War and Peace is a day at the beach compared with “All My Children,” which starred Susan Lucci as Erica Kane for 41 years, and “One Life to Live,” featuring Erika Slezak as Victoria Lord for 42. Most significant, though, the story lines were open-ended and could stretch for weeks, months, even decades. Small, minimally lighted sets with lots of shadows created a stagy look that was surprisingly well suited to the small black-and-white screen and heightened the melodramatic mood. Actors often ad-libbed, and productions were rushed. By 1970, the three major networks were airing a total of 18 daytime serials.ĭaytime soaps, televised five days a week and 52 weeks a year, were far less polished than prime-time fare. And marketers were keen to tap the buying power of this vast new demographic-as evidenced by the detergent ads that originally gave rise to the sudsy nickname in the 1930s.
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Midcentury housewives had more free time to tune in than did previous generations of women, thanks partly to innovations such as the automatic dishwasher and clothes dryer. Trade publication Variety found the show to be of “no visual interest.” But television soap operas, largely created by women for women, were soon attracting tens of millions of viewers and driving network revenue. “Last week television caught the dread disease of radio-soapoperitis,” Pathfinder news magazine complained when “These Are My Children” debuted. Phillips went on to turn her successful radio drama “Guiding Light” into a TV soap opera in 1952 and also launched “As the World Turns” (1956) and “Another World” (1964).Ĭritics, of course, hated TV’s newest dramas.
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Irna Phillips, a scriptwriter and radio actor, led the way with a bold innovation whose impact on world culture everyone underestimated: “These Are My Children,” the first daytime serial television drama, which she created 70 years ago. Long before Daenerys Targaryen commanded her dragons to torch armies of White Walkers in “Game of Thrones,” another strong, visionary woman sparked the revolution that makes today’s epic entertainment so profitable, if not plausible. Photo illustration by Amanda Berlinski source photo: Steve Fenn / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images The long-lived soap opera "All My Children" began its over-40-year run in 1970.
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