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that wasnt her point. She wanted to further demonize Ted; that was the main focus of their talk. She wants to ensure that Nicole leaves him so that he's free and single to be with her. At this point, I dont think she really cares what Nicole thinks of her; she just wants her out of the way Eva got what she got from Anita bc of Hayley. I think its important to remember that context bc they just dealt with an interloper that infiltrated their ranks and hurt her daughter in the worse way. Now you have another unfortunate girl positioned to do the same to her other daughter. The feelings are still too fresh and she doesnt want Eva to get the idea that she would ever be allowed the opportunity to play them again -
Oh I've seem this! That's part of why I'm curious! The show could put EastEnders to shame on the gangster Aspect! Oh I've seem this! That's part of why I'm curious! The show could put EastEnders to shame on the gangster Aspect! -
Eve was one of those characters that had the "Jessie Brewer"role. They had heavy storyline, they burned through it and now they are there for support and a touchstone in the community (Marland wanted to give Jessie story, but I agree with Monty...she best served in her connecting role, and keeping that damn Amy Vining busy so she keeps her nose out of things) So charcters are important and why they should have kept characters like Bridget around (even as she is more volatiles then Eve) who didnt need a big storyline but could have been behind the bar making connections and expostion, but Rauch wanted JEVA/JEVA/JEVA and DRAMA (which to him meant a lot of yelling and stupidity.) -
By Hunnibunni4447 · Posted
Why do I feel like (or remember possiblePlease register in order to view this content
) Mark Dante operated on Jeff? Also, I was under the impression that Jeff shot himself accidentally. In his drunken stupor he saw Rick and Monica together and he thought hevwas shooting at them. -
By Paul Raven · Posted
A number of errors in the above article. You wonder how with all that research,how they slipped through. I think they are conflating Women Alone with Lonely Women. I have never read anything of a serial called Women Alone. However,I am prepared to be proven wrong. It seems Irna actually WAS interested in TV soaps as witnessed by These Are My Children airing in 1949 on NBC in the early days of TV. I don't believe that was reluctance, rather simply good business sense as radio's dominance began to wane. Inferring that was somehow connected to Irna who was off that show 10 years prior. Again inferring that Phillips leaving 6 years prior had some connection to the eventual cancellation. Again these two events are in fact one. Irna left ATWT only once in 1970 and returned in 72. She was not working on another P&G show at the time. So either she brought the ratings up or they dipped, depending on which above account you believe Untrue. A World Apart debuted 5 years after she left AW. And AWA aired longer than a few months. Over a year in fact. I believe Orin Tovrov was the writer. Irna was not involved in the creation of this show. And no mention of Masquerade an Irna serial which was on air around this time. TBD finished in 1962. As we see over and over, these inaccuracies are published and accepted as fact. -
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By vetsoapfan · Posted
YES! While I objectively found the writing on RH (particularly during its first few years and then again in its final days) to be excellent, so many of the principle characters were unpleasant, and totally turned me off. I could never settle down and become emotionally involved with a group of people who grated on my nerves. -
By AMCOLTLLover · Posted
Ugh now we get a Emmerdale and Corrie crossover soon. ugh.. How desperate -
By AMCOLTLLover · Posted
This show is definitely not one to deserve the axe. especially the New Year’s Eve episode was crazy wild! there is a place where u can download nearly all episodes from October 2019 til today. But they don’t accept new people. https://youtu.be/aD-IXEJjymU?si=19wtpwthSNYOe-4y this is from this years winter break when the returned. I loved it -
By Contessa Donatella · Posted
