Ellen Holly

In her four-and-a-half hour interview, Ellen Holly (1931-2023) talks about her early life, and her paternal family tree going back to the 1700s. She discusses becoming interested in acting, and her big Broadway breakthrough in Too Late the Phalarope. She recalls attending the Actors Studio at the request of Lee Strasberg, and the problems of being an African American actress who appeared to be “too light.” She talks extensively about her groundbreaking role as “Carla Gray” on the daytime drama One Life to Live and being the first African American actress with a continuing daily lead role on a soap opera. She chronicles her struggles with show creator Agnes Nixon and various producers to be paid a fair wage and given good storylines. Holly recalls leaving One Life to Live in 1980, and returning in 1983, only to be fired by then-producer Paul Rauch at the end of her contract. She discusses coming to the painful realization that she had been treated shabbily by the network and the producers of One Life to Live, and what she learned from that experience. She concludes by talking about attending Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963 with her aunt Anna Arnold Hedgemen. Adrienne Faillace conducted the interview on May 29, 2018 in White Plains, NY.