April 2: Irna and the Soaps

As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, the first daytime television soap operas in half-hour serial format, both premiered on this date in 1956 on CBS. As the World Turns, which would endure until 2010, was the creation of Irna Phillips (1901-1973), who had already made her mark on radio and television with The Guiding Light, Young Doctor Malone, and Days of Our Lives, among other soap opera series. Phillips wrote her scripts by acting them out and dictating; in the 1940s Phillips wrote two million words a year, dictating six to eight hours a day. She was the first to use organ music to transition from scene to scene. Phillips also mentored the writers and producers of the next generation of soaps, notably Young and Restless and All My Children. The Guiding Light is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest-running television drama in history (1952-2009).

“Television comedy had many parents — Ernie Kovacs, Jackie Gleason; TV drama had early shapers in Paddy Chayefsky, Rod Serling, Reginald Rose and others. But the soap opera had only one mother and she was it. She founded an entire industry based on her techniques, beliefs and the ongoing, interlocking stories that she dreamed.” —Cary O’Dell