Days of Our Lives (TV Program)

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    ‘Days of Our Lives’ Actor, Drake Hogestyn, Dies at 70

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    Mr. Hogestyn was best known for playing John Black on the daytime soap opera and appeared in more than 4,200 episodes over 38 years.Drake Hogestyn, who played John Black, the sturdy and fiercely loyal character who by turns was a spy, private investigator and mercenary, for nearly 40 years on the long-running soap opera “Days of Our Lives,” died on Saturday, a day shy of his 71st birthday.Mr. Hogestyn had pancreatic cancer, according to a statement from his family shared by the show. He died in Los Angeles, according to a publicist for the show, Andrea McKinnon.In 1986, Mr. Hogestyn first appeared on “Days of Our Lives,” which premiered in 1965 on NBC and follows various characters in the fictional Midwestern town of Salem. For a few years, he played another character, Roman Brady, but came to be known best for his role as John Black.Mr. Hogestyn appeared in more than 4,200 episodes of the soap opera and became a fan favorite for his portrayal as the rugged, raspy-voiced and often heroic character who had the skills of an intelligence agent, a police officer and a private investigator.The character was also known for being married to Dr. Marlena Evans, a psychiatrist and the town’s de facto matriarch, played by Deidre Hall. In 2005, the actors won a Soap Opera Digest Award for Favorite Couple.“It’s, like, I’ll always love her,” Mr. Hogestyn said, at a gathering for the show’s fans in 2004, of the characters’ enduring romance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bill Hayes, Longtime Star of ‘Days of Our Lives,’ Dies at 98

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      He logged more than 2,000 episodes on the enduring soap opera. He also rode the Davy Crockett craze to a hit single in 1955.Bill Hayes, an actor and singer whose 2,141 episodes of “Days of Our Lives” over five and a half decades constituted the daytime drama version of an ultramarathon, and whose top-selling 1955 single, “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” remains seared into the memories of the baby boom generation, died on Jan. 12 at his home in Studio City, Calif. He was 98.His wife and longtime co-star, Susan Seaforth Hayes, confirmed his death.To soap opera fans, Mr. Hayes was a staple of weekday afternoons from the days of rabbit-ear antennas into the streaming era.He began his tenure on the long-running NBC show in 1970. His character, Doug Williams, was a suave and slippery con artist who, after leaving prison, found himself padding through the maze of the plot twists, double-crosses and big reveals that day after day drew viewers back to the fictional Midwestern town of Salem.In 1976, two years after Mr. Hayes married Susan Seaforth in real life, their characters wed on “Days of Our Lives” in an episode that drew 16 million viewers.NBC, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Arleen Sorkin, Soap Opera Star With a Claim to Batman Fame, Dies at 67

