Sitcoms Written by Women Are a Funny Thing

The working lives of these women TV writers in the 1950s were very different from the sitcom wives they scripted.

The television history books are wrong. Most accounts of network TV’s early days claim almost no women wrote for 1950s sitcoms. While the industry was male-dominated, more women wrote television comedy in its infancy than has been frequently reported. Often marginalized by colleagues and now forgotten by history, their successes and struggles should be remembered. 

Women were at a disadvantage competing for comedy writing jobs in the early ’50s, as many of television’s early series, such as The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and Our Miss Brooks, were adapted from radio shows, mostly written by men. Television producers hired most of their writers from that pool of former radio comedy scribes. 

“Girl Writer”: Madelyn Pugh Davis

A few women made the crossover from radio, joined by several broadcasting newcomers. Among the onetime radio writers, Madelyn Pugh Davis was the early television woman comedy writer most frequently memorialized due to her long association with Lucille Ball. 

Like show business-obsessed Lucy Ricardo, Davis was shut out of her chosen field. In the 1940s, no one would hire a woman as a foreign correspondent. However, unlike the I Love Lucy heroine, Davis made a splash in the entertainment industry. 

Davis faced more rejection when she became a radio writer. One show declined to hire her, saying she wouldn’t fit in because she was a “girl”. Davis’ radio career took off when she became a writer on Ball’s series, My Favorite Husband. 

Madelyn Davis followed Lucille Ball to television, co-writing every episode of I Love Lucy. Davis always tried out the physical stunts in the scripts to see if they were realistic for Ball to perform. She was sometimes treated as a novelty. Her director’s chair was titled “Girl Writer”. However, she thought of herself simply as a writer and tended to ignore the discrimination. She continued to write for Lucille Ball off and on for decades and later became one of the first female showrunners on the long-running comedy Alice. 

The first woman nominated for a comedy writing Emmy®, Davis was such an iconic figure that upon her death, Journey Gunderson, executive director of the Lucille Ball – Desi Arnaz Center for Comedy, said, “I would argue that Madelyn Pugh Davis’ work is as significant a contribution to American entertainment and pop culture as that of any comedy writer in American history.” 

A Naturalistic Artist: Peg Lynch

Peg Lynch of Ethel and Albert also transitioned from radio to television. She wasn’t just a writer; Lynch created, starred in, and controlled the series. 

Ethel and Albert launched nationally on the radio in 1944. Initially, Lynch tried too hard to be funny, writing a Gracie Allen-like character before realizing she could mine humor from realistic situations and dialogue. Ethel and Albert moved to television as a twice-weekly ten-minute segment on The Kate Smith Hour. In 1953, it became a live half-hour series, aired on NBC, CBS, and ABC until 1956. 

Lynch would rise at four in the morning to write, rehearse, plan stories, and make decisions about casting, sets, and more. Her naturalistic scripts were unlike anything other TV writers, male or female, were penning. She retained ownership of the show and her characters for the rest of her life. While offers came in to write for other shows, Lynch refused them.

“Attractive” But Inexperienced: Barbara Hammer

Barbara Hammer gave a subtle feminist bent to many of her 27 scripts for The Donna Reed Show. Drawing on her own experience, she penned an episode in which Reed’s Donna Stone character contemplates a writing career. 

Starting at just 24 years old, Hammer racked up an impressive list of credits, including Father Knows Best, The Danny Thomas Show, and Bewitched. Rather than comment on her talent, the caption on a press photo from early in her career referred to her as an “attractive TV comedy writer”.

Later, credited as Barbara Avedon, she teamed with Barbara Corday to write for the famously feminist Maude and the Barney Miller spinoff Fish. Avedon’s years of experience didn’t shield her from sexism. A male Maude producer mistook her for a secretary/novice writer. A Fish writer referred to her as “inexperienced”. Another male writer chided the duo for “taking jobs from men”. 

Avedon struck one last blow for feminism by creating the dramatic series Cagney & Lacey. The late Avedon is far better known for creating that iconic series than for her pioneering role as a woman sitcom writer. 

The Excluded: Peggy Chantler Dick

Another writer for The Donna Reed Show, Peggy Chantler Dick, flourished in TV comedy writing with a career that lasted into the 1970s. She worked on everything from Leave It to Beaver to The Partridge Family. 

Chantler Dick said she faced little prejudice as a woman writing comedy. There was one major exception. Although she was on the staff of a series, the executive producer held a meeting about the future of the show and only invited male writers. As a result, she quit the series. 

Screen Writers Guild Founder: Erna Lazarus

Erna Lazarus, who also wrote for The Donna Reed Show, came from the world of movie scriptwriting, which was more accepting of women writers than radio. Beginning in 1937, Lazarus worked steadily in the studio system, writing nearly 20 screenplays.

Breaking ground again, this time in television, her credits include The Gale Storm Show, The People’s Choice, Bewitched, and Petticoat Junction. One of the founding members of the Screen Writers Guild, Lazarus died in 2006 at 102. 

