I saw this recent headline in the New York Times: Traditional Soaps May Be Waning, but Our Lives Are Sudsier Than Ever, and was taken back to 2007, when, in the midst of a flu-induced fever dream, the lightbulb came on: mainstream conversation around soap opera was conflating soap opera, a noun, with soapy, an adjective.  

That revelation eventually found its way into my 2011 essay, “The Ironic and Convoluted Relationship Between Daytime and Primetime Soap Opera,” (published in, The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era), where I discussed the following: 

“In a description of Dallas on IMDb, one poster, Tad Dibbern, was careful to distinguish between soap opera as a noun and soap opera as an adjective. By calling Dallas a show that followed “a soap-opera style,” Dibbern acknowledged the serial format of the show but stopped short of actually calling it a soap opera. This distinction was largely lost in the aftermath of Dallas and the success of shows such as ABC’s Dynasty and CBS’ Falcon Crest, which premiered after Dallas and embraced its format. In the mind of much of the U.S. public, the adjective soapy, while accurately describing primetime serials like Dallas and Dynasty, became synonymous with the noun soap opera. Soapy has become shorthand for everything from “a cheaply melodramatic plot twist” (Ford 2008b) to “surreal, campy, and wayyyy out to the left of reality,” and often linked to the descriptor “guilty pleasure,” an oxymoron whose formulation recalls the nation’s Puritan roots. Further, soapy in the pejorative sense is how the public, and many of daytime’s decision makers (as the Bibel excerpt earlier in this essay emphasizes), have come to perceive daytime soap opera.”

These two quotes from the Times piece really jumped out: 

“‘I think of soap operas as melodramas,’ said Michael R. Jackson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. ‘They prioritize plot over character, which is to say that the character will conform to whatever the plot. People — they’re villain or victim.The reality stars and content creators who have catapulted to fame often hew to those archetypes, and they’re rewarded for it.’” 

“We are seeing real-life stories about real-life people being mined for a new kind of soap opera.”

So, what would Irna think — and — what did Irna say? 

Well,  in the bible for As the Earth Turns (later changed to As the World Turns) — arguably the single most influential soap opera —  she did not equivocate: “We would like to stress the point that “AS THE EARTH TURNS” is not a melodrama. It is the story of people. It might as well be said that the life of each one of us is a serial story.”

So, while she disagreed about the melodrama, she understood that there was a story in everyone’s life. But, how would those stories be told — and what about those villains?

In an undated essay, she later noted, “Identification. It is a perilous practice among dramatic writers to allow their situations or characters to become too remote from the average listener. On AS THE WORLD TURNS, for example, I have tried to keep my characters on a life-size scale. They are well off, but not wealthy. They are average in intelligence. My villains (though I reject the concept of the totally irretrievable character) are never so villainous that the listener turns away in disgust. There must be that element of universality in everything - that something that causes the listener to say, "Yes, I have felt that way," or ‘I have known someone very much like that.’”

And in 1972, Irna famously said, “We’re all grays. None of us are either black or white, or bad or good.”

So, suffice it to say, this latest iteration of the serial drama, the term Irna preferred to soap opera - is not what she had in mind. 

For a more nuanced consideration of how serialized story has, well, changed over the decades, here’s my 2020 review of Elana Levine’s Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera & US Television History. 

For soap fans, past and present, who wonder why the shows they love have disappeared, or deteriorated beyond recognition, or who think they know what could-have-should-have been done, if only, Elana Levine’s new book, Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera & US Television History (2020, Duke University Press) connects the dots with a combination of nuance and rigorous research. Levine writes as scholar and professor (Media, Cinema and Digital Studies in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), and longtime soap fan. (Full disclosure: Levine and I have been exchanging our observations of soap opera for more than 10 years. She shared early drafts of several chapters, and the final version contains two references to my work).

Her Stories begins with detailed look at Irna Phillips’s first, and most influential, effort to bring soaps to television — These Are My Children — which premiered on 31 January 1949, and laid the groundwork for the serial dramas that would  follow in the 1950s and 60s. Levine then connects soaps’ glory years —  mid-1960s-mid-1980s — when “both the TV industry and culture at large recognized that the soap audience was broader than that of the stereotypical housewife” — with rise of the Big Three broadcast networks: CBS; NBC; ABC. The final section considers the future of soaps in a post-network age, along with their influence on other forms of popular culture in the ever-expanding digital landscape. 

Levine chronicles one aspect of soaps’ decline by deconstructing and comparing their use of melodrama, realism, and social relevance. Through soaps’ early years, writers fought to moderate the melodrama associated with radio serials in favor of emotional realism. But in the 1980s, emotional realism, and the social relevance of the 1970s, gave way to the romantic fantasy storytelling that propelled the  popularity of the supercouple. By the 1990s, soap storytelling had become bifurcated, as shows addressed the social and political tensions of the times by either revisiting social relevance, or moving even further away from social realism, diving into “fantastical extremes” that surpassed “the fantasies of the eighties soaps.” 

Also running through the book is the impact of gender: Through close examination of numerous storylines — several from my favorite show As the World Turns: there were the unhappily married Lowells; their daughter, Ellen, who gave up her illegitimate son for adoption; soaps’ first supercouple, Penny and Jeff, and first bad girl, Lisa, all from the show’s early years; then in the final years, Luke and his boyfriend, Noah — Levine illustrates how soaps have reflected society’s gender roles as they shifted over the decades, occasionally linking to the larger political landscape.

At the risk of overstating the obvious: soap opera’s marginalization and invisibility has always stemmed from its association with women. What’s less obvious is how that marginalization contributed to a collective “inferiority complex” among many of those who make soaps, which, in turn, would lead to variations in the soap narrative that drove away many longtime fans who found the changes “too far removed from soap proper” and “further rejections of the soap opera past.” Irna Phillips, who died in 1973, was never embarrassed by the stories she told or the characters she created. Had she lived, she would have been appalled to see what’s become of her creation. Phillips’s unfinished memoir, All My Worlds, wasn’t available until 2009; Her Stories benefitted greatly from Levine’s access to the manuscript. 

Viewer discontent with changes in soap storytelling was but one factor in the genre’s long descent. Levine does a fine job detailing how, beginning in the mid-1980s, declining soap viewership led to declining advertising rates, which led to networks reducing the licensing fees paid to shows, which led to reduced production budgets; on and on the vicious cycle continues. Where will it end, and when? While Levine acknowledges “that there is little place for for soap opera in a steaming TV world,” she goes on to say, “as the US daytime soap opera approaches its ninetieth birthday, it may yet have life to live.” We shall see. 

reuse, recycle, repurpose…

Instead of “from the archives,” as I noticed how many people are describing previously published pieces they’re posting, I decided to evoke my family ethos: reuse, recycle, repurpose. 

I’ve been getting ready to finally begin Unraveling Soap Opera’s Elusive History, which is going to be a long haul — and there are two another projects are demanding to be written — so it could be a while before I post new material. Which is why I’ve been scouring my Red Room “archives” for some articles to post in the interim. Reading through these pieces from 2008-2014, I can track how my thinking about soaps has evolved over the years. 

I wrote my first article for Soap Opera Weekly in 1990, followed by a handful of others, but nothing after 1996. In 2005, I connected with Sam Ford, who was doing a master’s in Comparative Media Studies at MIT and writing his thesis on As the World Turns. I became an outside reader on his thesis committee, and CMS co-founder, Professor Henry Jenkins, asked me to write something for his blog, Pop Junction (formerly Confessions of an Aca-Fan), the first of many critical observations I’ve beeing writing about soaps. As I writing this piece, I came to realize that the personal essay would become my métier. 

From 2008: A Critfan Yearns for the World As It Was.

More to come…

Yesterday, January 29th, marked a year since I introduced Annotating Irna with A Complete Unknown. In it, I mentioned a  screenplay, Scheherazade in the Afternoon, but didn’t go into any detail. And while the stand-alone scenes I annotated illustrate Irna Philllips’s long-hidden and far-reaching impact on serialized storytelling, none deal with the emotional journey at the center of the biopic. 

I must also note tomorrow, January 31st: on this date in 1949, the first televised serial drama — These are My Children, created by Irna  — premiered on NBC.  Here’s the fictional scene from the screenplay, followed by the factual annotation: Television’s First Soap Opera. 

Initially, I hadn’t planned to discuss contemporary soaps here. But, when Beyond the Gates premiered shortly after I began Annotating Irna, I realized I had a unique opportunity to connect Irna’s history to soap opera’s present — and its future. And I didn’t even need to change the title of the newsletter since any discussion of soaps, implicitly or explicitly, involves Irna. 

But, the purpose of Annotating Irna has always been to advance Scheherazade in the Afternoon. When I began researching Irna’s life back in 2009, I found a cesspool of misinformation, misrepresentation, and more than a few flat-out lies, all of which contradicted what Irna wrote in her unfinished memoir, All My Worlds. In Setting Irna’s Record Straight, I detailed her pregnancy in the late 1920s in Dayton, Ohio, which ended with no baby and no chance for another; a devastating loss, which as her daughter put it, “would divine the path Mummy would take for the rest of her life.”