Women Pioneers in Television: Biographies of Fifteen Industry Leaders by Cary O'Dell. McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers. Jefferson, NC © 1997. Irna Phillips pg. 181-193 In 1991 TV GUIDE published a special commemmorative magazine celebrating its 2,000th issue. Included in its pages was a special section on television visionaries, "The Creators." Of the twenty names there (among whom were Pat Weaver, Norman Lear, David Sarnoff, William Paley, and Leonard Goldenson), only one belonged to a woman.(1) That woman was almost single-handedly responsible for creating one of the most enduring and most profitable television genres in history. As Dan Wakefield wrote in 1976, she "is to soap opera what Edison is to the light bulb and Fulton to the steamboat."(2) She founded the industry of the television soap opera and for forty years was its single greatest writer, producer, guardian angel, and guiding light. The name? Irna Phillips. Irna Phillips was born July 1, 1901, (some sources give 1903) in Chicago, Illinois, the tenth and last child of William S. and Betty Phillips (who was 42 years old when she gave birth to Irna). Few of her brothers and sisters survived to maturity. Her parents owned a small grocery store in Chicago and the family lived above it. Her father died when Irna was eight, and her mother took on the task of caring for the family; years later, Phillips said of her mother, "{She} had the sturdiness befitting a pioneer."(3) By Phillips own account, he4r childhood was a sad and lonely one. In 65 she remembered herself as a "plain, sickly, silent child, with hand-me-down clothes and no friends," forced to sleep on a cot in the family's dining room because space was scarce. Phillips's only pleasure came from books and her own imagination, from which she fashioned cartons into stages and created make-believe families with large homes, wonderful clothes, and plenty of money.(4) Irna's early school was uneven. She refused to go to school unless someoine came in to dress her. Sometimes, as she remembered, no one bothered.(5) Nevertheless, she went on to graduate from Seen High School in Chicago in three years. After a short spell at Northwestern, Phillipa transferred to the University of Illinois, where she indulged a love for acting. Though her professor thought her talented, she never landed a major role in a school production and was finally told she had neither "the looks nor the stature for professional success."(6) Devastated by this news, Phillips, on her mother's advice, decided on a career in teaching. After graduation she taught for a year in a Fulton, Missouri, community college. Later she did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, taking courses in speech, drama, and psychology. She then taught for five years in Dayton, Ohio.(7) How Irna Phillips got back to Chicago is open to debate. Some sources say she returned to visit a newly born niece; others say that a tiff with a boyfriend sent her packing.(8) Others say she was only on vacation.(9) What *is* known is that she returned to the Windy City in 1930 and that she seldom left it again.(10) Exactly how Phillips got her first radio job is not known either. Two stories survive. In the first she was on a tour of WGN studios when someone mistook her for a radio actress applying for a job and handed her a script. Though they considered her voice too low for a woman, they were impressed enough with her reading of a poem by Eugene Field, "The Bowleg Boy," that they hired her.(11) The second story of Phillips's entrance into radio is that she walked into the station and asked point-blank for an audition. Either way, she ended up with a nonpaying job on WGN, broadcasting a daily trifle called THOUGHT FOR THE DAY, which consisted of Phillips reading poetry and adlibbing insprational commentary.(12) After two weeks Phillips was promptly let go only to be almost immediately rehired in a different capacity after she allegedly protested to her ex-boss. In her new job she was asked to write an act daily (six days a week) "radio strip," or serialized story. WGN had already been running the continuing story of GASOLINE ALLEY, based on Frank King's comic strip about small-town America, and now wanted another daily show; this one "about a family."(13) Irna Phillips responded with what many consider the first "soap opera." It was titled PAINTED DREAMS and began on October 20, 1930, running in short, ten-minute installments.(14) The show had six characters but only two actors. Phillips played the main character, Mother Monahan (a role based on Phillips's own mother), and the "mystery character," Kay. Actress Ireene Wicker (later "Kellogg'sSinging Lady") played all the other parts - including the family's barking dog, Mikey. The two women got by without male voices by only referring to the men in their lives, never by having them present.