Agnes Nixon

Nixon is the premier storyteller in the history of daytime television, and the creator of beloved soap operas such as "One Life to Live" and "All My Children." Raised in Nashville, as the only child of divorced parents in an Irish-Catholic enclave, she experienced more tears than joy. She felt isolated and painfully lonely because no child she knew had a father living apart from his family. Moreover, she was terrified of her dad's irrationality. Nixon never got over those feelings of inadequacy, and they provided her a writer's insight into the hidden emotions that so often shape people's destinies. In college at Northwestern, she won college competitions for writing and directing the best play, which led to her first job in radio just three days after graduation. Nixon was later hired to write for soap operas, such as "As the World Turns," "Search for Tomorrow," "Guiding Light," and "Another World." In 1968, she was recruited by ABC-TV and offered creative control of her own program. Tired of the restraints imposed by the WASPy, non-controversial nature of daytime drama, Nixon instead decided to dramatize tough, real-life issues, which reflected the changing social structures and attitudes of American family life. Nixon created "One Life to Live" and developed "All My Children" with story lines that grew out of the shenanigans of rogues, scoundrels, temptresses, liars, busybodies, social climbers and the lusty folks who populate Everytown, USA. Nixon had a serial on the air five days a week, 52 weeks a year, for 50 years. Heralded as the "Queen of the Modern Soap Opera," she brought the open discussion of previously forbidden social issues into the living rooms of millions of American homes, on topics ranging from the anti-war movement, cancer, abortion, homosexuality, race relations, and the AIDS epidemic. In 2010, Nixon received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 1993, she addressed the students at the Achievement Summit in Glacier National Park.