As Irna created the groundbreaking soap opera As the World Turns in the mid-1950s, she embodied Thornton Wilder’s observation that “art is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and hide it at the same time.” Not a cradle-to-grave biopic, Scheherazade in the Afternoon connects the ramifications of Irna’s loss with her admission that while in the past she had fictionalized her life, “In As the World Turns I fantasized as well as fictionalized my own life,” revealing the screenplay’s central dramatic question: 

Why does an independent woman in her fifties — approaching the pinnacle of her career —  “fantasize life” in a fictional setting “far more real than New York or Chicago — and far better?”

The Austin Film Festival’s Coverage rated Scheherazade in the Afternoon “consider” and “ready for production or competition.” Now it’s time to get the screenplay in front of the right person. At this point in my life, an agent or manager doesn’t make sense, so I need to find a way past the gatekeepers. Ideally, I’d like to find a well-connected entertainment attorney. And, of course, I’d love to find an actor, producer, or director who might be interested. 

So, I’m turning to my readers: any suggestions or referrals, please let me know. Or, if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone, forward this post to them. 

Thanks to all in advance!

For the past 20 years, I’ve been thinking seriously about about soap opera, and how it’s come to find itself in current, sorry state. It’s been a frustrating process: while I could see the various issues, I couldn’t find any obvious hierarchical relationship among them.  It’s been a puzzle. But some of the pieces are finally beginning to come together to form a series of questions. Exactly how many, I’m not sure — there’s still a lot to synthesize and organize — and I’ve never been a fast writer. 

So, it might be awhile before my next post. But, I will be back…

I was putting together a short piece to mark the 95th anniversary of Painted Dreams, the first radio soap opera, when, lo and behold, I came across a 2020 piece I totally forgot I had written to mark the show’s 90th anniversary. 

Since I come from a long line of recyclers, here’s what I wrote in 2020, with a couple of updates: 

Ninety-five years ago, 20 October 1930, the first radio soap opera, Painted Dreams, premiered on Chicago’s WGN. I hadn’t intended to say much more than Happy Birthday! But, being a student of soaps in general — and Irna Phillips, widely credited as Painted Dreams’ creator, in particular — I did a little poking around and came across something interesting.

Researching Irna’s life, I’ve spent a lot of time examining what she’s said about herself — particularly in her unfinished memoir, All My Worlds. The manuscript is a very rough draft that ends ten years before her death in 1973. I’ve also had to keep in mind that we are all unreliable narrators of our lives; that the stories we tell about ourselves are filled with examples of misremembering, misrepresentation, embellishment, self-aggrandizing, score-settling, and, of course, the occasional lie. 

So it’s not surprising that Irna version of creating Painted Dreams differs from that of WGN station manager, Henry Selinger, as relayed by Les White, a Chicago psychologist who has also researched Irna’s life. 

Irna’s version: In September 1930, after her 10-minute show, A Thought for Today — “a sort of inspirational advice show” — is cancelled by Selinger, WGN program director, Henry Gilman, asks her if she “was able to write a continuing family story.” Irna agrees and finishes the ten, ten-minute episodes in a week, titling her creation Sue and Irene. To circumvent a limited budget, Gilman introduces Irna to a singer, Ireene Wicker, who provides voices for four of the characters with Irna doing the other two. Before the show airs, Selinger changes the title to Painted Dreams, which Irna agrees was an improvement. 

Here’s Henry Selinger’s version: 

According to Les White’s 2005 piece Imperial Soap Opera, Irna begs Selinger for a paying job at WGN, so he, “threw her a bone: to write and act in his ‘playlet’ Painted Dreams, which Selinger based on his own Jewish family. Selinger outlined the ten episodes, which according to White (who cites no source; Selinger died in 1973), took Irna a month, not a week, to complete and which Selinger had to “throughly revise.” By the time the show, described as “the story of the joys and hopes and disillusionments of average people,” aired, the family had become Irish-American. 

White also shares Selinger’s observation that, prior to Painted Dreams, “Occasionally, she (Irna) and another actress improvised dialogue between two young ‘shop girls’ babbling on about their troubled lives and loves. These segments never aired.”

While researching this piece, I came across Rob Wargo’s 2010 piece for Painted Dream’s 80th anniversary, which diverges from both Irna’s and Selinger’s accounts: 

“One day in 1930, schoolteacher Irna Phillips visited Chicago’s WGN looking for work. Although initially hired as an actress, her interests soon turned to writing, and she created the series Sue and Irene in which she and Ireene Wicker (best known as radio’s ‘Singing Lady’) provided all of the voices, with Irna playing ‘Sue’ and Ireene playing ‘Irene.’ Scheduled during the daytime, Sue and Irene was sponsored by Lever Brothers’ detergent ‘Super Suds.’ The dialogue was conversational in tone, rather than full-out acting, similar to another early serialized entry Clara, Lu and Em.

The success of Sue and Irene spurred Phillips to create another series with greater dramatic possibilities. Within three months, WGN gave Phillips a chance to write two weeks’ worth of scripts for a serial revolving around an Irish-American household. Although Phillips was unsuccessful in securing a sponsor for the series, the station put it on the air on a sustaining basis. The program – Painted Dreams – aired six times per week for approximately one year before it landed a Chicago-based meatpacker, Mickleberry Products Company, as sponsor Phillips not only wrote the series, but also played the lead character, the elderly, widowed Mother Moynihan, a kindly, philosophical, all-wise protagonist coping with the realities of the Depression era. Her single goal in life was to ensure the ultimate happiness of her grown children.”

Wargo said his source was one of two books by Jim Cox: The Great Radio Soap Operas or Historical Dictionary of American Radio Soap Operas. My library wasn’t able to track down the books, so I don’t know Cox’s source. But there are a few things to unpack here. 

Certainly, Wargo’s “The dialogue was conversational in tone, rather than full-out acting,” tracks with Selinger’s, “improvised dialogue between two young ‘shop girls’ babbling on about their troubled lives and loves.” But, what left me flummoxed was the idea that this “improvised dialogue” not only aired, but had a sponsor. In All My Worlds, Irna spends several pages detailing the creation of Painted Dreams. Even allowing that she was writing more than forty years after the fact, could she really have forgotten that Sue and Irene aired — and with a sponsor?  

I was curious to see what sources Jim Cox cites in his books on radio soaps. I poked around a bit online to see if any other authors talked about Sue and Irene. But everything tracked back to Cox. And reading the description of Sue and Irene, I have to wonder why it, rather than Painted Dreams, is considered the first radio soap. 

Although Irna was being paid fifty-dollars a week by the station, she saw herself as the sole creator and owner of the show. WGN was part of Mutual Broadcasting Company and Irna was eager for Painted Dreams to move to the network. The station disagreed and Irna left the show in 1932, then filed suit, claiming WGN had stolen her property. After a protracted court battle, the court decided against Irna, finding that she was an employee and that WGN owned Painted Dreams. By the time the suit was settled in 1938, Irna had gone on to create Today’s Children (much the same as Painted Dreams, it aired on WMAQ), The Road of Life — and, of course —  The Guiding Light.

For almost 40 years, the “story” the late Christopher Schemering told about a life changing experience in Irna Phillips early life in his 1986 book, Guiding Light: a 50th Anniversary Celebration, has been repeated so many times it’s taken on a life of its own. That life continues every time someone reads her Wikipedia page. But, Schemering’s version of events is very different from what Irna writes in her unfinished memoir, All My Worlds.

And it’s not just that Schemering’s version of Irna’s life diverges from hers; he leaves out a piece of crucial information. I began researching Irna’s life in 2009, and it is time to set the record straight.

At the time of her death in 1973, Irna had a contract for her memoir. When she died, her estate repaid the advance and “all known copies of the manuscript were returned from the agent and (the publisher) Dutton.” Irna’s adopted daughter, Katherine, chose to keep the All My Worlds manuscript private; when she died in 2009, her adopted brother, Thomas, sent the manuscript to the Wisconsin Historical Society, which houses Irna’s papers. How Schemering obtained the manuscript remains a mystery. 

Schemering begins Irna’s story with her inspiration for Guiding Light’s central character, Reverend Ruthledge: 

“Why the 18-year old Irna was drawn to a nonjudgemental, understanding minister at this point in her life soon becomes clear in her autobiography. Irna had fallen in love with a doctor in Dayton and became pregnant with his child. When he denied paternity, the feisty Irna brought a court action against him and won. Although this was 1919, Irna was bound and determined to have the baby and raise the child on her own. Irna’s child was stillborn.”

But, on page 21 of AMW, Irna had just finished two years teaching at Williams Woods Junior College and was preparing to start a graduate fellowship in speech at the University of Wisconsin when she gets a letter from her brother in Dayton inviting her for “a little vacation.” Irna accepts, saying “A vacation was just what I needed.” Shortly after she arrives in Dayton, in the summer of 1925, Irna met the doctor. Irna didn’t share a lot of dates, and the timelines don’t always track, so exactly when she began her affair with the doctor and became pregnant is not clear. But, since Irna was born in 1901, what is clear is that she wasn’t 18! So why does Schemering say she was? And why does he connect Irna’s pregnancy with her decision to join Reverend Preston Bradley’s People’s Church? 

Irna was indeed 18 when she became a member of the church, saying on page 77 of the manuscript, “I never had any formal religious training, although I considered myself a Jew. However I knew something very important in my life was missing.” But she begins discussing her relationship with the doctor much earlier — page 22 — so it’s not as though Schemering could have been confused. So why did he conflate the two events? And why did he fail to mention that the pregnancy left Irna unable to bear children, a fact which, in the words of her daughter, “devined the path Mummy would take for the rest of her life?”

