Soap Opera Uncensored Presents: Between Heaven and Hell — A One Life To Live Tribute

By Nelson Branco

Best Actors! Best Actresses! Best Love Stories! Worst Couples! Best Storylines! Worst Storylines! Best Characters! Best Villains! Best Recasts! Best Head Writer! Best Executive Producer! Biggest Hair Models! Best Moments/Cliffhangers! Best Younger Actors! Daytime Emmy Wins! Best Location Shoots! Asa Buchanan's Best Wives! Biggest Scene-Stealers! Sexiest Men! Most Beautiful Women! Famous Alums! Fearless Predictions! Brian Frons: TV's Most Hated Man! The Genesis and Impact of ONE LIFE TO LIVE! Agnes Nixon's Timeline! And the award for Biggest Super Star Ever! ONE LIFE Fans: "What ONE LIFE Meant To Me!" Casting and Backstage Secrets! How ONE LIFE Got The Last Laugh! The "Cartini" Era!

Past and Present Interviews With Andrea Evans, Judith Light, Nathan Fillion, Paul Rauch, Trevor St. John, Robin Strasser, Kassie De Paiva, Susan Haskell, Agnes Nixon, Michael Easton, Ilene Kristen, Brett Claywell, Scott Evans, Kristen Alderson, Brandon Buddy, Scott Clifton, Farah Fath, Forbes March, John Brotherton, Michael Malone and Josh Griffith!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nelson Branco
• Release date: Feb 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466104358

Nelson Branco

Nelson Branco is the Senior Producer of STRAIGHT TALK WITH ADRIENNE BATRA (airing 1-3 PM EST) at Canada's 24-hour news network, SUN NEWS NETWORK. He's also a Toronto freelance entertainment journalist, who regularly contributes to Hello! Canada, CTV National News Channel, The National Post, The Los Angeles Times' theenvelope.com, TV Guide USA, tvguide.com, Inside Entertainment, OUT, OK!, IN Magazine, Zoomer, Entertainment Tonight, etalk Daily, and fab magazine. For over five years, he spearheaded the soap coverage for TVGuide.ca's popular and controversial daytime-TV hub. In 2009, he appeared on the CW's Daytime Emmy Awards during the red carpet show as an expert.After graduating from Ryerson University in 1997 with a Radio and Television Arts BA degree, he moved from Toronto to New York in 1998 to take on the roles as senior news editor at Soap Opera Update. Branco first freelanced for Soap Opera Weekly as an intern in 1994, and after leaving Soap Update to help create and launch Bauer Publishing's In Touch Weekly in 2003, the Winnipeg native continued to freelance occasionally for its sister publication, Soaps In Depth. In addition, Branco has successfully helped create and launch various magazines In Touch Weekly, Hello! Canada and Canada's first celebrity magazine, Weekly Scoop, where he served as its news and entertainment director. Branco was also a producer and an on-air expert on TVTropolis series, Planet Soap. Most recently, he helped launch The Marilyn Denis Show on CTV as its managing show writer.

Book preview

Chapter 60:

What ONE LIFE Meant To Its Fans

Where do you go with nothing to cling to

your head in the clouds the rainbows behind you,

it’s so hard to breath, always searching for hope

But lost are those eyes, where I used to hide away

And gone are those dreams,

falling down

Still you only have one voice just one chance here to hold onto, to reach for me, and believe cause you only have one life to live

This song is a lifeline, so keep holding on to me live for today’s dream tomorrow’s what will be, look and you’ll find you have one life to live

Where so you turn when darkness surrounds you, your heart on the floor, you’ve lost the horizon so hard to feel, no reason for hope

Well you only have one voice, just one chance here to hold onto, to reach for me, believe cause you only have one life to live

This song is a lifeline, so keep holding on to me, live for today’s dream, tomorrows what will be, look and you’ll find you have one life to live

one life to live

—Paul Glass’s lyrics to ONE LIFE TO LIVE, as sung by Kristen Alderson

To fashion stories about richly diverse people as their lives intertwined, as they interacted with one another… To explain the hopes and hardships, the goals, fights, and failures that are ultimately shared by all mankind no matter how disparate their lifestyles.

