The New York Times published a wonderful piece on Friday about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and how a live episode of AS THE WORLD TURNS was interrupted the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963. At the moment of the assassination, the show was the only regular program being broadcast nationally by a major network — specifically, throughout the Eastern and Central time zones."Don Hastings (Bob Hughes) was interviewed by the Times and recalled overhearing a cameraman say to someone in the control room, "Don’t tell the actors what? The president’s been shot?"
Rosemary Prinz, who played his sister, Penny, hoped for some on-air reference to the killing when the show resumed production the following Monday. But Irna Phillips, the show's creator, wanted no outside intrusion on the fictional Oakdale.
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| Rosemary Prinz, Don Hastings and Helen Wagner in 1985. |
"I was supposed to go on about Tom and his father," she recalled, "and I said instead: 'Oh, Grandpa, here we are talking about little Tom. My God, after what the country has gone through, it seems so out of proportion. But, of course, we have to go on.' Santos [Ortega] had very, very round eyes, which he always opened wide as Grandpa anyway, and he opened them even wider."
Prinz left AS THE WORLD TURNS in 1968 after 12 years. She returned in 1985 (Phillips died in 1973) and made sporadic guest appearances after that.
An uninterrupted version of the episode is preserved at the Paley Center for Media, in New York and Los Angeles. In it, Nancy boldly predicts that Bob and Lisa will reunite.
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