Agnes Nixon

Bio:
Agnes Nixon (born Agnes Eckhardt on December 10, 1922 in Chicago, Illinois) was an American writer and producer, best known as the creator of several soap operas. Agnes began her soap career under Irna Phillips, as a writer on Woman in White and As the World Turns. On one of her shows, Guiding Light, Agnes notably wrote a script about a character having a cancer scare, after her own friend died of cervical cancer. Agnes needed to write the storyline without the use of the words “cancer,” “uterus,” or “pap test,” but following the airdate, the number of women who took a pap smear surged dramatically. In the mid-1960s Agnes was asked by ABC execs to create a show with a contemporary storyline and she produced One Life to Live in 1968. Because of the show’s success, Agnes’s All My Children was greenlighted and began as a half-hour soap opera in 1970. Throughout the years, Agnes introduced many social trends into her scripts, such as the anti-war movement, the AIDS epidemic, homosexuality and American TV’s first on-screen abortion. In 2010, Agnes received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of TV Arts & Sciences during the 37th Daytime Emmy Awards. Agnes died on September 28, 2016 at the age of 93.

Best Known For:
Agnes Nixon is best known as the Queen of Soap Operas and the creator of All My Children and One Life to Live.

Personal Life:
Agnes was married to Robert Nixon from April 6, 1951 until his death in 1996. The two had four children together, including filmmaker Robert Nixon.