—Agnes Nixon on the germination of ONE LIFE in Gary Warner’s ONE LIFE anniversary book, THIRTY YEARS OF MEMORIES

"[My daughter, Megan [Gordon] actually passed away nearly 20 years ago, but I… I still to this day get stopped on the street by FRATERNITY ROW fans who remember the characters that she played. And some ask how she’s doing or will she ever return, but I must tell you that there are times I get so caught up in the show that I find myself wondering the same thing. The fans are so loyal, so passionate, so invested in their stories. I always ask how they started watching FRATERNITY ROW. Some of them were stay-at-home mothers taking a break before their children came home from school. Others were college students free time between classes. Many of them inherited a love of the show from their parents or their grandparents, who were longtime fans themselves. I remember the first time I tuned in to FRATERNITY ROW. I was hooked instantly. I needed to know what would happen next to these fascinating people.

Would the hero and the heroine find their way back to true love? Would the villains get their comeuppance? Or would their crimes go unpunished? Would loving families overcome their struggles? Or would their troubles prove too difficult to surmount. Ultimately, that’s what soap opera is about: Families. Close families. Rival families. Even families that are unexpected. Or the ones we chose for ourselves. And when a show is lucky to be on the air as long as FRATERNITY ROW has been on, these families become extensions of our own. The audience might be upset when a favourite actor leaves, but they are always willing to welcome a new one — even when that new cast member is quite different than the one being replaced. After all, this is a place where people come back from the dead, go off to grade school in the morning and come home from high school in the afternoon, because for every new face, every new couple, every new family, there are long familiar faces. Some who have grown right before our eyes — and some we hope to see grow up. We know them so well they become our friends. We yearn for their happiness, especially when it’s hard won. We laugh as they laugh; we cry as they cry; and we can’t imagine doing without them. And when things are the worst on the show that seems to be when we enjoy them the most. There’s only one thing we have to do to keep them in our lives. Tune in tomorrow."

—Victoria Lord on what soaps mean during the show’s penultimate episode

UNCENSORED ONE LIFE QUOTES FROM PEOPLE MAGAZINE:

I’ve had stories centre around a shotgun I waved around Llanview. I’d want that gun, and I’d put it on the wall.

—Emmy winner Jerry verDorn

Translation: Before aiming it at Brian Frons and Barbara Bloom.

"It taught me lessons about acting that I’ve used in every role I’ve done.

—Judith Light

Translation: Like never paying your last respects onscreen to a show that made you a star.

I have some of the greatest fans. They even created a Monopoly game based on Nora’s life.

—Emmy winner Hillary B. Smith

Translation: Disney went bankrupt in our most recent game.

Snoop Dogg wanted to do scenes with me.

—Emmy winner Bob Woods

Translation: And smoke a joint afterwards.

I’ve done it all.

—Sean Ringgold on his ONE LIFE stint

Translation: Except act.

One time I had to work with a rat that I got completely grossed out by.

—Kassie DePaiva

Translation: But luckily Brian Frons wasn’t around the studio a lot.

I had to be derisive and unkind for, like, three months.

—Emmy winner Roger Howarth

Translation: And then, they yelled, "Action!’

I joke that I have no organs left in my body.

—Emmy winner Erika Slezak

Translation: And after working for ABC/Disney, my soul is missing, too.

Sometimes people do a triple take when they see me walking down the streets of New York. My favourite people are the nannies from Jamaica or Trinidad. They say, ‘You rock, Roxy!’ It totally gets me every time.

—Ilene Kristen

Translation: Or they could be trannies from Brooklyn; not sure.

PROLOGUE: MY ONE LIFE TO LIVE

Like Roger Ebert and film, I was born inside the soap opera of my life.

As an uninspired prairie boy longing to experience more than just the dull and uncultured existence inhabiting me, I discovered this magical genre called soap opera, which would spiritually, intellectually and creatively engage me and change the course of my life and career forever.

When my young and impressionable self first laid eyes on DAYS OF OUR LIVES, it was love at first sight. I would sprint home each weekday to catch the trials and tribulations of life in Salem. After discovering SOAP OPERA DIGEST, I immersed myself in every aspect of DAYS and started paying attention to the entire daytime-TV industry.

A year later, my mother kidnapped me to Portugal for an endless summer vacation. Stuck on a depressing farm in the middle of the country, and knowing I wouldn’t have access to any TV, I wisely took my collection of SOAP OPERA DIGESTs with me. It made for an inspired survival kit.

Stranded and bored to death, I began reading each issue of the industry bible from cover to cover, even memorizing all the photo credits, actors’ names, and character/show histories! Yep, I was on my way to becoming a soap opera expert and pundit.

