One Life to Live creator Agnes Nixon cast Lillian Hayman in the leading role of "Sadie" shortly after the show premiere in July 1968. Nixon named the role on her actual family housekeeper, Sadie Gay, and based the character's founding plotline on the 1959 filmImitation of Life. Hayman played the character role for 18 years until 1986, when show executive producerPaul Rauch declined to renew her contract with ABC Daytime at a time when she was the longest-tenured actor with the show and after the firing of her onscreen daughter Ellen Holly. Esther Rolle, who would later become recognized for her Golden Globe Award-nominated role as Florida Evans on the CBSprime timesitcomGood Times, temporarily played the role in 1971 when Hayman took a part in the Broadway musical70, Girls, 70.
Storyline
Sadie is introduced in July 1968 as former Lord family maid at their manor, Llanfair. She eventually quit her job there to become head of housekeeping at Llanview Hospital. She lives across the hall from her good friend Anna Wolek. Sadie is a widow and mentions her "lost" and absent daughter Carla Gray. A mystery woman named Clara Benari shows up in town in October 1968, introduced as an Italian American woman who becomes secretary to Llanview Hospital chief of staff and doctor Jim Craig and dates African Americanresident physicianPrice Trainor. Many hospital staffers are shocked at the prospect of a white American woman dating a black man. A few months later, it is revealed that "Clara Benari" is the assumed name of Carla Gray, Sadie's lighter-skinned black daughter passing as white. Sadie is furious that her daughter would deny her heritage, but they eventually reconcile, and Carla embraces her roots and reclaims her surname "Gray." She takes a job as family housekeeper to Llanview Hospital psychiatrist Will Vernon in 1977, and moves in with the family in 1978 after Will's daughter Samantha Vernon is involved in a car accident. Sadie is depressed when daughter Carla and her husband Ed Hall divorce in 1979, and but she sets her feelings aside and sings at the wedding of Carla's new love interest, Jack Scott, in October. Hayman's airtime as "Sadie" increases after a period of intermittent appearances in the early 1980s when Carla returns to appear regularly in fictional Llanview in 1983, after a three-year absence. Sadie encourages Carla to rekindle her relationship with Ed, to no avail. Carla accepts a job practicing law in Arizona and disappears from the show in 1985. Sadie's appearances decline after September 1985, and eventually Sadie disappears from the show in 1986. Her former son-in-law and former Llanview police commissioner Ed says during an appearance in 2000 that Sadie dies in the 1990s.
