Liza Walton Sentell
| Liza Walton Sentell | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search for Tomorrow character | |||||||||||||
| Portrayed by |
Denise Nickerson Kathleen Beller Meg Bennett Sherry Mathis Louan Gideon Mathis was most identified in the role. | ||||||||||||
| Profile | |||||||||||||
| Other names |
Liza Kaslo Liza Walton | ||||||||||||
| Residence | Henderson, USA | ||||||||||||
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Liza Kaslo Sentell (born Liza Walton) is a fictional character on the now cancelled American Soap opera, Search for Tomorrow.
The role was originated by actress Denise Nickerson and later on, she was played by Kathleen Beller; actress and writer, Meg Bennett; actress Sherry Mathis, who was most identified in the role; and Louan Gideon, who played her to the show's end in 1986.
Liza was the daughter of Janet Walton and her second husband, Dr. Dan Walton. This makes her the granddaughter of Stu Bergman. As a young girl, she was devoted to her father, which explained why she was so against her widowed mother's remarriage to psychiatrist Wade Collins. She felt that it would have been an affront to his memory.
After he skillfully made her see and understand what her unhappiness was doing to her mother, she gave her blessing and Janet and Wade married. She also warmed to her new stepfather.
Liza met a young musician named Steve Kaslo (Michael Nouri); the brother of her friend, Amy Kaslo (Anne Wyndham). They fell in love and were eventually married. Steve also discovered he had leukemia, and was near death. For a while, it went into remission, but it became malignant again, and eventually Steve died while recording a song.
After his death, Liza was courted by Travis Sentell (Rod Arrants), a wealthy businessman who had just brought Tourneur Industries into the community of Henderson. His uncle, Martin Tourneur (John Aniston) eventually became Joanne Gardner's fourth husband until she divorced him because of his infidelity.
He had funded Steve's rock opera, when her mother refused to help Liza, on legal advice. They shared many exotic adventures including kidnapping, almost getting killed and blown up in Hong Kong, and dealing with many very shady people, which included his own parents. This culminated in their marriage. Even after Travis's death and her remarriage, Liza is usually best remembered as Liza Sentell, just as her mother is best remembered as Janet Collins. This is because of the longevity of her marriage to Travis.
They were married for a good part of the eighties until Travis was killed. She eventually remarried into the Kendall family when she wed patriarch Lloyd Kendall. In the show's final episode, Liza had seen someone who was a spitting image of Travis and was intrigued. However, this hadn't been pursued, since Search was cancelled. In many ways, the Travis and Liza story was Search for Tomorrow's answer to General Hospital's Luke and Laura storyline, which had been very popular at the time due to the adventuresome nature of the story.