After four years of playing Maureen Reardon Bauer on the soap opera, Guide light, Ellen Dolan decided that she should go to Los Angeles to further her acting career. This is what happened next:

Ellen Dolan: So, I quit and went out and immediately made the standard of ‘doing two national commercials a year and then doing a lot of regional theater.’ What did I do.

Until I went shopping for dinner one night, which consisted of a can of cat food for my cats or some peanut butter for me. And you had to feed the cats. And he couldn’t call home for money. So it was like, oh my.

So I contacted my agents and said, “get me out, get me out.” And they did. And I started doing all these pilots and everything. And testing. And that’s how we ended up thinking that I should go to Los Angeles.

And that’s when I got the call from Doug Marland saying “Would you do Margo again?” And I thought … yeah. I want to go home. I want to be in New York. And I want to do the kind of parts that the day allows women to do. Yes.

And the same thing happened when I left it As the world turns in ’92, I think. And I went back to Los Angeles thinking that I really had to try again. I have to try well, because by then I was almost 30 years old. 36 years? And by Hollywood standards, that is …

Susan Dansby: On the hill.

Ellen Dolan: That is over the hill.

So I went out and booked a pilot again, right away. I did everything good and correct. And he was living in a nice place. And he was working on different things.

You know I got to the point where I was doing two episodes in Walker, Texas Ranger. I was in Texas and I looked at it all and thought, this is not as fun as the character I was doing during the day.

So when I found out they were going to recast Margo, I called my agent and said, I want to go back to New York.

And they said, are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? Because if we call Vince and bother him, it’ll be hell to pay. And I said, yes, I’m sure. I never made a character as interesting as Margo.