I've always been fascinated by the history of television. In my early teens, I leafed through The Complete Directory to Prime Time Television, 1946-Present (the present being defined as the spring of 1981 - it's strange to realize that my memory encompasses half of the history of organized broadcast television) so many times that the covers fell off and pages frayed. In the years before IMDb (which started as some guy named Colin collecting lists of actors, directors, and writers on rec.arts.movies ca. 1991), it was the only place I knew to get cast lists and broadcast dates for TV shows, plus a short history of the medium. I focused on the shows I knew or had heard of (the shows I watched in prime time or those I watched - or avoided, like Gilligan's Island - in reruns on Channels 17, 29, and 48, and those my parents, born right before the "invention" of network television, talked about), which reinforced the idea that TV had always focused on the WASP suburbanite and women didn't work (and by extension weren't behind the camera, either). Jennifer Keishin Armstrong proves that image was wrong, at least when no one was sure television would be a success. Sadly, three of the four women she profiles are largely forgotten and the fourth is remembered more for her later acting career than her early behind the scenes work.
Irma Phillips invented the soap opera, down to the convoluted storylines and cheesy organ cues. The youngest child of 11, she wanted to be an actress but was told she "didn't have the looks." After a tour of the WGN radio studio, she decided to try writing scripts and the result - a daily visit with four women around their kitchen table - was a hit and created the domestic drama. After a brief, unsuccessful attempt to write movies, Phillips, who never married and adopted and raised two children as a single woman (when a Philadelphia broadcaster adopted as a single woman in the last 1970s it was front page news), created The Guiding Light which ran on radio then television until 2009. She expanded soaps from four women talking about clothes over coffee to the broader family dramas which touched on serious issues. Her protege Agnes Nixon brought the genre further with storylines about racism, abortion, and AIDS woven around the over-the-top antics of Erica Kane. I never liked soap operas (the worst part of chicken pox was two weeks with my recently retired great-aunt who Could Not Miss *All My Children*), but I have to respect the amount of work involved in putting on a 30 or 60 minute show five days a week and how the serialized nature (albeit a bit toned down) has become a standard trope not only for the prime time soaps of the 80s but more serious fare like St. Elsewhere and Mad Men and shows in-between like Grey's Anatomy. And when Shonda Rimes burst on the scene, she appeared to be the first woman to control a "tv empire."
Hazel Scott was the first African American to host a prime time variety series (Amanda Randolph had hosted a daytime series. A talented and innovative jazz pianist and a civil rights advocate married to Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Scott accepted the job on the DuMont network so she could stop traveling and spend more time with her husband and their young son. Elegantly attired and backed by Max Roach and Charles Mingus, Scott's show expanded from one, to three, then to five nights a week - and was abruptly cancelled because of 'cost.' Granted, the DuMont network was held together with masking tape and crossed fingers, but the real reason was that Scott was "named" in a red-baiting publication. Marriage to a Congressman couldn't save the show of an African-American woman who'd refused to play maids and battled movie directors and executives over the portrayal of other African-American women. She eventually relocated to Paris, divorced Powell, and focused on music. She made a few later on-screen appearances but was essentially erased from the screen by the blacklist.
The blacklist also played a role in Gertrude Berg's diminished role in the cultural history. A lonely child (the only survivor of her parents' seven children), she developed her writing skills at the Catskill resorts she and her parents visited, and when her bad handwriting meant that she had to read her script to the executive interested in The Goldbergs it led to her being cast as matriarch Molly. Berg was the original showrunner, writing scripts and overseeing production as well as finding sponsors once it moved from radio to TV (and inventing product placement with the prominently displayed Sanka can). Beyond that, The Goldbergs were proudly ethnic in a medium about to become blandly WASP. Jake was in the "rag trade," he and Molly had Yiddish accents (although Berg did not), episodes centered on Seders, and they vacationed in the Catskills. It wasn't until the 1970s when network TV reluctantly identified characters as Jewish and then mostly as an afterthought, but one of the top rated shows in the late 40s defied that.
At least until Phillip Loeb, who played Jake Goldberg, was listed in the same publication as Hazel Scott. He was a long time activist and a frequent performer at Cafe Society, the nightclub where Scott made her name and which featured many left-wing artists. Berg fought for him, but in the end it was the show or Loeb. He continued to collect a salary as long as the show aired, hopping from NBC to CBS and finally to DuMont which stopped transmission a few months later. Berg continued the show in syndication, although reviews say that the warmth was gone, and eventually reinvented herself as a dramatic actress. Unable to find work or support his disabled son, Loeb committed suicide in 1955 (Zero Mostel - a close friend of Loeb's and another performer at Cafe Society - played a character loosely based on Loeb in The Front).
The final pioneer is Betty White. Yes, that Betty White - Sue Ann Nivens, Rose Nyland, 21st Century pop icon. She's spent most of her career merely in front of the camera but co-created the daytime talk show and spun off the domestic sitcom. According to her memoir, she decided to be a performer after writing and starring in a play for her eighth grade graduation. Four years later, she and a classmate were chosen for a broadcast demonstration. After two short, failed marriages, she was a struggling radio performer when a top DJ asked her to be the co-host of a daily Los Angeles TV show, Hollywood on Television. She chatted, sang, and performed improv skits for 5 1/2 hours a day, six days a week. When her co-host jumped to another station, she became the solo star and spun off the skits into a syndicated sitcom Life with Elizabeth where she hired "the best person for the job" behind the camera including women and African-Americans. In the early 1950s, her talk show was broadcast live nationally, but executive meddling led to its cancellation and no amount of condescending praise for the single woman with no intention of remarrying could end that. We know her because of her on-screen talent (just like Rose is somewhat of a send-up of Sue Ann, the latter was created as a spin on her earlier roles), but her early innovation deserves more recognition.
By now, you're probably asking, "What about Lucille Ball?" Well, we know what Lucy did. She refused to move her popular radio show to TV without her Cuban-born and heavily accented husband. Once they had the show, Lucy and Desi formed a production company, insisted on taping the show (for a smoother final product) and kept the rights to the tapes (inventing second-run syndication). We know that beyond her amazing talent for physical comedy she was a businesswoman who ran Desilu for several years after buying out her ex-husband and green lighted Star Trek shortly before selling the studio to Paramount at a profit. The only part of her story we don't know is that she gave advice to a younger actress/producer in the early 1950s - Betty White.
