Ever ‘Diva Darling’ as the World Turns

It was Hollywood Boulevard, not Sunset--but it was unmistakably her. The great star of yesteryear, Norma Desmond. Dressed in a black evening gown sparkling with silver sequins. Her blond hair dramatically teased atop her head. Batting faux mascara-caked eyelashes and crooning sad torch songs of faded youth and lost love, all the while chasing after the spotlight on a small stage in an intimate cabaret off the lobby of the crumbling, eternally encased in scaffolding Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Yes, Norma was back in town.

Of course, her name isn’t really Norma Desmond. Never was.

She was born Margaret McLarty, though even that hasn’t been her name in more than 40 years. She changed it to Eileen Fulton shortly before being cast on a New York-based soap opera in 1960. The serial was “As the World Turns,” then in its fourth year on CBS, and Eileen was brought on to play the sweet and doting Lisa Miller. But the young actress had fled to Gotham seeking an escape from the saccharine innocence she’d known growing up the daughter of a Methodist minister in Asheville, N.C., and intentionally injected a shrewish quality into her character, which was at once embraced by the show’s creator, daytime pioneer Irna Phillips.

Audiences couldn’t get enough of her vampy escapades, devoting four decades to the devil-ution of Lisa (take a breath) Miller Hughes Eldridge Shea Colman McColl Mitchell Grimaldi Chedwyn. “And that doesn’t count the thousands of lovers,” Fulton proudly chimes. “She really couldn’t control herself.”

From ‘Garbage-Mouth’ to Soap Opera Matron

Back in L.A. recently for a brief run of her cabaret act at the Hollywood Roosevelt’s Cinegrill, Fulton sat down to lunch at one of her favorite local haunts, Musso & Frank Grill, a Tinseltown landmark since 1919, to discuss her upcoming 40th anniversary with “As the World Turns.”

Reflecting on the early black-and-white years, Fulton concedes earning her reputation as a grand soap opera diva, though she much prefers the title “diva darling.”

“I want things done right,” she acknowledges, “but I’ve learned that there’s a nice way to ask.” Admitting civility was something she once considered frivolous, she says. “I was awful when I first went on the show, and mainly that was insecurity and being scared to death. Our show was live--and that was so hard. I remember just not knowing how to ask somebody to be quiet . . . just saying, ‘Shut the hell up!’ They called me ‘garbage-mouth.’ ”

Like any respectable soap diva worth her weight in cubic zirconia, Fulton has presented her fair share of demands throughout the years. Once, when writer-producer Phillips refused to tell her if Lisa was the culprit in a big murder mystery, the actress bluntly informed her boss: “We’re live--don’t forget. And if you don’t tell me, I’ll make up your mind for you on the air.”

Another time she stormed off the set, refusing to be spanked on screen because she believed it to be glorified spousal abuse. Then there was the infamous 1973 dispute when Fulton refused to sign her contract unless producers included a “granny clause,” forbidding the writers from turning her character into a grandmother.

“At that time, grandmothers had no romance at all--and I wasn’t about to let that happen to me,” Fulton says. The clause was lifted several years ago, allowing Lisa to become mother to Tom, Chuck (now deceased--”little ground Chuck,” she calls him) and one “mystery fetus,” as well as a grandmother several times over.

Now the owner of a hotel, two restaurants, a newspaper and a boutique, Lisa has survived more than her share of trauma throughout the years. Effortlessly reciting her character’s laundry list of travails, Fulton remembers, “Lisa lost her mind twice and had slight bouts with alcohol and drugs. She was nearly burned up in a fire and another time almost thrown off a roof. Once she was kidnapped onto a boat and nearly diced and fed to the sharks.”

But by far the most horrifying chapter had to be the time “Lisa was raped repeatedly by three unidentified men in the back of a black limousine all the way from California to Texas.”

This last item provoking laughs, Fulton decides to include it in her act later that evening.

Not unlike her character, Eileen Fulton Cochran Fortunato McMorrow hasn’t had much luck in the marriage department either--three marriages (in ‘57, ’70 and ‘89) and three divorces, producing no children.

