Two-Time Tony Award-Winning Actress Helen Gallagher, Known for Pal Joey, Sweet Charity, Dies at 98

Helen Gallagher, a two-time Tony Award winner known for performances in a number of Golden Age musicals including Pal Joey, Sweet Charity and Guys and Dolls, died on November 24 at a Manhattan hospital. Her death was confirmed by Edith Meeks, executive and artistic director at New York’s Herbert Berghof Studio where Gallagher was a teacher for many years. She was 98. 

A Brooklyn native born on July 19, 1926, Gallagher began her Broadway career in the 1940s, performing in the corps de ballet in Seven Lively Arts and Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston. In a 2007 interview, Gallagher called Seven Lively Arts, a musical scored by Cole Porter, "the most spectacular introduction to the theater." It was during that time that she met choreographer Jerome Robbins, auditioning for his ballet Interplay. "I was no dancer," she said. "I would have broken both legs had I done Interplay." From that audition, however, Robbins remembered her and cast her shortly after in the ensemble of his 1945 production of Billion Dollar Baby. 

Gallagher danced in the the original 1947 company of Brigadoon, and later that year, earned her first featured role in the Jule Styne musical High Button Shoes, choreographed by Robbins. Following two more featured roles in Touch and Go and Make a Wish, she landed the role of club singer Gladys Bumps in the 1952 revival of Pal Joey. The performance earned Gallagher her first Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

In 1953, she took on the title role in Hazel Flagg, another production with music by Jule Styne. The following year, she returned to the world of Jerome Robbins, assuming the role of Gladys in The Pajama Game, a character originated by Carol Haney and understudied by Shirley MacLaine. In 1956, she married Frank Wise, a stagehand she met during her time with The Pajama Game. “Frank was also Catholic," Gallagher said in a 1971 interview with the New York Times. "We were married in a civil ceremony by a Jewish judge because he was a friend, we had our honeymoon at Grossinger's because it's a nice hotel.” Early in their marriage, Gallagher gave birth to a baby that died after only two days, and several years later, suffered a miscarriage. “We've thought of adopting," she said in the same 1971 interview. "What can you say? It's the way the cookie crumbles.” Gallagher and Wise eventually divorced.

In 1955, Gallagher played Miss Adelaide in a revival of Guys and Dolls, and in rapid succession, played Sharon McLonergan in Finian's Rainbow, Meg Brockie in Brigadoon (her second Broadway Brigadoon) and Kitty in Portofino. In 1966, Gallagher originated the role of Nickie in Sweet Charity, earning a Tony nomination for the performance. She would also perform the title role during Gwen Verdon's absences and closed the Broadway run as Charity in July 1967. 

In 1969, Gallagher joined the cast of Mame as Agnes Gooch, and in 1970, opened the musical Cry For Us All, which ran for a total of nine post-opening performances. Better luck came in 1971, when she played Lucille Early in the revival of No, No, Nanette—a production that also starred Jack Gilford, Ruby Keeler, Patsy Kelly, Bobby Van and Susan Watson. Gallagher earned her second career Tony Award for her performance. 

Beyond Broadway, Gallagher is well known as Irish matriarch Maeve Ryan on the ABC soap opera Ryan's Hope. She played the role for the entirety of the show's duration from July 1975 to January 1989, earning three Daytime Emmy Awards along the way. She appeared on Broadway for the final time in 1981, performing a brief run of the revue Sugar Babies, and in 1984, starred in Tallulah, a biomusical about actress Tallulah Bankhead that ran at the TOMI Terrace Theater. Her final stage performance in New York was in 2000 in the Kander and Ebb musical 70, Girls, 70 at the York Theatre.