Hall of Fame: Charita Bauer

Charita Bauer

2009 Soap Opera Hall of Fame Inductee

• unknown role, David Harum
• unknown role, Front Page Farrell
• unknown role, Orphans of Divorce
• unknown role, Rose of My Dreams
• unknown role, Stella Dallas
• Gail Carver, Lora Lawton
• Susan Wakefield, The Right to Happiness
• Fran Cummings, Second Husband
• Millie Baxter, Young Widder Brown
• Mary Aldrich, The Aldrich Family
• Lanette, Our Gal Sunday
• Maudie Mason, Maudie's Diary
• Bertha Miller Bauer, The Guiding Light

One of the most beloved actresses in the history of soap operas, Charita Bauer (December 20, 1922 – February 28, 1985) was born in Newark, New Jersey, and began her career at the age of eight as a model for clothing ads. She attended the Professional Children's School in New York and made her acting debut on Broadway in Thunder on the Left (1933) at the age of nine.

Also on Broadway she was the original Little Mary in Claire Boote Luce's acclaimed all-female comedy The Women, which ran for two years on Broadway with Bauer in every performance.

She was active throughout the 1930s and 1940s on numerous radio dramas and sitcoms of the day, portraying a wide array of characters as a Chinese boy, a mosquito, and a blind hillbilly. Some of the series she appeared on included Let's Pretend, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons. The March of Time, The FBI in Peace and War, Suspense and other programs. Her longest role in radio was as Mary Aldrich on the comedy soap opera, The Aldrich Family. She portrayed the role from 1941 to 1953 on radio, as well as playing the role in the television sitcom version during the 1949-1950 season.

She was best known for playing headstrong and opinionated Bertha "Bert" Miller Bauer - the last name is just a neat coincidence - on the long-running soap opera The Guiding Light, both on radio from February 3, 1950 to June 29, 1956 and on TV from June 30, 1952 to December 10, 1984 - a total of 34 years, 10 months and 7 days as Bert Bauer. Her character was a spitfire in the earlier days, constantly nagging her husband Bill, and always meddling into other people's business. As Bert matured, she became the heart of the Bauer family and the heart of Springfield. The 1960s saw her character constantly dealing with her husband's alcoholism and his skirt chasing. By the 1970s she had been relegated to the ceremonial role of town matriarch. In 1951, to avoid confusion between her real life and her popular soap role, Charita asked the show's producer's to name her soap opera son Michael after her own son Michael Crawford. (The show was aired live in the early days, and a mistake like addressing her TV son by an incorrect name would have been difficult to cover.)

Bauer was no stranger to social issue storylines -- in 1962, she became the first actress on daytime television to tackle a real-life medical dilemma, as Bert was diagnosed with uterine cancer. The storyline helped millions of women realize the importance of regular checkups and pap smear screenings. Bauer received a record amount of mail from fans thanks to the wonderful storyline written by Agnes Nixon.

In 1978 Bert was involved in her first major storyline in years, as her troublesome, alcoholic husband Bill reappeared after an absence of ten years. Bauer's performance, as Bert went from shock to anger to forgiveness, was one of the season's highlights. The next year the actress was presented with the Outstanding Mother Award by the National Mother's Day Committe for heading up two families, one real and one fictional.

Her next major story came along in 1983 when Bert befriended a dying man.

On May 24, 1983, she was one of several stars of Guiding Light who appeared in the made-for-TV movie The Cradle Will Fall. The screenplay for the movie was based on Guiding Light storylines, and required the appearance of several characters from the show.

Just before Thanksgiving 1983, complications from a blood clot forced her to have her leg amputated. When she returned to the show in March 1984, her character's life mirrored her own. After visiting her sister-in-law Meta in New York, Bert returned to Springfield and began experiencing pain in her leg. She ended up having her leg amputated just as the actress who played her had. For the first time in decades, Bert had to depend upon others to wait on her hand and foot, resulting in one of the series' most memorable stories. (Bert, sitting in a wheelchair at Cedars Hospital, told Josh Lewis, who had been paralyzed recently and had given up hope, that life itself was a miracle and never to forget it.) In a moving scene, Bert dropped a teacup. She tried to get it, but could not, and in sheer frustration, she burst into tears.

With her health failing, Bauer made her last appearance as Bert on December 10, 1984. On February 28, 1985, Bauer died of complications stemming from diabetes only weeks shy of her 35th anniversary on the show. She was 62 years old.

Even with almost 35 years in the role, she passed away with very little fanfare, due in part to the snobbery that was placed on soap opera by much of the media which was far worse then than it is today. It was appropriate for this great lady though as Charita Bauer lived her life with a quiet modesty, always considering her work to be part of the great ensemble. She received a posthumous Lifetime Contribution Daytime Emmy Award that summer, along with Search for Tomorrow's Larry Haines and Mary Stuart. Her character Bert died in March 1986, a full year after Bauer died.

Christopher Schemering described her acting style this way: "Her acting was deceivingly simple, a brisk, technically astute playing style which exuded so much warmth that in later performances her characterization seemed to bask in nothing less than a Chekovian brand of heartbreaking merriment."

Bauer did what few performers ever get to do. She stopped being just an actress playing a part; she became the character of Bert. As Bert she became a national treasure. She was "the guiding light" for generations of Americans.