Also diverging from Irna’s telling is Schemering’s version of her love life: “Although she appeared a lonely figure to the press of the day, Irna had a full social life. According to her unfinished memoir, Irna had many romances – almost exclusively with doctors and lawyers! (Which, of course, explains her long obsession with doctors and lawyers in her serials.)” This is a total fabrication: every word in that paragraph is a lie — including “and” and “the.”

Again, why? Nothing of the kind appears in the manuscript. After the stillbirth left her sterile, Irna vowed to avoid “the pain and embarrassment of telling a man I couldn’t have children,” and “made up (her) mind never to become involved with an unmarried man.” The only relationship Irna  mentions (page 84) after she returned to Chicago in 1930 is with an unnamed, married Guiding Light director (thought to be Howard Keegan) whose wife would not give him a divorce. 

Irna describes him as well read, erudite, Catholic, and an alcoholic with a wife named Ilka. Not a common name. But the first name to pop up in a Google search is Ilka Chase, a writer and actress who, at the time of Irna’s affair (1937-1941), was married to her second husband, William B. Murray Sr. — critic, member of the Algonquin Round Table, and head of radio at the William Morris agency. Irna had several radio serials running at the time, so it’s more than likely the two crossed paths. And, according to his son’s memoir, Janet, My Mother, and Me, Murray was an alcoholic — but not Catholic. 

And then there’s Ralph Skilken, the young Dayton attorney who helped Irna sue the doctor for paternity. After her pregnancy ended, the two spent time together. While Irna is circumspect about the details of their relationship, on page 45 she says, “Ralph’s friendship and companionship did much to help restore confidence in myself as a woman,” noting a page earlier, “If my memory serves me correctly, I believe I might have fallen in love with him.” But Skilken wanted children of his own, and the relationship ended. 

The last time Skilken appears is on page 47; Irna says, “Ralph was and is (italics mine) one of the best friends I ever had.” But, according to two of Skilken’s children, the family spent a month with Irna in Los Angeles during the summer of 1948, and visited her in Chicago. And while Skilken was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, he married a Catholic woman and their children were raised in her faith. 

Of course, none of those involved is still breathing, so it’s impossible to ever know for sure. But there’s a possibility, if not likelihood, that the man Irna says she had an affair with was, in fact, a composite of three men; far from the “many romances – almost exclusively with doctors and lawyers!” Schemering asserts. 

 None of this is to suggest that the AMW manuscript be taken as gospel. Like most memoirs, it’s filled with misrememberings,  misrepresentations, embellishments, self-aggrandizing, score settling, the occasional lie — and obfuscation. But, it’s Irna’s story and she was free to tell it as she pleased. 

So, on that note…

Christopher Schemering was not the only one to play fast and loose with Irna’s version of her life:

In early July, I shared my initial impressions of “Beyond the Gates.”

“Four months in, the pacing has settled down somewhat, but is still choppy and lacks cohesion. Storylines move plot point to plot point — skipping over the emotional beats in-between that connect viewers with characters — in Irna’s words, “better characterization.” These emotional beats are often replaced with exposition, creating more than a few missed opportunities.”

Two months have passed and not much seemed to have changed. Speaking for an increasing number of increasingly frustrated viewers, one poster noted, “We have stories like June rediscovering her children and Leslie's financial windfall that move at the speed of light and skip several beats and then we have stories that are dropped for several weeks to resurface again out of the blue. Sometimes it works and other times it really doesn't. Definitely something they need to sort out for season 2.”

“Emotional beats.” “Choppy pacing.”  “Lacks cohesion.” “”Plot point to plot point.” “Stories that move at the speed of light.”  

Maybe a little inside baseball for readers not familiar with soaps. Here’s a musical analogy: 

In soap opera terms, the melodic build of a classical music piece translates to audience anticipation; the crescendo is the event — a secret revealed, a long-awaited confrontation. The resolution is the aftermath — how the event resonates for characters. 

Now think about attending a performance of the 4th movement of Rimsky-Korsakov‘s Scheherazade (roughly 12 minutes depending on who’s conducting): the melodic theme builds to a crescendo a bit past the half-way mark and lasts perhaps a minute. That’s it— no melodic build — just the one-minute crescendo followed by bits and pieces of some very fast, crashing chords. But the lyrical, peaceful conclusion? Gone. 

Next, they take a hatchet to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto — where the haunting, but oh so slow 2nd movement has disappeared entirely. Then on to Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto — well, you get the idea. And yes, I’ve always been fond of the late-19 century Russian composers.

The intention of these hypothetical abridged performances is to attract a younger audience. And yes, some will say “Cool!” But will there be enough of them to offset those who look at the next program and think, “Bach? Chopin? — Dvořák!?  No thanks!”

“Beyond the Gates” seems to be betting “yes.” Executive Producer Sheila Ducksworth, who spearheaded the creation of BTG, has acknowledged the challenges of balancing the expectations of viewers used to the more traditional soap opera narrative with those in the coveted 18-49 demo who tend to have a shorter attention span. But as the show has progressed, the pacing has increasingly tilted toward speed. 

Viewer frustration is beginning to be reflected in the numbers. After the initial curiosity leveled off, the show’s total viewers peaked at 1.572M in mid-May, when CBS picked the show up for a second season. Since then, the numbers have dropped significantly: 1.515M week of 18-22 August, up from 1.504M the week before. The number of responses on fan boards has also been dropping since May, when the responses on Soap Opera Network topped 2,000. In August there were 1,700. 

Frankly, I was ready to — well, not stop watching altogether — but to keep tabs on spoilers and recaps then watch online when something looked interesting. Or someone — specifically Timon Kyle Durrett’s multi-layered Bill Hamilton. This guy I would watch read the proverbial phone book. (Anyone wondering “Phone book? What’s a phone book?” can look it up — or ask their parents.)

Then I watched episode #121 (Wednesday, 27 August) — then Thursday and Friday — and was in total agreement with the poster who observed: “I didn’t expect this story to be the catalyst for so many reveals like Andre/Dani to Bill and Chelsea’s sexuality being revealed to Bill. Good stuff.” 

Catalyst is the key word here. I began to look forward to watching the pieces finally coming together. And I wasn’t the only one excited by the prospect. Numbers for that week jumped to 1.534M — up 24M from the the previous week — but still down 38M from the May high. 

And then… Near the end of Friday’s episode,Ted Richardson announced that he was transferring the deed to the house he shares with his estranged wife, Nicole, to Leslie, who destroyed their marriage, setting up an inevitable confrontation between the two women that promised to be one for the ages. And I couldn’t wait! Turns out I didn’t have to wait long: after the final commercial break, there was Leslie barging in to share her good news with Nicole. Next episode: the house was just another plot point. That was it — no chance to see the story unfold over even a few days. 

In the past, soap opera story lines could drag out over months, sometimes more than a year. No one  — and that includes those of us well past the 55+ demo — has the patience for that. But this drastic overcorrection is taking its toll. Online, more than a few posters say they’re bailing. While some might dismiss them as outliers, what about the offline viewers who are turning off their televisions? Deleting the show from their DVR schedule? Canceling their Paramount+ subscriptions?

Is the show even aware of the level of frustration? And more important, the reasons behind viewer frustration? The numbers only tell part of the story. There’s a lot to be learned from qualitative responses. And if they are aware, when did they start making changes? And when will those changes begin appearing on viewers’ screens? 

In Part 1 of “What would Irna think about Beyond the Gates,” I shared her thoughts from a 1972 interview with Broadcast Magazine: 

"I'm out of patience with pre-taping way in advance because that locks you in. Daytime dramas should be flexible so that you can rewrite an outline if it doesn't seem to be working out in the performance. I'm usually about three weeks ahead on my outlines, but I have no objection to changing horses in midstream on a moment's notice."

Back then, “pre-taping way in advance” meant two, maybe three weeks ahead of air. When BTG premiered in late February, the show had three months of episodes taped. Currently, four months are in the can — enough to air into early 2026 — with an additional two months of scripts written, likely already taping. 

Pre-taping was necessary because BTG is the first daytime soap produced on network television in 25 years. And while Michele Val Jean has been writing for soaps for decades, this is her first effort as creator, head writer, and showrunner. Additionally, the show’s produced in Atlanta, where crews weren’t  familiar with the pace of producing a daily soap. Along with production logistics, there’s the efficiency and cost savings pre-taping provides. 

But with so many episodes ready to air, the BTG creative team never had the opportunity to fix quickly the inevitable initial missteps. So, whose idea was it to introduce viewers to a brand new soap while blowing up the traditional soap opera narrative structure? Val Jean and recently departed co-head writer Robert Guza? 

Those are rhetorical questions I’ll let Irna answer. 

I know I cited this quote from Ken Corday in Parts 2 and 3, but as Irna herself noted, “(some things) bear repeating.”

“Irna raged against what she called the ‘dying of the light brought on by the corporate and network creative control.’ She called them ‘temporary people making permanent decisions who didn’t know what they didn’t know.’”   

What does all of this mean for the future of “Beyond the Gates?” The show’s been renewed through February 2027. Beyond that, we shall see…

A decade before Erica Kane entered the soap opera scene in 1970, Eileen Fulton began a 50-year-run on the CBS serial, As the World Turns  as Lisa — soap opera’s original bad girl. 

