I graduated from Senn High School in 1980. Located on Chicago’s North Side, Senn is a fairly typical inner-city public high school, except for the fact that a lot of famous and semi-famous people graduated from there. Today let’s meet one who will get you to tune in tomorrow: Irna Phillips, inventor of the soap opera, class of 1919.

Irna grew up poor. She was one of ten children and her father died when she was 8. After graduating from Senn Irna went on to receive Masters Degrees from the Universities of Illinois and Wisconsin.

Irna wanted to be an actress, but she was deemed “too plain.” She did do some radio acting, but wound up on the writing side of the business, working for Chicago radio station WGN. It was there that she hit upon the idea of a daily serial, Painted Dreams, about the struggles of a large, single mother family like the one Irna grew up in. The show featured numerous characters and multiple plotlines, and each episode ended with a cliffhanger. After initial resistance from sponsors, the show proved to be a hit, but Irna eventually got into a dispute over ownership rights and moved on. Having learned her lesson, Irna was careful about retaining rights to her work in the future, a move which was to make her a wealthy woman.

After moving to another radio station, Irna created more soaps, including The Guiding Light. She went on to create and write other successful radio shows before moving on to television, where, in 1956, she introduced As the World Turns, which went on to run for 54 seasons. She also worked on several other successful TV soap operas.

Irna passed away in 1973, by which time she was known as “The Queen of Soaps”.