Eileen Herlie: Actress who played Gertrude to Olivier's Hamlet then became queen of the daytime soaps

After a stage and film career of distinction on both sides of the Atlantic (including the screen role of Gertrude in Olivier's Hamlet), Eileen Herlie achieved the peak of her stardom in America as the redoubtably enduring dowager, Myrtle Fargate, heading the long-running daytime soap opera All My Children from 1976.

The transatlantic move was due partly to the opportunities which opened up in the wake of Herlie's Broadway success in Tyrone Guthrie's joyous 1955 production of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker as the dressmaker Mrs Molloy opposite the eponymous human steamroller of Ruth Gordon's Mrs Levi. It was, too, undeniably in part, because of the damage done to her reputation at home by the relentlessly hostile criticism of most of her work by the Observer's then-mighty theatre critic, Kenneth Tynan.

Born in Glasgow, the auburn-haired Herlie was not a conventional beauty but she was blessed with a strikingly fine bone structure (which lit tellingly on screen), commanding eyes and a rich voice, especially effective in its lower register (on Broadway she proved a charming singer).

Stage-struck early, she made her début with the Scottish National Players in Joyce Carey's Sweet Aloes (Lyric, Glasgow, 1938) before a happy spell in repertory at Rutherglen where, in a constricted wartime theatre, her parts ran the gamut from maids to matriarchs. A tour in the stage version of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1942) led to her London début, taking over as the much put-upon second Mrs de Winter in the long-running West End production (Ambassador's, 1942).

The Liverpool Playhouse Company, under William Armstrong, still occupied a leading place in regional theatre and Herlie played there for more than a year (1944-45), earning her spurs in a varied run of roles including Paula in Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray, a genuinely sensual Anna in Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie and her first Gertrude in Hamlet.

London managements had noticed her progress; she worked at the Lyric, Hammersmith – then under the Company of Four, the non-profit wing of the all-powerful HM Tennent empire – in The Trojan Women as Alcestis (1945) and in William Saroyan's bitter-sweet bar-room-set Time of Your Life (1946), most affecting as a young drifter.

Tennent's, under Hugh "Binkie" Beaumont, took a big gamble on Herlie as the Queen, the huge central role in Jean Cocteau's fevered Ruritanian melodrama The Eagle Has Two Heads (1946-47). Her tour de force – including an epic tirade of a speech lasting more than 20 minutes, ranging from tender imprecation to taunting provocation and then a dramatic staircase death – brought her mostly ecstatic notices and strong box-office figures. But her performance, Tynan said, "consists of uttering every speech, every sentence, as if it were a curtain line: that is to say, with hollow eyes and in a sepulchral desolating moan, sinking to a plummy bleating sound."

Her career took a further leap under Tennent's with Medea (Globe, 1948). The consensus was favourable although the performance was perhaps lacking subtlety, but Tynan was devastatingly cruel, dismissing her performance as "transparently pretentious". As often with those not in his pantheon he could be sadistic, going beyond criticism into personal venom. He was equally lethal in his dismissal of Herlie's Paula in Tennent's sumptuous revival of The Second Mrs Tanqueray (Haymarket, 1950).

A glorious Coronation-year season saw Herlie happily back at Hammersmith for a silky Mrs Marwood in John Gielgud's production of The Way of the World (1953) and she was in terrific form for Peter Brook in his revelatory reappraisal of Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd (1953). Gielgud and Paul Scofield were the conspirators in an atmospherically aqueous world of light and shadows, with Herlie meeting all the challenges of Belvidera, including her mad scene.

By contrast, her Mollie Molloy in The Matchmaker (Haymarket, 1954 and Royale, NY, 1955) was a delight of fluttering heart and tremulous optimism. Its Broadway success and a second marriage led to Herlie's resettlement. She then followed a pioneering Alec Guinness as an early champion of Stratford, Ontario. Her appearances included Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and a grave, grieving Paulina in The Winter's Tale (both 1958).

Back on Broadway the production of John Osborne's play written with Antony Creighton, Epitaph for George Dillon (John Golden, NY, 1958) did not repeat the success of Look Back in Anger, although Herlie's warm, passionate Ruth was widely praised.

Herlie was outstanding in the musical Take Me Along (Shubert, NY, 1959). The show worked best for those with a sweet tooth, but Herlie brought a Celtic bracing touch and beguiling charm to the lovelorn Lily, more than holding her own with the ebullient presence of Jackie Gleason. Her solo number, "If I Promised You a Rose" enchanted the house. Sadly her next musical, All American (Winter Garden, 1962), a star vehicle for Ray Bolger, the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, was a thin affair with a lacklustre score.

Herlie returned to Gertrude, opposite Richard Burton's Prince, in a modern-dress Hamlet (Lunt-Fontanne, NY, 1964, directed by Gielgud, who also played the ghost). The production attracted huge publicity because of the Burton-Elizabeth Taylor affair. Herlie's closet scene with Hamlet, when Burton chose to bother, could be mesmerising. As in Olivier's film she made it clear that by the close this Gertrude was seeking expiation in death, drinking knowingly from the poisoned cup.

Her final leading Broadway appearance was as Queen Mary in Royce Ryton's Crown Matrimonial (Helen Hayes, NY, 1973). Amid the corn, Herlie, subtly suggesting the monarch's inner turmoil, evoked an emotional depth, her face in the confrontation with George Grizzard's Edward VIII a poignant map of bewildered loss.

Herlie's best film opportunity was her Gertrude in Olivier's Hamlet (1948); although younger than her screen son she was impressive in suggesting a weak woman confronting a disconcerting, late-surfacing sexuality, and (as with Burton) the closet scene was a highlight. Other screen work included The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan, John Huston's troubled Freud: the Secret Passion and Sydney Lumet's rather too stagy The Seagull.

She made many television appearances in America, although nothing could match All My Children. Herlie also guested in its spin-offs, including Loving and One Life to Live. Millions of matrons nationwide followed Myrtle Fargate's joys and sorrows (there tended to be many, many more of the latter) for more than three decades. She made her last appearance in June.

Alan Strachan

Eileen Herlihy (Eileen Herlie), actress: born Glasgow 8 March 1919; married 1942 Philip Barrett (marriage dissolved), married 1951 Witold Kuncewicz (marriage dissolved); died New York 8 October 2008.