Ellen Demming (born Betty Ellen Weber; November 10, 1922 – February 7, 2002) was an American

actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a Character (arts), character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek ...

, best known for her role as Meta Bauer on the

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

Guiding Light ''Guiding Light'' (known as ''The Guiding Light'' before 1975) is an American radio and television soap opera. It is listed in ''Guinness World Records'' as the third longest-running drama in television in American history. ''Guiding Light'' a ...

'', which she played from 1953 to 1974.

Life

Schenectady, New York Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...

-born graduate of

Stephens College Stephens College is a private women's college in Columbia, Missouri. It is the second-oldest women's educational establishment that is still a women's college in the United States. It was founded on August 24, 1833, as the Columbia Female Acade ...

, Demming also acted in off-Broadway and summer stock theatrical productions. She played Mary in ''

Family Portrait Family Portrait may refer to: Portraiture painting * Family Portrait (Hals, four persons), ''Family Portrait'' (Hals, four persons), a 1635 painting by Frans Hals * Family Portrait (Hals, five persons), ''Family Portrait'' (Hals, five persons), ...

''.

Brooks Atkinson Justin Brooks Atkinson (November 28, 1894 – January 14, 1984) was an American theatre critic. He worked for ''The New York Times'' from 1922 to 1960. In his obituary, the ''Times'' called him "the theater's most influential reviewer of his ...

deemed her performance, as the Virgin Mary, as full of "...pride, modesty, and great delicacy of feeling." After her retirement from ''The Guiding Light'', she moved to

South Salem, New York South Salem is a hamlet in the Town of Lewisboro, Westchester County, in the U.S. state of New York. Part of the New York metropolitan area, the town center has a post office, town hall, library, and recycling center. Notable residents have incl ...

, and later, to

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

Personal life

She was married to television producer Hal Thompson. She died in 2002, aged 79, in

Springfield, Vermont Springfield is a town in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 9,062. History The land currently recognized as Springfield is the traditional land of the Pennacook and Abenaki people. One of the ...

, from undisclosed causes.

References

1922 births 2002 deaths Actresses from New York (state) American soap opera actresses American stage actresses Stephens College alumni Actors from Schenectady, New York People from South Salem, New York 20th-century American actresses {{US-tv-actor-1920s-stub