A Word on Words; 2806; June Sochen

so i'm just a lawyer welcome to a word on words the book and lady madonna and i guess to jim jordan who's the author of this but congratulations on the title and the continent thank you very much it's a grabber effect it got me and took me intuit that title caught me in an account and give me one more at the idea that you talk about women in attendance in the twentieth century the case is back to twenty now i live more myth and women young generations don't remember was when they maybe don't recognize a lot like mei mei wells that would be one there's body ear attitude sort of conducted yes eventually someone who kids may know often for a mildly time late night

television or just know her name because it floats around in popular culture but i think one of the the first things i want to do in this book is to point out the importance of women entertainers i think generally popular culture hasn't been taken seriously enough i think when entertainers have played a major role of first of all they were the first women professionals they're successful women making a lot of money before any other group of women are making money they're names are in the newspapers their faces are visible there are women that i try to resurrect that are less well known like eva tang wei the i don't cure girl and wild bill who made more money than the president united states at the time and some people criticize that other people applauded it arguing she provided more pleasure than president calvin coolidge did so she should receive more money than he did odd but when entertainers in other words had been part of the fabric not only of entertainment but of american life but as you know i also try to look at how the images of women have changed over time with the entertainers being the pioneers there at the first group really are they present

women hour with ways of looking at themselves early on you very ill you address of black women in entertainment and point out that simply because of race asserting their tone was far more difficult yes african american women really as i say suffer from a double disability both race and gender when entertainers had a hard time making their move but african american entertainers were black and so the result is it was even harder for them and there are number of interesting dilemmas that that has rarely been talked about and that the black women in vaudeville that i taught exotic nobody's ever really treated them seriously but they how they suffer from the fact that even in no black among black audiences they often preferred them a lot is the lighter skinned african american women to the dark skin women

even though the dark skinned women may be as talented as singers or dancers or whatever another as they get accepted unfortunately that the wide cultural standards white is right and so the black intellectual leaders and i quote people like george schuyler an undue boys in other leaders in that in the african american communities lamented the fact that a dark skinned black women and dark skinned black man i mean even dark skinned black man or a light skinned black and there was an interesting reversal often have to court their skin to make a darker earlier photographed a first lady i would have never have recognized and i'm an old old old old carter i never would recognize ever was yes from that stunning beauty yes she was exactly right when she ethel waters in fact as a multi faceted career she had a piece she appears in vaudeville she's in the cabaret the yearly nightclubs in broadway musicals it was interesting is when she goes to hollywood she has to be out of the man they see as the

fat knot just like on the ways beavers later has to fatten up and accept an adopt a southern accent a black women are from the north of course pope the way other northerners fault they didn't have a southern accent so they have to fit into hollywood's stereotypes about them in order to get a role you talk about women in the family in movies yes in tv ads in music right you say you include your favorites but you go beyond your friends who are your favorites well in terms of the really big favor him in movies they obviously to laugh clearly the air and i think i say it is also a book the bloody women as a group are interest me the most because they're on the edge there really challenging the sec's roles they're saying in public which many people are saying we're thinking in private that would never say openly i mean you know you and many people are shocked by what they are but they just read your book and go back to play in the

other body is the other body women i mean they said it all there's a little less ma where state and at the tang wei sophie tucker doctor in a nightclub or so the saudi government but right and she had a very long career and one of the points that i make i also is that in terms of that to change and ben uses you say overtime in europe are the twentieth century in the nightclubs invented in the nineteen teens it's a new york city at the small cabaret where and in both uptown and downtown in a new york city particularly or even in chicago on the south side would be where african american nightclubs began if you go the small nightclubs you we're going to hear really racy stuff that was expected but it was a small venue and it's itself chosen itself selected what it was in the black or in the white communities or in the nineteen teens and twenties blacks and whites makes you know in the night years much more freely than they do than they did before so in some cases it afterwards but what you hear and i think since the seventies is kind of opening up a venue beginning with the

concert hall so that bette midler in the seventies she certainly were my favorites in the divine miss em shows can do really outrageous raunchy stuff i mean the really crazy although she also this is kind of an interesting point i think that i make is that she also shows that she knows the past she was a sophie tucker is material that she names her daughter sophie she and other words builds on her own persona and her own images on somebody who came before in a much smaller venue where loyal following but clearly a much smaller audience and in the same in the same way you'd imagine joan rivers who again if you take it all which she said all about the main mae west was much subtle is not the word to use but it seems to me that she had she had better use the double entendre then when joan rivers who just came with a bright bluntly came with it and ran right up from within and right into place without joan rivers that intelligence single entendre is not

