EILEEN FULTON: 30 Years as Lying Lisa

Eileen Fulton has connived, lied and schemed her way into viewers’ hearts as the vixenish Lisa on the long-running CBS daytime soap “As the World Turns.”

This month Fulton celebrates her 30th anniversary on the series, which airs weekdays from 1-2 p.m. on KCBS.

Born in Asheville, N.C., the daughter of a Methodist minister, Fulton, 56, studied acting in New York under Sanford Meisner and with Lee Strasberg.

Known as “The Queen of Soaps,” Fulton has appeared on and off-Broadway and has sung in supper clubs. For three months in the early ‘60s, she was starring off-Broadway evenings in “The Fantasticks” and playing Honey at the matinees of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” while appearing daily on “As the World Turns.”

Fulton discussed her 30 years on “As the World Turns” with Susan King.

Thirty years on the same series is pretty amazing.

That’s a long time, isn’t it?

I’ve enjoyed it. I think what has kept me going is that the producers and the writing staff have made it possible for me to go out and do many other things. I didn’t come to New York to be one character. IUm an actor and must play many characters.

How many months do you take off a year?

I have four months off, so I can do other shows. I have a one-woman show I am working on now-a nightclub act. I love to sing. We are booking for the summer.

You must have seen a lot of changes in the soap opera world over the past three decades.

I don’t think soaps have changed that much. There have always been love affairs, illegitimate babies. We didn’t have AIDS back then. But we have kept up with the times as far as what is going on in the world. The only difference is that now people don’t mind saying they watch the show.

May I tell you a fun story? When I was doing my nightclub act in Texas, a man told me, “You have almost ruined my business.” I said, “What is your business?”

He said, “I am a funeral director. No one will come to a funeral between 1:30 and 2 p.m.”

Is your character of Lisa as evil as Alexis Carrington was on “Dynasty”?

Lisa was a conniving, screaming witch. She wasn’t just out and out ugly (like Alexis). She lied and wanted everything her way. She just bent the truth so it went her way. She’s had six husbands, 38 lovers and was raped repeatedly from California to Texas and lost her mind twice. She’s had two children, little Tom and little Chuck, now dead, and one phantom fetus.

A phantom fetus?

Yes, it was my most unfavorite story line. I had to walk around and say, “I am pregnant and I don’t know how it happened.” I had already had three husbands and two children, so I thought it was kind of silly. It turned out to be an ovarian cyst.

How do fans react when they see you in person?

I used to get smacked around.

Fans would hit you?

At the very beginning. When I was first on the show, a very nicely dressed woman, she really looked beautiful, came up to me on the street said, “Aren’t you Lisa?” I opened my pocketbook to get out my pen to sign an autograph, and she said, “I hate you,” and she whacked me on the arm and pushed me in the gutter. Everybody looked at me like I was scum.

And about 10 years ago, when Lisa was after Bob Hughes, letters came in again saying if that witch gets him, we are going to come down and finish her career so she’ll never act again. They wrote to the producer, the directors and the head of CBS. I had to have police protection.

But things are a lot different now. Now I get love letters. In fact, I get letters from as many men as I do women. I get letters in the hundreds from women saying they were named after me. Lisa was not a popular name, and now it’s one of the top names. And it’s because of me.

Do you remember any crazy thing that happened when the show was done live?

I had to make cherries jubilee once. I had to say the line, “We are all finished,” and I couldn’t say it if we weren’t finished. We didn’t want to talk with our mouths full, so we had to time it. From 7:30 in the morning we were eating cherries jubilee. They kept putting more and more brandy on the cherries, and we kept slurping it up. We were smashed by the time the show went on the air.

Then they put Sureflame in the thing so it would blaze up and look wonderful.

When I took the lid off, it went “boom,” and fire went up the curtain and things caught on fire. We didn’t care. We were drunk.

Do you work every day on the series now?

Next week I am working four days, and this week I worked three. It varies on the story line. I have had a lot of time off since I came back to the show.

When did you leave the show?

I left the show in 1983 and came back at the end of 1984. I came to California and lived in Studio City. I had a year’s booking at dinner theaters doing wonderful plays. I loved it out there.

So what made you decide to go back to the soap?

They had replaced me with actress Betsy Von Furstenberg, and she was not happy. She had fallen in love and decided to quit. So they (the producers) said they would kill Lisa off. I called them up and said, “You will not kill Lisa off. If you kill her that’s fine, but I will come back and die.” I am very possessive. I came back, and I haven’t died yet because I’ve been too busy.