That’s when my love affair with my favourite show ever (even rivaling SIX FEET UNDER and SEX AND THE CITY) began.

Reading a year’s worth of DIGEST synopses proved to be an informative and a fun way to introduce myself to Soapville, USA.

But it was a town named Llanview, which instantly captured my imagination. I suppose it was poetic I fell in love unconditionally with ONE LIFE through the printed word first considering my future profession in magazine and newspaper journalism.

Having not watched one single second of ONE LIFE TO LIVE, I drank in every morsel of plot and character information I could out of my year’s worth of DIGEST.

At the time, Maria Roberts was wreaking havoc on Viki and Clint’s, and Tina and Cordero’s marriages. Dorian was behind bars for killing Mitch Laurence. Viki learned she was pregnant with future schizoid, Jessica. Clint learned Cord was his son. Jenny and her spy hubby, David, visited Vienna. Niki Smith returned. Alison began her baby-kidnapping career. And, after a fateful trip to Argentina, Tina and her unborn baby perished after falling over the gorgeous but ferocious Iguazu Falls in Brazil (looking fabulous, no doubt).

Anxiously, I counted the days until I could travel back to Canada and finally turn on my new favourite soap opera and get lost in Llanview.

What would happen? Who would die? And how hot did John Lopreino really look in that blue Speedo I kept reading about? (Or, more importantly, how did he ever manage to fit all his junk in there without being sewn in?) These aforementioned questions were probably the first few clues to my burgeoning homosexuality.

After the longest summer on record finally came to an end, I headed straight to my TV. And the soap gods were on my side because I arrived in Llanview on a perfect day.

My first visual memory of ONE LIFE was presumed dead (but still impossibly beautiful) Tina Lord bursting through the church doors as her husband, Cordero, was marrying Bree from DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, a.k.a. Kate Sanders.

Shocker: Turned out, our favourite campy survivor, Tina, and her baby were alive!

But, not really. After Tina was nursed back to her campy self after her waterfall debacle, she had miscarried. However, that didn’t stop our resourceful vixen. Nope, long before the traditional hospital baby switches became popular on soaps, our crafty Tina convinced Gabrielle, who was still hopelessly pining for the father of her newborn baby, Max, (who had no idea Gabby was carrying his bambino) to hand over her child, so Tina could raise the bambino with Max. Gabby agreed, but once Tina hit Llanview, she passed off the baby as her and Cord’s. Did you get all of that?

Handing over Al (our smart girl named the future Buchanan heir after the man who raised Cord), Tina passed out at the wedding so glamorously that I feel instantly in love with Andrea Evans. Yep, Deidre Hall, who?

After that episode, I was obsessed. I even forced my soap-weary brother and sister to watch ONE LIFE, which made us a closer sibling unit, especially since we grew up impoverished and didn’t have too many options when it came to after-school activities.

To this day, I’m not exactly sure why ONE LIFE engaged and enveloped me so.

Perhaps it’s because ONE LIFE has always been the underdog, a part of the disenfranchised.

In fact, the first time I heard the word disenfranchised was on ONE LIFE when Billy Douglas’s homophobic father screamed it out loud when his son came out in Rev. Andrew Carpenter’s church.

Moreover, ONE LIFE, to me, has always been the smart man’s soap opera.

With a brilliant and entertaining mix of sci-fi, social issues and pure camp, Llanview was the most fascinating place on Earth to visit.

ONE LIFE also introduced me to the nail biting WTF-cliffhanger.

A few years later, as Tina and Max were about to tie the knot, Tina mistakenly vowed, I take thee, Cord. Since Cord was the best man at the ceremony, it was a little awkward, to say the least!

Fade to black.

Well, I might as well have been detoxing from crystal meth that weekend. I was hopelessly impatient for Monday’s episode. I imagined every single possible outcome, but still hungered for the aftermath of Tina’s latest guffaw. I even skipped school that day (Shhh… don’t tell my mom).

Through the years, ONE LIFE has always been there for me to escape the stresses and challenges of life.

