Days of Our Lives' Bill Hayes (Doug Williams) Has Died Dead at 98
It’s with a heavy heart that we report that Bill Hayes, who played Days of Our Lives’ beloved Doug Williams for 54 years, has died at the age of 98. And those words — or some variation of them — are ones that we always knew we’d have to type at some point. Everyone dies. That’s life, right? But we did not realize until we actually had to click-click-click on the keyboard how doing so would make us feel.
Days of Our Lives shared the news, along with a statement from longtime executive producer Ken Corday saying, “I have known Bill for most of my life and he embodied the heart and soul of Days of our Lives. Although we are grieving and will miss him, Bill’s indelible legacy will live on in our hearts and the stories we tell, both on and off the screen.”
More: Interview with Days of Our Lives’ Hayeses
We lost a part of ourselves when we lost this actor in particular. Let’s be real: He’d been in our lives for… well, as long as a lot of us have been alive. And the punch to the gut doesn’t just stem from his work as Days of Our Lives’ Doug Williams, either. What he accomplished in the role was amazing: He transformed the erstwhile Brent Douglas from a shifty con artist into a sought-after romantic lead.
But Hayes also mattered to us on a personal level.
When we think of Days of Our Lives, we think of a few things automatically: the hourglass, Deidre Hall and Marlena Evans, donuts and Hayes and his on- and off-screen wife, Susan Seaforth Hayes, who plays Julie. The chemistry that the two of them struck up was so palpable that not only did it spill over into real life, it landed them a 1976 cover of Time magazine.
It doesn’t get a whole lot more iconic than that.
More: Flash back to Doug and Julie’s first wedding
Hayes’ career extended well beyond Days of Our Lives, of course. The sometime singer had lent his golden pipes to Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca’s Your Show of Shows in the 1950s, and the Broadway vet topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart — for five weeks, no less! — with the most popular of three versions of “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” in ’55 as Crocket craze swept the country. He also performed on Broadway, starred on variety shows and worked with some of the greatest singers and dancers of the time. So it makes sense that when Doug was introduced back in 1970, he’d be a lounge singer. (As well as a convict. It is Salem, after all!)
As if our hearts weren’t broken enough, Hayes was said to be every bit the charmer that Doug was. “He is just warm and wonderful,” Days of Our Lives executive producer Ken Corday told Soaps.com in 2021. “He pops onto the set and is just affable and friendly and has that same great rhythm and tone we’ve all come to know and love.
“The man you see on screen,” he added, “is very much the man Bill is off screen.”
In his time on the show, Hayes did it all. He got to sing and dance — especially in those early days — serve as mayor of Salem and run his own restaurant and nightclub. He even, towards the end got to play the Devil himself and perform a musical number with none other than Dick Van Dyke himself.
It hasn’t been an easy time for Days of Our Lives, as the show just said goodbye to Victor after John Aniston’s passing just a little over a year ago.
Scroll through the below photo gallery to see what Hayes’ Days of Our Lives castmates recall most fondly about him.
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