My first thought when I heard about her recent death was: “So, is CBS Sunday Morning finally going to acknowledge the passing of an actor from the network’s long-running Proctor & Gamble soaps — ‘World Turns and Guiding Light — in their Passages segment?”

I’ve often wondered if there’s some kind of policy. It’s not as though ‘Sunday Morning’ never noted the death of soap opera actors — General Hospital’s Jackie Zeman, for example — but never actors from the P&G shows: not Kathryn Hays  (38 years, ‘World Turns), Elizabeth Hubbard (26 years, ‘World Turns), Lisa Brown (20 years, ‘World Turns & GL), or Jerry ver Dorn (26 years, GL). 

The Proctor & Gamble soaps were long the financial bedrock of CBS. In soap opera’s heyday, daytime programming (soaps and game shows) were said to have generated more than more than 70% of networks’ revenue.* So why not acknowledge actors who contributed to that bottom line? I mean, it’s not as though adding a name to the Passages segment involves a lot of heavy lifting: pull a stock photo; add a caption; 2-3 seconds on screen. 

So, you can imagine my surprise  — not to mention delight — when mid-week, The New York Times ran an 800+ word obit that included six photographs with the headline: “Eileen Fulton, Glamorous Villainess of ‘As the World Turns,’ Dies at 91,” and mentioned her career beyond soaps in theater and cabaret. Not to quibble, but “villainess” might have been a bit of an overstatement — vixen is more accurate. 

Maybe that obit lit a fire under the people at Sunday Morning, because as the next Passages segment unfolded — Malcolm Jamal Warner, Ozzy Osbourn, Hulk Hogan, musician Chuck Mangione, jazz singer Cleo Laine — there, at the end, was Eileen Fulton’s picture: Actor/As the World Turns — age 91.   

It was a black-and-white photograph I’d never seen before — one that fully captured her joie de vivre — effervescent is how cast mate, Scott Bryce, remembers her. In the course of my years researching soaps, I met Eileen several times and talked with her on the phone. Gracious is the word that comes to my mind.  Years back,  a fellow soap fan who knew about  my research asked if I thought Eileen would sign a birthday card for her aunt, who loved Lisa and coming up on a milestone birthday — might have been 100. I called Eileen’s publicist, who said to send a card with the address. The birthday girl was beyond thrilled when she opened the card signed, “Love, Lisa.” 

Down the road, there are a handful of actors remaining from that era — including the last original cast member of “As the World Turns,” Rosemary Prinz, 95 — all knocking on heaven’s door. 

So, CBS Sunday Morning: the ball’s in your court. 

* “All Her Children,” Dan Wakefield, 1976, page 16: by 1971, “daytime programming (soaps and game shows) accounted, as it does today (1976), for an estimated 75% of the revenue of the major networks.”

Occasionally, Irna would acknowledge that she was about to repeat something she had said previously: “I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating.” So, one more time…

From Ken Corday: 

“Irna raged against what she called the ‘dying of the light brought on by the corporate and network creative control.’ She called them ‘temporary people making permanent decisions who didn’t know what they didn’t know.’”   

CBS:

The ratings: “Beyond The Gates” is holding its own against ABC’s “General Hospital” in its time slot, but losing roughly a million viewers from its lead-in, “The Bold & The Beautiful.” Down the road will this become enough of an issue for CBS to “suggest” changes, as they did when the network engineered the May 1995 reshuffle of PGP executive producers, installing people who were more “receptive” to the network’s “suggestions,” which included new head writers for “As the World Turns?” And was it a coincidence that those writers, Stephen Black and Henry Stern, had previously worked at Lorimer with the new president of CBS Entertainment, Leslie Moonves? While Black and Stern lasted less than a year, they inflicted considerable damage and ratings continued to fall until ‘World Turns was cancelled in 2010. 

Another contributing factor: former ABC Daytime exec, Barbara Bloom, who took over as head of CBS Daytime in 2003 and attempted to turn “As the World Turns” into an ABC soap: Over the next seven years she would replace three beloved actors with people she had worked with at ABC, then, along with Head Writer Jean Passanante, create a series of new characters, at best, tangentially connected to the show’s core (one of whom would dominate the show’s final two years) — all cast with actors Bloom worked with at ABC — in total, more than a dozen. How much of a factor Bloom’s actions were in ‘World Turns’s ultimate demise is impossible to say — but, it certainly didn’t help. 

CBS has already renewed “Beyond the Gates” for a second season, so it’s  too early for long term speculation, although the network’s abrupt decision to air repeats the week of July 4th is concerning. And given how many episodes have been pre-taped, September is likely the earliest any substantive changes will begin to air.

P&G:

“Beyond the  Gates” is the first soap opera built around a Black family. Not surprisingly, there was enormous media coverage ahead of its premiere in late February.  But there’s another question that has yet to be addressed: Why, after 20 years, did Procter & Gamble decide to return to soaps after distancing itself from the shows produced for decades?

Here’s the timeline: 

Micki Dwyer-Dobbin exits as PGP’s Executive in Charge of Production in 2005;  P&G does not replace her, leaving Executive Producers, Chris Goutman (ATWT) and Ellen Wheeler (GL), to deal directly with Barbara Bloom at CBS. 

Two years later, facing significant budget cuts, Ellen Wheeler moves  “Guiding Light” from its New York studio to Peapack, New Jersey. 

2008: The Telenext logo replaces PGP in GL and ATWT closing credits, further distancing the company from its soaps.  

CBS cancels “Guiding Light” in 2009, followed by “As the World Turns” in 2010. 

2024: Procter & Gamble Studios join forces with CBS and the NAACP to produce a new soap opera — the first in 25 years — “Beyond the Gates,” which follows the lives of a wealthy Black family. 

How P&G got from 2005 to 2024 is a question waiting to be asked, a story waiting to be written (though not by me:). 

So, what’s next for “Annotating Irna?”

“Soap opera  — around since 1930, on television since 1949 —  ubiquitous, profitable for decades, yet virtually invisible within the larger popular culture landscape.” 
For the past 20 years, I’ve been thinking about how the various pieces of the soap opera puzzle fit together. As for when I’ll post next: there’s a lot of material to synthesize here — and I’ve never been a fast writer — so soon, she said, hopefully. 

Until then, stay tuned! Subscribe — and the next installment of  “Annotating Irna” will arrive in your inbox. 

I hope you’ll join me on my continuing exploration of soap opera’s place in American popular culture. Many thanks to those who’ve already subscribed.

Correction: 
Originally, I wrote that the Richardsons might be expecting. Of course, I meant the Hamiltons. 

Before I start:

Last time I wrote, “should newlywed Haley Hamilton’s recently announced pregnancy end happily (never a given on a soap:), P&G’s premium diapers, Pampers, could be mentioned.” Of course, what I should have said was, “never a given on a soap, assuming the pregnancy is even  real.” Suffice it to say, it doesn’t look as though the Hamiltons will be needing Pampers anytime soon.  

Moving on…

While much has changed in soaps over the years — and not always for the better — “Beyond the Gates” head writers, Michele Val Jean and Robert Guza (who recently left), are continuing the foundation of Irna’s storytelling, which she shared in 1972 on the David Frost show: “People are people. They’re motivated. We’re all grays. None of us are either white or black, or bad or good.”

This ethos defines BTG’s opening story: Dani and Bill Hamilton’s divorce and his remarriage to Haley. The aftermath, which continues to reverberate, embodies critic Robert LaGuardia’s insightful description of Irna’s storytelling: “Phillips presented the story through characters neither all black nor all white, forcing viewers to grieve over the heartbreak of the human condition rather than hang on to a fixed value judgment.”

Without going into too much detail, Val Jean and Guza have created scenes that allow these characters to exhibit the conflicting emotions of simultaneous emotional truths: Dani hates Bill for leaving her after their 30-year marriage, but part of her will always want him back — and vice versa. Their daughters, Chelsea and Naomi, are understandably furious with their father, but, he’s still their father. Bill seems happy with his new life (at least for now), but desperately wants to repair his relationship with his girls. So the online discussions/arguments continue: “Dani’s right;” “no, Dani needs to get over herself.” This is how fans “grieve over the heartbreak of the human condition rather than hang on to a fixed value judgment.”

But — now you knew a “but” was coming, right?

When Irna conceived “As the World Turns,” as the first 30 minute soap, she wanted the additional time not to tell more story, but to develop "better story and characterization."

The first two weeks of Beyond the Gates were overwhelming. Not only was every one of the 20 contract characters introduced — along with a few of the recurring — but their upcoming storylines were telegraphed, as well; some began immediately unfolding. Keeping track of what was happening to characters whose names we barely knew was exhausting. Why introduce everyone all at once?

Four months in, the pacing has settled down somewhat, but is still choppy and lacks cohesion. Storylines move plot point to plot point — skipping over the emotional beats in-between that connect viewers with characters — in Irna’s words, “better characterization.” These emotional beats are often replaced with exposition, creating more than a few missed opportunities. 

The most glaring is the relationships among the Richardsons: Dani’s sister, Nichole, a psychiatrist, her plastic surgeon husband, Ted, and their two children, Kat and Martin. What few scenes there’ve been between parents and children have involved the revelation of Ted’s affair and new daughter — no sense of the how these people related to each other previously. Or, how these two physicians, whose profession requires discipline, patience —  not to mention impulse control — could raise children who’ve acquired none of these qualities. Was this a source of tension — dare I say — conflict as Kat and Martin were growing up? Not a clue. 

