When Women Invented Television | NY Times Bestselling author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
Sign up for free
Listen to this episode and many more. Enjoy the best podcasts on Spreaker!
Download and listen anywhere
Download your favorite episodes and enjoy them, wherever you are! Sign up or log in now to access offline listening.
When Women Invented Television | NY Times Bestselling author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
This is an automatically generated transcript. Please note that complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Description
Welcome to Season 3! Sharon and Susan kick off a new season with Jennifer Keishan Armstrong, the New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia: How a Show about Nothing Changed...
show moreSharon and Susan kick off a new season with Jennifer Keishan Armstrong, the New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia: How a Show about Nothing Changed Everything, When Women Invented Television, Sex and the City and Us, and Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted.
Jennifer writes about entertainment and pop culture for the New York Times Book Review, Fast Company, Vulture, BBC Culture, and Entertainment Weekly. Her latest book So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed with It) was published this year.
In this fascinating interview, Jennifer takes us behind the scenes with four different women who, in their own ways, invented television: Irma Phillips, Hazel Scott, Gertrude Berg -- and Betty White. Each of them faced sexism -- and racism -- but triumphed during a time when opportunities for women in television were limited -- but strangely also more open than you may think….
THE CONVERSATION
- How The Mary Tyler Moore Show gave a voice to women everywhere when they gave a voice to a host of female TV writers.
- The Oprah of the 1950’s was… Gertrude Berg?
- The Beyoncé of the 1940s was... reknowned Black jazz pianist, Hazel Scott.
- Find out how Scott became the first Black person to host a national primetime television show -- in 1950.
- The character of Suanne Nivens that Betty White played on The Mary Tyler Moore Show was based on a woman who did a LIVE Homemaking Show played by… Betty White!
- Irma Phillips was asked to make something that would appeal to women -- so she invented the Soap Opera.
- Phillips created As The World Turns -- AND the longest running show of all time, The Guiding Light.
- Gertrude Berg’s ground-breaking sitcom about a Jewish family -- The Goldbergs -- was so successful that it was considered to be the lead-in for a new, untested show that might need some help -- I Love Lucy.
- Why was 1955 the death knell of women working in television -- both in front of AND behind the camera?
- According to network executives in 1969, what were the THREE THINGS Americans didn’t want to see on television?
- How The Mary Tyler Moore Show made Ed Asner a feminist.
AUDIO-OGRAPHY
Find Jennifer Keishan Armstrong at her website, jenniferkarmstrong.com.
Buy The Women Who Invented Television (and all Jennifer’s books) at Bookshop.org.
Find Jennifer on Instagram.
Find Women Who Invented Television at YouTube:
Watch The Betty White Show (1954)
Watch Betty White in her sitcom, Life with Elizabeth.
Learn more about Hazel Scott.
The Goldbergs with Gertrude Berg, Episode: “A Sad Day”
Check out an Irma Phillips episode of The Guiding Light (1952).
CONNECT
Visit 80sTVLadies.com for transcripts.
Sign up for the 80s TV Ladies mailing list.
Support us and get ad-free episodes on PATREON.
VOTE
We're NOMINATED for Best Film & TV Podcast.
Please VOTE for 80s TV Ladies at Women in Podcasting Awards.
REMEMBER: Register or Check your US Election Registration at Vote.org
This year is the 45th anniversary of President Carter's Crisis of Confidence speech. Get Susan’s new play about it: Confidence (and the Speech) at Broadway Licensing.
Information
Author | Weirding Way Media |
Organization | Chris Stachiw |
Website | - |
Tags |
Copyright 2024 - Spreaker Inc. an iHeartMedia Company