Corinne Conley Stuart played Phyllis Anderson on TV’s “Days of Our Lives” for nearly a decade. Her long acting career includes parts on hit series like CHIPs,” “That Girl,” and “The New Dick Van Dyke Show,” plus voice work, including the role of Rudolph’s mother in the classic 1964 film “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
Corinne “Conni” Conley Stuart ’49 learned at an early age to fib when adults asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.
She’d tell them she wanted to be a journalist. It sounded respectable, and no one snickered when she answered that way.
But Stuart really wanted to be an actress. She can’t remember a time when she did not feel drawn to the stage or to the stories on the radio. (There was no TV when Stuart was a child.)
“I guess I was a little bit of a show-off,” she said.
Stuart was born in New York, lived for a time in Biloxi, Miss., and then settled in Radford, Va., where her father worked for Hercules Powder Co. manufacturing munitions during “the war years.” Stuart graduated from high school in Radford at 15 and headed to Mary Washington, selected because her older sister had attended the all-women’s college.
“I had never been away from home, never even went to summer camp,” Stuart recalled. “It was a great place for me to go. At that time, it was a little more sedate, restricted. It was kind of good for me to start gradually in the world.”
During her freshman year, Stuart auditioned for a dance band and got the part of the girl singer. The gig kept her out until past 11 p.m. lights-out, so Stuart would creep in quietly, always with a box of goodies from the dance. “We’d have to turn on our flashlights to see the prizes I had for everyone.”
Stuart, who studied speech and dramatic arts, remembers revues and assemblies put on by the students, but she didn’t need a stage to entertain. She would don a long blue robe and a bathing cap and on the way to the shower would “bellow” Into My Life Some Rain Must Fall. She did the number for a dorm Christmas show, attended by the often-mentioned Mrs. Nina Bushnell, dean of women.
Mrs. Bushnell, Stuart recalled, “was quite severe at times, quite a proper lady.” Stuart picked up her sense of drama from Mrs. Bushnell and has carried it with her for more than 60 years.
After graduation, Stuart got a job in Paul Green’s outdoor drama The Common Glory in Williamsburg. Then she traveled to New York City, where she joined The National Classic Theatre, a Shakespearean company that performed in high schools and colleges all over the country. There, Stuart met her husband, Bonar Stuart, from Montreal. That’s where they headed when the tour ended, and Stuart went right to work performing at Mountain Playhouse, in a radio soap opera, and in live television shows and sketches. She won the Canadian Broadcasting talent show Opportunity Knocks. And she landed on Broadway in Robertson Davies’ Love and Libel.
There were variety and comedy shows in Hollywood, and lots of voice work, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964; Stuart provided the voice of Rudolph’s mother. She played Phyllis Anderson in Days of Our Lives for nearly a decade. Stuart is in her 80s now. She recently had a role in Haven, a Canadian TV series based on a Stephen King novel. She wrapped up a movie called Old Stock this spring. The auditions keep her sharp, she said. And she plans to keep doing all she ever wanted to do “as long as they’ll have me.”