The underlying problem continues: juggling so many character and storylines left little time to fully flesh out characters — and not just the Richardsons. While some of the initial storylines are coming together into an umbrella story that promises to have far-reaching consequences, with so many characters and storylines, the whole of the show has yet to exceed the sum of its parts. Given the size of the current cast and number of storylines can it ever?  

Michelle Val Jean began sketching out BTG long before CBS, P&G Studios, and NAACP joined forces to bring the show to air. Considering her and recently departed co-head writer Robert Guza’s decades long history with soaps, I have to wonder if the show would have begun with such front-loaded the narrative had they been left to their own devices. 

According to Ken Corday, whose father, Ted, co-created “Days of Our Lives” with Irna: 

“Irna raged against what she called the ‘dying of the light brought on by the corporate and network creative control.’ She called them ‘temporary people making permanent decisions who didn’t know what they didn’t know.’”   

Given that the show has to deal with three corporations and eight — eight! — executive producers (including Val Jean and creator, Sheila Ducksworth) it’s more than likely that at least some decisions were the result of corporate notes. As many, including my old friend, Patrick Erwin, have observed from the BTG earliest days: “Too many cooks stirring the pot.” 

More about the cooks next time. 

In May 2009, a month after the cancellation of “Guiding Light,” I began researching GL’s creator, Irna Phillips, life with a simple question: “What would Irna think?” At the time, I was considering what Irna might have thought about the new production model GL adopted the year before it left the air after 52 years on television (following 15 years on radio). 

It seems fitting to now ask the same question about “Beyond the Gates,” broadcast television’s first new soap opera in 25 years. A coproduction of CBS, P&G Studios, and the NAACP, BTG premiered in late February. I had planned to share my thoughts earlier, but you know what they say abobut making plans…

First, a few caveats:

I was in diapers when when I began watching soaps with my mother — the Procter & Gamble shows — GL and “As the World Turns.”  After ‘World Tuns was cancelled in 2010, I pretty much stopped, though I continue to check in with a few fan sites. So, it’s been more almost 15 years since I last watched soap operas on a regular basis — a lot has changed. 

As I considered what Irna might think about how soap opera has changed since her death in 1973, a song from 1970 popped into my head — Melanie’s: “Look What they’ve Done to My Song, Ma. Even more on point, the original title: “What Have They Done to My Song?”

When soaps began on television, daily episodes — each a four scene, one-act play — were broadcast live. By the time Irna died, episodes were recorded, but still shot in sequence. 

In the early 1980s, shows began editing videotape — shooting movie style,   set-to-set — rather than in sequence. But it was still a single episode being produced each day. Now, it’s an assembly line: pieces of several episodes are shot during the course of a single day, then pieced together in the editing suite. This production model reduces studio time, and  is a major factor in soaps’ financial sustainability, so it’s likely here to stay. But, as Irna noted in a 1972 interview with Broadcasting Magazine (now B&C)  pre-taping has a tradeoff:

"I'm out of patience with pre-taping way in advance because that locks you in. Daytime dramas should be flexible so that you can rewrite an outline if it doesn't seem to be working out in the performance. I'm usually about three weeks ahead on my outlines, but I have no objection to changing horses in midstream on a moment's notice."

When BTG went on the air, they had already recorded three months worth of episodes, which finished airing in late May. While it always takes a few months for a new soap to get settled, with so many episodes in the can there were limited opportunities to make any adjustments along the way. And there were stories and characters that have needed adjusting from the beginning, which I’ll discuss in a subsequent post. 

In a 1948 letter to P&G executive, William Ramsey, Irna suggested that televising serial dramas could provide a “commercial angle where the product could be seen and used but not announced,” Over the years, a few soaps have flirted with idea, but the flirtations were short-lived. Early on, “BTG” embraced this “commercial angle” when Nicole Richardson entered her living room spraying a can of Febreeze. Soon, cameras began holding on laundry baskets with Tide’s signature red bottle. Fans start taking note of every appearance, and the commercial that often immediately follows. 

With one notable exception — an awkward scene with Nicole and her mother, Anita Depree, extolling the virtues of Febreeze — BTG’s placement has been following Irna’s suggestion that products be seen but not announced. Initially, Irna imagined “two girls washing out sheer hose in a hell of a dramatic scene.” Back in the day, characters often talked in the kitchen — some with running water and working appliances.  But, these days no one seems to have a kitchen — at least not one viewers can see — so that leaves out Dawn, Cascade, and Bounty.

Of course, Tide and Febreeze are only two P&G products. The show could have fun and throw in some Downey, or a box of Bounce dryer sheets.  Maybe switch off with Tide Free and Gentle in the white bottle. And while changing a diaper wouldn’t work, should newlywed Haley Richardson’s recently announced pregnancy end happily (never a given on a soap:), P&G’s premium diapers, Pampers, could be mentioned. And maybe a box of Puffs tissues on a desk or night table. But please — enough with the camera holds — viewers will notice. 

And what might Irna think about the stories on the current soaps?

She didn’t live to see the impact the enormous popularity of “General Hospital’s” Luke and Laura and primetime’s Dallas and Dynasty had on the daytime soaps in the early 1980s, when soaps began to be dismissed as “soapy,” and  associated with cat fights and campy characters. A recent poster’s succinct observation that, “soaps have been going further and further off-course since 1981. TPTB just don't have a fundamental understanding of what makes soap fans so loyal,” echoes perfectly what “Days of Our Lives”executive producer, Ken Corday, whose father, Ted, worked with Irna, noted in his memoir: 

“Irna raged against what she called the dying of the light brought on by the corporate and network creative control.” She called them “temporary people making permanent decisions who didn’t know what they didn’t know.”   

More on that in later. But, next time: 

How “Beyond the Gates” is continuing Irna’s storytelling ethos… and how it’s not. 

SCENE:

FLASHBACK - INT. ABC - CORRIDOR - DAY — 1962

Irna and DOUGLAS CRAMER, a programming executive in his early-30s, stop in front of an office door.

DOUGLAS CRAMER
I appreciate this, Irna. I really wanted to hire you. But, the network was excited about this guy because he wrote a great script for "The Untouchables." Except he has no idea how to serialize the story.

IRNA
Douglas, you know I've always considered myself a teacher first.

INT. ABC — PAUL MONASH'S OFFICE - DAY

PAUL MONASH, mid-40s, sits at his desk. Irna and Douglas Cramer enter.

PAUL MONASH
Doug, come on in. I'm expecting my new secretary.
(his face falls when he sees Irna)
Oh, you must be the new girl — honey, get us some coffee.

DOUGLAS CRAMER
Paul, I'd like you to meet Irna Phillips. Irna, Paul Monash.

Monash, not even a little embarrassed, stands up as he and Irna shake hands. All sit down.

PAUL MONASH
Oh yes. The soap opera writer. You know, I'm not sure why she's here, Doug. Peyton Place is going to be a high-class anthology drama, not some soap opera.

DOUGLAS CRAMER
Yes, it is. But, it is going to be serialized high-class anthology drama. And you don't know how to structure a serialized story. That's why Irna's here — to teach you how —

PAUL MONASH
Well —

IRNA
Mr. Monash, I only came as a favor to Douglas. One of my serials, As the World Turns,” draws higher ratings than half of CBS's primetime schedule, which is why I'm in the process of creating a new serial, “Another World,” for NBC. All of which means I'm a very busy woman. So, if you don't want my help, just say so.			

INT. ABC STUDIO HALLWAY - DAY, A FEW MONTHS LATER

A harried Douglas Cramer walks back and forth carrying papers between Paul Monash's office and an adjacent office with Irna.

END FLASHBACK

FOOTNOTE:

In the early-mid-aughts, there were more than a few fans of primetime serials (most, but not all, of them men) who rejected any connection between their shows and daytime soaps. Underlying their resistance, though rarely articulated: the very idea that the hypermasculine, tortured protagonists that embodied the early years of what’s now called “prestige” television — Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper — could possibly have anything to do with the feminized genre that is daytime soaps.  One critic went so far as to suggest that, “the majority of both producers and viewers of primetime serials have never watched soaps and probably wouldn’t have liked them if they did.”

Now, it may well be true that the majority of primetime serial viewers would “have never watched soaps and probably wouldn’t have liked the if they did,” (though, really, who’s to say for sure?). But, when it comes to the producers, no one ever asked them. When “Hill Street Blues” creator, Steven Bochco, mentioned in interviews that the writers room often referred to the show as “cop soap” (or maybe it was “soap cop”), no one said, “I’ve heard you say that a few times. Anything to it?” Bochco died in 2018, so we’ll never know.

So, while it seemed clear to many observers that there was a connection between daytime and primetime soaps, less clear was how — and who? 

A few years back, I was watching a weekend binge of “Family” (ABC, 1976-1980). In one episode there was something about James Broderick’s portrayal of attorney Doug Lawrence — his expression, mannerism, I don’t know — that reminded me of Don MacLaughlin, who played “As the World Turns” patriarch, attorney Chris Hughes, from the show’s 1956 premiere until his death in 1986.