For example, when ONE LIFE told the enlightening, groundbreaking tale of Billy Douglas coming out to his homophobic father juxtaposed with the lifelong damage created between Rev. Carpenter and his father, Sloan, over Andrew’s brother’s AIDS death (and Sloan’s refusal to accept his son’s homosexuality), I was on the edge of coming out myself as a teenager. The timing was cathartic, eerie… and perfect. Ultimately, the storyline inspired me to be true to myself and come out within a couple of years despite my staunch and restrictive Catholic upbringing. That’s the power of soap… and Michael Malone. (I’m thankful I wasn’t in the throes of realizing I was a friend of Dorothy’s during Dena Higley’s plot-driven Daniel Colson-is-a-murdering-closet-case story!)

It was because of this transcendent art form’s social power that I fell in love with ONE LIFE — and every soap — so much that I even created my own weekly magazine, SOAP WORLD PRESENTS… as a kid with my typewriter, markers, paper, staples, and pictures I’d cut out from SOAP OPERA UPDATE, which had the most beautiful colour photos out of all the soap press. I still have the magazines to this day – and they still hold up by today’s standards, if I do say so myself (I even had real ads in my magazine). Through the production of SOAP WORLD PRESENTS, I gave myself a valuable lesson on how to put together a magazine from start to finish from all angles, which would give me an edge in my career in later years.

The magazine also helped cool my anger because it infuriated me to no end that ONE LIFE — and other ignored soaps — did not grace the cover of soap magazines as much as the privileged DAYS or GENERAL HOSPITAL, so I created my own magazine and award show system, THE SOAP WORLD AWARDS!

This passion project also came in handy when I showed my very impressed future editor, mentor and friend, SOAP OPERA WEEKLY’s Mimi Torchin, who offered me an internship on the spot without ever meeting me! She even mentioned me several times in her SPEAKING MY MIND editorial in WEEKLY.

When I chose to become the senior news editor of SOAP OPERA UPDATE magazine (after an unexpected bidding war between new soap rags, SOAPS IN DEPTH and SOAP OPERA NEWS all at the age of 22), I was assigned the Procter & Gamble soaps to cover, AS THE WORLD TURNS and GUIDING LIGHT.

While I wished I could have covered Llanview, and I got to in the news department, it was perfect that GL was my beat because my all-time favourite ONE LIFE producer was shepherding Springfield: Mr. Paul Rauch.

In 1997, I finally met Mr. Rauch. And luckily, he really liked me, he really liked me. Since then, Rauch has regaled me with myriad stories from soap opera yore. And we both agreed that soap fans watch daytime serials as much for the small moments as the big, sweep stunts.

To this day, Paul and I remain friends.

And now, for the first time in my life, my mainstay, ONE LIFE ceases to exist.

But it does in my heart, soul, and mind.

This book is a tribute to the show I will always dearly love and respect.

Long live, Llanview. It will rise again. Trust.

CHAPTER ONE: GIVING BIRTH TO LIFE

In 1968, Richard Nixon was named the 37th President of the United States of America. Yale University finally admitted female students. Saddam Hussein became Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup detach. Pope Paul VI condemned birth control. 60 MINUTES clocked in its premiere episode on CBS, where it still remains to this day. Canada elected Pierre Trudeau, its best and most beloved Prime Minister.

However, the sun shined the brightest when it rose one day on July 15, 1968.

Doctor… Larry… Wolek, Anna Wolek said, punctuating her brother’s remarkable achievement of overcoming his humble beginnings to become a psychiatric intern at Llanview Hospital. You know, a time when DNA testing and switches didn’t exist. Heck, DNA klutz Vimal Patel was probably not even a glimmer in his parents’ loins back then.

With those three words, the greatest soap opera ever to air on daytime TV and one of the most groundbreaking, socially -relevant dramas, was born.

Created by Agnes Nixon — the protégé of Irna Phillips, the mother of the soap genre — ONE LIFE highlighted the trials and tribulations of racially diverse families: the blue-blooded Lords, the working-class Woleks, the Irish-Catholic Rileys, and the Jewish Siegels.

Never before had a serial reflected America’s exploding diversity until ONE LIFE populated the afternoon landscape.

And today, ONE LIFE is still regarded as the most multifaceted soap opera on air. Or it was.

As we all know, ONE LIFE was brutally, unfairly assassinated on April 14, 2011, when ABC/Disney cancelled what would soon become its highest rated soap opera, along with Nixon’s other creation, ALL MY CHILDREN (ABC inexplicably kept its lowest-rated drama — and more expensive venture — GENERAL HOSPITAL on air, but later gave its timeslot to Katie Couric’s new talker, KATIE, this fall).

