could turn where I didn’t sense betrayal, secrets at my expense, and astonishing stupidity on my part. One of the places I could turn to was the Y&R studio, where I was valued and where Harry Bernsen meant nothing, and not a day went by when I wasn’t grateful for the safety net my coworkers, and Katherine Chancellor, for that matter, provided me when I needed it most.
T hings weren’t going all that smoothly for Katherine either, by the way. When her husband, Phillip, learned that his mistress, Jill, was carrying his child, he was ecstatic and asked Katherine for a divorce. Katherine, drunk as a skunk, signed the divorce papers and Phillip flew to the Dominican Republic to put a quick end to his marriage so that he could marry Jill.
Katherine met his plane when he returned to Genoa City and offered to drive him home, during which she tried to convince him to give their marriage another try. When he refused, Katherine pushed the gas pedal to the floor while going around a curve, and the car flew off a cliff. Both Katherine and Phillip were critically injured. Shortly before he died, Phillip had the hospital chaplain marry him and Jill, a marriage Katherine had annulled by successfully alleging that because she’d been drunk when she signed the divorce papers, the divorce wasn’t legal and neither was Phillip and Jill’s marriage.
One day Katherine’s beloved son, Brock (by her first husband, Gary Reynolds), arrived at her door and begged her to let him take her to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The “Friday cliffhanger” that week was a very shaky, hesitant, frightened Katherine stepping through the door of a meeting with Brock by her side. We had no idea if she was going to stay or run away . . . but Monday’s show opened with Katherine taking a deep breath and stepping forward to announce, “My name is Katherine, and I’m an alcoholic.”
I was genuinely honored and humbled by the response to Katherine Chancellor’s rehab. For years afterward, I received thousands of letters from fans telling me that it was Katherine’s battle for sobriety that inspired them to overcome their own alcohol addiction, and at countless personal appearances people not only thanked me for the inspiration Katherine provided but also gave me their AA chips as a token of their gratitude. One woman in particular touched me deeply—she’d kept a note that I’d written to congratulate her on her first month of sobriety that was so old there was a three-cent stamp on the envelope. Katherine’s obvious impact on the Y&R audience, and the responsibility that impact carried with it, made such an impression on me that whenever I heard about an upcoming storyline in which Katherine was going to fall off the wagon, I wrote literally hundreds of letters to warn those very special fans what was coming and to remind them that it was only a fictionalized version of what could happen. “Don’t do it yourself,” I told them. “Let Katherine do it for you, and you’ll see, she’ll beat it again.”
I hope each and every one of you knows what your stories continue to mean to me. I’ve never forgotten you, and I never will.
M eanwhile, back in Beverly Hills, I filed for a legal separation as soon as I kicked Harry out of the house, but it took almost a year to get the actual divorce under way. During that year I worked hard, trying to regroup and getting invaluable emotional support from such real friends as Doris Day, who’d gone through her own marital nightmare with her late husband, Martin Melcher; Barbara Stanwyck, who lived up the street; and my darling Barbara Hale, whose friendship I continue to cherish to this day.
Inevitably, all that emotional pain began to manifest itself physically, including an onset of severe stomach spasms. I was at lunch with a dear friend one day about six months into the legal separation when a particularly nasty spasm hit—suddenly I couldn’t breathe, and my stomach distended so horribly that
T hings weren’t going all that smoothly for Katherine either, by the way. When her husband, Phillip, learned that his mistress, Jill, was carrying his child, he was ecstatic and asked Katherine for a divorce. Katherine, drunk as a skunk, signed the divorce papers and Phillip flew to the Dominican Republic to put a quick end to his marriage so that he could marry Jill.
Katherine met his plane when he returned to Genoa City and offered to drive him home, during which she tried to convince him to give their marriage another try. When he refused, Katherine pushed the gas pedal to the floor while going around a curve, and the car flew off a cliff. Both Katherine and Phillip were critically injured. Shortly before he died, Phillip had the hospital chaplain marry him and Jill, a marriage Katherine had annulled by successfully alleging that because she’d been drunk when she signed the divorce papers, the divorce wasn’t legal and neither was Phillip and Jill’s marriage.
One day Katherine’s beloved son, Brock (by her first husband, Gary Reynolds), arrived at her door and begged her to let him take her to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The “Friday cliffhanger” that week was a very shaky, hesitant, frightened Katherine stepping through the door of a meeting with Brock by her side. We had no idea if she was going to stay or run away . . . but Monday’s show opened with Katherine taking a deep breath and stepping forward to announce, “My name is Katherine, and I’m an alcoholic.”
I was genuinely honored and humbled by the response to Katherine Chancellor’s rehab. For years afterward, I received thousands of letters from fans telling me that it was Katherine’s battle for sobriety that inspired them to overcome their own alcohol addiction, and at countless personal appearances people not only thanked me for the inspiration Katherine provided but also gave me their AA chips as a token of their gratitude. One woman in particular touched me deeply—she’d kept a note that I’d written to congratulate her on her first month of sobriety that was so old there was a three-cent stamp on the envelope. Katherine’s obvious impact on the Y&R audience, and the responsibility that impact carried with it, made such an impression on me that whenever I heard about an upcoming storyline in which Katherine was going to fall off the wagon, I wrote literally hundreds of letters to warn those very special fans what was coming and to remind them that it was only a fictionalized version of what could happen. “Don’t do it yourself,” I told them. “Let Katherine do it for you, and you’ll see, she’ll beat it again.”
I hope each and every one of you knows what your stories continue to mean to me. I’ve never forgotten you, and I never will.
M eanwhile, back in Beverly Hills, I filed for a legal separation as soon as I kicked Harry out of the house, but it took almost a year to get the actual divorce under way. During that year I worked hard, trying to regroup and getting invaluable emotional support from such real friends as Doris Day, who’d gone through her own marital nightmare with her late husband, Martin Melcher; Barbara Stanwyck, who lived up the street; and my darling Barbara Hale, whose friendship I continue to cherish to this day.
Inevitably, all that emotional pain began to manifest itself physically, including an onset of severe stomach spasms. I was at lunch with a dear friend one day about six months into the legal separation when a particularly nasty spasm hit—suddenly I couldn’t breathe, and my stomach distended so horribly that
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