“When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today”
- By Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
- c.2021, Harper
- $27.99, $34.99 Canada; 334 pages
Turn it up. This is the best part of the whole series; it’s a great bit, the funniest one. You’ve seen every episode of this favorite show multiple times and you know the must-watch scenes, every line, every outfit change, new set and new character. And in “When Women Invented Television” by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, you’ve still got a lot to learn.
Gertrude Berg clearly understood how much power she wielded – still, in the fall of 1948, when she walked into the Madison Avenue office of the man in charge of CBS, she knew she was taking a chance.
For years, she’d been the writer, casting director, star, and force behind the network’s most popular radio show, “The Goldbergs.” Berg wanted to take that popularity to the new medium of television, and she told William S. Paley so. He agreed, and by the end of 1949, “The Goldbergs” was a hit with a solid sponsor and Gertrude Berg was a television star.
It was not quite as easy for Irna Phillips. Today, we’d tell Phillips to slow down. She was a hundred-mile-an-hour single mother of two adopted children and the creator, solo writer, and daily juggler of multiple radio “soap operas.” She saw the coming of television and its irresistible possibilities but getting her work there was a struggle.
Hazel Scott had no problem transitioning from live concerts to TV: the
Article source: https://www.marconews.com/story/entertainment/2021/04/07/bookworm-classic-tv-watcher-women-invented-television-gold/7107274002/
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