Helen Losee Wagner was born on September 3, 1918 in Lubbock,Tex., one of two daughters of Charles and Janet Tinker Wagner. She studied music and drama at Monmouth College in Illinois. Ms. Wagner, who portrayed the straitlaced Mrs. Hughes on As the World Turns, died on Saturday at her home in Mount Kisco, NY. She was 91.

Proper and unassuming, Ms. Wagner's Nancy Hughes stood for old fashioned values and never wavered. She was admired, and not only by housewives who, like Nancy, were striving to maintain a home while raising children. Well into the '60s, Ms. Wagner recieved fan letters from young men saying she reminded them of their mothers and grandmothers.

Before signing a 13-week contract for As the World Turns in 1956, Ms. Wagner had been a singer and stage actress, sometimes working as a church soloist to pay the rent. She had roles in Sunny River, Oklahoma! and The Bad Seed on Broadway.

In 1954 she married Robert Willey, an actor and theater producer. He died last year.