Llanview drew its last breath on January 13, 2012 after an astonishing, award-winning 43-year network run (delivering compelling stories in parts of six decades). The gritty, yet fun series scored nearly four million viewers, securing it a third-place finish, and most impressively, netted second place in the coveted 18-49 Women demographic with a 1.6 rating (To put that in perspective, the top-rated sudser, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS, averages a 1.5 rating).

To fully understand ONE LIFE’s untimely and unfair death (some argue, murder), one has to revisit the complex origins of its birth.

In the late ‘60s, after marveling, admiring and coveting Nixon’s success as head writer over at NBC’s ratings juggernaut and critical darling ANOTHER WORLD, ABC commissioned Nixon to create her own series.

This wasn’t the first time Nixon would conceive her own soap universe.

And, in many ways, ABC fans ironically have Procter & Gamble to thank for ONE LIFE.

In 1965, Nixon was originally asked by P&G to imagine her own soap to replace CBS’s TO TELL THE TRUTH when she served as head writer of GUIDING LIGHT.

The project was ALL MY CHILDREN, but P&G nixed it when the sponsors of TO TELL THE TRUTH, the Lever Brothers, threatened to sue CBS and P&G if they replaced the show.

Consequently, Nixon lost confidence in ALL MY CHILDREN after the debacle, and filed the Pine Valley bible away. She remained writing and focused on GUIDING LIGHT’s Springfield, USA.

Fast-forward a few years later….

Nixon was now head-writing NBC’S watercooler show ANOTHER WORLD to great acclaim and ratings success. Long before Gloria Monty came on the soap scene, Nixon cast herself in the role of miracle worker when she arrived in Bay City. Thanks to her Herculean soap prowess, Nixon single-handedly saved ANOTHER WORLD from cancellation and made it the second highest-rated soap, mostly due to her creation of Rachel Cory, a future prototype for anti-heroines like Erica Kane.

Paying close attention was NBC’s rival network, ABC, who was relatively new to the soap game. Determined to beat the P&G ratings juggernaut soaps — CBS’s trifecta, AS THE WORLD TURNS, GUIDING LIGHT, SEARCH FOR TOMORROW — ABC asked Nixon to create a new serial to sandwich between its only two successful serials, GENERAL HOSPITAL, and cult sensation, DARK SHADOWS.

Unfazed by the failure of her first attempt to create her own soap world, Nixon recalled to SOAP OPERA DIGEST: You have to have a very bad taste for a writer to want to stop writing. So when ABC asked me to do a soap for them, I was very anxious to. I wanted to create my own show. And boy, did she ever.

Having lost faith in AMC, Nixon returned to the soap drawing board and focused her energies and talents on an edgier and darker vehicle, ONE LIFE, which would compliment DARK SHADOWS and THE EDGE OF NIGHT much better than ALL MY KIDS.

Originally titled BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL, ABC had only one caveat for the sophisticated show: controversial storylines were kosher, because they trusted Nixon’s taste level, but the provocative title needed to change to something less contentious. But Americans were still greeted by the image of a roaring fire when the show debuted hinting at the show’s polar moral worlds. (Marshmallows not included.)

Interesting aside: Nixon recently told the press that executive producer Frank Valentini will often joke to Nixon that ONE LIFE would not have been cancelled had she kept the original, sexier title! He’s here all week, folks!

In a compromise, the fledgling show was renamed ONE LIFE TO LIVE as a nod to its defining storyline (Viki’s multiple personality disorder), a plot that would drive the show until its final days 43 years later.

Having grown up listening to a minister narrate GUIDING LIGHT on the radio, Nixon was always fascinated by religion and its implications in society. At the time, the daytime landscape was largely filled with Protestant families and characters. Nixon immediately knew it was time to shake up daytime with other faiths and belief systems.

And she was right. The fearless writer got a head start on the zeitgeist: The 1960s was a time in American history which was just beginning to see the oppressed demand and fight for their rightful place in society.

But religion wasn’t Nixon’s only focus. No, Nixon created families not only based on which God they prayed to, but also by their social and economic class.

The Lords made up the one percent of rich America, while the Irish Catholic Riley clan and the Jewish Siegels personified the now nonexistent middle class. The struggling Polish-American Woleks and African-American Grey family populated the 99 per cent of Llanview’s population.