While not explicitly serialized, “Family” shared a lot with “As the World Turns’s,” core family, the Hugheses: in addition to Chris, there was his wife Nancy, three children and a daughter, Susan, who had died in a swimming pool accident six months before the show began. The Lawrence family included stay-at-home mom, Kate, and three children; another son, Timmy, had been killed in a boating accident five years earlier.

Now all of these similarities could be chalked up to nothing more than happenstance were it not for how many people in and around “Family” had connections to soaps opera in general and “As the World Turns” in particular. 

“Family” was conceived by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, who had previous headed ABC Daytime programming. He was succeeded by Brandon Stoddard, who fired Irna Phillips from her final show in 1970, “A World Apart.” While at ABC, Stoddard, in addition the miniseries,”Roots,” went on to green light “thirtysomething” and “My So-Called Life,” primetime shows, which, while not explicitly serialized, incorporated elements of soaps.

President of ABC during “Family’s” run? Fred Silverman, who began his career as head of CBS Daytime and worked closely with Irna Phillips and “As the World Turns.”  Also on board: executive consultant Mark Rydell, who, from 1956-1962 played Jeff Baker on ‘World Turns. And I looking through As the World Turns: The Complete Family Scrapbook, when I came across a picture of James Broderick, who portrayed Jim Norman on the show in 1962. Like I said — a lot of connections to daytime and ‘World Turns. 

And then there was Douglas Cramer. While not directly attached to “Family,” he partnered with Aaron Spelling on numerous shows, including one of the most influential primetime soaps, “Dynasty,”  So he was around. Prior to becoming Director of Program Planning at ABC in 1962, Cramer worked with Irna as a supervising producer on “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light.” In a 2009 interview, Cramer said that when he joined ABC, he immediately proposed a daily, primetime soap to Irna, but Procter & Gamble said no. There was no followup question, and since Cramer died in 2021, we’ll never know his reasoning. 

But, what if Cramer had succeeded? Would the public’s perception of soap opera have changed had there been a daily primetime soap opera in 1962? An even bigger “what if” goes back to 1949 when television’s first soap opera, “These are My Children” premiered. NBC overruled Irna’s argument that the show should air at 7PM, when families could watch together and instead ran the show at 5PM, when housewives would be preparing or serving dinner. Not surprisingly, the show struggled and was cancelled after five weeks. But, what if Irna had prevailed and the target audience for televised serial drama was families, not only women? 

Cramer moved on to the serializing “Peyton Place,” based on the hit movie and bestselling novel of the same name. He hired Irna to teach producer, Paul Monash, how to serialized the story. Cramer wanted five nights; ABC agreed to two, which was soon upped to three; the show premiered in September 1964 and ran for five season. 

Irna sought to capitalize on the success of “Peyton Place with a a fascinating idea: Connect the enormous success of “As the World Turns” with a primetime spinoff, “Our Private World.” It was an idea that with proper planning and sufficient resources could have expanded the reach of daytime soaps. Instead, CBS and P&G rushed “Our Private World” into production and the show premiered in May 1965, less than a year after “Peyton Place.” Fred Silverman described it as a “half-assed effort.” ”Our Private World” lasted 19 weeks. 

The success of “Peyton Place” laid the groundwork for the serialized stories that are now the norm. It also had a more immediate impact on other primetime shows in the mid-1960s. “Dr. Kildare,” produced by Norman Felton, who worked with Irna in 1948 on the first television soap, “These Are My Children,” was initially a self-contained one-hour drama airing weekly. After in response to the success of Peyton Place, the storylines spanned multiple episodes, eventually airing two separate half-hour episodes each week instead of a single one-hour episode. 

While seriality is often considered the defining element of soap opera, there are others. In 2016, I asked Fred Silverman, who headed programming at CBS and NBC as well as ABC, in what ways did the influence of daytime serials spill into primetime. He would go on to talk about the rise of the mini-series and serials. But his immediate response: 

“If you look like at shows like Bonanza or Gunsmoke, where you have a core of characters from year to year who are developed and grow a bit, that change and get older.  If you look at the construction of Gunsmoke, you have Matt, Kitty, Festus and Doc, there were often scenes that were reminiscent of the kinds of scenes you could find in “As the World  Turns,” that didn't necessarily move the story along, but were just great moments of character revelation and humor.”

Bonanza!? Gunsmoke!? My father’s favorite television shows had scenes reminiscent of my mother favorite soap? Who knew?

Since its arrival in the early 1990s, many have considered reality television a satisfactory replacement for soap opera; I find it a cheap substitute. And I don’t mean that figuratively or  pejoratively. Mary Ellis Bunim, who had previously produced four daytime soaps, partnered with Jonathan Murray to create a primetime soap opera for MTV. But when MTV ran the numbers and balked at the expense, Bunim and Murray shifted gears and in 1992 the unscripted — and considerably less expensive —  “The Real World” was born, followed over the years by “Survivor,” “The Bachelor,” and all manner of “The Real Housewives,” to name but a few. Less expensive because rather than stories that emerge from storytellers’ imagination, reality tv editors cobble together episodes from miles of video recordings of explosive, often staged, encounters Like author Sigrid Nunez, “I myself am inclined to agree with people like Doris Lessing, who thought that imagination does a better job of getting at the truth.”

After the soaps I grew up with — “As the World Turns” and Guiding Light” — were cancelled in 2010 and 2009, I lost interest in the daytime soaps. As for streaming, I find myself overwhelmed by the crushing volume. There are many shows I missed that are now available, but some have dozens of episodes requiring more time than I’m willing to commit — at some point, it starts to feel like a job. I’ve enjoyed a few British and Australian series.  But, notwithstanding the suggestions of platform algorithms, I find I spend far more time scrolling and searching than actually watching. Sometimes I just say the hell with it and find a movie or episode of a procedural or sitcom.  

 SCENE:  

FLASHBACK –   INT. TELEVISION STUDIO – NIGHT — 1965  
Irna is being interviewed on Irving Kupcinet's late night talk show.  

IRVING KUPCINET  
We're back with Irna Phillips, who's very unhappy with Procter and Gamble, the longtime sponsor of her show, daytime's number one soap opera, "As the World Turns."  

IRNA 
I  prefer the term serial drama.  

IRVING KUPCINET  
Fair enough. Now, you were saying...  

IRNA 
For six months, I've wanted to tell the story of divorce through the eyes of a Negro child. Not a particularly racial story, but they keep hemming and hawing. I will not use Negros for filler. If I can't use them as I want to, I won't have any Negro performers.  

END FLASHBACK  

INT. CHICAGO — BEDROOM – NIGHT — DECEMBER 22, 1973   
Irna continues pacing.  

IRNA 
It took several months, and I never got to tell my story about the Negro child, but "As the World Turns" finally had a Negro performer — one. "The Guiding Light" had two. And there was a young woman on "Another World."  

FOOTNOTE:  

I first learned of Irna’s appearance on Kup’s show in a 1965 letter from actress Frances Foster, then chair of the New York chapter of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), thanking Irna for her candid remarks. Attached to the letter was a clipping from “Variety.” The description of her appearance struck me as vintage Irna: impatient; confrontational; want it done, do it yourself. 

And that’s how it plays in the scene. On the show, Irna says that she had been asking to integrate the shows for six months but P&G refused. However, there’s no correspondence on the issue. And other than a 1965 interview with McCalls magazine — “I admit that the Hughes live in a world where no one ever mentions segregation or nuclear warfare and where politics is never mentioned in case a sponsor or viewer might be offended. And I hope one day soon that will change.” — I can’t recall Irna saying anything about integrating the shows.  

In her letter to Irna, Foster mentioned that CORE had sent a letter to P&G and other soap sponsors requesting that not only should “Negros be hired for roles immediately,” but that there should be “a far-reaching program which will depict non-whites as an integral part of the American scene.” But, when I reread CORE’s letter, I realized that I had forgotten  its date —  15 March — and the date of P&G’s response (the usual corporate PR blah, blah, blah) — 24 March.    At the time, I thought  it was Billy Dee Williams and James Earl Jones who broke the color barrier in early January 1966 — nine months after CORE’s letter — which seemed reasonable time frame for a major corporation to come to a decision on, what, at the time, was such a fraught issue. But, when Micki Grant died in 2021, I realized that it was she who broke the color barrier when she joined the cast of “Another World” on 12 July 1965 — just four months after CORE’s initial letter. And that struck me an extremely short timeframe.   

Here’s what I think might have happened:   

While P&G responds immediately to CORE’s letter with the usual PR-speak stating “they had long encouraged their programs to hire Negros and that they had sent their ad agencies a letter to that effect,” behind the scenes, the company worries what will happen if CORE goes public with its demands. In the 1960s, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI considered civil rights organizations subversive Communist fronts. So were P&G appear to integrate their soaps in response to CORE’s letter, it would likely not sit well with many customers and viewers, not to mention stockholders. So, P&G decides to control the narrative: Irna goes on Kup’s show, lobs a few grenades, and in a matter of weeks, the first show is integrated — but on P&G’s terms — not CORE’s. Of course, with no paper trail, there’s no way to know for certain.  

Not surprisingly, integrating the soaps proved problematic. Of course, there was pushback from viewers — and not just from the South — there are letters from Connecticut and Long Island in PGP’s archives at the Wisconsin Historical Society. But the real challenge was how to fully weave the lives of Black characters into the fabric of the all-white soap opera world. So, while Irna may have insisted to Irving Kupcinet that she would “not use Negros for filler,” the reality is that these early Black characters were, indeed, used for filler.   

