Charita Bauer

Charita Bauer (December 20, 1922 – February 28, 1985) was an American soap opera radio and television actress.

Born in Newark, New Jersey on December 20, 1923, she began her career at the age of eight as a model for clothing ads. Her talents included singing, playing the piano, and speaking three languages.

Bauer attended the Professional Children's School in New York, and her first theater appearance was on Broadway in Thunder on the Left (1933). She was the only child actress in The Women on Broadway in 1938. By 1942, Bauer's maturity was evident as a newspaper reported, "Charita Bauer ... gets her first 'grown-up' role in a Broadway play in William Roos' 'Life of Reilly,' which opens on Apr. 29." In 1944, she played in Good Morning, Corporal, on Broadway, with a reviewer commenting, "she's grown up and in this play has the role of a young woman ..."

Bauer first appeared on radio on WPAP in New York City as a child. She was active throughout the 1930s and 1940s on numerous radio dramas of the day, including Let's Pretend, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons. The March of Time, The FBI in Peace and War, Suspense and other programs.

She played Sarah O'Brien in Rose of My Dreams, Mary Aldrich in The Aldrich Family (a role she also played on the television version of the program) and Judy Todhunter in David Harum. Bauer also played in Second Husband,The Parker Family, and Orphans of Divorce.

On November 11, 1944, Bauer made her 2,000th radio broadcast when she appeared on Grand Central Station.

She played headstrong and opinionated Bertha "Bert" Miller Bauer on the long-running soap The Guiding Light on radio from 1950 to 1956 and on TV from 1952 to 1985. While her character was a spitfire in the earlier days, by the 1970s she had been relegated to the ceremonial role of town matriarch. To avoid confusion between her real life and her popular soap role, Charita asked the show's producers to name her TV son Michael after her own son Michael Crawford. (The show was aired live in the early days, and a mistake like addressing her TV son by an incorrect name would have been difficult to cover.)

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