As an artist, Nixon immediately realized she could best hold a mirror up to society by intermingling these distinct families through romantic and professional entanglements. This was long before Norman Lear came into the picture with the groundbreaking, socially relevant and iconic sitcom, ALL IN THE FAMILY, which, much like Nixon’s soaps, exposed and explored the sensitive nature of bigotry with a similar narrative cocktail consisting of fact, opposing views, humour and thoughtfulness. Weaving these socially yet entertaining tales on a daily basis made them all the more powerful and engaging than a weekly prime-time series.

However, Nixon doesn’t receive enough credit for her most successful achievement as a writer: as a feminist storyteller.

Race and social stories aside, ONE LIFE’s most lauded storyline involved its heroine, Viki Lord, and in it, broke new ground in the feminist narrative.

I started with a double personality, with Victoria Lord, whose father was so dominant and made her the perfect daughter, and ruled her so that she developed a second personality [Niki Smith], Nixon explains of the show’s genesis.

Viki’s multiple-personality disorder would go on to define the show’s 43-year history. In hindsight, Nixon’s explanation of Viki’s DID was rather naïve and innocent: as a little girl, Viki apparently fractured after witnessing an argument between her father Victor and her pregnant mother. In Viki’s child-like mind, she thought she saw her dad push her mother down a flight of stairs deliberately, which ended up killing her mother. However, that was one cruel act no one could blame on Victor Lord because Viki’s mother accidentally fell. This tragic altercation also caused Viki’s unborn sister, Meredith, to grow up with major health problems, which only strengthened Viki’s resentment and pain of witnessing the definitive event.

Over the years, ONE LIFE would expose a variety of factors which led to Viki’s DID disorder.

When Tina Clayton returned to Llanview, it was later revealed college student Viki walked in on her father and best friend, Irene Manning, having sex. Tina was the result of that affair (the audience would later learn that Irene also bore male twins from her affair with Victor, Todd and Victor Jr.).

In 1989, ONE LIFE offered a sensational retcon as the trigger to Viki’s lifelong illness. Apparently, this time around, Viki fell in love with a boy, Roger Gordon, who lived in Victor’s underground city, Eterna. After witnessing Roger die, Viki fractured and Niki emerged for a year, a time period in which she had given birth to their daughter, Megan Gordon, which culminated in a fantastical, yet metaphorical storyline involving a visit to Eterna when Roger and Megan returned to Llanview very much alive.

But the most believable and realistic explanation came in the form of co-head writers Michael Malone and Josh Griffith’s re-imagining. In the early 1990s, when DID was becoming more and more understood, ONE LIFE re-addressed Viki’s disease by confirming what most of its savvy audience suspected: That Viki had been sexually abused by her own father, Victor. Hence, the creation of Niki, a pure id who could enjoy sex when Viki could not. In this storyline, viewers were introduced to Viki’s never-before-seen alters besides Niki: Tommy, Jean Randolph, Princess, Tori, and Victor Lord. Confronted with the truth, Viki finally integrated herself, although Niki would pop up every few years whenever Viki needed her or another retcon was being hatched (like when Mitch Laurence revealed he sired Jessica and Viki had actually given birth to twins, the other being Natalie).

For most of the post-feminist 90s, Viki and Niki were seemingly integrated, which was fitting considering the creation of the character, Viki, as Martha Nochimson writes in a book on soap opera and the female subject, NO END TO HER, allowed soap opera’s Persephone to finally approach her underworld. In Greek mythology, Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter. Persephone was later abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld. Sound familiar?

While many critics drew comparisons to Tracy Lord in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, especially when Viki was introduced as the blonde, ivory-complexioned, clichéd American princess walking through the French doors of her Philadelphia Main Line Home, Llanfair into a summer night, sighing up at the moon, Nochimson recalled, Nixon denied drawing inspiration from the classic film.

Unlike her film counterpart, Viki was not a princess positioned to be dominated by a plot that brings her back under the control of her father and of the man who will take his place as her husband. Instead, Nixon made Viki Victor’s publishing heir — quite a feminist decision at the time for a writer to make.

As Nochimson noted four years earlier, Nixon’s mentor, Irna Phillips, had unsuccessfully given Kim Reynolds a feminine energy on AS THE WORLD TURNS but Nixon had better luck with the newer, more innovative administration of ABC-TV.

Nixon used Viki’s DID to illustrate societal oppression via paternal violation.

Using Niki as a metaphor, Nixon artistically illustrated to audiences what the ruling patriarchy was really fearful at the time: powerful women who desire to dominate in the same vein as men.