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      Her “Days of Our Lives” character provided a rare burst of daytime-drama comedy. She was later the voice of Harley Quinn, the Joker’s henchwoman.Arleen Sorkin, an actress and comedian who created memorable characters in two decidedly different universes — the soap opera one of “Days of Our Lives” and the crime-fighting one of Batman, where her Harley Quinn became a fan favorite after she first gave her a voice in 1992 on “Batman: The Animated Series” — died on Aug. 24 in Los Angeles. She was 67.Her husband, the producer and writer Christopher Lloyd, said the cause was pneumonia coupled with multiple sclerosis, which she had dealt with for many years.Early in her career Ms. Sorkin was best known as part of a female comedy troupe called the High-Heeled Women, which formed in 1978 and performed all over the country, mixing jokes and comic songs. One number in their repertory was a rap called “For White Girls Who Have Considered Analysis When Electrolysis Is Enuf,” a riff on the Ntozake Shange play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.”By some accounts, Lilly Tartikoff, the wife of the NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff, saw Ms. Sorkin in a High-Heeled Women show and told her husband to look into signing her. In any case, in 1984 Ms. Sorkin made her debut on “Days of Our Lives,” the long-running NBC soap, as Calliope Jones (later Calliope Jones Bradford), an offbeat fashion designer who brought a rare burst of humor to the often overly earnest world of daytime drama.In an oral history recorded in 2006 for the Television Academy, Ken Corday, one of the show’s producers, said that the character was inspired by the stage persona of the singer Cyndi Lauper. In her audition, Ms. Sorkin nailed the character’s kookiness.“It was one of those things where we don’t need to read any more, we don’t need a screen test; she’s got the role,” Mr. Corday said.Calliope quickly established herself as the quirkiest thing in Soap Land.Ms. Sorkin as the outlandish fashion designer Calliope Jones Bradford in a 1986 episode of “Days of Our Lives.” “What I lack in talent,” she said, “I make up for in accessories.”Joseph Del Valle/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“The sacrosanct dramatic aura of daytime soaps has never tolerated a giggle, much less a full-out belly laugh, in plots dealing with drug abuse, child molestation, abortion, murder, wife-swapping and worse,” Vernon Scott, who covered Hollywood for United Press International, wrote in 1985. “Then along comes Calliope Jones, a ding-a-ling character in ‘Days of Our Lives,’ who actually pokes fun at soap operas themselves. This revolutionary development is akin to electing Eddie Murphy to the Politburo or appointing Johnny Carson to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”Viewers loved it; the fan mail began pouring in. The producers let Ms. Sorkin ad-lib some of her lines, adding a spontaneity to the usually glum proceedings. Calliope’s outlandish wardrobe augmented the comedy.“What I lack in talent, I make up for in accessories,” Ms. Sorkin told Mr. Scott.Ms. Sorkin appeared in more than 400 episodes of “Days of Our Lives,” most recently in 2010. Throughout her appearances, she sought to make viewers pay attention.“I imagine women doing housework while they watch our show, things like ironing,” she said. “It’s my job to make them scorch something.”The Calliope character helped bring about Harley Quinn, the Joker’s sidekick, who has an inexplicable romantic attachment to that archvillain even though he is abusive toward her.When the character Harley Quinn first appeared on “Batman: The Animated Series” in 1992, Ms. Sorkin provided the voice. “Arleen Sorkin’s voice certainly gave a great deal of life and dazzle to the character,” said Paul Dini, a writer for the show. Courtesy of DCHarley was introduced in a 1992 episode of “Batman: The Animated Series” called “Joker’s Favor.” Paul Dini, a writer for the show, told Entertainment Weekly in 2017 that he had been toying with creating a funny, snappy henchwoman for the Joker. Ms. Sorkin, an old friend from their days as students at Emerson College in Massachusetts, had appeared in a fantasy sequence on “Days of Our Lives” where Calliope was dressed as a sort of court jester. She had given Mr. Dini a videotape of her favorite “Days of Our Lives” moments, and the sequence was on it. Mr. Dini happened to watch the tape one day when he was sick and something clicked.“I was like, Well, there she is,” Mr. Dini said. “She should run around with the Joker dressed like that.”He and the animator Bruce Timm came up with Harley, a sidekick clad in red and black, and Ms. Sorkin provided the distinctive voice: “high-nasal, sing-song-y and filled with Brooklyn-ish inflections,” as Vulture put it in a 2015 article.“Arleen Sorkin’s voice certainly gave a great deal of life and dazzle to the character,” Mr. Dini told Entertainment Weekly.Harley wasn’t originally intended as a regular, but she became one, and then, later in the decade, made the transition to DC comic books, a rare case of a character going from TV to the page rather than the reverse. Ms. Sorkin provided her voice not only in “Batman: The Animated Series” but also in assorted video games and subsequent TV series, including “The New Batman Adventures” and “Justice League.” Among the other actresses who have taken up the role in animated or live-action productions is Margot Robbie (“Birds of Prey” and “The Suicide Squad”), who has most recently owned the box office as the title character in “Barbie.”Mr. Lloyd, in a phone interview, was asked whether Ms. Sorkin would have described herself as a comedian, an actress or what. He said her choice might have been “clown.”That, though, he said, would have been misleading, as she also had credits as a writer, including on the 1997 Jennifer Aniston movie “Picture Perfect,” and as a creator of the 1990s sitcom “Fired Up.” She was also involved in various humanitarian causes.“These are not the typical achievements of a clown,” he said. “I think that’s how she would describe herself, but she went on to do quite a bit more than that.”Arleen Frances Sorkin was born on Oct. 14, 1955, in Washington to Joyce and Irving Sorkin. Her mother held various jobs, including real estate agent. Her father was a dentist with a longtime dream of having one of his film ideas adapted into a movie. In an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 2007 on the occasion of his death, Ms. Sorkin recalled that when she was hired as an extra in the 1979 movie “And Justice for All,” when she left the family’s home in Washington headed for the assignment, he handed her a movie treatment he had written and asked her to give it to Al Pacino, the film’s star. (Dr. Sorkin’s dream was finally realized in 2004 when he received a producing credit on “Something the Lord Made,” an HBO film drawn from an idea he had long championed.)Ms. Sorkin with her husband, the producer and writer Christopher Lloyd, at an awards show in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2004. Asked how he thought his wife, who was a writer as well as a performer, would have described herself, he said her choice might have been “clown.”Mathew Imaging/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesMr. Lloyd, whom Ms. Sorkin married in the mid-1990s, said she pursued an education degree at Emerson, anticipating a career in teaching, but was also involved in theater there. She played Lola in a production of “Damn Yankees,” and a cast mate urged her to hold off on teaching and instead give performing a try.Lisa Pessaro, another Emerson alumna, was among the original members of High-Heeled Women and remembered her comic colleague in an interview with Emerson Today shortly after Ms. Sorkin’s death.“She was just simply an unharnessed gem,” Ms. Pessaro said. “She had incredible wit and was oozing with personality.”In addition to her husband, Ms. Sorkin is survived by her mother; two sons, Eli and Owen Lloyd; and two brothers, Arthur and Robert Sorkin. More