(15) PAINTED DREAMS had run for two years o n WGN when Phillips tried to create radio network interest in it. WGN refused the idea, saying that it owned the show outright and that it could not be moved to another broadcaster. Phillips quit the station and began what was to become a long, bitter court battle with the station over ownership of the series. The case dragged on in the courts for ten years, finally being decided against Phillips. By then, though, she had moved on to other things. She had also learned a lesson: All future shows and scripts she worked on would be copyrighted in her name alone.(16) In 1932 Phillips bounced back with her second soap, title TODAY'S CHILDREN. It ran on WGN's chief rival WMAQ (at first unsponsored and with Phillips footing all costs in order to retain ownership). It was a thinly disguised version of DREAMS: Mother Monahan was now Mother Moran, and the other characters of the show were similarly redesigned. For a time Phillips acted in the serial but eventually found the dual work of acting and writing too taxing. She resigned herself to writing only.(17) Soon after, "the Phillips impulse" for creating new sows began. She created a short-lived soap, MASQUERADE - the story of a painter involved with different glamorous women. Devised as a way to sell the sponsor's cosmetics, it lasted three months.(18) TODAY'S CHILDREN ended in 1938, partly because the death of Phillips's mother made work on a mother-centered show too difficult for her emotionally, and partly because, as Phillips said, "I had exhausted all the problems of these people."(19) These two failures and the demise of CHILDREN were balanced by two other Phillips creations that survived and prospered: THE GUIDING LIGHT (debuting in 1937) and THE ROAD OF LIFE (debuting in 1938).(20) ROAD OF LIFE centered on the life of noble surgeon Dr. Jim Brent, who "mends broken legs and broken hearts with equal ease."(21) GUIDING LIGHT was the story of Dr. John Ruthledge, a small-town minister. The character was based on a friend of Phillips. Sometimes during the early years an entire fifteen-minute episode was devoted to a Ruthledge sermon. Collected into book form, the character's many sermons sold 290,000 copies nationwide.(22) Irna Phillips also created another hospital-based drama around this time, WOMAN IN WHITE. And when a group of characters from GUIDING LIGHT, the Kransky family, developed enough, she spun them off into their own show, THE RIGHT TO HAPPINESS, in 1939. It ran until 1960.(23) Along the way, creating, writing, and controlling her series, Phillips pioneered many of the staples of soap operas today. She was the first to incorporate professional people into her stories: lawyers, ministers, and doctors replaced minimum-wage, blue-collar workers as heroes.(24) Phillips was the first to use such soap devices as organ music (provided by Bernice Yanocek) for dramatic effect, and cliff-hanger endings to keep audiences coming back.(25) Phillips was the first to bring a higher social consciousness to the world of soaps. In 1945, after using THE GUIDING LIGHT to help sell war bonds and after realizing she had been "subconsciously" educating her listeners in various areas for years, Phillips decided to take a more uniform approach to the idea of "social significance." Phillips and staff sent letters to a variety of agencies around the country (the Red Cross, the American Legion), asking a simple question: "What is your problem and what can we do to help you with it on one of our programs?" From their responses, Phillips devised soap story lines intended to further those agencies' causes.(26) Quite ingeniously, Irna Phillips also tailored her shows to her predominantly housewife audience. She slowed the pace so that women doing housework could answer the door, vacuum, or see to the baby and still not miss anything. She rationed ideas and story lines by doing the same thing.(27) Phillips, herself, was a highly eccentric woman, possibly more than any of the thousands of characters she created during her career.She consulted fortune tellers from time to ti me and changed the spelling of her name from the original Erna to Irna when a numerologist said it would ease her life.(28) She was also a hypochondriac. She visited doctors nearly every day of her life. A physician who lived in her apartment building in Chicago stopped by several times a day to listen to her complaints and take her temperature.(29) Her trips to New York City were often mixed in with trips to different hospitals and specialists in Manhattan. Once, while staying in her suite at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, she insisted that storm windows be installed to end the drafts. The windows are still there.