Niki sported red hair, flashy clothes, snorted, was uncultured, vulgar and promiscuous. My kind of gal!

For the first time in divided identity, when traditionally one of the alters must be repressed so the more socially acceptable version can thrive in society, ONE LIFE did something rather provocative: It, with the help of new writers Gordon Russell and Peggy O’Shea, integrated Viki and Niki rather than repress the socially unacceptable personality.

Nochimson remarked that Viki’s story could not have been told in film at the time because because here no hero came to exorcise the woman’s ‘undesirable’ part.

Instead, Viki was left to realize that in order to remain the capable and powerful woman she was grown to be, and to add full sexuality to her repertoire, she must work to incorporate Niki, not suppress her.

But, as with any great writer, Agnes wrote what she knew. I wrote that from my own life, she confirmed in SOAP OPERA DIGEST. My father was a control freak, but I was determined not to be controlled! That story was the grain of sand in the oyster.

Whereas Nixon likes to fancy herself a more realistic version of her most famous creation, AMC’s Erica Kane, Nixon is much more like Viki Lord than any of her famous imaginings to date. (This isn’t a new phenom with daytime legends. For example, Y&R’s William Bell liked to fancy himself a more extreme version of Victor Newman, too.)

Nixon knew the appeal of the dual personality in the soap genre. As a feminist tool, Viki was a metaphor for revealing the Jungian shadow of a female personality through her narrative.

Ironically, four decades later, the patriarchy, Nixon’s favourite narrative catalyst, would prove the victor as the evil corporate machine, Disney/ABC, cancelled Nixon’s shows and held AMC and ONE LIFE’s rights hostage.

However, no one can erase the impact of Nixon’s DID storytelling. Especially the award-winning performances it generated.

Co-star Ellen Holly praised Gillian Spencer, the actress who originated Viki. What she did with the Viki/Niki storyline was as enthralling as Joanne Woodward in THREE FACES OF EVE, and Sally Field in SYBIL, two other stories about multiple personalities. Gillian was quite remarkable.

A greater fate would await nuViki/Niki et. al, the incomparable Erika Slezak, who, over the course of three decades, would net a record-breaking six Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress. (FYI: Slezak could very well net herself a record-breaking seventh Emmy Award this year.)

Viki and company aside, Nixon’s favourite storyline was the groundbreaking and highly inventive Carla/Clara storyline (a story THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS would later copy with less success in the mid-‘80s).

The brazen and fearless soap writer told THE NEW YORK TIMES that her soap would feature African-American characters in front-burner storylines.

And she wasn’t blowing black smoke.

Tony winner Lillian Hayman played the beloved and sassy Sadie Gray, who worked as a housekeeper at Llanview Hospital. The breakout fan favourite was haunted by the absence of her daughter, Clara Grey.

And just like that, ONE LIFE was off to the races, literally and figuratively.

With revolutionary storylines -- including a unique and edgy love quadrangle involving Viki; her alternate personality, Niki Smith; Joe Riley; and Vince Wolek -- Nixon had evolved Irna Phillips’ two-dimensional vision for soap opera.

As she articulated in 1997, Nixon’s story secret is, don’t let all your waves crash at once. But ride them out when they do. Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, and most importantly, make ‘em wait.

Yep, this wasn’t your mother’s soap opera — or an Irna Phillips creation.

She said at the time, I had grown up in the South seeing the horrors of racism, and that was a thing I had always wanted to combat as a writer.

While serving as a writer on GL, her dream was extinguished by P&G when she proposed an interracial friendship between a black nurse and a white heroine named Julie. Immediately, a store in Atlanta stopped ordering P&G products.

It just made me madder, screamed Nixon to DIGEST’s Mara Levinsky.

Because of that experience, Nixon dotted her Is and crossed her Ts with ABC ensuring she maintained creative autonomy. They agreed.

For five months after the show debuted, the Jim Craig/Carla Benari/Price Trainor triangle got people talking… and fuming.

Played by the equally controversial (and light-skinned) actress Ellen Holly — who out of nowhere recently attacked Nixon’s production company, Creative Horizons, for racism, along with ABC — viewers thought Carla was a white woman.

As Holly recently told SOAP OPERA DIGEST, The beginning story was about a black actress who was refused black roles because she looked white. In her hunger to become a star, she had passed for white and lived to profoundly regret it.

