Margaret DePriest, a onetime actress who spent three decades as a pioneering head writer on such soap operas as General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, All My Children and Another World, has died. She was 94.
DePriest died Sept. 29 of natural causes at her home in Greenwich Village, her daughter, Sara Kimbell, told The Hollywood Reporter.
DePriest had starred in soap operas as Abby Cameron on CBS’ The Edge of Night and as the social worker Mrs. Berger on NBC’s The Doctors when she and her mentor Lou Scofield created the CBS daytime drama Where the HeartIs in 1969. (Network execs at the time praised her for “writing like a man,” Kimbell noted.)
After four years on that show, she joined CBS’ Love of Life in 1975 as head writer, then wrote for The Doctors in 1976 and was an assistant to the producer and a writer/head writer on ABC’s General Hospital from 1978-81, on the scene when Luke (Anthony Geary) and Laura (Genie Francis) got married in Port Charles.
DePriest moved to NBC’s Days of Our Lives, and during her three seasons there, she and fellow head writers Pat Falken Smith and Sheri Anderson re-invented the town of Salem — giving it a riverfront, hilltop mansions, new restaurants, etc. — and introduced the blue-collar Brady family to viewers.
She also came up with the riveting storyline about the serial killer known as The Salem Strangler and helped write the 1985 wedding of yet another daytime supercouple, Bo & Hope (Peter Reckell and Kristian Alfonso).
DePriest later was a head writer on NBC’s Another World in 1986-88, on ABC’s All My Children in 1989-90, on ABC’s One Life to Live in 1990-91, on Another World again in 1996-97 and on NBC’s Sunset Beach — where she loved working for Aaron Spelling — in 1998-99.
Along the way, she received Daytime Emmy nominations for outstanding drama series writing in 1981 for General Hospital, in 1984 and 1985 for Days of Our Lives, in 1990 for All My Children and in 1992 for One Live to Live.
DePriest was “exacting and unafraid to challenge executives,” her daughter said, adding that “she favored strong female leads and layered storylines that tackled social change, class and identity.”
One of seven children, Margaret Lou DePriest was born during the Depression on April 19, 1931, in Bristow, Oklahoma. Her mother, Drusilla, was a homemaker who arrived in town from Kentucky in a covered wagon, and her father, Oscar, worked in the oil fields. Neither ever learned to read or write.
Woody Guthrie used to wander onto her family’s porch and sing with her dad.
DePriest won a full drama scholarship to the University of Oklahoma and after college acted on stages in Dallas and hosted two local TV shows, Ladies First and Maggie and Her Friends, a kids program with puppets. After that, she came to New York in the 1950s with her first husband, actor-singer Glenn Kezer, who wound up in the original My Fair Lady on Broadway.
In 1958, she found work as a stage manager and actress in an off-Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which revolved around a witch hunt in another town called Salem.
DePriest enjoyed a big year in 1965 when she originated the role of Abby on The Edge of Night (while ghostwriting scripts for Scofield); won a best actress Obie Award for her turn in The Place for Chance; and starred alongside Jan Sterling in another off-Broadway drama, Friday Night.
After appearing on a 1968 episode of ABC’s N.Y.P.D., she put acting aside to concentrate on writing.
In the late 1970s, DePriest and her family moved to Los Angeles. She had been penning scripts in New York for her L.A.-based shows, and “back then there were no computers, fax, FedEx or email — just typewriters, carbon paper and ‘the overnight pouch,’” her daughter noted.
She also wrote short stories and a 1982 play for the East West Players company in Los Angeles that was directed by Shizuko Hoshi and Tony-winning actor Mako.
Her second husband was Paul B. Price, an actor and TV writer who portrayed the frisky Claude Perkins in the Broadway and big-screen versions of the madcap comedy The Ritz. Both her marriages ended in divorce.
In addition to her daughter, survivors include her son, Jake; son-in-law Wayne; and grandchildren Eli and Chaya.
“My mom began every morning with The New York Times crossword — in pen,” her daughter said. “She was a lifelong, voracious reader; a lover of poetry (especially Seamus Heaney) and literature; and a lifelong seeker of knowledge. She read the Bible and the Quran not for faith, but as literature. She loved architecture, art, history, flowers — she had a great green thumb — antiques and beauty in all forms.”
