Three years into Days of Our Lives' run on NBC, the soap had already gone through three Julie Olsons. The first of them left of her own accord, and her short-lived successors were shown the door.

“I was supposed to confront Denise and try to cause her to have a heart attack but instead bring on my own labor pains,” Seaforth Hayes recalled for Soap Opera Digest in 2018. So “I gave it ...