I'm continuing my feature on Agnes Nixon's Memoir "My Life to Live" that she wrote shortly before her death. Below are my thoughts on chapters eight through ten.
Chapter 8 discusses how Agnes still missed her late fiance Hank, and that spending time with his family made her miss him more. Then we get more details of her time writing for Irna Phillips, first at "The Guiding Light". Agnes would go to Irna's apartment at 9 am, and they would start working, some days they would do one episode, if they wanted to go ahead. They did a notes session, who was about 20 minutes long. Then if anything about the script would influence long term, they discussed those ramifications (which could be for as little as 15 minutes or as long as an hour.) Once Irna said that Agnes could go, she did and went home to type up the episode on her typewriter including a carbon paper to make a copy. One day, she went seven hours without thinking of Hank, which showed she was moving on emotionally.
The next radio writing Agnes did was for "Freedom of Opportunity" for Mutual of Omaha. This was a weekly radio series, which had a many different writers do biographies on significant Americans in a 30 minute time slot. Nelson Shaun, was the executive in charge of the radio program, and he gave Agnes a chance as he read her sample script about Dr. Howard Taylor Ricketts who figured out how Rocky Mountain spotted fever was spread through ticks. He said he wanted scripts that had schmaltz and he defined that as guts. Schmaltz is fat used in cooking, but these days it means overly sentimental. She spoke of some of the stories she wrote, Milton Hershey (who sent her chocolate), Major Gregory Boyington, and Martha Berry. She ended up in her story about Martha Berry playing a fictional character named Ingaby, Studs Terkel who was involved in the program started calling Agnes by that nickname. Sadly Nelson Shaun had a heart attack and died in 1947. Agnes didn't enjoy writing for it as much in the past, and decided to move to New York City. In this time, she also made more friends, but didn't have any romance.
Agnes moved to East 48th Street in Manhattan, with a roommate Beth. Beth was seeing a married man, and Agnes had to agree to call first if she wanted to return to the apartment if Beth was entertaining him. Before leaving Chicago, Agnes got a recommendation from Virginia Payne (who played Ma Perkins on the radio). Agnes ended up writing for Robert Montgomery Presents a television program. Her first script was a story called "Really the Blues" about Mezz Mezzrow, and Jackie Cooper was playing the lead part. (I had to look up who Mezz Mezzrow, was, and that was a jazz clarinetist and saxophonist. Her one major mistake on the script was not thinking about the scene change being only a minute long for the advertising. Eventually she realized what she should and shouldn't do and wrote for many of the major anthologies being made in New York.
Over the summer, Agnes went to Tennessee to see her mother and Aunt Emma. Through them she was introduced to Jacqueline a war bride who was going to visit France before giving birth, which led her to meet Etienne. He was 20 years older than Agnes, and wooed her. She cared for him, but didn't fall in love with this man. He was friends with the producer and his wife of a Monsieur Vincent, which she was adapting from the foreign film along with the Gibsons - Mr. Gibson was the ambassador to Belgium. Agnes became close to Mrs. Gibson and met luminaries including presidents. Eventually she agreed to go to France and learn more about the country from Etienne. He proposed to her six years after Hank had died, outside of Omaha Beach in France.Thankfully Agnes's father who had a heart attack was doing better. He had married Hazel, but sadly Mrs. Gibson passed, though Agnes continued to help the ambassador. She even helped to respond to Queen Elizabeth.
Agnes's life changed again, when she got contacted by Roy Winsor. She signed a contract to write for the new soap opera for television "Search for Tomorrow", but more about that in (part 3) of my summaries about this book. With Mr. Gibson's help, she was able to one up her father, as she told him, the only way she would take over his business is if she owned it. Harry and her lawyer were stunned, and her father never spoke about her writing or the business again.
In section three, I'll get into the details of what happened at "Search for Tomorrow", and how she met Bob Nixon.
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