While casting the future iconic role, Nixon finally found her muse when Holly wrote about her real-life experiences in a NEW YORK TIMES article.

After everything fell into place creatively, what followed is perhaps Nixon’s crowning achievement as a writer and social scientist.

Carla was engaged to a white doctor, Dr. Jim Craig, but later fell in love with black resident Price Trainor.

ABC was deluged with viewer complaints. In 1969, Americans had no desire to see a black man kiss a white woman. In fact, a Texas affiliate even dropped the show! Shocker.

Of course, the irony was that Carla wasn’t white! In one of the most jaw-dropping plot twists in soap opera history, it was revealed that Carla was Sadie’s long-lost daughter! The first three years were really marvelous for my character, expressed Holly. In Nixon’s sensitive and believable story, Price ultimately rejected Carla because of her colour illustrating reverse racism among minorities — which was quite forward thinking at the time.

And this is the magic of Agnes Nixon.

Holly praised the story, telling DIGEST, It was probably the most spectacular use of the serial form, as a medium, in terms of what it can do. Agnes Nixon exploded the story in a way that I’ve never seen anybody do before or since.

Long before prime time and film tackled such topics, Nixon was shining a light on America’s prejudices and conducting a social experiment worthy of any smart reality-TV show today.

Viewers fell for Carla and Jim Craig — not realizing they were the interracial couple here, yet were up in arms over a seemingly interracial couple, Carla and Price, who weren’t!

The reveal that Carla was indeed black — and Sadie’s transient daughter, Clara — was a definitive Friday cliffhanger.

Nixon recounted that the reveal was two-fold: It not only exposed racism and the plight of light-skinned people but also internalized prejudice: One day, Carla was going to visit her friend, Anna (played by the late, great Doris Belack). And as she walked up the stairs, Sadie came out of her apartment and Sadie said, ‘Clara!’ And Carla said, ‘Mama,’ recalls Nixon. And that was the end of the show on a Friday! [Laughs] I remember the following scenes with Sadie and Clara/Carla [that] Clara had betrayed her race. Carla said, ‘I couldn’t get a job!’ and, ‘what are you talking about? I remember when I was five years old, and we’d be walking along and you were holding my hand and someone would say, Whose little white girl are you taking care of? And you’d drop my hand. And so, for those who had ears to hear and brains to understand, I think we explained it.

Ashton Kutcher, meet the master of Gotcha!

Nixon slyly proved America could enjoy and root for an interracial couple — if they were colourblind. Once again, Nixon was ahead of her time, echoing Dorothy Parker: You can’t Teach an old dogma new tricks. Nixon tried, she really did.

In her book, Nochimson praised Nixon’s wrenching tale, stating the power of the aforementioned scene matches and even surpasses the most daring Hollywood movies that recount similar dilemmas of light-skinned black women: PINKY, directed by Elia Kazan; and IMITATION OF LIFE, directed by Douglas Skrik. These directors, working in a medium structured to suppress the possible female subject, were less free than ONE LIFE to explore the impact on feminine agency of racism.

This is one of the myriad reasons why Nixon deserves the coveted Lincoln Center Honors for outstanding contribution to the arts.

Long before Oprah Winfrey came along to heal a nation full of greed, self-hate, bigotry, oppression, Nixon was at the forefront single-handedly paving the way for the disenfranchised.

Nixon didn’t stop there.

The super-scribe was once again called in to action when the White House requested the entertainment industry to help with the explosion of drug abuse in the country by the younger sector.

It certainly was a risk, said Nixon. As far back as I can remember, the networks and producers have always had a parochial philosophy about daytime serials. ‘Stay away from anything controversial.’ As a writer I got tied of all the putdowns by the critics of the serials who said we never did anything relevant.

No one could accuse Nixon of that. She was on a roll.

As the Carla/Clara arc was reaching its epic denouement, a light bulb went off in Nixon’s noggin: She had Dr. Jim Craig’s wayward daughter, Cathy Craig, become addicted to drugs.

In one of her first of many groundbreaking location shoots, Nixon took the show to Odyssey House, New York City’s real-life rehabilitation centre.

In fact, a few years later, Cathy became a reporter and wrote a frank article for THE BANNER informing readers how venereal disease is contracted. According to WORLDS WITHOUT END, the serial’s audience was invited to write in for free copies of the article, which Nixon researched and wrote herself. Nixon’s goal was to assist people in obtaining necessary information about a once-considered