BBL Star Passes Away

LOS ANGELES, January 17:
Darlene Conley, a stage and television star who for the last two decades played
Sally Spectra on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful, passed away on January 14 of stomach cancer. She
was 72.

“Darlene understood better
than anyone that each moment of airtime was precious,” said Bradley P. Bell,
the executive producer and head writer of The Bold and the Beautiful. “She constantly entertained us with every move,
every breath, every inflection of her voice. Whether she was the villain, the
damsel, the sexpot, or the comedienne, Darlene was brilliant. An extraordinary
actress of film, radio, stage and television, my family had the privilege and
honor of Darlene gracing our shows for three decades. She was truly
one-of-a-kind. We will miss her beyond measure.”

“Darlene was a beloved
member of the CBS family for many years,” said Barbara Bloom, the SVP of
daytime at CBS. “Her talent, wit, and energy made her a force to be reckoned
with and her loss is immeasurable. She’ll be greatly missed but also greatly
remembered.”

Born in Chicago, Illinois
in 1934, Conley received her first break at 15, when she was cast in a touring
production of The Heiress.
After graduating high school, she toured the country with classical theater companies
before appearing in Shakespearean roles on Broadway with the Helen Hayes
Repertory Theater. She later appeared in a Broadway revival of the Night of
the Iguana, with Richard
Chamberlain, and in David Merrick’s musical The Baker’s Wife. Her first feature film was Alfred Hitchcock’s The
Birds, and she later worked with
John Cassavetes in Faces and Minnie
& Moscowitz. Conley also
appeared in numerous prime-time series, movies and mini-series. Daytime TV,
however, became her home, with spots on Days of our Lives, Capitol and General Hospital,
before being given the role of the nefarious Rose de Ville by the late William
J. Bell on The Young and Restless.
When Bell co-created The Bold and
the Beautiful with his wife Lee
Phillip-Bell, he envisioned a special role for Conley, that of Sally Spectra.
Conley once said of the soap opera medium: “It is really the best medium today
for women of a certain age to do something really flashy; it’s where what we do
well as actresses matters.”

The Bold and the Beautiful is the most watched daily dramatic serial in the
world, viewed in more than 110 countries.