All My Children
Monday to Friday 1:00 p.m., ET/12:00 noon, PT
“All My Children” celebrated its 40th anniversary on January 5, 2010. Since its premiere, the show has successfully maintained its popularity and continues to be one of daytime’s most compelling dramas. “All My Children” took home the 1998 Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, the third time the show received this top honor, having garnered the award in 1994 and 1992. It also received its third consecutive Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series Writing. “All My Children” has received its third Writers Guild Award and its third GLAAD Media Award, as well as GLAAD’s inaugural Out Image Award for the character of Bianca Montgomery. In all, the show has received more than 40 Emmy Awards and consistently distinguishes itself in the field of daytime drama.
“All My Children” has historically been committed to social issues, focusing on such topics as AIDS, abortion, teenage alcoholism, racial bias, acquaintance rape, spousal abuse, homosexuality, Reyes syndrome, Vietnam MIAs, drug abuse, the risks of motherhood over 40, safe sex, pet therapy and organ donations, among others. The show made television history by airing daytime television’s first same-sex kiss between the characters of Bianca and Lena, was the first show to chronicle the coming-out story of a transgender woman, the first to air a wedding between two lesbian women and the first to cast a real life Iraq War veteran.
High production standards add dimension, and “All My Children’s” location scenes provide maximum visual excitement. Remote shoots have included the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, the New York State Correction Facility at Sing Sing, the lush Budapest countryside, the Canadian Rockies and Negril, Jamaica. The graphic depiction of such catastrophes as a destructive tornado, a deadly plane crash and a devastating explosion at Holidays have added a richness in production value that is unparalleled in daytime television. Most recently, the show has teamed up with Stargate Digital to utilize CGI technology in featured episodes creating a rooftop helicopter getaway and a destructive tornado sequence.
Celebrity fans who have guest-starred on the program include Rihanna, Oprah Winfrey, Ne-Yo, Jesse McCartney, Carol Burnett, Celine Dion, Warren Buffett, Kathy Bates, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Donald Trump, Montel Williams, Tom Wopat, Donna Hanover, Regis Philbin, Kathy Lee Gifford, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Paul Anka, Dick Cavett, Melba Moore, Ed Koch, Jimmy Buffett, Stevie Wonder, Aaron Neville, Gwen Verdon, Robert Morse, Cheryl Tiegs, Maureen O’Sullivan, Dom Deluise, Olympian Summer Sanders, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Boomer Esiason, race-car driver Danny Sullivan, folk music group Blessed Union of Souls, Rosie O’Donnell, R&B artist Brian McKnight, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Latin singing sensations C-Note, Elvis Crespo, Shaggy, pop-groups BB MAK and O-Town, Tito Nieves, B-5 and the outrageous RuPaul.
Created by Agnes Nixon, “All My Children” premiered on the ABC Television Network on January 5, 1970, as a half-hour show; seven years later it expanded to an hour. Julie Hanan Carruthers is executive producer. “All My Children” is produced in New York and airs MONDAY-FRIDAY (1:00-2:00 p.m., ET), on the ABC Television Network.
AGNES NIXON, creator
One of the foremost women of television serial drama, Agnes Nixon is the creator of the ABC Television Network’s “One Life to Live,” “All My Children” and “Loving.” She also created the nighttime miniseries “The Mansions of America,” which aired in the 1981-1982 season.Responsible for
dramatizing on television many of today’s most crucial social problems, Mrs. Nixon is a rare personality in the world of entertainment – she has had a serial on the air five days a week, 52 weeks a year for over 41 years.
A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Mrs. Nixon, then Agnes Eckhardt, graduated from the Northwestern School of Speech and moved to New York, where she became a freelance writer for such outstanding television dramatic series as “Studio One,” “Philco Playhouse,” “Robert Montgomery Presents,” “Somerset Maugham Theatre,” “Armstrong Circle Theatre,” “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” “My True Story” and “Cameo Theatre.” When nighttime programs moved west, Mrs. Nixon, by then married, stayed in the east and began writing such daytime serials as “Search for Tomorrow,” “As the World Turns,” “Guiding Light” and “Another World.” She also began creating shows for ABC.
Mrs. Nixon has been a guest writer for The New York Times and TV Guide, and was featured in the cover article of the Los Angeles Sunday Times Magazine of August 25, 1991. She has appeared on “Good Morning America,” “Tomorrow,” “The Dick Cavett Show,” “The David Frost Show,” “The Merv Griffin Show,” “Mike Douglas,” “Oprah,” “20/20,” “Hour Magazine,” “Signature,” “Evening Magazine,” “That’s Entertainment” and “The Class of the Twentieth Century.” She has also been a guest lecturer at many universities, including Princeton, Ohio State, University of Maryland, Harvard and the Annenberg School of Communications.
In the spring of 1981, Mrs. Nixon was the recipient of the prestigious National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Trustee Award. In presenting the award, Barbara Walters noted that Agnes Nixon was both the first writer and first woman to be so honored by the Academy. Distinguished recipients in previous years have been Leonard H. Goldenson, William S. Paley, Dr. Frank Stanton, comedian Bob Hope, the late General David Sarnoff and the late CBS News correspondent Edward R. Murrow.
In May 1982, Mrs. Nixon received the Junior Diabetic Association’s Super Achiever Award. In October 1983, Ladies Home Journal voted her one of America’s 100 most important women. In December 1984, she received the Communicator Award for American Women in Radio and Television.
Mrs. Nixon is a member of the International Radio and Television Society, and of the Museum of Television and Radio; a trustee of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and of the National Arthritis Foundation; serves on the Advisory Council of Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute; and is one of a ten-member board of the Harvard Foundation, established by President Derek Bok and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences with the purpose of fostering racial harmony in the Harvard community with the hope that it will be emulated by other schools throughout the country. She also is a recipient of the Harvard Foundation Award.
In 1993 Mrs. Nixon received a Gold Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement. Also during that year she was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Television Hall of Fame.
Mrs. Nixon lives in suburban Philadelphia in a pre-Revolutionary home that was an inn during that period of history. She has four children, Cathy, Mary, Robert, and Emily, and seven grandchildren, Ceara Foley, Kelly and Amy Chicos, Erin, Rory and Galen Hiltbrand, and Oliver Langworthy.
JULIE HANAN CARRUTHERS, executive producer
Julie Hanan Carruthers became executive producer of ABC Daytime’s popular drama “All My Children” in September 2003. Previously, from December 1999, she had been executive producer of “Port Charles,” the spin-off series of the Emmy Award-winning Daytime drama “General Hospital,” where, along with her team, she adapted a new production model, enhancing its breakout telenovela format.
Ms. Hanan Carruthers served earlier as senior supervising producer of both “General Hospital” and “Port Charles.” She was a producer for the Daytime drama “Santa Barbara” from 1986-90, during which time it won three Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Daytime Drama. She became a producer at “General Hospital” in 1994, and was named supervising producer in 1996. “General Hospital” received five Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Daytime Drama during her producing tenure.
Ms. Hanan Carruthers grew up in Sarasota, Florida, and received her degree in radio, television and film from the University of Texas.
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