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E-book
Author Cassidy, Marsha Francis, 1946- author.

Title What women watched : daytime television in the 1950s / Marsha F. Cassidy
Edition First edition
Published Austin : University of Texas Press, ©2005

Copies

Description 1 online resource (x, 264 pages) : illustrations
Series Louann Atkins Temple women & culture series ; bk. 10
Louann Atkins Temple women & culture series ; bk. 10.
Contents ntroduction: Daytime Television in the Era of the Feminine Mystique, 1948\-1960 -- The Dawn of Daytime: Reaching Out to Women across America -- Kate Smith: Remembering the Future -- The Charm Boys Woo the Audience: Garry Moore, Arthur Godfrey, and Art Linkletter -- Misery Loves Company: Strike It Rich, Glamour Girl, and the Critics -- Domesticity in Doubt: Arlene Francis and Home -- Matinee Theater and the Question of Soap Opera -- At a Loss for Words: Queen for a Day, It Could Be You, Who Do You Trust?, and The Big Payoff -- Conclusion: Visions of Femininity
Summary In this pathfinding book, based on original archival research, Marsha F. Cassidy offers the first thorough analysis of daytime television's earliest and most significant women's genres, appraising from a feminist perspective what women watched before soap opera rose to prominence. After providing a comprehensive history of the early days of women's programming across the nation, Cassidy offers a critical discussion of the formats, programs, and celebrities that launched daytime TV in America--Kate Smith's variety show and the famed singer's unsuccessful transition from patriotic radio star to 1950s TV idol the "charm boys" Garry Moore, Arthur Godfrey, and Art Linkletter, whose programs honored women's participation but in the process established the dominance of male hosts on TV and the "misery shows" Strike It Rich and Glamour Girl and the controversy, both critical and legal, they stirred up. Cassidy then turns to NBC's Home show, starring the urbane Arlene Francis, who infused the homemaking format with Manhattan sophistication, and the ambitious daily anthology drama Matinee Theater, which strove to differentiate itself from soap opera and become a national theater of the air. She concludes with an analysis of four popular audience participation shows of the era--the runaway hit Queen for a Day Ralph Edwards's daytime show of surprises, It Could Be You Who Do You Trust?, starring a youthful Johnny Carson and The Big Payoff, featuring Bess Myerson, the country's first Jewish Miss America. Cassidy's close feminist reading of these shows clearly demonstrates how daytime TV mirrored the cultural pressures, inconsistencies, and ambiguities of the postwar era. --Publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-258) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
Print version record
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Subject Women's television programs -- United States -- History
Television and women -- United States -- History
PERFORMING ARTS -- Television -- Reference.
PERFORMING ARTS -- Television -- History & Criticism.
Television and women
Women's television programs
Frauenfernsehen
United States
USA
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2004019568
ISBN 0292796943
9780292796942