30-Year Stint on ‘As the World Turns’ : Don MacLaughlin of TV Soap Opera Dies

Don MacLaughlin, one of the two original cast members of the television soap opera, “As the World Turns,” has died after a brief illness, it was announced Monday.

MacLaughlin--a pioneer radio character actor--was 79 when he died Wednesday at his daughter’s home in Goshen, Conn., said Dina Siegel, a spokeswoman for the CBS television program, which is produced in New York.

For 30 years he portrayed attorney Chris Hughes in the daytime drama. With Helen Wagner, who portrays Nancy, his wife, he premiered the program April 2, 1956.

Two months ago, the program celebrated its 30th anniversary, with a feature devoted to the Hughes’ 50th wedding anniversary.

Cover in Scripts

Siegel said the prerecorded show will weave Hughes’ death into subsequent scripts.

Born and reared in Webster, Iowa, MacLaughlin attended the University of Iowa and went to the University of Arizona for graduate work, where he became interested in acting.

However, poverty forced him to return to Iowa and teach for a year, before he struck out for New York City. His first Broadway role was in the “The Fifth Column,” and he later played Cmdr. Harbison in the musical, “South Pacific.”

Besides his Broadway career, MacLaughlin found success on numerous radio shows during the 1930s and 1940s. His rich voice was perhaps most famous as David Harding in the radio serial, “Counterspy.” He also was heard as “Chaplain Jim,” “Tennessee Jed” and as the ill-fated oil tycoon Dwight Swanson in “The Romance of Helen Trent.”

Made Transition

Another of those radio shows, “Road of Life,” made the transition to television in 1954, taking MacLaughlin with it as Dr. Jim Brent.

The next year, he appeared in the original pilot for “As the World Turns” and was a member of the cast when it premiered as television’s first half-hour (as opposed to 15-minute) daily drama in 1956. In 1975 the program expanded to an hour.