Background
Elaine Stern Carrington was born on June 14, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States; the daughter of Theodore Stern, a merchant, and Mary Louise Henriquez.
Elaine Stern Carrington was born on June 14, 1891 in New York City, New York, United States; the daughter of Theodore Stern, a merchant, and Mary Louise Henriquez.
She received her education at St. Agatha's School and at Columbia University (1910 - 1911).
Carrington developed her aspirations to write while an adolescent. Persisting in the face of numerous rejections, she had her first short story published in 1910; and the following year she won several short fiction and scenario-writing contests, including a $1, 000 prize awarded by the New York Evening Sun. By the late 1920's she had become an established contributor of short fiction to such mass-circulation magazines as Collier's, Pictorial Reveiw, Harper's, Delineator, and the Saturday Evening Post. Reviewing All Things Considered (1939), an anthology of these stories, the New York Times found a strain of sharp satire running through Carrington's writings, although their dominant tone was sentimental. Carrington was coauthor of the Broadway play Nightstick (1927), which became the basis for the movie Alibi (1929). She also published The Gypsy Star (1928) and a detective novel, The Crimson Goddess (1936). Carrington achieved her greatest material success and public impact as the creator and writer of radio daytime serial dramas, or soap operas. In 1932, the National Broadcasting Company asked her to develop a radio script from a story that she had submitted. It went on the air in October as "Red Adams, " broadcast three nights a week, later acquiring a sponsor and moving to daytime radio. With a change of title, characters, and plot, it emerged as "Pepper Young's Family" in June 1936. Drawing upon her own experiences, Carrington portrayed the trials, conflicts, and problems of a typical American middle-class family, as well as its warmth, understanding, and cohesiveness. The program, which at one time was heard daily on two networks, was still broadcast at the time of her death. Carrington's success with this serial led to two other long-running soap operas, "When a Girl Marries, " begun in May 1939, and "Rosemary, " which went on the air in October 1944. Although they lacked some of the warmth and humor of "Pepper Young" and fit more closely the grief-ridden formula that still endures in television soap opera, both attracted large followings. At the height of her career in the 1940's and early 1950's, Carrington turned out approximately 38, 000 words each week, earned an annual income well in excess of $200, 000, and reached an average of about 2 million listeners with each broadcast. She was also responsible for "The Carrington Playhouse" during the mid-1940's, which produced the scripts of amateur writers with aspirations similar to those that she had nurtured as a young woman. Among the artists and technicians of network radio in New York from the early 1930's to the late 1950's, Carrington was known as "Queen of the Soapers. " With writers Irna Phillips and Frank and Anne Hummert, she "determined and defined what soap opera unalterably became. "
Her autonomy is illustrated by her introduction of such subjects as racial integration into her serials and in her work to help found the Radio Writers Guild. A self-conscious popular artist, Carrington was anxious to defend her work against the attacks of critics if not for its artistic value, then for its social role.
Her belief that serials played a useful role was demonstrated by empirical studies of audiences beginning in the late 1930's. Research showed that serials gave many women psychological support in coping with personal difficulties, as they followed problem-solving stories on radio, and a positive self-image, as they observed heroines overcoming obstacles.
Carrington was not successful in television; the serial "Follow Your Heart" was canceled after a three months' run in 1954. She died in New York City.
Tall, buxom, and gray-haired, she was often described as energetic and pleasant but fiercely independent in her relations with networks and sponsors.
On March 23, 1920, married a childhood schoolmate and lawyer, George Dart Carrington. They had two children.