Why did images of white, nuclear families dominate television in the 1950s? Why has it taken nearly 70 years for images of a diverse America—featuring people of color, immigrants, women as independent social beings—to appear on prime time television? Challenging the longstanding belief that what appeared on television screens in the 1950s and after resulted from some social consensus, The Broadcast 41 addresses these and other questions by telling two intersecting stories. The first story documents the heterogeneous perspectives of a generation of progressive women who had been…
Great piece by Martha Fischer, who I had the pleasure of meeting when she visited to read Jean Muir's papers (which are archived at the University of Oregon). Can't wait to read the biography she is writing.
Judy Holliday was brilliant. She was a smart and funny, a member of a Village improv group called the Revuers. She was committed to a wide range of political causes, including serving on the radical Voice of Freedom Committee along with Dorothy Parker and Paul Robeson, and supporting the Civil Rights Congress. When she was listed in Red Channels in June 1950, the film Born Yesterday, written by Garson Kanin (also listed in Red Channels), was set to be released later that year, this…