Johnson, Frederick, 1955-

Dates

• Existence: 1955    

Biography

Frederick Johnson was born on October 21, 1955 in Greensboro, North Carolina.  Upon graduation from Summit High School in Summit, New Jersey, he attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.  While at Cornell, Johnson wrote film criticism for The Cornell Daily Sun.  After graduating with a B.A. in English in 1978, Johnson worked as an advertising copywriter in New York for five years before attending The University of Southern California, where he received a Master’s in Writing in 1985.   

            During his last year at USC, Johnson wrote a speculative script for “The Young and the Restless” and submitted it to co-creator/head writer William J. Bell, who then asked Johnson to write a speculative long-term story projection.  Bell hired Johnson as a story consultant/script writer on both “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful” in 1988. 

            In 1993, Johnson joined the writing team of “All My Children”, becoming an associate head writer under Agnes Nixon.  He has been nominated for fourteen Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series Writing Team and won five times.  He has also won five Writer’s Guild of America Awards for Outstanding Script for a Television Daytime Serial out of a total of twelve nominations.

            Johnson is the only writer to have worked extensively with both Agnes Nixon and William J. Bell, each a protégé of Irna Phillips, widely considered to be the creator of the modern soap opera.

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