Soap opera role brought prominence

Augusta Dabney, 89, an actress best known for playing Isabelle Alden for a decade on the ABC soap opera “Loving,” died Monday at her home in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., after an extended illness, said her daughter Lillah McCarthy.

Born in 1918 and raised in Berkeley, Dabney graduated from UC Berkeley and moved to New York in 1937 to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. A year later, she debuted on Broadway in “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” and met her first husband, actor Kevin McCarthy, in the production. They had three children before divorcing in 1964.

Although she acted in nine more Broadway shows, including two plays by Edward Albee, Dabney determined that acting in daytime dramas would allow her to raise her children.

She appeared in nine soap operas and met her second husband, William Prince, when he played her spouse on NBC’s “Young Doctor Malone.” They appeared in at least three other soaps together, including “Another World” and “As the World Turns.” They were married from 1964 until Prince’s death in 1996.

The couple also played Michael Keaton’s parents in “The Paper” (1994), one of her dozen films.

She was a regular on the dramatic anthology “Robert Montgomery Presents” in 1955 and made her final TV appearance in 2001 on the A&E; series “100 Centre Street.”