Soap alum Patricia Barry passes away

Soap opera veteran Patricia Barry (DAYS, AMC, and GL) has passed away at the age of 93.

Patricia Barry, veteran actress of the stage and multiple soap operas, died peacefully in her Los Angeles home at the age of 93, her publicist reports.

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The Iowa native -- who got her big break in the 1940s when Warner Bros. offered her a contract after she won a Rita Hayworth look-alike contest -- is known to daytime fans as several memorable soap opera characters.

Her first foray into the genre was in 1971, when she was cast as Bill Hayes's fictional wife, Addie Horton, on Days of our Lives -- a role she played until 1974. She then moved to All My Children's Pine Valley in 1980, where she played Peg English, leader of an international drug cartel who was simultaneously raising her adopted daughter, Brooke (Julia Barr). Barry later took on the role of Guiding Light's conniving Southern belle Miss Sally from 1984 to 1987 and then played Loving's matriarch Isabelle Alden from 1992 to 1993.

In addition to her soap opera roles, Barry is known for a slew of classic films like Her Kind of Man (1946), The Beast With Five Fingers (1946), Joan Crawford's Humoresque (1946), The Man I Love (1947) with Robert Alda and Ida Lupino, The Wreck of the Hesperus (1948), Gene Autry's Riders of the Whistling Pines (1949), The Tattooed Stranger (1950), and First Love (1954).

The actress also appeared in several television shows like The Twilight Zone , Perry Mason, Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, Route 66, My Three Sons, Three's Company, Dallas, Murder, She Wrote, and PBS' Ghostwriter.

Barry was one of the earliest members of Women in Film as well as a former president of the nonprofit advocacy organization. She was also an accomplished businesswoman who leased fully furnished New York and Los Angeles homes to visiting stars, directors, and other dignitaries like Peter Ustinov, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Angela Lansbury, Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin, Joshua Logan, Don Rickles, Peter Gallagher, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid director George Roy Hill.

The actress' husband, Philip Barry Jr., died in 1998. She is survived by daughters Miranda Barry, a former executive in charge of global Sesame Street productions, and Stephanie; son-in-law Mark; grandchildren Alixanne and Hailey; and godchildren Tracy and Stephen.

Memorial services for Barry will be held in early 2017 in both Los Angeles and New York.

Would you like to leave your condolences for Barry? What soap opera role do you most remember her for? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.

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