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Irna Phillips
Irna Phillips (July 1, 1901 – December 23, 1973) was an American scriptwriter, screenwriter, casting agent, and actress who pioneered a style of daytime soap opera in the United States geared specifically toward women. Phillips created, produced, and wrote several radio and television daytime serials throughout her career, including Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World. She was also a mentor to several other pioneers of the American daytime soap opera, including Agnes Nixon, William J. Bell and Ted Corday.
Phillips was one of 10 children born to a German-Jewish family in Chicago. Her father died when she was 8, leaving her mother alone to raise the children. She claimed to be a lonely child always given hand-me-down clothes and making up long and involved stories for her dolls to live out. At 19, she was pregnant, abandoned by her boyfriend, and then gave birth to a still-born baby. She studied drama at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (where she became a member of Phi Sigma Sigma sorority), receiving a Master of Arts degree before going on to earn a master's degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[citation needed]
Phillips wanted to be an actress, but her teachers told her she was too plain to have any real success. From 1925 to 1930, she worked as a school teacher in Dayton, Ohio, teaching drama and theatre history to schoolchildren. While working in this capacity she continued to attempt a career as an actress, and after performing several acting roles for radio productions at WGN in Chicago, she left her career as a teacher. At the age of 42, Phillips adopted a son, Thomas Dirk Phillips. A year later, she adopted a daughter, Katherine Louise Phillips.[citation needed]
After working as a staff writer on a daytime talk show, Phillips created the serial Painted Dreams, which aired daily except Sundays on local Chicago station WGN. Phillips wrote every episode of the series in addition being a starring cast member as the characters Mother Moynihan and Sue Morton. Mother Moynihan was a widowed matriarch of a large Irish-American family. Phillips based Mother Moynihan's struggles on her own mother's obstacles. After creating, producing and starring in Painted Dreams, Phillips became credited with innovating a daytime serial format for radio geared toward women. Later known as “Queen of the Soaps”, she introduced techniques such as the organ bridge to give a smooth flow between scenes and the cliff-hanger ending to each episode.
Phillips endured much disapproval for her writing, especially from sponsors like Procter & Gamble. The radio business during the 1930s was heavily male-dominated, and as result, it was claimed the audience for Phillips' serials were childlike, unrealistic, vulgar, and distasteful. In reality, her female characters were depicted as strong women with options, education, and personality. Phillips' characters were not something of the ordinary for the stereotypical 1930s women. No regular male roles were introduced until later in the series' run. The conflict most basic to the programs' dramatic structure was that between traditional and changing gender roles: Irene Moynihan, the daughter was characterized as the “aspiring modern girl, with ambitions toward a career”, against Mother Moynihan's and Sue Morton's more traditional views. Although Painted Dreams began as an unsponsored program, Phillips believed that a radio series must be a "utility to its sponsors" and that it must "actually sell merchandise; otherwise the object of radio advertising has failed". With this in mind, she wrote in an engagement and a wedding which provided the possibility of product tie-ins.[citation needed]
In 1932, Phillips urged WGN to sell Painted Dreams to a national network. When they refused, Phillips took them to court, claiming the series as her own property. WGN manager Henry Selinger claimed to have come up with the original daytime serial to sell products for women. However, Phillips was hired to write as well as perform in this first series. Disputes of ownership over the innovative serial ended Phillips' association with WGN and she was picked up by opponent station WMAQ. Painted Dreams was then changed to Today's Children featuring the same plot and debate over starting a career or starting a family. Phillips had then learned to retain all rights and ownership to her newly titled show and the many that followed during her career.[citation needed]
By 1938, Painted Dreams emerged from the courts and was purchased by CBS. The nature of the court settlement prohibited Phillips from any future involvement with the series. That year, when Phillips's mother died, she demanded that Today's Children be discontinued out of respect. CBS agreed and replaced it with her new series, Woman in White, a serial which focused on the internal workings of a hospital; it was one of the first daytime serials to be set in a hospital. It was on Woman in White that Phillips first began working with Agnes Nixon. William J. Bell also began his apprenticeship under Phillips during her radio days.[citation needed]
In 1937, Phillips collaborated with Emmons Carlson on her third radio serial, The Guiding Light (shortened to simply Guiding Light after 1975), basing it on personal experiences; after giving birth to a stillborn child at age 19, she found spiritual comfort listening to sermons by a preacher of a church centered on the brotherhood of man. It was these sermons that formed the nucleus of the creation of The Guiding Light. From 1937 to 1946, the series was broadcast from Chicago on the NBC radio network. The show was cancelled by NBC twice; once in 1939, and once in 1946. After the first time on October 13, 1939, it was brought back by popular demand of the listening audience and began again only four months later on January 22, 1940. NBC cancelled the series a second time on November 29, 1946, coinciding with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission forcing a split of NBC and the creation of the ABC network. CBS would pick up the series seven months later on June 2, 1947, where it transferred to television in June 1952, and where it would stay for the remainder of its run until its television conclusion in September 2009.
