[msb-alumni] Agnes Nixon, Writer of Soap Operas, Dies at 93
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2016 14:02:19 -0400
BlankAgnes Nixon, Writer of Soap Operas, Dies at 93
She had an "abandonment complex" because her parents divorced soon after she
was
born. Growing up in an Irish-Catholic enclave in Nashville in the 1930s
and 1940s, she felt painfully different because the other children all seemed
to
have fathers. Hers was "nearly psychotic" and schemed to crush her
post-collegiate
dream of being a writer. He wanted his daughter to follow him into his burial
garments business and arranged for her to meet Irna Phillips, a pioneering
writer of radio serials her father was certain would "set me straight"
regarding
the foolishness of a writing career, Nixon often said. And then Nixon
invariably inserted a soap opera staple into the story the plot twist. During
the meeting, Phillips looked up from reading the sample script that was Nixon's
resume and asked, "How would you like to work for me? "It was one of the
greatest moments of my life," Nixon later said. "It was freedom. Nixon, who went
on to create such enduring daytime TV dramas as "One Life to Life" and "All My
Children," died Wednesday at a senior living facility in Pennsylvania. She
was 93. Although her characters were inevitably embroiled in melodrama, Nixon
was repeatedly honored for elevating soaps during a television career that
spanned more than 60 years. She pioneered socially relevant themes and dealt
with them seriously, bringing attention to such once-taboo topics as racism,
AIDS, lesbian relationships and teenage prostitution. In 1962, Nixon wrote a
story line for "The Guiding Light" on CBS about a character who develops uterine
cancer and has a life-saving hysterectomy. The network and show sponsor Proctor
& Gamble agreed to the plot only if the words "cancer," "uterus" and
"hysterectomy"
were not used. "I thought, well, hmmm, that's a little tough," Nixon told
National Public Radio in 2010, so she had the doctor tell the patient that she
had "irregular cells, rather than possible cancer. ... It was very successful,
and that hooked me. When "One Life to Live" debuted in 1968, it featured
a complicated story aimed at making viewers confront their prejudices, Nixon
later said. It involved a young black woman that the audience is led to believe
is white; she plans to marry a white doctor, but later falls in love with a
black resident. A man in Seattle wrote "to protest that white girl kissing
that black resident," Nixon recalled in the NPR interview and laughed. Then he
said: "But I am getting confused. If she turns out to be black, I want to
protest her kissing the white doctor. When Nixon was recognized in 2010 with a
Daytime Emmy for lifetime achievement, the National Academy of Television
Arts and Sciences said that she had "totally changed the traditionally escapist
nature of daytime serials while straining to make the world a better place.
She wasn't trying to "break barriers," Nixon said in 1999 on the TV biography
"Intimate Portraits," but thought it was insane "to say that entertainment
and public service can never be in the same story. In 1981, the television
academy had given Nixon its highest honor, the Trustees Award, for
"distinguished
service to television and the public. She was the first woman to receive the
distinction, joining an elite group that includes Edward R. Murrow and Bob
Hope. After writing the initial weeks of "Search for Tomorrow" for CBS in 1951,
she played a role in the success of six other soap operas. She helped Phillips
launch "As the World Turns" on CBS in 1956 and, two years later, joined the
network's "Guiding Light" as head writer. In 1964, she took charge of NBC's
ratings-challenged "Another World" and turned it around. Within four years, ABC
came calling with a powerful enticement creative control. Her husband,
Robert Nixon, left his job as a Chrysler Corp. executive, and the couple formed
a company to produce her first solo effort, "One Life to Live. The show
quickly won praise for realism after premiering in 1968. A story on teenage
venereal disease caused 50,000 viewers to write in, and an official at the
Centers for Disease Control told Nixon: "You've shown us how to reach the
teenagers of America," the Los Angeles Times said in 1991. When ABC wanted a
second daytime drama, Nixon came up with "All My Children" in 1970. She also
co-created a third soap for the network, "Loving," that aired from 1983 to
1995. Nixon readily acknowledged "All My Children" as her favorite dramatic
offspring. The show was set in Pine Valley, the presumptive dramatic equivalent
of Rosemont, the Philadelphia suburb where Nixon lived in a pre-Revolutionary
War home. She based archvillain Adam Chandler, who didn't "know how to love,"
on her father and gave her favorite character, wickedly manipulative Erica
Kane,
abandonment issues. Susan Lucci became one of daytime's most popular stars
playing Erica from the show's earliest days until the program's end in
September
2011. She repeatedly called Nixon "a genius as a storyteller. When "One
Life to Live" left the air in early 2012, few network soap operas remained. As
women increasingly entered the workforce, viewership eroded and the genre
continued to lose ground to cable and offerings on the internet. "The name of
entertainment is escape," Nixon said in 1981 in People magazine, and it made
her wealthy, one excruciatingly slow plot turn at a time. In the mid-1970s,
Nixon had sold both "One Life" and "All My Children" to ABC for an undisclosed
sum. "I loved the writing and I hated the business," Nixon told the Los Angeles
Times in 1998, when it was reported that she earned more than $1 million
a year. She was born Agnes Eckhardt on Dec. 10, 1922, in Chicago, to Harry and
Agnes Eckhardt and grew up in Nashville living with her bookkeeper mother
and extended family. Previous reports put her year of birth as 1927 but the
announcement of her funeral Mass said she was born five years earlier. At
Northwestern
University, she studied drama alongside Charlton Heston and Patricia Neal but
felt "outclassed," as an actor, Nixon later said, and turned to writing.
Days after earning a bachelor's degree in the late 1940s, Nixon was writing for
Phillips on a radio soap. When Phillips headed west to work in television,
Nixon moved to New York to write for early prime-time TV dramas. On a blind
date
in 1950, she met her future husband and soon agreed to marry him on one
condition that she could continue her career. They settled in the Philadelphia
area and had four children in five years. With no time to travel to New
York City for work, she returned to Phillips and soaps, writing at home and
mailing in her scripts. Having a bustling career in the "pre-Betty Friedan
days" was tough and made her feel like a misfit, she told The Washington Post
in
1983. For years, she and her husband split their time between the Philadelphia
area and New York City. After he died in 1996, Nixon said she found writing
"All
My Children" therapeutic. By then, she had long devoted herself to long-range
plotting and still followed her mentor's maxim: "We don't just live the high
points and low points, we live minute by minute. Nixon is survived by her
four children, Cathy, Mary, Robert and Emily; and 11 grandchildren.
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