(30) Frequently, she asked to be pushed around in a wheelchair.(31) Not surprisingly, Phillips's preoccupation with illness and disease became evident in her work. Doctors and nurse as characters, hospitals as settings, and illnesses as subjects for drama were vintage Phillips characteristics.(32) Phillips's treatment of actors who worked on her shows was rather odd as well. She seldom bothered to learn the names of the performers, knowing them only as the characters they portrayed.(33) Actress Helen Wagner, who has played Nancy Hughes (now McClowsky) on AS THE WORLD TURNS since it premiered in 1956, was a friend of Irna's and remembers just how typical that was, "I was always Nancy to her. Any reference to my husband always meant Chris, my on-screen husband, not my real-life husband. I never became 'Helen' until very late in her career, after knowing her many, many years."(34) Similarly, Phillips did not like the off-screen lives of her actors to interfere with the on-screen lives of their characters. Helen Wagner, whose character of Nancy was in the early days something of a homebody, was for many years denied a vacation from the show because it would mean writing the character out for a few weeks. Phillips told Ms. Wagner, "Nancy is a housewife, Nancy does not travel." It was several years before Nancy was allowed to go visit a sister out of state so that actress Helen Wagner could have a few days off.(35) Like her characters' lives and her plots, Phillips rigidly controlled her home life and went to great lengths to keep it simple. She lived far away from the network TV industry in her Chicago apartment. Until she was in her late thirties, Phillips shared a bedroom with her mother, and she never learned how to drive. Though her sponsor once gave her a 1940 Plymouth to celebrate ten years in radio (and Phillips named it Sheila), it is doubtful she ever drove it.(36) Even her weekly menus were preset: on Sunday there was leg of lamb; Monday, chicken; Tuesday, steak; Wednesday, meatloaf; Thursday, lamb chops; Friday, spaghetti; and Saturday, stew.(37) Phillips seldom had anything to do with the press, which she believed (perhaps rightly) dismissed soap operas as second-class subculture, snickering at her success and her fans' loyalty. She permitted few interviews during her entire career.(38) Also not surprising was Phillips's flair for melodrama. In 1960 interviewer Peter Wyden related the story of the day Phillips's son Tom arrived late to meet her: "She does not just become vaguely uneasy. Her concern is translated into imaginary but stark disaster - he's been run over, his body is lying at the curb, he is bleeding badly."(39) Irna Phillips labeled herself a compulsive worrier and believed she would never get an ulcer because she turned all her worries into scripts.(40) "I do quite a bit of projecting," ahe told an interviewer.(41) To oversee her programs, Phillips moved in 1940 to New York City. After seeing the toll the war was influcting on the country in 1941, she fashioned the serial WOMEN ALONE to dramatize the plight of women left on the home front. Her experiences in New York also served as the model for yet another new drama, LONELY WOMEN, which had a short on-air lifespan beginning in 1942 before Phillips recycled an old title and the show became known as TODAY'S CHILDREN in 1943. After six months, though, New York was not to Phillips's liking, and she soon returned to Chicago. A similar move to California in 1943 did not work out either, and she returned to Chicago after only nine months.(42) With so many shows on the air at the same time, and wielding as much power as she did, Irna Phillips put forth a revolutionary idea for soap opera broadcasting in 1943. THE GENERAL MILLS HOUR, as she foresaw it, would consist of three ofher shows running back-to-back - each in different lengths, from fifteen to twenty minutes depending on the plot - with characters from each occasionally overlapping and interacting. A narrating voice-over would navigate proceedings. It endured for a few months until Phillips abandoned the concept.(43) By 1943, only a little over ten years after she began, Phillips was single-handedly responsible for five different daily dramas. Her total income from them was $250,000, and her literary output was estimated at two million words per year, the equivalent of forty novels.(44) She had established such a factory by this time that she found it necessary to have a lawyer and two doctors on retainer just to act as consultants.