My family immigrated to America from the Soviet Union in 1977. I was seven years old. I spoke no English. (OK, that's not true. I knew the words "apple" and "the." How do you translate the word "the?") I knew nothing about fitting in at my new Jewish Day School, or San Francisco, CA, in general.
And then I discovered television. Television would teach me how to be an American! There was "The Brady Bunch," and "Gilligan's Island," and "Lost in Space," and "The Partridge Family." (I was obviously receiving very mixed messages about the average American family.)
Summer of 1980, though, I discovered soap-operas. I wasn't the only one. It seemed like the whole country had gone on the run with "General Hospital's" Luke and Laura. I don't know what appealed to all those other people about them. I didn't even know what appealed to me about them, at the time. It's only in retrospect that I realize what drew me to soap-operas in a way that no other genre could match was that soap-operas were consistent. Day after day, week after week, year after year, the same people were there at the same hour on the same channel.
My life was anything but consistent. By that point, I was 10 years old and I'd lived in four different countries. I'd left people behind. Some showed up again, others were gone for good. My father was working three jobs to support us - days, nights, and weekends. My mother had a new baby, a new job, and was learning English which, at that point, I understood better than she did. Which meant I was the designated family translator. I was a child, but I was also supposed to act like an adult. I was an immigrant, but I was supposed to act like an American.
Life was confusing. Soap-operas were infinitely clear in comparison. (I used to wonder why people in reality didn't show exactly what they were thinking, whether they were good or bad, on their faces. The music in the background helped figure out what was going on, too.) They were predictable. They were reliable. They made me feel comfortable, safe, and secure.
I started with "General Hospital," then moved onto all the ABC soaps. I added the NBC soaps next. And then the CBS soaps. How did I do it? By sitting in front of the TV, and twisting the knob back and forth, eager to catch "the best parts" of each show. (Yes, this was the past, where we didn't even have a remote, much less VCRs or Watch on Demand.)
As I grew older, I was eager to learn everything there was to know about this thrilling genre I'd fallen in love with. (First, I had to learn the word "genre.") My husband, to this day, teases me that I turn watching television into reading. But if I am interested in something, I can't rest until I've researched it to the point of exhaustion.
That's when I first heard the name: Irna Phillips. Irna Phillips is considered the "Queen of Daytime," the woman who invented soap-operas as we know them today.
Born and raised Jewish, Irna's longest-running show, "The Guiding Light," began as the parable of Reverend Ruthledge, who always kept a lamp burning in his window as a welcome to anyone requiring guidance and comfort. Yet, while most radio programs of the period featured wholesome, Midwestern Christian characters, Irna's show featuring wholesome, Midwestern Christian characters also boasted one Rose Kransky. Rose was a young Orthodox Jewish woman who wanted more out of life than marriage and family. Reverend Ruthledge lent her the money to go to secretarial school, after which she got a job at a publishing house. Rose had an affair with her boss, and got pregnant. The same way Irna had gotten pregnant at the age of 19 and, rather than hiding in shame, sued the father for child support - and won! Irna's baby died. Rose's baby lived for his mother to raise him.
But "Guiding Light" wasn't the only show Irna created or wrote for. There was "As the World Turns," "Another World" and "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing," among others. Irna was responsible for transitioning "The Guiding Light" from radio to television. Every serial that came afterwards was influenced by her tropes, whether daytime soaps created by her protegees, Agnes Nixon ("All My Children," "One Life To Live," "Loving") and Bill Bell ("The Young and the Restless"), or primetime dramas like "Dallas," "Dynasty," "Grey's Anatomy," or even sitcoms like "Friends," all of whom continued their stories from episode to episode, forcing viewers to turn in to find out "Who Shot JR?" or whether Ross and Rachel would finally make it work.
That settled it for me. I was going to be Irna Phillips when I grew up.
(Spoiler: I did not grow up to be Irna Phillips. Only Irna Phillips grew up to be Irna Phillips)
I did work for some of her creations, though. "All My Children" and "One Life To Live," and I even wrote officially-sanctioned tie-in books to her classics, "As the World Turns" and "Guiding Light."
But even when the books I wrote weren't about soaps, they were still soaps. (Little do those who denigrate my novels by calling them "soap operas" know that they are paying me the highest compliment!)
And then I took it one step further. I didn't merely take inspiration from Irna Phillips for my books. I wrote Irna herself into one of my books.
That's the beauty of historical fiction. You can do that. You can take a real person you admire, and have them cross paths with your imaginary people.
But it's tricky. Because you're taking a real person… and putting them in situations they were never in, writing words they never said, and giving them opinions they never expressed.
I read a lot about Irna Phillips. Both when I was a kid, when I worked for "Guiding Light" and "As the World Turns," and prior to writing my upcoming book. She was a complicated woman. Fierce, ambitious, strong. She could be generous, and she could be spiteful. She was famous for killing off characters if the actor displeased her, and for not listening to anyone's opinion but her own. Sometimes she was right, sometimes she was wrong. In short, she was a human being.
As far as I know, Irna was never in a position where an African-American actor was a hit on her radio show, but Irna refused to hire him when "The Guiding Light" moved to television. Yet that's the situation I put her in.
I believe I've researched enough about Irna to speculate about how she would react under such circumstances. Irna was clear about one thing: The show always came first.
She'd paid her own money to produce a television pilot of "Guiding Light" to prove that it was a viable project for Procter & Gamble to sponsor. She wasn't going to risk its success by, in 1952, putting a Negro front and center. At least, that's how I imagine it would have gone down.
And that's the biggest issue with writing historical fiction. We are making up lives for actual people who actually lived them. It feels, if not wrong, then not exactly right, either.
I agonized over going ahead with it. And then I thought of Irna Phillips. Irna believed in doing whatever you have to, in order to make your work the best it can be.
And I want to be Irna Phillips when I grow up.
Comments