Jacqueline Babbin (July 26, 1926 – October 6, 2001) was an American television/theatre writer, producer, and executive.

Early life

Jacqueline Babbin was born on July 26, 1926 in New York City, in the borough of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. She entered high school at the age of eleven and Smith College at fifteen. She worked as an assistant to the renowned literary agent Audrey Wood in 1943, and Irene Selznick. She was briefly married to a

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

executive.

Career

Babbin began her television career in 1954 at

David Susskind David Howard Susskind (December 19, 1920 – February 22, 1987) was an American producer of TV, movies, and stage plays and also a TV talk show host. His talk shows were innovative in the genre and addressed timely, controversial topics beyond th ...

’s production company Talent Associates, starting out as a script editor. She formed a successful writing partnership with Audrey Gellen. The two women collaborated on several adaptations of stage plays, including ''

Harvey Harvey, Harveys or Harvey's may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Harvey'' (play), a 1944 play by Mary Chase about a man befriended by an invisible anthropomorphic rabbit * Harvey Awards ("Harveys"), one of the most important awards ...

'', ''The Browning Version'', ''Ethan Frome'', ''The Member of The Wedding'', ''

Our Town ''Our Town'' is a 1938 metatheatrical three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play tells the story of the fictional American small town of Grover's Corners between 1901 and 1913 thro ...

'' and ''Billy Budd''. In 1961, Susskind and Babbin produced a short-lived dramatic anthology, '' Way Out'', which was a series of

macabre In works of art, the adjective macabre ( or ; ) means "having the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere". The macabre works to emphasize the details and symbols of death. The term also refers to works particularly gruesome in natu ...

stories by Roald Dahl. They also continued their collaboration throughout the decade as producers on TV specials, including ''Hedda Gabler'' (with Ingrid Bergman and

Michael Redgrave Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave CBE (20 March 1908 – 21 March 1985) was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author. He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in ''Mourning Becomes Elec ...

), and ''

The Crucible ''The Crucible'' is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93. Miller wrote the play as ...

'' (with

George C. Scott George Campbell Scott (October 18, 1927 – September 22, 1999) was an American actor, director, and producer who had a celebrated career on both stage and screen. With a gruff demeanor and commanding presence, Scott became known for his port ...

, Colleen Dewhurst and

Fritz Weaver Fritz William Weaver (January 19, 1926 − November 26, 2016) was an American actor in television, stage, and motion pictures. He portrayed Dr. Josef Weiss in the 1978 epic television drama, ''Holocaust'' for which he was nominated for a Primetime ...

). From 1979 to 1982, Babbin served as Vice President, Novels For Television and Miniseries for

ABC Entertainment The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, Calif ...

. In 1982, she was hired by

ABC Daytime ABC Daytime (sometimes shortened to ABC-D or ABCD) is a division responsible for the daytime programming block on the ABC Network and syndicated programming. The block has historically encompassed soap operas, game shows and talk shows. Histor ...

and

Agnes Nixon Agnes Nixon ( Eckhardt; December 10, 1922 – September 28, 2016) was an American television writer and producer, and the creator of the ABC soap operas ''One Life to Live'', ''All My Children'', as well as ''Loving'' and its spin-off '' The Ci ...

to be the executive producer of '' All My Children''. During her tenure there, she hired Elizabeth Taylor and

Carol Burnett Carol Creighton Burnett (born April 26, 1933) is an American actress, comedian, singer, and writer. Her groundbreaking comedy variety show ''The Carol Burnett Show'', which originally aired on CBS was one of the first of its kind to be hosted ...

as guest stars. She left ''All My Children'' in 1986, began writing novels shortly after, and became the executive producer of '' Loving'' in 1990. Some of Babbin's other projects included the TV series '' The Best of Everything'' (1970) and '' Beacon Hill'' (1975), the TV movies '' Sybil'' (1976), ''

Brave New World ''Brave New World'' is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hiera ...

'' (1980), and the first TV adaptation of ''

The Glass Menagerie ''The Glass Menagerie'' is a memory play by Tennessee Williams that premiered in 1944 and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame. The play has strong autobiographical elements, featuring characters based on its author, his Histrionic persona ...

'' ( CBS Playhouse, 1966). She died of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

on October 6, 2001 in Kent, Connecticut.

Novels

* ''Prime Time Corpse'' * ''Bloody Soaps''

Recognition

She was nominated for five

Daytime Emmy Award The Daytime Emmy Awards, or Daytime Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the New York–based National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences ...

s and a single Primetime Emmy Award.

References

External links

* https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0044801/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Babbin, Jacqueline 1926 births 2001 deaths Smith College alumni American women television writers Daytime Emmy Award winners American television producers American women television producers 20th-century American women 20th-century American people 20th-century screenwriters