Bess Flynn

Bess McAllister Flynn (August 1886 - February 28, 1976) was an American actress and a writer of radio soap operas.

Early years

Born Bess McAllister in Iowa in August 1886, Flynn was the daughter of a schoolmaster and a teacher. She began teaching in a country school when she was 16, but she resigned three years later to become a member of a traveling stock theater troupe. and in the midwestern United States before she began working on radio. In 1931 she took her son to Chicago to audition for a radio program. The audition was delayed because of the lack of a woman to read some lines in the script, so Flynn volunteered to do that. She and her son left with roles on the show, with Flynn portraying Tilda on The Gumps. Flynn also portrayed Mother Moynihan on Painted Dreams. Other radio programs on which she acted included Princess Pat Players.

Writing Flynn's acting on radio kindled her interest in writing. As she read her lines, she decided to try writing scripts, and in 1935 she began doing so. In 1940 she left acting entirely so that she could spend more time writing.

By May 1941, Flynn was producing about 30,000 words weekly as she wrote for 10 radio programs. She was an advisor for the soap opera We, the Abbotts.

After Flynn moved to New York, her new neighbors were concerned about what they considered to be unusual activity in her apartment. When the building superintendent asked her about that activity, she replied, "Tell them that I'm just a radio writer in the pangs of creation and I may need help any minute." She said, "Some [soap operas], not many, have good writing and are first-class popular entertainment", Flynn said that, as she had plots in mind "for the next two years or more", she considered the characters in her shows to be real and avoided getting them involved in devices such as court trials, kidnappings, and murders. She occasionally consulted Black when segments of scripts related to medical topics.

Personal life and death She married actor Edward Flynn in Chicago. She died on February 28, 1976.