Micki Grant played legal secretary (then attorney) on “Another World” for seven years, But other than a few family members being added to the cast shortly before she left in 1972, her seven years — which included long absences — provided little meaningful story for the character.  Billy Dee Williams and Cicely Tyson, Dr. Jim Fraiser and his wife, nurse Martha Fraiser were on “The Guiding Light” for two years (in 1967, Ruby Dee took over as Martha), but, again, no story. Agnes Nixon was the show’s head writer when the characters were introduced; She would to on to create “One Life to Live” for ABC. When it premiered in 1968, the cast included Black actors who were soon involved in a groundbreaking storyline that dealt explicitly with race. Since Nixon often said how happy she was to be free of the constraints PGP imposed, it’s likely that she had been pushing storylines for the Fraizers before she left.   

As for Irna wanting to look “at divorce through the eyes of a Negro youngster”: She didn’t specify which show she had in mind, but most likely it was ATWT.  Also in January 1966, the late James Earl Jones began a short run as Dr. Jerry Turner before, according to Helen Wagner’s Oral History of Television interview, leaving to workshop “The Great White Hope”  — the role that would win him a Tony Award in 1970 — at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC. The character was never recast — why remains a mystery — and when Jones returned to New York that Fall, he replaced Billy Dee Williams on “Guiding Light.”   

It wouldn’t be until the 1980s that Black characters would begin to have substantial roles on the PGP soaps. In 1981, the Morgan family joined  “Another World.”  While “Guiding Light” had a few Black characters here and there through the 1980s, the 1990s saw two Black families, the Grants and the Speaks, added to the canvas. On “As the World Turns,” it was 1985 before the show introduced police officer Roy Franklin and his sister, Nella, with the Griffin family joining the cast in the early 1990s.  Black actor, Hannibal Penney Jr., who portrayed Dr. Clem Moultrie on “Ryan’s Hope” in 1975, succinctly summed up the underlying — and unspoken — challenge of weaving Black characters into storylines: "Daytime TV is all about romance, and when an actor gets a full story with a love interest, then he can discern his following and how much audience appeal he has." Penney was on RH for three years, but Clem never had a love interest.   

Which raises the thorny issue of inter-racial relationships:  In 1976, on “Days of Our Lives,” there were a few complaints a white David Banning and Black Valerie Grant became friends. But, when the relationship blossomed into love a year later, hate mail poured in, ratings dropped, and the show abandoned the story, writing Valerie out.   

“All My Children” ended white Cliff Warner’s and Black Angie Baxter-Hubbard’s 1989 engagement when it proved unpopular with viewers, who wanted to see Cliff with his true love, Nina. How much fan opposition was due to race is not clear.   

In 1992, racial issues were explicit in white Duncan McKechnie’s and Black Jessica Griffin’s relationship  on “As the World Turns ” Both families objected and refused to bless the marriage. When their daughter, Bonnie Louise, was born in 1993; their close friend, Lisa, was forced to confront her own racism.   

Soaps generally feature two families, whose members became involved, generating conflict and drama. But “Generations,” (1989-1991) which centered around one Black family and one white, featured no inter-racial relationships. 

And as for pairings between Black men and white women: historically, they’ve proved few, far between — and short-lived. 

There had been an earlier effort to integrate the soaps in 1962, when Rex Ingram was put on contract to play the Reverend Victor Graham on ‘The Brighter Day.” However, the show’s ratings were tanking — it had lost half its audience after a time slot change — and was cancelled two weeks after Ingram began. While the optics were, well…  — and there would have almost certainly been viewer complaints — it’s unlikely the Ingram’s casting was a major factor in the show’s cancellation.   

Irna died in 1973, and never got to see the full fruits of her efforts. But, this past February, “Beyond the Gates,” premiered on CBS. The first new network soap since “Passions” in 1999, BTG, a production of CBS, Procter & Gamble Studios, and the NAACP, tells the story of the Duprees, an uber-wealthy Black family living outside Washington, DC.    

SCENE:

INT. IRNA'S APARTMENT - LIVING ROOM – DAY - NOVEMBER 22, 1963 
Irna, Rose and Bill Bell sit at the card table.

BILL BELL
You know, this storyline for "Another World" doesn’t have much to do with the Missy story we pitched to NBC.

IRNA
The suits at the network know enough.
(growing agitated)
NBC has never had a successful serial drama. How many shows have they tried, twenty? Not one still on the air.

BILL BELL 
Which is why -

IRNA
NBC destroyed my first television serial. Rose, tell him what they did to "These Are My Children."

ROSE COOPERMAN
He's heard the story. Look at the time. The show's about to start.

SAME SETTING — A FEW MINUTES LATER
"As the World Turns" is on the television as Irna, Rose, and Bill watch from the sofa and an arm chair.

IRNA
What is Nancy doing with those books?

BILL BELL 
(laughing)
She's turning them right-side-up.

IRNA
That's not in the script.

BILL BELL
Maybe Santos wanted to see if Helen was paying attention.

IRNA 
(to Rose)
As soon as the show is over, get Nancy and Grandpa on the phone. Ted, too.

They continue watching closely for another minute when the broadcast stops.

IRNA 
What is this?

ANNOUNCER (TV)
Here's a bulletin from CBS News.


SAME SETTING AN HOUR LATER
The three sit silently, watching Walter Cronkite on the television. Rose and Bill are in tears.

WALTER CRONKITE 
(TV) 
The flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1PM, Central Standard Time, 2-o'clock, Eastern Standard Time...some thirty- eight minutes ago.

IRNA
Well, that episode is lost forever.

ROSE COOPERMAN
Irna!

The phone rings. Bill gets up.

BILL BELL
That'll be Lee.

Bill picks up the phone.

BILL BELL
I'm leaving now... I'll be home soon.

Bill hangs up.

IRNA
What do you mean "I'm leaving now?" We have work to do. 

Bill and Rose are speechless.

IRNA
The president's been murdered. Yes, it's a tragedy, but what are we supposed to do? Just sit around and cry?

BILL BELL
Yes!

Bill exits and the door slams (OS). Irna and Rose sit silently. After a moment, Irna speaks.

IRNA
I'd like some coffee. And I still want to talk to Nancy and Grandpa.

Rose exits silently. Irna remains sitting. For just a moment her eyes fill with tears, then, just as quickly, her tears dry. She gets up, moves to the card table, then sits. Rose enters with the coffee, then sits.

IRNA
Thank you. Now, back to "Another World."

ROSE COOPERMAN
You know, I've been thinking about how much the Matthews family reminds me of the Hughes and "As the World Turns" —

IRNA
(sarcastic and biting)
Really Rose?! Really! Well, you know that, and I know that, and Bill knows that. But "Another World" is on NBC not CBS. So how are "As the World Turns" viewers going to know that? Do you have ideas how we solve that problem, Rose?

INT. CHICAGO - BEDROOM – NIGHT - DECEMBER 22, 1973 

Irna reads from the last page of the manuscript.

IRNA
"So I hit upon the idea of having a birthday party for Grandpa Hughes on "As the World Turns." Viewers were invited to send birthday greetings. Grandpa received nearly 150,000 telegrams and cards. A list was made and a letter send to viewers in appreciation, and with an announcement, which read something to the effect that there was a new family going on the air, one which we were sure the viewers would like as much as they did "As the World Turns." The network was given, along with the date of the first broadcast.

FOOTNOTE:

The first two scenes have evolved considerably from what I initially wrote. I came across a 2007 interview with Don Hastings, who played Dr. Bob Hughes on ‘World Turns for 50 years, in which he talked about his time as a writer with Irna in the early 1970s. According to Hastings, after the dog-and-pony show was over and the executives left, Irna would say, “Now, here’s the story we’re really going to tell.” 

I loved that line and had hoped to find a place for it. But setting it up required a lot of exposition — and I hate exposition! — so I cut that scene and had her tell Bill Bell, ”The suits at the network know enough.” Not quite as punchy, but it makes the point.  

Also crucial: explaining Irna’s unhappiness that “Another World” will be on NBC rather than CBS and, given NBC’s abysmal record with daytime soaps, why her concerns were valid. This scene also provided an opportunity to show how I imagined Rose might deal with Irna.  

Initially, I was reluctant to include the iconic episode when Walter Cronkite breaks into “As the World Turns” to report the news that President John Kennedy had been  assassinated. That clip has been viewed so many millions of times and become so synonymous with ATWT,  I feared its presence might seem gratuitous.

Ultimately, I decided that by including the episode I could illustrate several ways in which the characters interact. Irna never mentioned the assassination in “All My Worlds.” But when he was interviewed for “An Oral History of Television,” Bill Bell said that while he went home after news of the assassination broke, Irna wanted to continue working — a revelatory difference between them, and set up a moment to show that Irna was not entirely devoid of feeling.

It was also an opportunity to discuss the scene immediately preceding the breaking news.  I had never noticed that Nancy righted the books that Grandpa had put back on the shelf upside down. It was a funny moment not in the script, and likely not suggested by the director, Ted Corday, who was not known for his sense of humor. It was also a chance to see Irna  refer to the characters — Nancy and Grandpa —  while Bill Bell referred to the actors — Helen and Santos.  And it revealed that however much control Irna exerted, the show was broadcast live, and once the red light went on the actors were in charge. 

