When Women Invented Television by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
Review of When Women Invented Television by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
When Women Invented Television by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong (2021). Published by Harper.
I randomly found this book in the new section of my library on a cold, rainy Saturday morning and was immediately intrigued. I don’t watch much television, but as a historian person, I understand how important television is to American society.
You can look a lot about a country and its history by delving into what was on television and how it was reacted to. I come from a background of knowing about the movie systems and the cinema world in the 1900s, but I knew that television was an entirely different ball game. And so I checked this little book out and devoured it in less than two days.
I think most Americans should pick up books like these. It would teach us, especially minorities and women, to realize that the world wasn’t as diverse and great as it is now, even though we still have major problems.
Learning about these women’s stories was quite inspiring, and as I sit to write this, Betty White, one of the women discussed in this book, recently has died. It seems only fitting to come back and write this review.
The first women to break into the television world were magnificent.
If you haven’t caught on by now, this is a nonfiction book split into four parts. It covers four equally remarkable women, some of whom were competing against each other for airtime, and the struggles that they faced trying to break into the industry. Television today still is very much a boy’s game in America, so to learn about these pioneering women is inspiring. They had it tougher back then and they still made it.
There’s some really interesting nuggets of knowledge scattered throughout the book. A lot of early television shows could only be broadcast in one side of the country, so the studios in New York would broadcast for the East Coast and the Los Angeles studios for the West Coast. One could only see images from the other coast’s shows only if someone took a camera and recorded a screen broadcasting the show, which made them very low quality and sometimes shaky.
There was also extensive crossover from the radio world into the television world. A lot of the women discussed in this book were originally successful on radio but then chose to cross over into television because of the opportunities they saw. Some failed with their adaptations from radio to television, but other persevered to break the odds.
The first woman discussed in this book is Gertrude Berg, a Jewish woman from New York City who brought Jewish and Yiddish culture for the entire country to see. She was the creator of The Goldbergs, which started out as a popular radio serial and was then brought to television. Goldberg starred at the matriarchy of the family, who embodied Jewish stereotypes and spoke with a heavy Yiddish accent.
Goldberg was ruthlessly ambitious, pushing for a stage play and for further success. She even dropped her leading man, the father of the family, when he was beginning to get investigated by the House of Un-American Activities for being a suspected communist. Her show was culturally significant, too, because it brought Jews to the forefront and was well-loved by non-Jews and Jews alike. In an era that included World War II and the rise of anti-Semitism, this is an incredible feat.
The second woman is Irna Phillips. Phillips was another radio serial writer, but she was best known for the fact that she wrote for women.
Her shows were daily soap operas that were largely successful, creating a niche that wasn’t well-respected but very profitable. Phillips then moved from Chicago to Los Angeles in order to make a career in television, Phillips’ career had major ups and downs, but she was once still a major player in the radio and television worlds.
Hazel Scott is our third woman presented in the book. She was the first African-American woman to host her own television show, The Hazel Scott Show, in 1950—an era where racism was at a peak since the Civil War. She was a famous jazz and classical pianist/singer who was well-loved around the country, and was also married to a Congressman, Adam Clayton Powell.
That marriage ended in 1960. Scott’s show would be cancelled because she was accused of being a communist, thus putting the studio in a difficult position. Regardless, Scott had a prolific career as one of the first colored women to appear in major Hollywood films, and she used her platform to speak against racism, discrimination, and segregation.
Our final woman is Betty White. I think in America we all know Betty White and her legacy, especially nowadays, but it is very important to distinguish that she was the first woman to be an actor, director, and producer. I won’t discuss much more about her because she’s such a household name.
Overall Thoughts
All in all, I think that this book does a clear and captivating job describing these women and what they did.
I liked how we learned about their origins, potential downfalls, and how they crossed paths during their television journeys. I learned quite a bit about the mechanics of the television industry then (e.g. most shows only could be done with a sponsor like P&G, then Betty White invented the nuanced way of doing a product placement in the middle of the show). There’s something for everyone in a book like this!
The writing was easy to understand, so I think that this is a book that doesn’t just appeal to academics and nerds. At the end of the day, I recommend it.
