing the show "Alibi" -- The NCIS team is forced to re-examine a hit-and-run murder case when a former FBI agent turned lawyer confides in Gibbs that her client’s confidential alibi is solid. Meanwhile, McGee grows suspicious of Tony’s strange behavior, on NCIS Tuesday, Nov. 12 on the CBS Television Network. Pictured: Mark Harmon Photo: Michael Yarish/CBS ©2013 CBS Broadcasting,...

George Schenck, who served as a writer, producer and/or co-showrunner on NCIS during the CBS drama’s first 15 seasons, died Saturday at his home in Los Angeles, a network spokesperson announced. He was 82.

He and Frank Cardea shared a creative partnership for 40 years. In addition to collaborating on NCIS, they created the 1982-83 CBS adventure series Bring ‘Em Back Alive, starring Bruce Boxleitner; the 1984-86 CBS crime show Crazy Like a Fox, starring Jack Warden and John Rubinstein; and the 1991-92 ABC drama Pros and Cons, starring James Earl Jones and Richard Crenna.

After writing nearly 50 episodes of NCIS starting with show’s inaugural season in 2003, the pair were elevated to co-showrunners in November 2016 following the sudden death of Gary Glasberg two months earlier. “It’s with heavy hearts that we assume his duties,” they said at the time.

“So sorry to hear the news on George,” NCIS star...

George Schenck, a television writer and producer for the beloved long-running series NCIS, died peacefully at his home in Brentwood, CA on August 3. He was 82.

His death was announced by his family.

Schenck was the son of the late film and TV producer Aubrey Schenck and great-nephew of the legendary Nicholas and Joseph Schenck, who ran MGM and 20th Century Fox during Hollywood’s Golden Age and were part of the industry’s major movers and shakers for much of the first half of the 20th Century.

With more than 40 years as a producing partner with Frank Cardea, Schenck’s prolific producing credits stretch back to the late 1970s and early ’80 on such popular series as Fantasy Island (1981); Bring ‘Em Back Alive, the 1982 adventure series starring Bruce Boxleitner; and the 1984 detective series Crazy Like a Fox starring Jack Warden and John Rubinstein as a father and son investigator team.

But his signature series was NCIS,...

Phylicia Rashad says that “a miscarriage of justice” has been “corrected” by way of former TV husband Bill Cosby‘s overturned conviction for sexual assault and Wednesday release from prison.

On Wednesday morning, Pennsylvania’s highest court overturned the disgraced comedian’s sexual assault conviction after it found that an agreement with a previous prosecutor prevented him from being charged in the case; Cosby was released from prison two hours later. In the interim, Rashad — who has publicly defended Cosby throughout his legal battles — took to social media in support of her onetime costar.

More from TVLineBill Cosby's Sexual Assault...

William Link, a writer and producer known for co-creating “Columbo” and “Murder, She Wrote,” died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles on Sunday, his niece confirmed to Variety. He was 87.

Over the course of Link’s decades-long television career, he became known for working alongside screenwriter and producer Richard Levinson. The duo collaborated on a number of projects, including both “Columbo” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

Steven Spielberg, who directed the first episode of “Columbo,” paid tribute to Link on Tuesday.

“Bill’s truly good nature always inspired me to do good work for a man who, along with Dick Levinson, was a huge part of what became my own personal film school on the Universal lot,” Spielberg said in a statement. “Bill was one of my favorite and most patient teachers and, more than anything, I learned so much from him about the true anatomy of a plot. I...

We're run featurettes, behind-the-scenes videos and making of documentaries here at The Playlist, but we'd wager there's been nothing quite like what you're about to watch below. Four and a half fucking hours, undiluted, with Terence Winter, the writer behind "Boardwalk Empire," "The Sopranos," "The Wolf Of Wall Street" and much, much more.  Recorded last year by Archive of American Television, the lengthy talk finds Winter going very, very deep on his entire life and career. The conversation covers his school days, stand-up comedy dreams (really), early writing gigs (on stuff like "The Cosby Mysteries" and "Xena: Warrior Princess"), and of course, lots and lots about "The Sopranos" and "Boardwalk Empire." This is a guy whose career has taken him from specs for "Doogie Howser, M.D." to becoming a collaborator with Martin Scorsese. Epic indeed. Go to the bathroom first and watch below....

There is a direct lineage between HBO’s The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire and it is personified by Boardwalk creator Terence Winter. A lawyer who wrote on series like The Cosby Mysteries, Xena: Warrior Princess and Sister, Sister, Winter found his true calling as a writer/producer of David Chase’s groundbreaking mob saga. Winter four Emmys for writing and producing Sopranos episodes, including one directed by Steve Buscemi. Winter’s followup, Boardwalk Empire, garnered 18 Emmy nominations and eight wins its first season. It’s back for more after completing a second season with shocking doses of killings, incest, bootlegging and treachery that culminated in Buscemi’s Nucky Thompson executing his surrogate son-turned rival Jimmy Darmody, played by Michael Pitt. Here, Winter discusses the season past, and carrying The Sopranos torch that has changed cable series permanently. Deadline: When Steve Buscemi played Tony Soprano’s cousin in The Sopranos, how...

There is a direct lineage between HBO’s The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire and it is personified by Boardwalk creator Terence Winter. A lawyer who wrote on series like The Cosby Mysteries, Xena: Warrior Princess and Sister, Sister, Winter found his true calling as a writer/producer of David Chase’s groundbreaking mob saga. Winter four Emmys for writing and producing Sopranos episodes, including one directed by Steve Buscemi. Winter’s followup, Boardwalk Empire, garnered 18 Emmy nominations and eight wins its first season. It’s back for more after completing a second season with shocking doses of killings, incest, bootlegging and treachery that culminated in Buscemi’s Nucky Thompson executing his surrogate son-turned rival Jimmy Darmody, played by Michael Pitt. Here, Winter discusses the season past, and carrying The Sopranos torch that has changed cable series permanently. Deadline: When Steve Buscemi played Tony Soprano’s cousin in The Sopranos, how...

In his role as showrunner for HBO's Boardwalk Empire, Terence Winter usually gets a fast response from any agent he calls. This was not the case in 1990, however, when he was 29 and trying to break into television. As a newly minted lawyer, a Brooklyn native transplanted to L.A., and an aspiring sitcom writer, he followed up with agents who'd agreed to read his scripts, but soon gave up in frustration when he realized they couldn't distinguish his carefully crafted spec episodes from the hundreds of other submissions on their desks.

A less determined person might have renounced his ambitions, but Terry Winter sized up the situation and devised a creative solution. After learning that a New York-based law school colleague was bonded as a literary agent, he made the following offer: using his friend's name on the letterhead, Winter would fund the creation of a new literary agency (which...