Word: irna
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...used them so extensively during the past ten years that they have come to be known as "soap operas." Leading soap-opera impresario is Procter & Gamble, whose 15 serials keep millions of women bathed in Ivory and suspense. Responsible for four of P. & G.'s sudsy dramas is Irna Phillips, a pigeon-plump spinster of 37, formerly a teacher, who has turned out a staggering total of 6,000 scripts in the course of her writing career. Now earning about $4,000 a week, Irna is the highest-paid aerial litterateuse in the country, by long odds the most...
...children of a Dayton, Ohio grocer, Irna was teaching dramatics and public speaking at Dayton Junior Teachers College, where she had worked after her graduation in 1923 from the University of Illinois, when she had a bust-up with her boy friend. It occurred at a Sunday night supper; by the following morning Irna was hotfooting it for Chicago. She got her first job in Chicago as an actress with station WGN. Within a few months she was busy writing and acting in her first and almost interminable masterwork, Painted Dreams. Irna continued to turn out Painted Dreams until...
Nowhere near the logical saturation point are Irna's present shows. Her Guiding Light, Woman in White, Road of Life and Right to Happiness are all flourishing. Irna's favorite among her works is Guiding Light, the story of a non-sectarian minister in a melting-pot community, into which she pours most of her philosophy and night-thoughts. It is in Woman in White, though, that Irna gets in some of her most telling licks. Featuring Karen Adams, a heroic nurse, Woman in White, like many other script shows, is remarkably independent of radio's taboos...
...scripts, Irna carefully abides by the cardinal plot rule of soap opera: Get your females behind the eight ball and keep them there. Irna is assisted in her work by two secretaries and a pair of literary Girl Fridays. She dictates all her material, frequently has an impassioned male remark to his sweetheart that he is happy "to have contacted her." To make sure she is right on legal and medical matters, Irna retains a lawyer and a pair of doctors. She has plunked most of her cash into annuities...