{"id":668539,"date":"2025-05-11T22:07:05","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T19:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/denise-alexander-dr-lesley-webber-on-general-hospital-dies-at-85\/"},"modified":"2025-05-11T22:07:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T19:07:05","slug":"denise-alexander-dr-lesley-webber-on-general-hospital-dies-at-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/denise-alexander-dr-lesley-webber-on-general-hospital-dies-at-85\/","title":{"rendered":"Denise Alexander, Dr. Lesley Webber on \u2018General Hospital,\u2019 Dies at 85"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tDenise Alexander, who performed in thousands of radio episodes and on The Twilight Zone<\/em> as a youngster before starring in two long stints as Dr. Lesley Webber on General<\/a> Hospital<\/em>, has died. She was 85.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlexander died March 5 of natural causes at the home of a nephew in Boulder, Colorado, her stepson, Anthony Colla, told The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe daughter of a talent agent, Alexander had spent more than six years playing Susan Hunter Martin on NBC\u2019s Days of Our Lives<\/em> \u2014 she began in 1966 while in college \u2014 when G.H.<\/em> producers at ABC heard that her contract had lapsed and began an \u201coffer you can\u2019t refuse situation,\u201d she recalled in a 2010 interview for the website I Love Soaps<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe moved to Port Charles as Dr. Lesley Williams in March 1973, and over the next 11 years, her tough yet compassionate character would twice marry Dr. Rick Webber (Michael Gregory and then Chris Robinson) and discover that her daughter, Laura (Genie Francis), who she thought had died as a child, was alive.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmid a contract disagreement, Lesley was killed in an offscreen automobile accident in March 1984, and Alexander told<\/a> Good Morning America<\/em> host David Hartman that she was sorry to see her go.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you work that closely with a character for 12 years, she\u2019s become my closest companion, and I like her,\u201d she said. \u201cShe is a lot of things I\u2019m not, like neat and organized and always cheerful \u2026 well, not always.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn August 1986, she returned to the soap world to play Bay City matriarch Mary McKinnon on NBC\u2019s Another World<\/em> through 1989, then came back to G.H.<\/em> as a regular from 1996 through 2009. (It turns out Lesley had not been killed; she had been drugged and kept in a catatonic state by the same guy who had kidnapp<\/a>ed her daughter!)<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her second G.H.<\/em> stretch, Lesley had to deal with Laura\u2019s own bout with catatonia and the fact that her daughter would kill Rick with a blow to the head in the Webber attic. Of course, things were not what they seemed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe broke barriers onscreen and off- portraying Dr. Lesley Webber \u2014 one of the first female doctors on daytime television \u2014 for nearly five decades,\u201d General Hospital<\/em> executive producer Frank Valentini noted in a statement. \u201cIt meant so much to have her reprise her role in recent years, and I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDenise Lois Alexander was born in New York on Nov. 11, 1939, and raised on Long Island. Her father, Alec, was an agent whose clients included Frank Gorshin and Sal Mineo.<\/p>\n

\n\tStarting at age 6, Alexander acted in more than 2,500 radio shows in New York. That included playing the daughter of a magician on The Big Guy<\/em> in 1950 and the daughter of sophisticated parents (Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy) on 1953-54\u2019s The Marriage<\/em>, also for NBC.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou would get out of school and go from one show to the next,\u201d she recalled. \u201cThey were 15-minute or half-hour shows, and you would sit around the table, read the script, rehearse a couple of times and do it. Then you were out of there and onto the next one. And sometimes it was in the next studio.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlexander had made her onscreen debut on an episode of Perry Como\u2019s Kraft Music Hall<\/em> in 1949. She then acted on such anthology dramas as Armstrong Circle Theatre<\/em>, The Philco Television Playhouse<\/em> and Robert Montgomery Presents<\/em> and had a regular gig on the sci-fi serial Tom Corbett, Space Cadet<\/em> from 1951-55.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe appeared on Broadway in 1952-53 in a revival of Lillian Hellman\u2019s The Children\u2019s Hour<\/em>, starring Kim Hunter and Patricia Neal, then portrayed Mineo\u2019s sister in the Don Siegel-directed Crime in the Streets<\/em> (1956), also starring John Cassavetes.