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Making

In the world of soaps, women’s issues take front-burner status

Making

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture

4.63.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Irna Phillips created the cliff-hanger in broadcast storytelling and perfected the serial drama, first in radio, then on television. She mentored the creators of All My Children, One Life to Live, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. The latter two remain on television today. Phillips also created the television vixen, an archetype first seen on soap operas that still endures. Agnes Nixon and married couple William and Lee Phillip Bell worked for Phillips in Chicago. Nixon was head writer of The Guiding Light. In 1962, she wanted to do a cancer storyline, about how uterine cancer is curable if caught in time. Doctors said women proactively asked for pPap smears after watching the character Bert Bauer struggle with her health. The Bells also ushered the sexual revolution into soaps in the 1970s, with glitz and glamor and pushing the envelope on sexuality. Soap operas created complex and groundbreaking women-centered storylines. In 1964, Another World ran an abortion storyline. In 1971, All My Children’s biggest vixen, Erica Kane, was a married pregnant model who didn’t want to be a mother. That abortion storyline was disruptive because the character was not seen as the “right” woman to tell an abortion story. Rape storylines on soaps have played out for decades because the form allows real-time nuance with storytelling. Nothing is ever wrapped up in one “Very Special Episode.” The uniqueness of soaps, airing five days a week, allows for pioneering storytelling.

Transcript

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0:00.0

From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Natalie Moore,

0:05.0

and this is Making Stories Without End.

0:10.0

Here, I take you on a journey to learn about daytime soap operas

0:14.0

and their broad reach on television.

0:17.0

Many people don't know that the serial started right here in Chicago. Join me as we talk about the social impact, history, and lasting legacy of television's

0:27.6

unique immersive storytelling.

0:33.6

Soaps and women.

0:39.6

What do you think about?

0:41.4

Probably catfights.

0:42.8

I don't want him anymore.

0:44.5

How do you think you are?

0:46.3

Giving me my husband back to me?

0:48.4

That's exactly what you want.

0:50.0

John and I shared more love, more life than you.

0:52.7

Really, Barbara, I got to tell you, you got to screw loose.

0:57.6

I take it very personally.

1:01.5

When my husband tries to pull a fast one to suit the whims of some peroxide trap,

1:08.3

who has made it a veritable career of screwing up everybody else's life.

1:12.6

You have made a career, a life's work out of hurting other people.

1:17.6

Any resemblance between you and a human being is purely accidental.

1:21.6

You are an evil, vicious monster sealed inside the shell of an aging whore.

1:29.4

That's for Bridget.

...

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