Original Y&R Cast Member Returns Today!

Longtime fans of THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS will get an extra treat today when they see the truck driver who gives Phyllis a ride into Genoa City. Her driver is played by none other than original cast member Tom Hallick, who played Brad Eliot. In Y&R’s first episode on March 26, 1973, Hallick’s character was the one who got a lift into town from a truck driver.

“I was shocked when Y&R called,” Hallick tells Soaps In Depth before adding with a chuckle: “I don’t know why they’re making such a big deal out of it… It’s for one episode!”

The actor was assigned the dressing room that belong to the late Jeanne Cooper (Katherine) during his brief return to the top-rated soap. “Jeanne and I had done a national tour of Plaza Suite,” Hallick recalls. “We’d finish at Y&R at 4:00 p.m., get a 6:00 p.m. flight and then [do a performance]. That was a lot of fun. Jeanne was always the life of the party. I never had scenes with her on the show, but we’d see each other all the time.”

Hallick’s original character was named after Bradley Bell, the son of late Y&R creator William J. Bell. (Today, of course, Bradley Bell is the executive producer/headwriter of THE BOLD & THE BEAUTIFUL.) “I didn’t get to see Brad while I was there, but I left him a note,” Hallick says with a smile. Of William Bell Sr., Hallick fondly recalls, “I remember going up to his house on Lake Geneva [in Wisconsin]. We’d spend wonderful weekends there. He was a very talented man. I had a lot of respect for what he did.”

Brad Eliot left town after his eyesight had been restored in the late ’70s, while Hallick moved over to a development deal at NBC which led to his playing Maxwell Hathaway on DAYS OF OUR LIVES in 1984. Many of the people with whom Brad interacted in Genoa City are no longer part of the show’s canvas, but his portrayer says he wouldn’t mind doing more Y&R. “It’d be kind of fun to go back again in some capacity,” he says.