Joan Benedict, ‘General Hospital’ actress, dies at 96

Joan Benedict Steiger, the Candid Camera and General Hospital actress who was the widow of Academy Award-winner Rod Steiger, has died. She was 96.

Benedict died June 24 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from a stroke, a family spokesperson confirmed to Entertainment Weekly.

Born July 21, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York, Benedict first performed at just 7 years old, onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. By 9, her show business pursuits took her abroad, where she trained at the Rome Opera Ballet School, eventually going on to study with acting coaches Robert Lewis and Stella Adler, two of the founders of New York’s famous Actor’s Studio.

“I saw my first movie when I was about 7,” Benedict told Paul Leslie in 2022. “It was Top Hat with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. And I remember when the movie was over and I came out into the sunshine, I ran back in and said, ‘Oh, no, no, no, that’s where I want to be. In that world.’ I always had that inkling.”

Benedict was a member of Allen Funt’s company for Candid Camera, the hidden camera reality series that often featured actors playing out pranks and skits to fool passersby. She was also part of the ensemble of NBC’s The Steve Allen Show. Benedict would go on to accrue dozens of TV credits, including guest roles on The Smith Family, Apple’s Way, The Incredible Hulk and Fantasy Island. 

She would later become a memorable soap star, with appearances on Days of Our Lives and Capitol, and her recurring role as Edith Fairchild on General Hospital.

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Along with her onscreen success, Benedict also took to the stage for regional theater and off-Broadway productions of such titles as Promises, Promises, Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories and Horton Foote’s The Traveling Lady. She portrayed the tyrannical hotel magnate Leona Helmsley in a one-woman stage show, Leona, and also held the stage solo in her autobiographical play, The Loves of My Life.

Benedict first met Steiger when she was just 19, but the duo went their separate ways after a brief romance. She married actor John Myhers, of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying fame, in 1962. The couple, who share a daughter, spent three decades together until his death in 1992.

In the late ’90s, Benedict reconnected with Steiger through mutual friends and they eventually tied the knot in 2000. Steiger died two years later, at age 77 of complications from surgery for a gallbladder tumor. She subsequently had a relationship with Once Life To Live actor Jeremy Slate until he died in 2006.

“Both of my husbands, and my lifetime partner Jeremy, were wonderful men who respected me as an actress,” Benedict said in a 2016 interview with Women Fitness. “They all died from different forms of cancer, so my memories are sometimes bittersweet, but with no regrets.”

Benedict is survived by her daughter and two granddaughters.