Historical Figures in Historical Fiction -- A Guest Post by Alina Adams

 Alina Adams is the NYT best-selling author of soap-opera tie-ins including “Oakdale Confidential,” “Jonathan’s Story,” and “The Man From Oakdale,” figure skating mysteries, and romance novels. Her historical fiction includes “The Nesting Dolls,” “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region,” and the upcoming “Go On Pretending.” www.AlinaAdams.com

Historical Figures in Historical Fiction: Queen of Soaps Irna Phillips

I know a lot about Irna Phillips.

I know that she was born in Chicago. That her father died when she was 8, that she was raised by a single mother, and that she grew up poor, sickly, and lonely (despite being the youngest of 10). That, at age 18, she had an affair with a married man, became pregnant and, when he wouldn’t step up, sued him for child support – and, most surprisingly for 1919, won! Irna’s baby was born dead, and though she never married, she did adopt a son and a daughter when she was in her 40s.

I know that Irna invented the concept of the radio soap opera. The dramatic pauses, the swelling organ music, the cliffhanger; those are all hers. I know that, at her peak, Irna was producing two million words per year (about 40 novels worth), and earning over $300,000 annually (close to four million in today’s dollars).

I know that, to prove that she was right and her corporate sponsor, Procter & Gamble, was wrong, Irna paid out of her own pocket to produce a television pilot of her radio hit, “The Guiding Light.” On the other hand, when P&G insisted that “The Guiding Light” transition from a black and white to a color broadcast, Irna demonstrated her displeasure at being cornered into accepting a change that wasn’t her own idea, by writing an entire episode set in the operating room. Where everything was black and white.

In addition, when the passive-aggressive approach didn’t work, Irna never hesitated to get into screaming matches about any and all aspects of her shows, which would go on to include “As the World Turns” and “Another World,” with executives in New York City from her home Chicago.

I know a lot about Irna Phillips. Yet, I have no idea how Irna might have reacted to an African-American actor being hired to voice one of her presumably white characters on the radio, or what she might have done about the issue of transitioning that character – and actor – to television. Because, despite my literally years of research into her life and work, as far as I know, the real-life Irna Phillips never encountered such a situation.

However, that is exactly what the fictional Irna Phillips featured in my May 2025 novel, “Go On Pretending” is faced with. In “Go On Pretending,” I write Irna resolving this issue in a way that I believe Irna would have, based on decisions she had made in the past, and ones she would go on to make in the future. 

Irna was quite progressive for her time. She wrote about adultery, divorce, juvenile delinquency and the struggle of veterans returning from World War I when the radio programs around her consisted of the not exactly socially realistic “Amos and Andy,” “Fibber Magee and Molly,” and “The Green Hornet.”  In 1937, “The Guiding Light” featured Rose Kransky, an Orthodox Jewish woman working in her father’s secondhand store but dreaming of a more glamorous life. A sympathetic local minister, Reverend Ruthledge, loans Rose the money for secretarial school which leads to a job with a handsome (and married) publisher, which leads to an affair, which leads to a pregnancy, which leads to a lawsuit and single motherhood. (Irna was obviously a student of the “write what you know” school.)

“The Guiding Light” was also the first soap opera to introduce African-American contract players. But that wasn’t until 1966, when first Billy Dee Williams, then James Earl Jones played Jim Frazier, while his wife, Martha, was portrayed by Cicely Tyson, then Ruby Dee in 1967.

In 1952, would Irna have been progressive enough to risk the television show she’d self-funded coming under attack due to the presence of a Black leading man and the miscegenation that implied fifteen years before the passing of Loving v. Virginia?

I think I know the answer to that. But I will never really know the answer to that.

Still, I went ahead and wrote Irna Phillips into my historical fiction novel. (She joins a handful of “Guiding Light” actors, future creator of “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” Agnes Nixon, and talk show host Phil Donahue, in that regard.)

Even as I was doing it, I kept asking myself, “Do I have the right to do that?” Do I have the right to put words – and attitudes, and opinions – into the mouth of a person who isn’t around to defend herself (against something she never actually did in real life)?

When writing “Go on Pretending,” I used Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s wonderful book, “When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Television Today,” which devotes a large section to Irna’s life and work. (Jennifer was even kind enough to give me a blurb for “Go On Pretending.”)

But, with all due respect to Jennifer, the folks who read my book may not necessarily read hers. (Though they should. Go! Do it now!) As a result, there may be people whose only knowledge about the life and legacy of Irna Phillips may come from a work of fiction. My work of fiction. Where I made things up.

Granted, I am hardly the first historical fiction author to do so. How many novels are there about real life royals, real life explorers, real life politicians, real life inventors, even real-life authors (ha-ha, take some of your own medicine, writers!)?

But if “everybody else is doing it” isn’t an adequate excuse for kids, why should it be for adults?

The irony is, Irna Phillips would have likely understood my actions, even if she wouldn’t have liked them. (Then again, Irna liked very, very few things, people, or ideas if, as indicated above, they weren’t her own.) Irna believed in doing whatever you needed to, to get your work to be exactly what you wanted it to be – and to hell with anybody else. She may have gotten on the phone and screamed at me. Irna loved getting on the phone and screaming. But, deep down, I like to think she would have understood.

And that’s the Irna I wrote about. Whether any of us have the right to do so, or not.

 

Blog Host, Helena P. Schrader, is the author of  

the Bridge to Tomorrow Trilogy.  

The first two volumes are available now, the third Volume will be released later this year.

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