biography
| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1901–73)
|
| biography:
| Radio and television writer, born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. After graduating from the University of Illinois (1923 BS), she taught speech and drama at college level. In 1930, for Chicago radio station WGN, she created and performed in Painted Dreams (1930–2), generally regarded as the first ‘soap opera’. She moved on to the National Broadcasting Company and wrote Today's Children (1932–8), the first network daytime serial, and began two more, The Road of Life and Guiding Light (both 1937). By 1943 she had five serials on the air and was one of the highest paid women in America. The coming of television did not faze her, and in 1949 she wrote the first TV ‘soap’ These Are My Children, and went on to write or co-write several more during the next two decades, including As the World Turns (1956), one of the most enduring daytime serials. She is credited with devising many of the now standard elements of soap operas. Although her female characters went through a wide range of experiences, marriage and family were always central to her stories. She never married herself but adopted two children. |
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