First published 2021
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong chronicles how four pioneering women shaped television during its earliest years. While radio executives dismissed the fledgling medium with its small budgets and limited audience, Irna Phillips, Gertrude Berg, Hazel Scott, and Betty White recognized television's potential. Phillips transformed personal loss into soap operas centered on female characters. Berg adapted her radio program into a Jewish family sitcom that expanded into merchandise and Broadway. Scott became the first African American to host a prime time variety show. White dominated daytime television as host, producer, writer, and star of her own program. Armstrong traces how these innovators established television's foundational formats during the medium's experimental phase. As television gained popularity and profitability after World War II, the House Un-American Activities Committee targeted entertainers as suspected communists. Male executives seized control while politics, prejudice, and profit margins pushed these female creators to the industry's edges. The book reveals how gender bias, racism, and anti-Semitism erased these women's contributions from television history even as their innovations continue to influence modern programming.
Genres: history, 20th-century, gender-studies, biography-memoir, 21st-century, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: erasure-of-contributions, gender-bias
Setting: United States
Period: 20th Century, Post-World War II
1 pages · Audio CD · HarperCollins B and Blackstone Publishing
Content warnings: racism