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      Cody Longo, ‘Days of Our Lives’ Actor, Dies at 34

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      Mr. Longo died in his sleep, likely from accidental alcohol poisoning, at his Austin, Texas, home on Wednesday, his representative said.Cody Longo, an actor known for his roles in the television series “Hollywood Heights” and “Days of Our Lives,” was found dead on Wednesday at his home in Austin, Texas. He was 34.He died in his sleep, likely from accidental alcohol poisoning, his representative, Alex Gittelson, said. Mr. Gittelson said that Mr. Longo had struggled with alcohol addiction for several years, but he believed that Mr. Longo had recently been sober.Mr. Longo was a singer, songwriter, musician and music producer and served as a music supervisor and executive producer on film and television projects. He released his first EP, “Atmosphere,” in 2012 and the single “She Said” in 2013.Mr. Longo starred in episodes of “Days of Our Lives” as Nicholas Alamain in 2011 and in the Nick at Nite drama “Hollywood Heights” as Eddie Duran, a music superstar, in 2012.In 2016, he had roles on the ABC series “Nashville,” “Secrets and Lies” and “The Catch.” Mr. Longo starred in the pilot for “Santa Cruz” on Fox and in the ABC Family teen drama “Make It or Break It.” He also appeared in the movies “High School” and “Piranha 3D” in 2010.Mr. Longo was born in Colorado on March 4, 1988, and studied psychology and film at the University of California, Los Angeles. He began acting professionally in 2009, according to his website.“He had taken some time away from acting to pursue his music career and spend more time with his family in Nashville,” Mr. Gittelson said, “but we had kept in touch regularly and he was excited to get back into acting this year.”Mr. Longo is survived by his wife, Stephanie, and three children, Lyla, Elijah and Noah. More

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      ‘Days of Our Lives,’ NBC Mainstay Since 1965, Moves to Peacock

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      The soap opera will be shown exclusively on the network’s streaming service, ending its 57-year run on broadcast TV.After more than 57 years and 14,000 episodes, NBC is moving “Days of Our Lives,” one of the last remaining soap operas, from its afternoon TV perch onto Peacock, the network’s streaming service.It will be replaced in the time slot by a news program, adding to the demise of the soap opera genre that, for most of television’s existence, was a steady presence on the major American networks each afternoon. “Days of Our Lives” will make its Peacock debut on Sept. 12, when the hourlong “NBC News Daily” will also premiere in its place on network TV.“With a large percentage of the ‘Days of Our Lives’ audience already watching digitally, this move enables us to build the show’s loyal fanbase on streaming while simultaneously bolstering the network daytime offering with an urgent, live programming opportunity for partners and consumers,” Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, said in a statement.The move left just three soap operas remaining on network TV: ABC’s “General Hospital,” and CBS’s “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.”Soap operas — named for the soap companies that advertised on them in the early days — began as radio programs in the 1930s, and moved to television in the ’50s in a 15-minute format. “Days of Our Lives” debuted on Nov. 8, 1965, as a half-hour program and expanded to an hour in 1975.The formula has in some ways changed little since the beginning: Plots feature heavy doses of love, lust, infidelity, heartbreak, murder and all manners of other intrigue, including occasional resurrections from the dead and brushes with the supernatural.For more than a decade, cancellation rumors have dogged “Days of Our Lives,” which follows a collection of characters in the fictional Midwestern town of Salem. In 2007, Jeff Zucker, then the president of NBC Universal Television, said the show was unlikely to continue past 2009. Soap opera ratings were sinking across the board; in 2009, CBS canceled “Guiding Light” after 72 years, and also canceled “As the World Turns” after 54 years.In 2011, ABC canceled “All My Children” and “One Life to Live.”But “Days of Our Lives” powered on, even as it attracted fewer than two million viewers per episode in recent years, far below the nearly 10 million who watched in the 1970s when it took over as daytime’s top-rated serial. It had the lowest ratings of the four remaining soap operas in the 2021-2022 season.In 2021, NBC renewed the program for two years, taking it into 2023. More

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      Jay Pickett, Veteran Soap Opera Actor, Dies at 60

