Friends Pay Tribute to ‘Days of Our Lives’ Star Bill Hayes: ‘A Wonderful, Kind and Giving Man’
variety.comMichael Maloney Television was a nascent medium in 1949 when Bill Hayes made his debut on “Fireball Fun-For-All,” a zany comedy-variety series fronted by vaudeville comedians Ole Olsen and Chick Johnson.
The series only lasted three months, but that was long enough to set Hayes on the path to become a TV legend through his role as a pillar of the venerable daytime series “Days of Our Lives” for more than five decades.
Hayes, who died Jan. 12 at the age of 98, never forgot the invaluable training he learned from working in the early days of live TV. “The cameras were huge and immovable back then,” Hayes told Variety in 2018 when he and Susan Seaforth Hayes, his wife of 49 years and longtime “Days” leading lady, were awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Daytime Emmy Awards. “They didn’t have the capability of zooming in or out.
It was all live until 1958.” In 2022, Hayes and the rest of the “Days” cast ushered in a new era of television viewing when the long-running soap opera became the first daytime drama to shift exclusively to a streaming platform, NBCUniversal’s Peacock.
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