Carl Bixby

Carl Bixby (May 4, 1895 – June 29, 1978) was an American writer, performer, and book writer whose career spanned Broadway, radio, and television. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to Mr. and Mrs. Waldo H. Bixby, he relocated to Richmond, Virginia, at age twelve. From that point forward he wrote one play per year, a practice he maintained throughout his life, and he acted in, directed, and wrote amateur theatrical productions while living there.

Bixby left high school during his junior year to enter the newspaper business. His early professional work included positions at The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the Birmingham Ledger in Alabama, where his focus leaned toward advertising and promotion. In 1915 he participated in a fundraising program for a Richmond church as a member of the Monumental Minstrels, contributing to a comedy skit and performing a vocal solo. He entered military service in 1917, serving briefly in a cavalry unit stationed in Brownsville, Texas.

In the early 1920s Bixby worked for an advertising agency in Richmond before moving to a similar position in New York City. While there he proposed the slogan "Good to the last drop" for Maxwell House coffee, attributing the phrase to President Theodore Roosevelt. His transition into radio came when a client sought a program on which to advertise. With no existing program to offer, Bixby invented a concept, sold it to the client, and then spent a week in his Long Island apartment writing the opening material for the serial Dangerous Paradise.

Dangerous Paradise became one of radio's first serials and advanced within its first year from relative obscurity to wide critical recognition. Bixby adapted its scripts into a novel published by The Macaulay Company in 1934, a 309-page work considered among the first novels derived from a radio program. He traveled to Canada in the summer of 1934 to gather material for the serial's upcoming season. By 1938 a dispute had developed between Bixby and the program's star, Nick Dawson, and Bixby pursued legal action to halt continuation of the series. On December 24, 1937, New York's Supreme Court ruled unanimously against him, determining that content produced by a script writer belonged to the employer. The decision, supported by a 180-page brief from Bixby's attorney, was among the first legal rulings to address the rights of radio writers.

Bixby co-created the radio drama Life Can Be Beautiful with Don Becker, and the program ran for seventeen years. The two collaborators lived in different states — Bixby in Connecticut and Becker in Virginia — and met only at irregular intervals to plot story developments. Their sessions took place in a locked hotel room in New York City over three days at a time, producing enough plot for six weeks to six months of programming. Writing and editing duties alternated between them without a fixed pattern, and no outside party knew which man had performed which role for any given group of scripts. Additional radio credits for Bixby included Club Romance, This Day Is Ours, The Man I Married, Big Sister, Second Husband, and an adaptation of the novel Kitty Foyle for the series Stories America Loves, which ran for twenty-six weeks. He also produced Radio Reader's Digest and, beginning October 31, 1949, hosted a daily inspirational program called Life Today on station WICC in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

His Broadway work included an appearance in 1928 in Prison Bars, for which he also served as book writer. During his years in Richmond he performed in male lead roles with the Little Theater League and appeared in the Legion Follies for the American Legion. In the early 1930s he performed with the Salon Players, affiliated with the Salon of Seven Arts, in Jackson Heights, New York. His playlet The Night Before was produced in Greenwich Village in 1924, and many of his other plays were staged by amateur groups including the Westport Players in Connecticut, where he also acted, directed, and assisted with set construction. He periodically sought guidance on his plays from his mentor, John Golden.

Bixby's television writing included work on The Edge of Night and The Secret Storm. He described his work on The Secret Storm as equivalent to producing one full-length play each week, and he kept his story planning a full year ahead of the show's current broadcast status. He worked from his Connecticut home, sometimes continuing through the night, and watched the program to monitor its development, occasionally revising material based on how performers interpreted their characters. In October 1948 he launched a magazine also titled Life Can Be Beautiful, though it had no affiliation with the radio program. The publication addressed topics including divorce, education, family life, health, religion, and sex, and Bixby described it as a personal magazine oriented toward practical optimism.

Bixby married Lillian Beatrice Harding, and the couple had two sons. He died on June 29, 1978, at his home in Southbury, Connecticut, at the age of eighty-three.