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      His credits included “General Hospital,” “Days of Our Lives” and “Port Charles.” He died while filming a western in Idaho, where he was raised.Jay Pickett, an actor known for his roles in TV soap operas like “General Hospital” and “Days of Our Lives,” died on Friday while filming a movie in Idaho. He was 60.Travis Mills, the director of “Treasure Valley,” which was set to star Mr. Pickett, said on Sunday that Mr. Pickett fell ill while preparing to shoot a scene near Oreana, Idaho. There was no official explanation for the cause of death, he said.Jim Heffel, a co-star on “Treasure Valley,” said in a Facebook post that Mr. Pickett “died sitting on a horse ready to rope a steer in the movie.”Mr. Mills said Mr. Pickett suddenly slumped over. “We were getting ready to film this scene, and he was just sitting there on horseback,” Mr. Mills said, adding that people on the set did CPR until paramedics arrived a few minutes later by helicopter. He was declared dead at the scene, Mr. Mills said.“Treasure Valley,” a western about a man who rebuilds his life after a fire destroys his family, was being filmed where Mr. Pickett grew up and had many connections, Mr. Mills said. During car rides through the valley to find places to film, Mr. Mills recalled, Mr. Pickett would make comments such as “That’s where my brother lived” and “That’s where I went to elementary school.”Jan Larison, Mr. Pickett’s younger sister, said, “His passion was to come back and make films about the lives he was raised around.”Jay Harris Pickett, the fourth of five children, was born on Feb. 10, 1961, in Spokane, Wash., to E. Richard Pickett, a cattle broker, and Virginia Pickett, who worked in agriculture for the federal government.The Pickett family moved about 400 miles south, to Caldwell, Idaho, where Jay was raised, Ms. Larison said. He graduated from Vallivue High School in 1980 and attended Treasure Valley Community College, where he played football and met the woman he would marry, Elena Bates.After community college, he attended Boise State University, where he continued to play football, eventually earning a bachelor’s degree in theater arts, his sister said. Then, he went to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned a master’s degree, also in theater.While studying theater, Mr. Pickett played quarterback for his college football team and participated in rodeos, his sister said. His skills on the stage, on the field and in the saddle did not go unnoticed, particularly among some of Ms. Larison’s friends. “They all just wanted to come over and meet him,” she recalled.In his 20s, Mr. Pickett began his acting career with small roles in the TV series “Rags to Riches,” “China Beach” and “Mr. Belvedere,” which all began airing in the 1980s.Jay Pickett and Julie Pinson in “Port Charles” in 1997.Tom Queally/Walt Disney Television, via Getty ImagesIn 1991, he played Dr. Chip Lakin in “Days of Our Lives,” an NBC soap opera that featured Mr. Pickett in 34 episodes. In “Port Charles,” a spinoff of “General Hospital” about the lives of medical interns and doctors at the fictitious Port Charles General Hospital, Mr. Pickett played Frank Scanlon, a dedicated paramedic and substitute teacher. The show ran from 1997 to 2003 on ABC.Mr. Pickett’s budding fame was observable, sometimes in unexpected places. While accompanying him in Las Vegas, Ms. Larison overheard a conversation about her brother that took place in a restroom: “Oh my goodness, did you see — that was Jay Pickett out there!” she recalled one woman as saying.Mr. Pickett portrayed Detective David Harper on ABC’s “General Hospital” from 2007 to 2008, and in 2012 he wrote, acted in and produced “Soda Springs,” a western film that also starred Tom Skerritt and Michael Bowen.“The sudden passing of my pal Jay Pickett is very sad,” Kin Shriner, who worked alongside Mr. Pickett on “General Hospital,” said on Twitter. “He loved acting and Westerns, and when we got together we laughed a lot.”Mr. Pickett went on to appear in numerous shows and TV movies, including “NCIS: Los Angeles” in 2015, the TV series “Queen Sugar” in 2017 and “Soldier’s Revenge,” a movie released in 2020.Apart from “Treasure Valley,” Mr. Pickett had roles in four films that were in postproduction as of Sunday, according to the Internet Movie Database.In addition to his sister, Mr. Pickett is survived by his wife, Elena, whom he married in 1985; their three children: Maegan, 35, Michaela, 29, and Tyler, 15; and three other siblings, Dee Pickett, Ginna Maggard and Rich Harris Pickett. Mr. Pickett’s father died in 2005, and his mother died in 2013.Mr. Pickett died on the seventh day of what was supposed to be a 20-day film shoot for “Treasure Valley,” according to Mr. Mills. “I truly believe it is some of the best work he did in his career, if not the best,” he said.Mr. Mills said he might seek to publish the script of the film, which Mr. Pickett wrote, and turn the footage into a short film or video tribute to the actor. More