Beloved ‘General Hospital' Matriach Denise Alexander Dies at 85

Miami Herald

10-05-2025

Denise Alexander, beloved star of General Hospital, died at the age of 85.
Denise Alexander, who played Lesley Webber on General Hospital, has died at the age of 85. She was born on November 11, 1939, in New York City and began acting as a child.
She appeared as Perry Como's daughter in 1949's Perry Como's Chesterfield Supper Club and had roles on many other series in the 50s and 60s, including The Twilight Zone, Father KnowsBest, and The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis.
Her first role on soaps was as Lois Adams on The Clear Horizon. In 1966, she landed the role of Susan Hunter Martin on Days of our Lives while a student at UCLA. In 1973, General Hospital snagged her away from Days when they outbid them during her contract negotiations with the show. When they hired her, GH didn't have a role ready, but quickly created one for her. The role was Lesley Webber, and it garnered her a Daytime Emmy nomination in 1976.
Alexander played an integral role in saving GH when it was on the brink of cancellation in the late 70's, along with her TV daughter Genie Francis, who plays Laura Webber, of Luke & Laura fame, and the rest of the contract cast.
Lesley Webber was killed off in 1984, but in true soap opera fashion was resurrected in 1996. Alexander reccured as Lesley until 2009 and then made sporadic visits to the show over the next decade. Her last appearance was in 2021.
Genie Francis spoke to TV Insider about Alexander, saying, "I loved her. She loved me. I stole her good stuff. When I look at myself sometimes on television, which I don't do often because I don't really like to watch myself, but I have seen myself do stuff and been kind of taken aback because I realized I just did Denise. So when I say I stole her good stuff, I'm saying I was so young, she imprinted on me. And some of my acting, some of my style of acting, was directly imprinted on me by Denise Alexander. And she was very, very good to me as I was growing up."
She went on to share, "She actually gave me this lovely necklace. It's like a little angel that's standing on a cloud, and it's on a pearl. It was a charm, and I wore it all the time. And then when my daughter wanted to become an actress when she was young, I said, 'You've got to have your good luck charm.' So I said, 'I'm going to give you this little angel that's been worn by two actresses, and now it's yours.' And so Eliza (Frakes, Francis's daughter) has that, and it's important to her too. And when I told Denise that, she cried. She was so excited to hear that what she had given me, I gave to my daughter."
Alexander died March 5, 2025. No details about the cause of death have been released. She was predeceased by her husband, Richard A. Colla, and is survived by her stepdaughter from that marriage, Elizabeth Colla.
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