The scene closes with Irna exploding at Rose. I had read and heard a lot of stories about Irna’s famous temper, but could never find a specific example of why Irna was so angry. While Irna never mentioned any conflict with Rose, James Lipton, host of “Inside the Actors Studio,” worked with Irna as both an actor and writer. In “Inside Inside,” he tells of Irna giving Rose a mink coat to apologize for some unspecified transgression. 

Finally, despite my aversion to exposition, I was determined to include Irna’s inspired solution to a challenging situation: how to let CBS viewers know about a new show on NBC in 1963, decades before the cross network promotion that is now standard on streaming services. While the problem had been solved before this particular episode aired — Grandpa’s birthday party aired several weeks prior to the assassination — by altering the chronology, Irna’s extreme reaction to Rose’s innocent comment set the stage to reveal Irna’s resolution to a seemingly intractable problem. 
  

Scene

INT. IRNA'S APARTMENT/LIVING ROOM – DAY — 1962 

Irna and Rose are at the card table.

IRNA 
What's left?

ROSE COOPERMAN
"As the World Turns." It's a Wednesday episode and Eileen is doing the "Virginia Woolf" matinees so —

IRNA
I don't like it. It confuses viewers, seeing characters from Oakdale in different roles. I mean really, who is going to believe my spirited Lisa as that mousey little twit, Honey? Besides, she has plenty of time to get there after the show. Her character doesn't come on until halfway through the first act, so there's no reason she can't be in this episode.


Footnote:

Eileen Fulton — Lisa — loves to tell this story: “As the World Turns” finished its live broadcast at 2 PM. The shuttle that ran from the studio at Grand Central to Times Square got her to the theater just in time to make her entrance. In the evening, she did “The Fantastics” off-Broadway. She brought a couple of hardboiled eggs with her. 

New York stage actors were a crucial element as soaps move from radio to television. Chicago was the epicenter of radio serials. Actors read their lines off of scripts on music stands, something they couldn’t do on television. And, unlike radio, actors had to look like the characters they were portraying. 

While Chicago is currently home to a vibrant theater scene, in the late 1940s, it was mostly national touring companies. Beyond the Goodman, there was little locally produced professional theater. So, on to New York, where in the 1970s, there could be as many as 14 soaps in production. That number dwindled over the years until the final New York soap, “One Life to Live,” was cancelled in 2012. 

Below is a by no means exhaustive list of some accomplished stage actors who took advantage of the paychecks and exposure soaps provided. Many were short-term soap roles to fill in between theater gigs — sometimes just a few days work. Some, like Tovah Feldshuh and Lisa Brown, followed Eileen Fulton’s example, doing double duty juggling a soap and Broadway. Robert LuPone, who received a Tony nomination for his role as Zach in the original production of “A Chorus Line,” appeared on six soaps while also co-founding the MCC theater group. 

Henderson Forsythe appeared in a dozen Broadway productions and won a Tony for his role in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” while playing David Stewart on “As the World Turns” for 33 years. And then there’s Larry Bryggman, who appeared in dozens of Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, during his 35+ years as John Dixon, also on “As the World Turns.”  

Unlike Irna, other headwriters were more willing to accommodate actors’ schedules. What Irna wanted was for viewers to experience their daily serials as totally immersive, something the intimacy of the camera made possible. In the early years, there were no credits identifying the actors with the characters they played. She didn’t want actors doing interviews so they would disappear and viewers could experience the characters as she did: real people. 

And they did: Even now, with social media, soap actors tell of being approached by fans who speak to them as their characters, filling them in on what other characters are doing. Sometimes, fans connected with characters a little too well. Lisa was soaps’ first “bad girl,” whose misdeeds so outraged one fan that she belted Eileen Fulton with her purse. 

Truth is, Irna Phillips was a lonely woman. According to Helen Wagner, who played Nancy Hughes for ‘World Turns’s 54 year run, Irna thought of the characters as her friends. She always referred to actors by their character’s name — even when talking with them face-to-face. This is not to say she was delusional. For a few years, Don Hastings, who played Bob Hughes for 50 years, doubled as a script writer. When discussing scripts though, Irna called him “Don.” 

Soaps on stage:
J Smith Cameron
Lois Smith
Kelly Bishop
James Earl Jones
Cicely Tyson
Ruby Dee
Micki Grant
Marie Masters
Rosemary Prinz
Kathleen Widdoes 
Giancarlo Esposito
Marion Seldes
Larry Pine
Larry Keith
Christine Baranski
Tom Aldridge

SCENE:

INT. IRNA'S APARTMENT - FOYER - DAY — 1956

BILL BELL, a handsome man in his late 20s, talented and ambitious, waits nervously. Hearing Irna dictating to Rose, he walks towards the voices and stands outside the living room watching Irna pace as she dictates, changing her voice and mannerisms to indicate characters and punctuation.

IRNA/GRANDPA
Nancy ain't going to like that. She's going to take one look at it and say "When do I wear it?" Don't you know your wife?

IRNA/CHRIS
Yes, I know her. But she is a woman and something sort of frilly and dressy-uppy —

IRNA/GRANDPA 
What did you say? You been listening to some saleswoman?

IRNA/CHRIS
Yes

IRNA/GRANDPA 
Sounds like it.

IRNA/NANCY
What are you two doing down there?

BILL BELL
Grandpa Hughes, Chris, and Nancy at the end.

IRNA
(surprised by his arrival)
Mr. Bell, I didn't hear you. You have a very good ear. It took Rose a long time to discern the different characters.

BILL BELL
Did you ever consider becoming an actress?

IRNA
I did, however in collage my drama teacher thought otherwise. Of course, I'm really more of an observer and chronicler of the human condition than a writer. And, of course, a teacher. Sit down, and we'll discuss these scripts you've written.

SAME SETTING – 90 MINUTES LATER
Bill sits at the card table with Irna and Rose, gathering together his scripts, all marked heavily in red.

IRNA
Well, you seem like a very nice young man. And you certainly have talent. I'm just not sure you're crazy enough to write for daytime serials.

Bill, taken aback, sees Rose suppressing a smile.

BILL BELL
Miss Phillips, if it's the money... You may not be aware, but my wife, Lee, has a television show -

IRNA
I've seen her show. She's very personable.

BILL BELL
She's a great admirer of yours. But I would be able to work without a salary, if that's the issue.

IRNA
I was wrong. You might just be crazy enough to write for daytime serials. However, I believe people should be paid for their work; your salary will be seventy-five dollars a week.

SAME SETTING – AN HOUR LATER

ROSE COOPERMAN
"Not sure you're crazy enough." You just love to torture people.

IRNA
I find it very instructive to see how they react. So, what do you think?

ROSE COPPERMAN 
Well, I like him. I think he's going to do very well

IRNA
So do I. But I am a bit worried that his wife earns more than he does. Men have such fragile egos they don't always respond well to constructive criticism.

FOOTNOTE:

I don’t recall who, but someone once told me that screenwriters need to be able to state the purpose of each scene in a single sentence. Seems like a good idea. I suppose in terms of plot, the purpose of the scene above is for Irna to meet Bill Bell; the two would work together for ten years, first on “Guiding Light” then “As the World Turns,” and had a complicated relationship.  

But, good storytelling involves more than plot. This scene was a chance to display Irna’s unique method of telling her stories. Many soap writers dictate their scripts into a dictaphone rather than writing or typing. Irna dictated as well, but not into a dictaphone. She once said that, like Scheherazade, she required a live audience. 

Here’s how she described her process: 

“When I dictate I, in fact, act out the entire episode. People who have watched me work have commented that when dictating I change my voice to fit each character, that I used certain gestures when speaking the lines intended for this character or that [one].” I would love to have seen a video; unfortunately, none exists. 

And then there’s Irna’ proclivity to control the situation. In “All My Worlds,” Irna said that Bill Bell was so eager to work for her, he offered to work for free. But she told him that she believed people should be paid and said his salary would be $75 a week. In “The Young and Restless Life of William J. Bell,” author Michael Maloney relays Bell’s version: “I don’t think you’re crazy enough…” In a 2014 interview, former Proctor & Gamble Productions executive, Edward Trach, told me that Irna liked to put people on the defensive, hence, “you’re not crazy enough…”

And, finally, there’s critic Robert LaGuardia’s observation in his 1974 book, “The Wonderful World of TV Soap Operas”: “Although she (Irna) didn’t outwardly invite it, she wanted people to talk with her on a one-to-one basis, even attempt to dominate her if they could.”  So, when Bill Bell offered to work for free, one interpretation might be, “Lady said she wanted crazy. Here you go.” 

An additional purpose of this scene is to flesh out the dynamic between Irna and Rose. Irna never went into a lot of detail about their relationship, so there’s no way to know for sure, although I’ve been told that Rose was deferential towards Irna — at least in front of others. But behind closed doors, it made sense to show Rose as the only person who could call Irna on her behavior — but never confrontationally. 

After working with Irna for 10 years, Bill Bell took over as head writer of  “Days of Our Lives,” which Irna co-created with Ted Corday, who had died the year before. Irna took his departure as a personal betrayal, and the two never spoke again. In 1973, Bell, along with his wife, Lee Philip Bell, created “The Young and the Restless,” followed by “The Bold and the Beautiful” in 1987. Both are still air on CBS