[Agnes Nixon has welded Irna] Phillips' home truths to such trendy themes as cervical cancer, racial prejudice and drug addiction. Nixon has at one time or another written almost every soap and created two: One Life to Live and All My Children, the thinking man's soap that has a 30% male audience. She is the soaps' crusader: All My Children went to Viet Nam and is now into women's liberation. After considerable tension, a young black couple have agreed to live in different cities for five days a week so they can pursue their different careers as doctor and social worker. Nixon's most memorable creation, however, was a traditional type, Rachel, the Circe of Another World. In 1966, when Nixon arrived at World, the show was in trouble. Within a year she had introduced Rachel as the bewitching homewrecker and one of the soaps' durably popular villainesses. (pp. 48, 51)

"Sex and...