The story of Fulton’s last marriage is seemingly torn straight from the story bible of “As the World Turns.” As she recalls in her cabaret act, she’d had too much to drink and went hunting for a husband after finding the perfect dress to get married in.

“I went to a political benefit and found a cute man to propose to,” she recalls. “But it was over the day after we were married.” A very Lisa thing to do. “It’s an Eileen thing too,” she giggles.

Asked how she’s managed to hold on to the same job for 40 years, Fulton deadpans, “I didn’t have a good agent. . . .”

These days, Fulton doesn’t even bother with agents, allowing her lawyer to deal with her occasional soap contracts, which keep on coming despite her diminished air time. With the daytime world focusing more and more on teen story lines, the 66-year-old actress hasn’t seen a romantic interest in four years. “I think that’s really stupid,” she spurts.

Lisa’s absence on screen is in part why Fulton so enjoys performing her sexy cabaret show routinely in Manhattan (May 12 and 13 at the West Bank Cafe) and, less frequently, at the Cinegrill here.

“It allows me to star in my own little show,” she says, “and offers variety.”

Fulton admits it’s no coincidence that the spotlight song of her act is taken from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard”--the melancholy “As if We Never Said Goodbye.” Heart-wrenching enough as written by Lloyd Webber, Fulton performs the song in front of a slide-show tribute to her four decades on “As the World Turns.”

“The first time I saw [the musical] with Glenn Close, it hit me--that would be great in my nightclub act,” she recalls. In Norma, Fulton identifies with the aspect of “being older and going through that horror of being rejected--though that hasn’t happened to me yet,” she’s quick to amend. “But I can certainly identify with that. Age is just a ball-buster.”

Even so, the diva has steered clear of cosmetic surgery, committing to “age gracefully” (though she refuses to be seen even by the doorman of her high-end Central Park West apartment building without at least a touch of makeup).

‘World’ Readies Montage to Honor Her, Co-Star

May 18 will officially mark Fulton’s 40th anniversary with the soap. In 1990, CBS put together a special retrospective for “CBS Morning News” to mark Lisa’s 30th anniversary. On June 1, “As the World Turns” will present a special clip montage of Lisa’s life, to honor both Fulton and co-star Don Hastings’ 40th anniversaries (his comes in August).

Fulton is grateful to CBS for, as of yet, not asking her to take a cut in either her wages or work guarantee--a humbling blow that has struck several senior performers in the daytime world. Frowning and growing noticeably uncomfortable with the line of questioning, she chirps, “Maybe I’m not making that much to begin with.” If producers were to ask her to take a cut, she says, it would be “tacky” and she’d “probably cut out.”

But she has no current plans to walk away from the role she adores. She already quit three times “forever” (twice in the mid-’60s, then again in ‘83), each time finding it impossible to stay away for more than a year and a half.

Having begrudgingly accepted that Lisa’s glory days have come and gone, Fulton’s worries now center on the sagging ratings of all daytime soaps and their increasing obsession with youth, which Fulton believes is in part to blame for last summer’s demise of NBC’s “Another World” after 35 years on the air.

“I hope we don’t fold, and I hope I don’t get canned,” she frets. “But I do think if anything should happen, what would I do? My life would change radically. I would have to stop buying so many clothes.”

Like Norma Desmond, a vibrant part of Fulton would fade without a camera focused on her. Although she has her nightclub act, and has written a series of murder mysteries and two autobiographies, their success is dependent upon her daytime recognition.

Being known, she says, has been the best benefit of her job. “A painter can go in the attic and paint, a writer can sit down and write, but an actor needs an audience,” she sighs, refusing to abandon hope that Lisa will soon be given another juicy story line. “I want to work. I like to work. And they should really take advantage of the fact that they are paying me.”

CBS execs, take note. Miss Fulton is more than ready for her close-up.

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* “As the World Turns” can be seen weekdays at 1 p.m. on CBS.