Jennifer Harmon, 'One Life to Live' actress, passes away at 82

Jennifer Harmon, the Emmy-nominated actress known for her roles in soap operas 'How to Survive a Marriage' and 'One Life to Live', has passed away at 82. Harmon was also an accomplished Broadway actress with a career spanning decades.

Jennifer Harmon, the lead actress of the NBC soap opera How to Survive a Marriage and a familiar face to daytime television audiences through her appearance on One Life to Live, has passed away. She was 82. Jennifer breathed her last on May 9, her family announced, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

Harmon was the fifth actress to portray Cathy on Agnes Nixon's One Life to Live, following Catherine Burns, Amy Levitt, Jane Alice Brandon and Dorrie Kavanaugh. She worked on the show from 1976 through 1978, when she received a Daytime Emmy nomination. (Robin Strasser had been offered the part but turned it down to play Dorian Lord.)

Extensive Broadway Career

Harmon had made her Broadway debut in 1965 in a revival of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's You Can't Take It With You, and before the decade was done, had returned to the Great White Way in revivals of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Ibsen's The Wild Duck and six other plays.

Her extensive Broadway career spanned decades and included acclaimed productions of The School for Scandal -- in revivals staged nearly 30 years apart -- as well as Blithe Spirit in 1987; The Sisters Rosensweig in 1993-94; The Little Foxes in 1997; The Deep Blue Sea in 1998; Amy's View in 1999; The Dinner Party in 2000-01; Barefoot in the Park in 2006; The Glass Menagerie in 2005; Seascape in 2005-06; and Other Desert Cities in 2011-12.

Early Life and Education

Born in Pasadena on Dec. 3, 1943, and raised in New Orleans, Harmon attended the University of Mississippi and the University of Michigan before moving to New York and joining the APA-Phoenix Repertory Company, which took her to Broadway.

A Staple of Daytime Television

She started out in soaps on the 1974-75 NBC serial How to Survive a Marriage, where her character, Chris, got divorced, remarried and battled alcoholism, according to The Hollywood Reporter. She returned to One Life to Live in the early 1990s to play an attorney representing Erika Slezak's Viki Lord -- as Cathy, she had kidnapped Viki's baby years ago -- and showed up on such other soaps as Another World, Guiding Light and Loving. (ANI)

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