Blacklist Fighter: Helen Levitt

Unfortunately, women comedy writers were not immune to the effects of the career-ruining Hollywood blacklist. Helen Levitt’s husband, Al, was blacklisted in the early 1950s. Struggling to make a living, Al Levitt worked with a front until Helen joined him as his writing partner. 

Using the pseudonyms Helen and Tom August, the Levitts were able to work in television together for 20 years, penning scripts for The Donna Reed Show, Father Knows Best, The Danny Thomas Show, and All in the Family. After retiring from television, the Levitts led the effort to supplement blacklisted writers’ pensions and restore credits to those writers. Helen also chaired a committee for the USC School of Film and Television to memorialize blacklisted writers. 

When Helen Levitt started writing for television, she thought male writers didn’t like women writers because they weren’t used to them. She cited excuses like, “We can’t talk dirty in front of women,” to keep them out of the profession. She liked to try new things rather than draw from the tropes that some male writers preferred. Levitt also worked to keep stale female stereotypes out of scripts. 

Second Only in Respect: Gertrude Berg

The blacklist also derailed the early TV series The Goldbergs, created and written by its lead actress, Gertrude Berg. It happened despite Berg’s popularity, which stretched back to 1929 when the radio version of The Goldbergs debuted. Beloved for creating this positive, entertaining look at a Jewish family, Berg was voted the second Most Respected Woman in America, bested only by Eleanor Roosevelt.

The series got off to a strong start when it converted to television in 1949. Berg became the first woman to win an Emmy in 1950 for her performance. Unfortunately, the series was canceled when Philip Loeb, who played her TV husband, was blacklisted in 1951. General Foods and CBS refused to air The Goldbergs with Loeb. Against her wishes, Berg was forced to let him go, although she still paid his salary for two years. Loeb ended his life in 1955. 

After the CBS cancellation, the series had a spotty broadcast history between 1952 and 1956, with frequent pre-emptions and hiatuses. The Goldbergs would air as a 15-minute series before reverting to a half hour and bouncing between NBC, DuMont, and syndication. 

Berg created and starred in another sitcom, Mrs. G. Goes to College (retitled The Gertrude Berg Show at mid-season) in 1961. Despite the show’s failure to return for a second season, she was nominated for another acting Emmy. Berg was still working on new projects when she passed away in 1966. 

Creator of Wise Men: Dorothy Cooper Foote

Jim Anderson may have had all the answers on Father Knows Best, but much of his wisdom came from the mind of prolific writer Dorothy Cooper Foote. Beginning with the show’s first episode, Cooper Foote wrote 32 segments during the series’ six-year run. The industry awarded her for her talent with an Emmy nomination, four WGA nominations, and one WGA award. Cooper Foote later wrote for another wise TV father, penning 23 episodes of My Three Sons. 

Power Trio: Katherine Eunson, Mathilde Ferro, and Gwen Bagni-Dubov

Two wife and husband teams contributed multiple scripts to Leave It To Beaver. Long before ageism reared its ugly head, Katherine Eunson was nearly 50 when she began writing for television. However, she was no novice; she had previously collaborated with her husband, Dale Eunson, on short stories, plays, and screenplays. The couple wrote a dozen episodes of Leave It To Beaver before concentrating on dramatic series.

Mathilde Ferro and Theodore Ferro were prolific in sitcoms, dramas, and soap operas. In addition to their ten Leave It To Beaver scripts, they wrote for The Donna Reed Show, My Three Sons, and The Patty Duke Show.

Another Leave It To Beaver writer, Gwen Bagni-Dubov, also wrote for My Three Sons, Love, American Style, The Brady Bunch, Eight is Enough, and the miniseries Backstairs at the White House, for which she was nominated for an Emmy and won a Writers Guild award.  

Writers’ Guild of America Nominee: Louella MacFarland

After writing dramatic anthologies and screenplays, including The Mating of Millie, which earned her a WGA nomination, Louella MacFarland penned her first sitcom episode in 1953 for Private Secretary. Many more followed. MacFarlane wrote for The Ann Sothern Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Dennis the Menace, and Hazel (27 episodes). She later became a sculptor and painter. 

Wearer of Many Hats: Shirley Gordon

Shirley Gordon was a publicist, assistant magazine editor, and a writer for dramatic anthologies on radio. Her television career, though, was dominated by sitcoms. She worked on My Favorite Husband, Bachelor Father, My Three Sons, Bewitched, and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.

Gordon is best known for contributing to at least 60 episodes of Paul Henning’s pre-Beverly Hillbillies series The Bob Cummings Show. She later wrote eight children’s books. 

Women Writers of Sitcom Live On

The stay-at-home wife who performs housework in a nice dress, pearls, and high heels is the enduring stereotypical image of women in early American TV sitcoms. While the portrayal of early TV’s stay-at-home moms often lacked nuance, the working women who wrote for those characters made small advances with more progressive stories than those conceived by male writers. These women’s busy working lives also differed considerably from the sitcom wives they scripted.

They should be remembered not only for their contributions to early television but also for paving the way for writers/producers/creators like Susan Harris (Soap, The Golden Girls), Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (Designing Women), Diane English (Murphy Brown), Tina Fey (30 Rock), Lena Dunham (Girls), and every other woman television comedy writer that follows.