(45) It was only later that Phillips reached the need for support writers, or "dialoguers," who filled out the basic story lines she devised. Many young writers who began with Phillips went on to successes of their own. In 1946 she hired a young recently graduated writer named Agnes Eckhardt, who later married and changed her name to Agnes Nixon.(46) Nixon would go on to create ALL MY CHILDREN and LOVING. Phillips also had a longtime collaborator in writer William Bell. After cocreating ANOTHER WORLD with Phillips, he went on to found with his wife Lee Phillip Bell two of the most successful soaps of recent years, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS and, later, THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL. Also in 1943, at near the same age her mother was when she herself was born, Phillips, unmarried and a career woman, adopted a child, Thomas Dirk. A year and a half later, Phillips adopted Katherine Louise.(47) Throughout the 1940s Irna Phillips reigned as the undisputed queen of the radio soap opera. By the end of the decade a new medium was on the horizon and it would be that medium that Phillips (somewhat reluctantly) would conquer next. By all accounts Irna Phillips was not anxious to move her shows from radio to television. With television, a fog horn could no longer substitute for the deck of a ship, and actors could no longer be brought in and replaced so easily. So reluctant was she to give up radio that after THE GUIDING LIGHT debuted on television on July 30, 1952, the scripts were rebroadcast that same day on radio. The two GUIDING LIGHTS ran concurrently on the two media for several years until finally the incredible success of the television version made the radio outlet obsolete.(48) Around this time Proctor and Gamble [sic: My Note: This book spelled Procter and Gamble wrong over & over.], the soap manufacturer and a longtime force in soap opera broadcasting, began its long association with Phillips. Phillips sold the ownership of her current TV dramas to Proctor and Gamble Productions. Between the two of them (Phillips and P&G) they formed the biggest, toughest alliance daytime television had ever seen.(49) In 1956 Phillips, in association with Proctor and Gamble, stormed onto television with what was to become her most popular (and some say, personal favorite) creation, AS THE WORLD TURNS. The continuing story of the Hughes and Lowell clans of Oakdale, Illinois, began on April 2, 1956, as TV's first half-hour soap. It was produced live until 1975 when it was lengthened to a hour. The show revolutionized daytime drama by gaining more viewers than ever before in the history of the genre (sometimes as high as a fifty percent share of the audience), and it launched soapdom's first all-out lying, scheming villainess, Lisa Miller (later, after marriage/s, Lisa Hughes, then Coleman, then Mitchell, then others). She was played by actress Eileen Fulton, who continues on the show to this day. Fulton's and the show's fame were so intense in the mid-1960s that CBS created a nighttime spin-off titled OUR PRIVATE WORLD. It, however, would only last a few months.(50) Irna Phillips's actual writing for her series, radio and television, was rather unusual. Every day at nine in the morning Phillips sat down at a rickety, brown card table - the same one she had used for years - and began to devise that day's scripts from projected story lines often set down months in advance. From there she would dictate dialogue to her secretary and close friend, Rose Cooperman. "I really don't think I write," she said "I act."(51) Occasionally sitting still and occasionally moving around the room, moving as the character would, Phillips assumed all the characters in the scene - male, female, adult, child - changing her voice to indicate a change in speaker.(52) This process worked so well for Phillips it was later adopted by many of her proteges, including William Bell.(53) As Phillips would talk, "Rosie," her secretary, would take down every word, following the various characters by following changes in Irna's voice and gestures. Rosie filled in the punctuation along the way. Both women became so involved with the story line they were creating that they found themselves in tears.(54) The average time for Irna Phillips to dictate a half-hour script was about an hour and forty-five minutes. It usually took longer to type the finished manuscript than it did for Phillips to dream it up.(55) During Phillips's "writing" she seldom lost her place or became confused. If she did, she could always consult one of her various genealogical charts she created for each show. They consisted of squares containing characters' names with solid lines connecting relatives, dotted lines connecting in-laws, and "X"'s over names of dead or missing family members.