Kent, Mona, 1909-1990

Radio and television writer.

Writer, "Portia Face Life," (CBS), 1940-1956.

Mona Kent (nee Ramona Hunt) (1909-1990) was a prolific American writer for radio and television as well as the author of a novel and other published and unpublished works.

Born in Iowa in 1909, Ms. Kent was rumored to have once worked as Harvey Girl for the Santa Fe railroad before beginning her professional writing career in Denver in the 1930s. There, she reportedly wrote radio soap operas titled "Roads to Adventure" and "The Barrett Outfit."

Later, Kent would relocate to Chicago, a far more active hub for the radio industry. There, she created her most famous and long-lasting work, the radio soap "Portia Faces Life."

"Portia" debuted in 1940 over the NBC radio network. Aired daily in 15-minute installments, it told the ongoing story of Portia Blake, a young, female attorney whose husband had died before the series began leaving our heroine to raise their son, Dickie, all alone. Kent told "Time" magazine in September of 1949, "Every soap-opera heroine. . .is, by definition, a much stronger person than her husband or any man in her orbit. . . ."

In later years, Portia would (after encountering innumerable travails on her way to the altar) eventually remarry, to a man named Walter Manning, though her life and the lives of those around her would remain ever eventful.

When the series ended its run in 1951, it concluded with a forever unresolved cliffhanger: Portia had just been found guilty of a crime she had not committed and was about to be carted off to jail.

Earlier, in 1943, Kent created and wrote a second radio serial, "Woman Of America."

With the advent of television, Ms. Kent turned her writing skills to that medium, penning episodes of the early sci-fi series "Captain Video and His Video Rangers."

In 1954, she created the soap opera "Woman With a Past" for the CBS television network. The show's lead character was a dress designer named Lynn Sherwood, played by actress Constance Ford. This show ran for six months.

During her life, Ms. Kent also found time to write numerous short stories, radio and TV scripts, adaptations, and articles as well as write and publish a novel titled "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" (Popular Library, 1950). A pulp fiction-y paperback, "Mirror" told the story of Dell Thornton, the writer of "syrupy soap operas for radio" who "destroyed everything she loved." (According to a 1988 article on Ms. Kent, she also, allegedly, published a second novel titled "Ol' Rum River," but this is unconfirmed.)

Reportedly married several times, in later years Ms. Kent would work under the name Mona Kent Eddy. She eventually settled on Long Island and spent her winters in Marathon, Florida. She was in Florida when she passed away in December of 1990.