When Women Invented Television

Gertrude Berg produced, wrote and starred in?The Goldbergs,?the template for the family sitcom.

Born Tillie Edelstein in 1898 in East Harlem, Gertrude Berg grew up performing at her family’s Catskills hotel, where she met her husband, Lewis Berg. She created, wrote and starred in the radio show The Goldbergs. In 1948, Berg asked CBS for a slot on its TV schedule.

All TV was broadcast live, so networks aired variety shows.?A situation comedy – an untested concept – would require?scripts, actors, rehearsals and changing camera angles. So, the networks turned Berg down.?Being visual, rather than aural, TV as a medium emphasized the show’s Jewish ethnicity, just as entertainment headed into the gray-suited 1950s.?However, while?The Goldbergs exemplified the Jewish-American tradition, its appeal was universal. Eventually, CBS agreed to produce the show itself until it found a sponsor. Sanka instant coffee stepped in, and?Berg’s character delivered ads within the show. Viewers?increased their Sanka purchases?by 57%.

Showrunner Irna Phillips pioneered radio soap operas and exported them to television.

Irna Phillips was among radio’s most powerful people?in the 1940s, earning $300,000 a year. At her peak, she produced five concurrent shows. The Guiding Light, a daytime hit, sold “soap?to housewives,” by focusing on domestic relationships.?Phillips, a single mother of two,?pioneered portraying working women who were juggling career and family. In 1948, NBC asked her to develop a TV soap opera set in Chicago.?

“Radio had been different; they could listen while they cleaned. Now she had to be visually interesting, but not too visually interesting, and not so visual that they’d miss a key plot point if they were looking away from the screen at their ironing or dirty dishes.”

Phillips introduced a new format for serial daytime production.?But, among other problems, radio actors didn’t know how to memorize lines; they’d?always read from a script. NBC canceled Phillips’s first show after five weeks.

With on-air charm and comedic ability, Betty White ad-libbed her path to a singular?career as an actor and producer.

Betty White was a bit actor when disc jockey Al Jarvis asked her to join the show he was planning,?Hollywood on Television. Audiences loved hearing them ad-lib, tease each other, read the news and sports scores, interview guests or the “man on the street,” and perform songs and sketches for five and a half hours a day.

“White would eventually rise to Gertrude Berg’s level of sitcom stardom. But she would get there by first competing with Irna Phillips for the daytime audience full of housewives, and she would do it by helping to invent a new form of her own: the talk show.”

White could look into a camera and make viewers?feel she was speaking directly to them. Hollywood on Television soon expanded to six days a week.?When White’s second marriage ended, she decided never to?marry again?and she moved back in with her parents, who supported her?ambitions. Meanwhile, TV’s popularity grew.

Jazz pianist Hazel Scott was the first Black solo?entertainer to host a prime-time?variety show.

The DuMont company, which manufactured TVs, began creating its own content in November 1948. Lacking experience, but not originality, its production people focused on daytime shows. DuMont?recruited African-American pianist Hazel Scott,?a renowned jazz artist who played to sold-out audiences worldwide in the 1940s. By 1949, she wanted to perform without touring?constantly. She enjoyed a “cozy” home life north of the Bronx, with her husband, preacher and congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.?and their son. They were a model?family for Black America: successful, principled and in love.

“She showed extraordinary strength, first in exerting control over her own image as a Black woman in the public eye and then in risking her career to make larger points about racism in the United States, all while trying to live up to the high standards of being a politician and preacher’s wife.”

A prodigy?at 16, Scott hosted a radio show and, at 18, played at Café Society, New York City’s?first integrated nightclub. She appealed to mainstream white audiences, playing classics with swing flourishes. Despite her celebrity, she faced racist obstacles, but she understood that her star status enabled her to make principled stands about equality. DuMont saw Scott as a top-tier?talent with a large fan base it could secure for an affordable price. In 1950, she became the first Black woman solo prime-time host.?The Hazel Scott Show was a hit.

By 1950, Americans had purchased five million TV sets. By 1959, 90% of US homes had televisions.

The US House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) sought to control TV’s messages in the 1950s.

As the 1950s dawned, the young?“national pop culture,”?which was more open to integration and internationalism, faced a backlash. The US House of Representatives’ Un-American Activities Committee sought to control?television content and made baseless?claims that the performers were communist sympathizers.?The American Business Consultants, a group created by former FBI agents to advise networks about “possible communist sympathizers,” basically engineered a “government-aided protection racket.” Their Red Channels magazine?published the names of liberal broadcasters?they regarded as potentially being communists. The whispered threat against these personalities was that they “might cause ‘controversy’” if they continued to be in movies and on TV.

Without evidence, HUAC accused prominent people –?primarily in entertainment –?of communist sympathies and forced them to refute the charges. A group known as the Hollywood Ten either refused to appear or appeared and denounced the HUAC. They were sentenced to yearlong prison terms and fined for contempt of Congress. Because of their association with “controversy,” studios wouldn’t hire anyone who ran afoul of the Committee, at least not officially.

“A mere accusation could tar a writer or performer with being ‘controversial,’ which studios and later advertisers saw as sufficient grounds for dismissal.”

HUAC especially targeted Black Americans; it?blacklisted Hazel Scott in 1950. She wanted to confront the situation to set the record straight, but her husband thought that would only worsen her position. The?Goldbergs actor Philip Loeb, who played Molly’s husband, Jake, also appeared on the list, even though the?Boys Club of America voted him “television father of the year.”?Berg and her cast ignored Loeb’s listing, chalking it up to his support of actor unions.?Berg worked with CBS and General Foods to find a way forward without firing Loeb. But, despite the nationwide appeal of Berg and The Goldbergs, CBS canceled the show after he testified before the Committee.?