(56) After the writing was finished Phillips would sit down and watch not only her shows but those of her competitors as well. While viewing her own shows, if she found something she did not like in script, performance, or production, it was switched immediately. This often meant a phone call to New York and a list of demands. A few times actors found themselves jobless after a phone call from Phillips. Not surprisingly, many actors, writers, and crew members feared Phillips's wrath. Once, when an actor playing what many thought an indispensable character asked for a raise in salary, Phillips refused and solved the whole problem by simply killing off the character. The show went on without him.(57) Don Hastings, who has played Dr. Bob Hughes on AS THE WORLD TURNS since 1960 (and wrote for the show for many years under the name J.J. Mathews), remembers Phillips as a tough but fair mother lion, ferocious in protecting her creation: "She was very tough on her writers but would protect them if the network or the producers criticized them. She always said that if she okayed a script it was as good as her writing it herself."(58) Though Irna Phillips could be difficult, and a great many lived in constant fear of her, nobody would deny her skill. Don Hastings remembers a time when AS THE WORLD TURNS ratings had slipped. Owners Proctor and Gamble asked Phillips - then at work on another Proctor and Gamble show - to return and help WORLD. "Can you bring us up to a thirty share by the end of the year?" they asked. Phillips delivered the thirty share in thirteen weeks.(59) Additionally, Phillips was not as difficult on a personal level as she might first appear. Throughout her career she was instrumental in starting other writers in their careers. Agnes Nixon, Bill Bell, and many other names benefitted from her support and guidance. Phillips was also known to take many young actors under her wing, sheltering and encouraging them. In her life in Chicago, Phillips had a small but tight-knit group of friends and a fiercely devoted household staff. They admired and respected her enough to overlook her dramatic nature and her many pseudo-illnesses. Producer Lee Bell, who with her husband Bill created THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS and THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, was a friend and coworker of Irna's for many years; she remembers an eccentric but likable person. "She was a genius," Bell said, "A brilliant, intelligent woman. You wanted to be around her. Whatever eccentricities [she had] didn't matter."(60) In 1964 Phillips formulated a new series for NBC titled ANOTHER WORLD. The title referred to the separate "psychological worlds" of its characters and the two separate economic worlds of the show's two major families. Not accidently, it also drew comparison with the previous Phillips creation AS THE WORLD TURNS.(61) ANOTHER WORLD was the first daytime soap to run one hour. It was also the first daytime show to address the topic of abortion.(62) Phillips invited controversy again in 1967 when she attempted to introduce an interracial story line into LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING, a show she was also writing at the time. When the network bosses balked at the idea, Phillips walked out. She abandoned the show, and it was canceled in 1973.(63) Despite Phillips forward thinking, however, she did not always approve of the direction daytime shows were taking. She said in 1972: "The daytime serial is destroying itself, eating itself up with rape, abortion, illegitimacy, men falling in love with other men's wives, all of which is often topped by a murder, followed by a long, drawn-out murder trial.(64) In 1964 ABC-TV put Irna Phillips, at age 63, on the payroll as a special consultant for its primetime soaper PEYTON PLACE, the serialized twice-weekly program based on the book by Grace Metalious. By taking the PEYTON PLACE job, Phillips achieved a rare triple play: she now had her hand in, and was receiving paychecks from, shows running on all three major networks.(65) In 1965 Phillips cocreated DAYS OF OUR LIVES and composed what has since become arguably the most famous opening line for any show in television's history: "Like sands through the hour glass ..."