Helen Gallagher

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This article is about the American actress. For the co-founder of Gallagher's Steak House, see Helen Gallagher (Solomon).

Helen Gallagher (born July 19, 1926 in New York City) is a Tony Award-winning American actress, dancer and singer of Irish, French and English descent.

For decades, Helen Gallagher was known as an actress in the New York stage. She appeared in, among other musicals, Hazel Flagg, High Button Shoes, and Sweet Charity. She was a thoroughgoing professional, albeit temperamental performer. According to Merv Griffin, who appeared in a Broadway musical with her, Gallagher once kicked an actor who tried to upstage her, sending him flying into the orchestra pit.

In 1952, she won a Tony Award for her work in the musical Pal Joey. In 1971, she won her second Tony Award for her role in the revival of the musical No, No, Nanette, which also starred Ruby Keeler and Patsy Kelly. Helen appeared in the 1977 movie Roseland opposite Christopher Walken. An aficionada of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she appeared on a special tribute episode of The Bell Telephone Hour.

Despite her extensive work on Broadway, she is perhaps best known as the gentle Irish American matriarch, Maeve Ryan, on the soap opera Ryan's Hope, a role she played for the show's entire duration, from 1975 to 1989. Creator and head writer Claire Labine had much affection for the character of Maeve, and as such, focused much loving care and attention in crafting her development. As a result, Gallagher's motherly character quickly came to be portrayed as the heart and soul of the show. She was nominated for five Daytime Emmy Awards for her work on the serial, winning in 1976, 1977, and 1988.

As the show progressed further into the 1980s, the ratings took a steep slide. When ABC executives decided to cancel Ryan's Hope, Claire Labine decided to end the final episode with Maeve at the family bar, Ryan's, singing her favorite tune, Danny Boy.

Since the cancellation of Ryan's Hope, Gallagher has appeared in All My Children and One Life to Live and in various Off-Broadway productions, although she considers herself in "semi-retirement".

She is divorced from her only husband, Frank Wise, by whom she had several unsuccessful pregnancies. In accordance with her religious beliefs she has not remarried.

Preceded by: Lauren Bacall in Applause

Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical 1971 for No, No Nanette

Succeeded by: Alexis Smith in Follies