Charla Doherty was an American movie and TV actress who was in the first season of the long-running soap opera Days of Our Lives. The daughter of Charles Squires Doherty and Genevieve Recher Doherty, Charla Sue Doherty was born in Cleveland, Ohio.
Doherty’s father won second place in a contest that asked, “Why do I hate Jack Benny?” seven months before she was born. Charles Doherty, who was a law student at Case Western Reserve University at the time, won $1500 in the contest, which was put on by Benny’s radio show.
The money was used to cover the costs of giving birth to her. Much later, it gave her appearance on The Jack Benny Program a unique way to get attention.
When she died at age 41 on May 29, 1988, two people gave information that was used in obituaries all over the country. One was her publicist, Michael Druxman, whose information was picked up by the Associated Press (AP) and spread all over the country.
Do you know that Bill Leavy, who worked for the NFL and was best known as the referee during the contentious Super Bowl XL, died at the age of 76:
This version of the obituary had the dateline “Calabasas, Calif. (AP)” and said that she died at her own home. It had a couple of small mistakes about Doherty’s career, like how long she was on Days of Our Lives and that she was on the TV show Mannix.
The other person told the Los Angeles Times that Doherty had died at her mother’s house in Woodland Hills, which is not far away. There were a few small mistakes in this obituary about Doherty’s career, like how long she was on Days of Our Lives, how many movies she made, and that she was on the Ben Casey TV show.
This version of the obituary was also used by other newspapers, but the dateline was changed to “Hollywood” and the Los Angeles Times was given credit. Both people said that she died of natural causes and that she survived by her mother and son.
Doherty played Julie Olson on the soap opera Days of Our Lives before anyone else. She played the troubled teen from the first episode of the show on November 8, 1965, until the last one on November 21, 1966.
During that year and two weeks, she was in 51 episodes. The character then went away from the show’s plot until the spring of 1967, when actress Kathy Dunn took her place. We don’t know what happened to make them change their minds.