(66) All did not always flow smoothly, however. The early years of ANOTHER WORLD were filled with complications: major characters were thrown out with little explanation, and actors were replacedal,ost weekly. Frustrated, Phillips left ANOTHER WORLD to concentrate on a show for ABC that she was cocreating with her daughter (and was based on Irna's own life). That show would only air for a few months when it premiered. Agnes Nixon was later brought into ANOTHER WORLD as head writer to whip the show into shape.(67) Since Irna Phillips had almost single-handedly created soap operas as a dramatic form years ago in radio, they had begun to change. The incedible success of her own AS THE WORLD TURNS made daytime soap operas an important, highly profitable part of the network schedule. To gain viewers and therefore money, soaps became more and more sensational. Gradually they became more scandalous, sexual, and action-oriented; Irna Phillips's stories of women sitting around the breakfast table were becoming passe. Phillips found herself being left behind by the genre she had created. Allen Potter, who worked on ANOTHER WORLD with Phillips during its difficult years, summed up the problem: "She was from a different era. [She was] still writing kids going down to the malt shop."(68) Phillips was asked to rejoin AS THE WORLD TURNS in 1972.(69) She simplified some of the plots but failed to turn the recent ratings dip around. Proctor and Gamble, the show's producer, fired Phillips in 1973. Back in Chicago she began work on an autobiography, but nothing was ever published.(70) On December 23, 1973, Irna Phillips died in her sleep at her home in Chicago. She was seventy-two. In accordance with her wishes news of her death was kept from the press for several weeks.(71) What made Phillips a success - the Queen of the Soaps, as she was often called - is somewhat difficult to answer. Helen Wagner recently explained it this way: "We [AS THE WORLD TURNS] premiered the same day as EDGE OF NIGHT [a now defunct mystery-based soap on ABC]. What was important on that show was the story. For AS THE WORLD TURNS what was important was the character.(72) Phillips realized early in her career that the success of serialized stories depended on her audience becoming involved and knowledgeable about the characters on the show. She told BROADCASTING in 1972: "Characters have to be multidimensional. The story has to come from the characters, to the point where your viewers will get to know a character so well they can predict his or her behavior in a given dramatic situation."(73) Phillips believes there were several reasons for her success, not the least of which was her self-described limited vocabulary ("my greatest asset"), which, she believed, made her programs universal. She also attempted in her writing to appeal to the basic instincts of self-preservation, sex, and family.(74) Perhaps Phillips's greatest personal achievement, however, was creating a world. fully and believably, that she did not really know herself. Though she never married; nor did she give birth; nor did she ever own a home. But somehow Irna Phillips knew enough about all those qualities to entertain millions for generations - to spin endlessly involving tales of day-to-day life; tales about the simple joys and daily dramas of paying the bills, raising children, belonging to a family, and falling in love. Irna Phillips wrote in McCALL'S magazine in 1965, "None of us is different, except in degree. None of us is a stranger to success and failure, life and death, the need to be lovedthe struggle to communicate..."(75) Four of the programs Irna Phillips created - AS THE WORLD TURNS, GUIDING LIGHT, DAYS OF OUR LIVES, and ANOTHER WORLD - are still on the air today. IRNA PHILLIPS July 1, 1901 Born in Chicago, Illinois 1922 Graduated with bachelor's degree in education. 1924 Graduated with master's degree in speech; began career teaching school in Missouri and, later, Ohio. May 1930 Returned to Chicago; joined WGN as actress and ad hoc writer. October 20, 1930 PAINTED DREAMS, radio's first "soap opera" debuted;created by Irna Phillips. June 16, 1932 TODAY'S CHILDREN, second Phillips creation, premiered; departed WGN. 1934 MASQUERADE premiered. 1935 MASQUERADE aired last broadcast. January 25, 1937 THE GUIDING LIGHT premiered. 1938 TODAY'S CHILDREN aired final broadcast; ROAD OF LIFE and WOMAN IN WHITE premiered. October 16, 1939 THE RIGHT TO HAPPINESS premiered. 1940 Phillips moved briefly to New York City; would return to Chicago after six months. 1941 WOMEN ALONE premiered; settled court suit with WGN. June 29, 1942 LONELY WOMEN (title later changed to TODAY'S CHILDREN) premiered. 1943 Resided briefly in Los Angeles; adopted son, Thomas Dirk. 1944 Adopted daughter, Katherine. Summer 1948 WOMAN IN WHITE aired last broadcast. October 11, 1948 THE BRIGHTER DAY premiered on radio. January 31, 1949 THESE ARE MY CHILDREN premiered. March 4, 1949 THESE ARE MY CHILDREN ended. 