Profile of Agnes Nixon on Famous Like Me

Agnes Nixon (born Agnes Eckhardt on December 27, 1927) is a Daytime Emmy award-winning writer and producer. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

She is best known as the creator of soap operas such as One Life to Live and All My Children. Having a key role in the production of these programs, she was either executive producer or consulting producer for both shows for many years: on One Life to Live from 1968 to 1975, and All My Children from 1970 to 1981. She continued to write the program with Wisner Washam until 1983, and again with him from 1988 to 1992, continuing on as a consultant in recurring capacities until 2000.

From 1970 until 1992 every episode of All My Children was written by either Agnes Nixon or her protege Wisner Washam. (Her role with her other creation, "One Life To Live", was more limited once she surrendered the day-to-day aspects of the show in 1975.)

She began her career in soaps working for Irna Phillips. Under Phillips she was a writer on As the World Turns, and was head writer for Search for Tomorrow, Guiding Light and, notably, on Another World, where she created the character of Rachel, an early prototype of one of her more lasting creations, Erica Kane. When she left "Another World", she left the tutelage of Phillips (and the restrictions of sponsor Proctor and Gamble) to create her own shows.

Other soap operas to her credit include Loving, which she co-created with Douglas Marland. Because of her long career and the number of successful shows she has created or been a part of, she is often termed the "Queen" of the modern soap opera. Along with Bill Bell and Marland, her creations and her writing has had the most effect on modern audiences, second only to her mentor Phillips.

Nixon is believed to have written the first medical related storyline on a soap opera. While writing Guiding Light in the 1960s a friend of hers died from cervical cancer. Nixon wanted to do something to educate women about getting a Pap smear so she wrote it into the show by having lead character Bert Bauer encounter a cancer scare. This storyline aired in 1962. Medical records show that after this storyline the number of women who took a Pap smear grew dramatically. (Nixon had to work around some difficulties of getting this storyline to air, as she could not make use of the words “cancer,” “uterus,” and “Pap test.”) In 2002 she recived a special Sentinel for Health "pioneer award" for her work on Guiding Light.

At one point she raised eyebrows and caused a great deal of upset in the writer's circle by her adamant refusal to join the Writer's Guild of America. As the executive producers of her shows she feared that a writer's strike would force her to stop her writing activities while at the same time still be required to produce. In spite of this she has won 5 Writer's Guild of America Awards.

In 1992 ABC executives decided that the show needed new blood and promoted Nixon's protege Megan McTavish to the position of head writer. (Nixon continued to be involved with the show, but wanted to take a step back from the grueling day-to-day task of being a headwriter.) McTavish made some important changes by re-writing major storylines. Most notably, when the show debuted in 1970 the father of Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) had simply abandoned his wife Mona (Frances Heflin) to be with another woman. McTavish changed history so that Erica had been raped by a friend of her father and had a child, Kendall Hart (Sarah Michelle Gellar, now played by Alicia Minshew). McTavish left and returned as writer several times.

In 1999, McTavish was dismissed and Nixon was again asked to take over the headwriting reins at "All My Children". Nixon was well aware that this would probably be her last major stint in daytime television, and wanted to leave one final legacy. As it had always been Nixon's intention that her soaps would deal with important social issues, Nixon decided to forever change the landscape of the show by having a major character come out. (Although the show had gay characters in the past, they had always been supporting players.) In 2000, Erica's daugher Bianca Montgomery (Eden Riegel) returned to Pine Valley with a secret and for months the audience was shown her trying to keep her sexuality a secret from everyone around her. Although this was at first met with criticism, it renewed interest in the show and Eden Riegel gained a huge fan base. This storyline led to All My Children winning a casting Arios award, a GLAAD Media Award and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for Best Drama Series.

In 2005, Nixon appeared onscreen to celebrate the 35th aniversary of All My Children on January 5th. She played "Agnes Eckhardt" (Nixon's maiden name). The character was introduced as a longstanding board member of Pine Valley Hospital. The episode included several in-jokes about the behind the scenes running of the show. For example, while Agnes was speaking, Opal Cortlandt (Jill Larson) said "The way she's talking you would think she built the town with her own bare hands". Verla Grubbs (Carol Burnett) said to Bianca Montgomery "I've been following your story since the beginning (Carol Burnett admits to having been a fan of the show since it debuted in 1970). This episode was also very significant as it was the last screen appearance of original castmember Ruth Warrick before her death ten days later; Nixon appeared at an onscreen memorial service for Warrick's character Phoebe in May 2005.

Nixon is still highly involved in All My Children. She sits around the writing table with the current writing team (headed by none other than Megan McTavish). In 2003 she appeared in an episode of A&E Biography about All My Children.

She was inducted into the Soap Opera Hall of Fame at a Planet Hollywood restaurant in 1994. She received the Trustees Award for Continued Excellence from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1981.

External link

• Internet Movie Database profile

Sources

• Museum of TV article about Nixon

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Agnes Nixon