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tDenise Alexander with John Cassavetes in 1956\u2019s \u2018Crime in the Streets.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Everett Collection<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tShe kept at it with appearances on Climax!<\/em>, Father Knows Best<\/em>, The Life of Riley<\/em>, The Danny Thomas Show<\/em>, The Detectives<\/em> and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis<\/em>, and in 1960 she played the daughter of a military scientist (Fritz Weaver) on the 14th episode of CBS\u2019 The Twilight Zone<\/em>, the lauded \u201cThird From the Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso in 1960, she began a two-year run as the daughter of an astronaut living in Cape Canaveral on the 1960-62 CBS soap The Clear Horizon<\/em> and was up for the part of Maria in the film adaptation of West Side Story<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile studying to complete her bachelor\u2019s degree in English at UCLA, Alexander accepted the part of Susan on Days of Our Lives<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe started out as the bad girl and was thrown out of boarding school for smoking and drinking just as her mother [played by Coleen Gray] was starting a romance with Mickey Horton [John Clarke],\u201d she recalled. \u201cSuddenly she had this problem teenager on her hands. The character caught on and sparked something with the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSusan wound up losing her young son in a fatal swing-set accident and killing her husband, David (Clive Clerk), but then Alexander\u2019s storylines got tamer, she said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt one point I remember getting a petition and went around the studio with this piece of paper for all the actors and the crew to sign that said, \u2018Whereas the show would be much more interesting if the character of Susan Martin got into a romantic relationship,\u2019\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI never got the part where you got to neck and make out with the guys. I started out as the bad girl but wound up as a good girl. Her big activity was baking at one point.\u201d (When she bolted for G.H.<\/em>, Bennye Gatteys replaced her.)<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tDenise Alexander with Macdonald Carey on \u2018Days of Our Lives.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNBC\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tWith G.H.<\/em> in 1976, Alexander received a Daytime Emmy nomination for outstanding actress in a drama series<\/a>, and the show reached No. 1 in the daytime ratings soon after Robinson came aboard in 1978. \u201cWhen it was Chris and me, Rick and Lesley were the Luke and Laura of their day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tSix years later, when she said she wanted to stick around but work less, G.H.<\/em> killed off Lesley, and fans picketed ABC in protest.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs McKinnon, she was married to Vince McKinnon (Duke Stroud and then Robert Hogan) and battled amnesia before leaving to live with her kids in Minnesota. Despite a big salary, Alexander said the commute from Los Angeles to New York eventually got to her.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe would stop by G.H.<\/em> for the first of several times in 2013 and work on the web shows Pretty the Series<\/em> and The Inn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlexander was married to actor-director Richard A. Colla \u2014 he played Tony Merritt on Days of Our Lives <\/em>\u2014 from the 1980s until his death on Christmas Eve 2021. She never had any children. Her stepdaughter, Elizabeth, died March 31.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her 2010 interview, Alexander looked back on the heady days of being a soap opera star.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe audience would surround your car and scream when you would try to drive away from some appearance,\u201d she said. \u201cFinancially, it was great. And I didn\u2019t have to go out on audition and be told I was too young, too old, too short, too fat, too boring, nothing. It was a great place to be and a great job and a great gift for an actor. And everybody got famous and that was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Denise Alexander, who performed in thousands of radio episodes and on The Twilight Zone as a youngster before starring in two long stints as Dr. Lesley Webber on General Hospital, has died. She was 85. Alexander died March 5 of natural causes at the home of a nephew in Boulder, Colorado, her stepson, Anthony Colla,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":668540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Denise-Alexander-Obit-Template-Headshot-Everett-H-2024.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[25075,28404,5200],"class_list":["post-668539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-days-of-our-lives","tag-general-hospital","tag-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}