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Agnes Nixon

AKA Agnes Eckhardt

Born: 10-Dec-1927
Birthplace: Chicago, IL
Died: 28-Sep-2016
Location of death: Rosemont, PA
Cause of death: Pneumonia

Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Film/TV Producer
Party Affiliation: Republican

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Daytime soap operas

Agnes Nixon is the driving force behind several successful soap operas, including her three most famous creations -- All My Children, One Life to Live, and Search for Tomorrow. She attended Northwestern University, where her classmates in drama class included Charlton Heston, Patricia Neal, and Cloris Leachman. After leaving college in the late 1940s she wrote for prime time television shows, including The Philco Television Playhouse and Hallmark Hall of Fame, before she was hired as a writer by soap opera matriarch Irna Phillips, and assigned to write for her radio soap Woman in White.

Nixon is credited with introducing "social relevance" to daytime soaps when, motivated by a friend's cancer death, she created a character for Guiding Light who had a Pap smear and detected uterine cancer early enough to beat it. During the first year of her All My Children, she introduced a then-shocking story line about inter-racial romance, and temporarily lost numerous affiliates in the South. Her father made his living by selling burial clothes to local mortuaries, and she has said that her first serious boyfriend kissed her goodbye to fight in World War II, but was reported missing in action and never seen again.

Father: Harold Joseph Eckhardt (mortuary clothier)
Mother: Agnes Patricia Dalton Eckhardt (office worker)
Husband: Robert Henry Adolphus Nixon (auto executive, m. 6-Apr-1951, d. 1996, three daughters, one son)
Daughter: Catherine Agnes Nixon
Daughter: Emily Anne Nixon Langworthy
Daughter: Mary Frances Nixon
Son: Robert Henry Nixon

    University: Northwestern University (attended)

    Daytime Emmy 1998 (Best Writing, shared, for All My Children)
    Daytime Emmy 1997 (Best Writing, shared, for All My Children)
    Daytime Emmy 1996 (Best Writing, shared, for All My Children)
    Daytime Emmy 1988 (Best Writing, shared, for All My Children)
    Daytime Emmy 1985 (Best Writing, shared, for All My Children)
    Friars Club
    Obama for America
    Risk Factors: Parkinson's

    TELEVISION
    Search for Tomorrow Writer-creator (1951)
    As the World Turns Writer
    The Guiding Light Writer
    Another World Writer
    One Life to Live Writer-creator (1968)
    All My Children Writer-creator (1970)
    Loving Writer-creator (1983)


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