a blated happy 65th...

a belated happy 65th...

Alan Locher recently marked the 65th anniversary of As the World Turns with an interview with the show's last surviving original cast member, Rosemary Prinz.

Rosemary, who has never been shy about sharing her difficult relationship with 'World Turns' creator, Irna Phillips, didn't hold back with Locher, recalling her comment (and something of a non sequitur) in a November, 2013 New York Times piece on the 50th anniversary of 'World Turns' iconic place in the Kennedy assassination: "Irna was the meanest bitch in the universe, and you can quote me!"

I began researching Irna Phillips's life in 2009, and have some thoughts about the source of the animus between the two women I'll share in a bit. But, my first thought upon hearing the 90-year-old Rosemary relay, verbatim, something she'd said eight years earlier, was to share it with the author of the Times' piece, Thomas Vinceguerra. Coincidentally, later on the same day I saw the Prinz interview, I heard something about the digital news platform, Indian Country Today. I had a vague memory that Tom had been involved with them, so I checked online where I was shocked to find out that he had passed away in late February.

Tom had seen a short biographical sketch I wrote about Irna for Harvard Magazine and called to talk with me about the Times' piece. While we never met in person, we did stay in touch over the years — sometimes I'd give a yell when I saw his byline, or after I read his labor of love, Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of the New Yorker — other times, he'd call me with a question about a soap opera actor for a piece he was writing. He was a lovely man and I will miss him.

Now, about Irna and Rosemary...

At the risk of overstating the obvious: Irna Phillips was a neurotic, difficult, demanding woman. For her, the actors playing the characters on ATWT were the characters; she never called any of them by their real names , only their characters'  (interestingly, she doesn't seem to have done this with characters on other soaps she created). But, Irna's intense obsession with Rosemary Prinz's character, Penny Hughes, was something else. The show would end and before the credits rolled, Irna would be on the phone criticizing Rosemary's performance.

For Irna, the fictional town of Oakdale was a real place — a place, "far more real than New York or Chicago, and far better" — which is exactly how Irna wanted viewers to experience Oakdale. So when Rosemary, a 25-year-old woman playing a 16-year-old virgin, was photographed smoking and drinking at night clubs, well... But that still didn't fully explain Irna's ire. So, like the actor who must figure out, without judging, why their character is behaving badly, I had to do the same for Irna, which meant going back to the creation of As the World Turns.

In the aftermath of an ill-advised affair and pregnancy that ended with no baby and no chance for another, Irna began writing serial dramas in which she fictionalized aspects of her life. She also adopted two children she raised as a single mother. It was not the happy family she had envisioned for herself, so when she created As the World Turns, Irna admitted "fantasizing" a warm family life in the solid marriage of Nancy and Chris Hughes and their three children, sons, Don and Bob, and daughter, Penny.

For the pretty and popular Penny, with her nice clothes, friends, loving family — not to mention the boyfriends and a room of her own — Irna created a life that was the antithesis of hers growing up: A lonely, homely child, the last of ten children; her closest sibling, an overbearing sister ten years older. Born when her parents were in their 40s, Irna was, at best, a surprise. The family was poor; she wore hand-me-downs and slept on a cot in the dining room, the same room where her father was laid out when he died — Irna was seven — no real friends, she didn't have a date in high school or college.

So, at the end of the day, this was really nothing more than the green-eyed monster rearing its ugly head. But, while Irna was jealous of her fictional surrogate, Penny, she took it out on the real life actor playing Penny, Rosemary Prinz.