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Irna Phillips
Irna Phillips (July 1, 1901 – December 23, 1973) was an American scriptwriter, screenwriter, casting agent, and actress who pioneered a style of daytime soap opera in the United States geared specifically toward women. Phillips created, produced, and wrote several radio and television daytime serials throughout her career, including Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World. She was also a mentor to several other pioneers of the American daytime soap opera, including Agnes Nixon, William J. Bell and Ted Corday.
Phillips was one of 10 children born to a German-Jewish family in Chicago. Her father died when she was 8, leaving her mother alone to raise the children. She claimed to be a lonely child always given hand-me-down clothes and making up long and involved stories for her dolls to live out. At 19, she was pregnant, abandoned by her boyfriend, and then gave birth to a still-born baby. She studied drama at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (where she became a member of Phi Sigma Sigma sorority), receiving a Master of Arts degree before going on to earn a master's degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[citation needed]
Phillips wanted to be an actress, but her teachers told her she was too plain to have any real success. From 1925 to 1930, she worked as a school teacher in Dayton, Ohio, teaching drama and theatre history to schoolchildren. While working in this capacity she continued to attempt a career as an actress, and after performing several acting roles for radio productions at WGN in Chicago, she left her career as a teacher. At the age of 42, Phillips adopted a son, Thomas Dirk Phillips. A year later, she adopted a daughter, Katherine Louise Phillips.[citation needed]
After working as a staff writer on a daytime talk show, Phillips created the serial Painted Dreams, which aired daily except Sundays on local Chicago station WGN. Phillips wrote every episode of the series in addition being a starring cast member as the characters Mother Moynihan and Sue Morton. Mother Moynihan was a widowed matriarch of a large Irish-American family. Phillips based Mother Moynihan's struggles on her own mother's obstacles. After creating, producing and starring in Painted Dreams, Phillips became credited with innovating a daytime serial format for radio geared toward women. Later known as “Queen of the Soaps”, she introduced techniques such as the organ bridge to give a smooth flow between scenes and the cliff-hanger ending to each episode.
Phillips endured much disapproval for her writing, especially from sponsors like Procter & Gamble. The radio business during the 1930s was heavily male-dominated, and as result, it was claimed the audience for Phillips' serials were childlike, unrealistic, vulgar, and distasteful. In reality, her female characters were depicted as strong women with options, education, and personality. Phillips' characters were not something of the ordinary for the stereotypical 1930s women. No regular male roles were introduced until later in the series' run. The conflict most basic to the programs' dramatic structure was that between traditional and changing gender roles: Irene Moynihan, the daughter was characterized as the “aspiring modern girl, with ambitions toward a career”, against Mother Moynihan's and Sue Morton's more traditional views. Although Painted Dreams began as an unsponsored program, Phillips believed that a radio series must be a "utility to its sponsors" and that it must "actually sell merchandise; otherwise the object of radio advertising has failed". With this in mind, she wrote in an engagement and a wedding which provided the possibility of product tie-ins.[citation needed]
In 1932, Phillips urged WGN to sell Painted Dreams to a national network. When they refused, Phillips took them to court, claiming the series as her own property. WGN manager Henry Selinger claimed to have come up with the original daytime serial to sell products for women. However, Phillips was hired to write as well as perform in this first series. Disputes of ownership over the innovative serial ended Phillips' association with WGN and she was picked up by opponent station WMAQ. Painted Dreams was then changed to Today's Children featuring the same plot and debate over starting a career or starting a family. Phillips had then learned to retain all rights and ownership to her newly titled show and the many that followed during her career.[citation needed]
By 1938, Painted Dreams emerged from the courts and was purchased by CBS. The nature of the court settlement prohibited Phillips from any future involvement with the series. That year, when Phillips's mother died, she demanded that Today's Children be discontinued out of respect. CBS agreed and replaced it with her new series, Woman in White, a serial which focused on the internal workings of a hospital; it was one of the first daytime serials to be set in a hospital. It was on Woman in White that Phillips first began working with Agnes Nixon. William J. Bell also began his apprenticeship under Phillips during her radio days.[citation needed]
In 1937, Phillips collaborated with Emmons Carlson on her third radio serial, The Guiding Light (shortened to simply Guiding Light after 1975), basing it on personal experiences; after giving birth to a stillborn child at age 19, she found spiritual comfort listening to sermons by a preacher of a church centered on the brotherhood of man. It was these sermons that formed the nucleus of the creation of The Guiding Light. From 1937 to 1946, the series was broadcast from Chicago on the NBC radio network. The show was cancelled by NBC twice; once in 1939, and once in 1946. After the first time on October 13, 1939, it was brought back by popular demand of the listening audience and began again only four months later on January 22, 1940. NBC cancelled the series a second time on November 29, 1946, coinciding with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission forcing a split of NBC and the creation of the ABC network. CBS would pick up the series seven months later on June 2, 1947, where it transferred to television in June 1952, and where it would stay for the remainder of its run until its television conclusion in September 2009.