Their Own Best Creations

Annie Berke is the film editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her scholarship and criticism have been published in Camera Obscura, Public Books, Feminist Media Histories, Ms, and the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television. She was formerly Assistant Professor of Film at Hollins University.

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

   Introduction

1. Craftsmen and Work Wives
   The Gendering of Television Writing
   
2. “A Sea of Male Interests”
   Your Show of Shows and the Comedy of Female Mischief
   
3. Gertrude Berg, Peg Lynch, and the “Small Situation”
   of the Stay-at-Home Showrunner
   
4. “What Girl Shouldn’t?”
   The Many Children of Irna Phillips
   
5. “Knowing All the Plots”
   Presenting the Woman Story Editor
   
6. “A Girl’s Gotta Live”
   The Literate Heroines of the Suspense Anthology Drama
   
   Conclusion
   Better Than It Never Was
   
Notes
Bibliography
Index