1950 Second incarnation of TODAY'S CHILDREN ended on radio. June 30, 1952 THE GUIDING LIGHT debuted on television. 1956 BRIGHTER DAY ended on radio. January 4, 1954 THE BRIGHTER DAY premiered on television. December 13, 1954 ROAD OF LIFE premiered on television; show ended broadcasts on radio. July 1, 1955 ROAD OF LIFE aired last broadcast on television. April 2, 1956 AS THE WORLD TURNS premiered. November 25, 1960 THE RIGHT TO HAPPINESS ended on radio. May 4, 1964 ANOTHER WORLD premiered. 1964 Worked as consultant on primetime's PEYTON PLACE. May 5, 1965 OUR PRIVATE WORLD, AS THE WORLD TURNS spin-off, premiered in primetime. September 10, 1965 OUR PRIVATE WORLD aired last episode. September 28, 1965 THE BRIGHTER DAY aired last broadcast on TV. November 8, 1965 DAYS OF OUR LIVES premiered. September 18, 1967 LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING, soap opera, premiered. March 23, 1973 LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING aired last broadcast. Late 1973 Fired by Proctor and Gamble. December 23, 1974 Passed away at home in Chicago. NOTES 1. "The Creators," TV GUIDE (Commemorative Edition) (July 1991), p.59. 2. Dan Wakefield, ALL HER CHILDDREN (New York: Doubleday, 1976), p.27. 3. CURRENT BIOGRAPHY (1943), p.590. 4. Irna Phillips, "Every Woman's Life Is a Soap Opera," Mccall's (March 1965), p.116 5. Ibid. 6. Peter Wyden, "Madam Soap Opera," SATURDAY EVENING POST (25 June 1960), p.129. 7. Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green, NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN: THE MODERN PERIOD (Cambridge: Belknap, 1980), p.542. 8. "Script Queen," TIME (10 June 1940), p.66. 9. Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green, p.542. 10. "Writing On: Irna Phillips Mends With Tradition," BROADCASTING (6 November 1972), p.75 11. Madeline Edmundson and David Rounds, THE SOAPS (New York: Stein & Day, 1973), p.43. 12. CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, p.590 13. Sicherman and Green, p.542. 14. Robert C. Allen, SPEAKING OF SOAPS (CHapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1985), p.111. 15. "Writing On: Irna Phillips Mends With Tradition," p.75. 16. Edmundson and Rounds, p.44. 17. Allen, p.112. 18. Wyden, p.130. 19. Ibid. 20. CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, p.590. 21. "Queen of the Soaps," NEWSWEEK (11 May 1964), p.66. 22. Sicherman and Green, p.543. 23. Wyden, p.130. 24. Sicherman and Green, p.259. 25. CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, p.519. 26. "With Significance," TIME (11 June 1945), p.46. 27. CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, p.590. 28. Wyden, p.129. 29. Interview with Lee Bell (4 September 1991). All other information and quotes from Mrs. Bell in this chapter were taken from this interview. 30. Interview with Don Hastings (5 December 1991). All other information and quotes from Mr. Hastings in this chapter were taken from this interview. 31. Wyden, p.129. 32. Robert LaGuardia, SOAP WORLD (New York: Arbor House, 1983), p.20. 33. Wyden, p.129 34. Interview with Helen Wagner (10 October 1991). All other information and quotes from Ms. Wagner in this chapter were taken from this interview. 35. Ibid., p.130. 36. "Script Queen," p.66. 37. Wyden, p.127. 38. Wagner interview. 39. Wyden, p.127. 40. Phillips, p.117. 41. Wyden, p.127. 42. Ibid., p.130. 43. Ibid. 44. CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, P.591. 45. "Script Queen,"p.68. 46. Wakefield, p.28. 47. Sicherman and Green, p.543. 48. Wyden, p.130. 49. Ibid. 50. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, THE COMPLETE DIRECTORY TO PRIME TIME NETWORK TV SHOWS(New York: Ballantine, 1981), p.571. 51. Wyden, p.129. 52. Phillips, p.168. 53. Bell interview. 54. Wyden, p.30. 55. Ibid. 56. Phillips, p.168. 57. CURRENT BIOGRAPHY, p.591. 58. Hastings interview. 59. Ibid. 60. Bell interview. 61. LaGuardia, p.81. 62. Ibid. 63. Jean Rouverol, WRITING FOR THE SOAPS (Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest Books,1984), p.11. 64. "Writing On: Irna Phillips Mends with Tradition," p.75. 65. "Queen of the Soaps," NEWSWEEK (11 May 1964), p.66. 66. Rouverol, p.11. 67. La Guardia, p.81. 68. Ibid. 69. "Week's Headliners," BROADCASTING (17 January 1972), p.9. 70. LaGuardia, p.81. 71. Landry, p.71. 72. Wagner interview. 73. "Writing On: Irna Phillips Mends with Tradition," p.75. 74. Sicherman and Green, p.542. 75. Phillips, p.116.
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