Biography

Rosemary Prinz

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Overview

Born
January 4, 1931 · The Bronx, New York, USA

Biography

As "Penny Hughes" on daytime TV's As the World Turns (1956) from 1956-1968, popular stage and soap actress Rosemary Prinz, the pretty lady with the distinctive mole, was the reigning Susan Lucci of her day. Born on January 4, 1931, in New York City's Bronx borough , her father was a classical musician who was a part of the New York String Quartet and, at one time, played cello for the legendary conductor, Arturo Toscanini. A position somewhere in the arts seemed destined for Rosemary.

An extremely gifted child, Rosemary graduated from high school at age 16 and went directly into summer stock, finding her first role in a 1947 production of "Dream Girls" and continuing on with "Dear Ruth" and "Kiss and Tell". She later toured with theater troupes, including The Vagabond Players. Trained for the theatre by Sanford Meisner, she made her New York/Broadway debut as a girl scout in "The Grey-Eyed People" at the Martin Beck Theatre in 1952.

In 1954, Rosemary found her popular niche in daytime soap operas. Starring as "Amy" in her first TV soap program entitled First Love (1954), she later copped the role of "Penny Hughes" and the rest is soap opera history. After her run on "As the World Turns", soap creator Agnes Nixon used Rosemary's popularity to launch All My Children (1970).

Although primarily known for her sudsy melodramatics, Rosemary became a formidable theatre performer and dedicated herself strongly to the stage throughout her career. From dinner theatre to Broadway, her singing skills were also well utilized with showy roles in such musicals as "Paint Your Wagon", "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", "Kiss Me Kate", "Annie Get Your Gun", "Applause", "Mame", "Gypsy" and "I Do! I Do!".

A stage highlight was playing played opera diva Maria Callas in four different productions of "Master Class". She has also added stature to such classics as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "The Glass Menagerie", "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" and the Broadway production of "Tribute", with Jack Lemmon in 1978.

Rosemary graced other TV soaps over the course of her long career. They included How to Survive a Marriage (1974) and Ryan's Hope (1975), in addition to revisiting her old alma mater, As the World Turns (1956), from time to time.

Later isolated film appearances included the romantic film The Bread, My Sweet (2001), the short Extreme Mom (2004) and the comedy Humor Me (2017).
- IMDb mini biography by: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Family

Spouses

Trivia

In 1948, aged 17, Prinz appeared in a feature film for the Navy about VD, called "It Could Happen to Your Kid Sister"; Prinz played the unfortunate younger sibling referenced in the film's title.
As "Penny Hughes" on As the World Turns (1956), she and actor Mark Rydell, as "Jeff Baker", became daytime's first major teen romance.
Made her film debut at age 70+ as the title role in The Bread, My Sweet (2001) (aka "A Wedding for Bella") in 2001, co-starring Scott Baio.
In 2003, Prinz returned to the New York stage in an off-Broadway production, "Killing Louise".
Prinz's first husband was actor Michael Thoma, who appeared in such series as Fame (1982) and Eight Is Enough (1977). Prinz married, secondly, to Joe Patti, a retired jazz drummer, whom she wed in 1967, a decade after her first marriage ended in divorce. Both unions were childless.

Quotes

There were many guidelines [in 1950s soaps]. This was way before Women's Lib. You could NEVER get divorced. That is why so many leading men died. In order to further the story you had to kill off the guy because it was a woman's medium. You killed off the guy and then the heroine married somebody else. If you were a leading man you never signed a long term lease.