An anti-communist smear campaign pressured networks to end Scott’s contract.

Likewise, Scott’s listing did no immediate damage. Her show expanded to five nights a week and went national in July 1950,?the first prime-time network series with a Black host.?Scott wanted to speak?to HUAC, so she forced the issue with a press conference. She insisted to?the Committee that she wasn’t a communist and that the HUAC’s?listing –?a threat to her career –?was unjustified.?A week later, DuMont canceled her show.

“Conservatives had effectively weaponized sexism, racism and anti-Semitism through Americans’ fear of communism and targeted it at Hollywood.”

Scott began touring again. She?canceled a?European tour due to exhaustion and continued government harassment. Diagnosed with a “nervous breakdown” and prescribed pills and electroshock therapy, Scott fell into depression. Eventually recovering, she accompanied the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for a night honoring George Gershwin?at Carnegie Hall in the spring of 1952.

Irna Phillips so believed that The Guiding Light, her top radio soap, belonged on TV, that she produced two dramatic 15-minute scripts to convince?Procter & Gamble to sponsor it. The anxiety of waiting for a response landed her in the hospital.?

Berg’s health gave out in?the tumult of constantly having to hustle her show, after defending Loeb until the network forced her to replace him. As 1953 ended, she spent weeks hospitalized with a gastric hemorrhage. In September 1955, she died of an overdose of?sleeping pills.

White and other women pioneers shaped emerging TV programming.

After Jarvis and his replacement, actor Eddie Albert, left?Hollywood on Television, the?producer proposed that he, White and pianist George Tibbles – who wrote many of the show’s sketches – would produce a?weekly half-hour evening series together. Following her mantra “Always say yes,” White agreed. The partners formed Bandy Productions to produce the sitcom Life with Elizabeth. White joined a dwindling handful of women “creator-producer-stars” with behind-the-scenes clout.

“White didn’t know it, but she was holding the line in her own way, against the incursion of total patriarchy onto the television business.”

Journalist Martha Rountree created Meet the Press for radio and took?it to TV, where it’s now the longest-running show. Rountree pushed back against Senator?Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt?on her show, calmly asking him?for details and evidence. The Screen Writers Guild reelected screenwriter Mary McCall, Jr. as its president to beef up negotiations with producers and defend writers HUAC maligned falsely.?Also significantly, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists set minimum wages for actors.?

TV increasingly reflected the conservative patriarchal tendencies of its white, male executives.

When The Goldbergs left CBS for a 10-year NBC contract, CBS had only one hit sitcom on Monday nights: I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball and her husband, Cuban band leader Desi Arnaz, cut a pioneering deal to shoot?before a live studio audience.?The cost of television sets dropped as programming grew bland. Berg hired Loeb’s replacement, who?made The Goldbergs more patriarchal, fitting?dominant trends. By?the fall of 1953, NBC could no longer guarantee Berg a time slot.

“TV had gone mainstream, and the progressive vibe of its 1940s era was disappearing, a victim of McCarthy’s crusade and the big business invading the airwaves.”

In 1954, the network debuted The Betty White Show,?as a national, daily half-hour talk show. That year, HUAC’s hearings moved to TV, leading to the end of McCarthyism. But the hearings competed with White’s show and with Guiding Light. The soap survived, but the network canceled Betty White.

Networks emulated Phillips’s soap operas for decades.

Procter & Gamble finally greenlit Guiding Light for TV in 1952. It became the hit Phillips had predicted. Triumphant in her career, Phillips felt less confident as a mother. She came to regret writing such strong women characters, and her scripts became more traditional,?showing women in subservient roles supporting men. Despite the entertainment industry’s scorn for soaps, Guiding Light?lasted 57 years on TV after decades on radio, history’s?longest-running scripted show. Phillips pioneered the use of?professionals in her story, using characters such as doctors to multiply plot possibilities. She made?episodes into cliff-hangers and added organ music for drama.

“TV is now rife with heavily serialized storylines that keep viewers watching using cliff-hangers: Any Netflix show that has swallowed up days of your life…has used Phillips’s tricks.”

Today, daytime soaps are less popular.?Shonda Rhimes, the producer behind the long-running prime-time medical soap?Grey’s Anatomy, continues creating nighttime dramas?that follow?Phillips’s legacy.

White, Phillips and Berg adapted to the changing media landscape. Scott appeared in TV cameos but mostly pursued?music.

White starred on game shows and hosted the Tournament of Roses parade. She became a TV legend with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls.?Her?career resurged in 2010 with Hot in Cleveland. The Guinness Book of World Records lists her TV career as the longest on record. In 2018, at age 96, White received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy award.

Under Phillips development, soaps went from 15 to 30 minutes. A show she made with Agnes Nixon –?As the World Turns?– ran for more than 50 years.

“The 1950s would become the most idealized decade of the century, a standard that white men in power continue to invoke up to this day.”

Berg took The Goldbergs?to DuMont, a coup for its upstart?network, which shut down months later.?Berg won a Tony in 1959 for her role in A Majority of One,?released an autobiography in 1961 and returned to TV as Sarah Green, a Goldberg type widow getting a college degree late in life. She died in 1966.

Hazel Scott and Adam Clayton Powell divorced in 1960. No film of any episodes of her show remain, a lack that “literally erases her television legacy.” She died in 1981.?While Oprah Winfrey and Wendy Williams are?daytime superstars, generally “progress has been glacial” for women of color on TV, despite the very early pioneering work of Hazel Scott.