Real-life Days of our Lives couple Bill Hayes (Doug Williams) and Susan Seaforth Hayes (Julie Williams) will be the recipients of this year's Lifetime Achievement Awards at the Daytime Emmys.
For the first time in quite a few years, the Daytime Emmys chose to honor soap opera performers with its Lifetime Achievement Award. There were perhaps no better recipients to receive the award than real-life husband and wife Bill and Susan Hayes.
"It's hard to remember a time when they weren't on our stages or on our screens," Deidre Hall remarked in her tribute to the two stars.
She's right.
Bill and Susan have been playing married Salem characters Doug and Julie since 1970 and 1968, respectively -- continue to be staples of the NBC soap opera half a century after they debuted.
In their acceptance speech, which began with the pair singing, the Hayses emphasized the importance of daytime television.
"Our four network shows are constantly battling time cuts, budget cuts, even cast cuts," Susan Hayes shared. "And yet we all command a vast, loyal audience because thee are great shows! [We] are thrilled to think that our love story and some of our performances are considering worth remembering."
"Are we relevant? Of course we are," Susan added. "Because soap opera has always been so much more than escapist entertainment."
"Let us create dramas that make our audience not only laugh and cry, but think and feel and know that we care about what they've been going through in their own lives," Bill continued.
When asked backstage how long it took to write their all-encompassing acceptance speech, Susan said it took about three weeks. Bill claimed that they'd "changed it a hundred times at least".
Bill Hayes began his career as a successful musician in the 1940s and managed to land on the Billboard Hot 100 with a version of The Ballad of Davy Crockett in the early 1950s. He segued into acting around that same time and managed to snag a role in the 1953 Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Me and Juliet. Hayes's music background was incorporated into DAYS; Doug was originally introduced as a convict with a background as a lounge singer.
Susan Seaforth began her acting career as a young woman and landed numerous roles in films and television series like Cheyenne, National Velvet, The Fugitive, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and My Three Sons. She appeared on General Hospital as Dorothy Bradley in 1964 and has made numerous appearances as Joanna Manning on The Young and the Restless (where her mother, Elizabeth Harrower, worked as a writer). She joined DAYS in 1968 and has earned four Daytime Emmy Award nominations in the Outstanding Lead Actress category for her work as Julie.
You can watch the entire tribute to Bill and Susan Hayes below.
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