Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar TelevisionA rich account that combines media-industry history and cultural studies, Their Own Best Creations looks at women writers' contributions to some of the most popular genres of postwar TV: comedy-variety, family sitcom, daytime soap, and suspense anthology. During the 1950s, when the commercial medium of television was still being defined, women writers navigated pressures at work, constructed public personas that reconciled traditional and progressive femininity, and asserted that a woman's point of view was essential to television as an art form. The shows they authored allegorize these professional and personal pressures and articulate a nascent second-wave feminist consciousness. Annie Berke brings to light the long-forgotten and under-studied stories of these women writers and crucially places them in the historical and contemporary record. |
Contents
Craftsmen and Work Wives | 19 |
A Sea of Male Interests | 49 |
Gertrude Berg Peg Lynch and the Small Situation | 80 |
What Girl Shouldnt? | 112 |
Knowing All the Plots | 148 |
A Girls Gotta Live | 170 |
Notes | 225 |
Bibliography | 263 |
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adapted Alfred Hitchcock Presents American anthology drama Archive audience authorship Berg and Lynch Broadcasting career characters Chicago Children Coca's Cockrell collaborations comedy creative daytime domestic early television entertainment episode Ethel and Albert explains female feminine feminism feminist fiction figure film and television Folder gender genre Gertrude Berg girl Goldbergs and Ethel Guild Hechtlinger Hollywood husband Imogene Coca Show Irna Phillips Joan Harrison joke labor Lucille Kallen Lynn Spigel male marriage Mary Mel Tolkin Modleski Molly mother move narrative Peg Lynch Phillips's play postwar television producer professional radio role screen screenwriters scripted lives Selma Diamond serial Show of Shows show's showrunner Sid Caesar sion sketch soap opera speak star story department storytelling studio suspense talent Tamiment tele teleplay television's tion University Press Variety viewer voice wife woman television writer women story editors women writers Wrong Number wrote York