ceding that bother with try to and make it more complicated to decide which he thought then suddenly have some the genius of mae west was it was that but also the end and took a second sometimes to get it absolutely and as some of you know some people argue that mae west brought censorship to hollywood that is in her early movies where if you read the script it really didn't sound so terrible or i give you an example i think from when she was still in vaudeville when she sings this song about if you don't like it just don't shake the trees and audio audio the man in the audience just went crazy every time they heard that line in the way she said it in her body language and in this working and it was in a key thing all the vaudeville houses and keith and all they were known as a vaudeville a house it's easy as a family house where you know everything was like respectable and head were all be at all be heard that that this may west is doing this really racy outnumber so he went and he said okay performed for

me and by her pianist was again i'm here in richmond and he says he couldn't believe all this and she's looking very thin you know and she has a roof so it's a very common way arby's is what's left of the censorship it was or you know the smirk five years late and the way she say i shave you know down the staircase and you're looking at a young cary grant and she done him wrong she standing of attack a staircase and he's a salvation army officer and she says you know come up and see me sometime at mason and their lives and their outlays all of those answers you say that there are three basic categories that solidify and how imminent and yes even susan doctors write a marionette and ryan

and little thin right now let me ask about that can and heave our america and i think these are also below yes but but but in the uk be america that's right although i'll give you one funny exception to that rule doris day and by the way i argue that these images prevailed throughout the surgery was unity insert act sometimes it may get transformed over time but doris day as some people know was considered the spunky sweet young thing primary and in the fifties film but when she first began she was always eat she was a horror she was at a clearly a sexual some factors andy i'm the way astor levant once said that only in america could doris day go from being a poor to abridge that i normally that's not the right of paris as a great line to yes and you also point out that

there's a lot of women who are real stars yet the themes of the movies and roads they played the title of that were given them that those things really dominated most of their careers doris day as an example right on the other side of that but a but there somewhere the back and back of the book there is a list right of the numbers of films that women stars made and it's phenomenal when you look at the clothes they were playing the same purcell right now as a result of that you throw exactly a few examples of that what happened katharine hepburn is clearly the lilith and in many ways that are absolutely and in many ways the most consistent and she's able to do they have consistently and i would argue here that's because of something in her personal

biography which everybody knew about she really is an aristocrat she's unlike most of their first generation of women who come into what's called the golden age of hollywood in the thirties and forties she was born to a father who was a doctor and a mother who was a suffrage and birth control advocate i she's from the but they often family which is corning glass an upper stage new york so she never needed the money she never got into a long term contract and waited bette davis did the us or john crawford it's quite poor and so pepper can always choose her roles very carefully she's always a career woman or an aristocrat rarely a wife only occasionally twice a mother owl because she wants to portray herself as very much an independent woman a woman with her own mind with her own identity with her own career the others singing i know i'm just looking down that list right now and the title sotelo hepburn as curse builds orphan with

strong a woman rebels want a year and then his aristocratic the holiday bring a baby the field of surgical fly right and then you all understand week as in the villainy roll and laura mullen i do believe california crawford is only mommy dearest makes this a really visit to baghdad has become the legacy image and that's what everybody remembers and joan crawford they don't remember for example animal unless today you rent your old movies and i'd recommend them mildred pierce nineteen forty five years for which she won the academy award nomination crawford is what i call a female her race show alger both in her personal life and in the role she plays on screen and i wait you know beginning with the stars in the early part of the twentieth century you have the fan magazines and celebrity and gossip watchers and so on and so people in the audience knew the personal life of these women as well as the professional life and they always blurred the images and kind of blended the image they projected on the screen with their real life any people

no new joan crawford had a very hard upbringing a mother who'd been married many times sick of changing her name and jones name and so she's at a female horatio alger she's someone who goes up the socioeconomic ladder but unlike a man she does it thanks to her good looks of those are primary assets ah but she does it and in the thirties and forties john crawford had the largest fan club of anybody think a lot of people appreciate that we're alive well what i mean that's another i would argue one of the atom came losses that i put on on their personal lives as i look at how the multiple e married joan crawford for example and bette davis married five six times and take all these retailers a little bit different because she's a generation later but also in a sense are still a remnant of the old view these women are full time professionals are hard working women the only men they marry a man who still are kind of old fashioned bette davis's many husbands couldn't stand being called mr davis right now they're not other names as davis and they didn't

understand sex role reversal you know today we talk about the iron stay at home day ads are men who will tibi the domestic partner in a relationship if the woman is the career as a judge is also lose your household a working exactly where both spouses are working and both contribute an articulate terry and raising the children and so on these women especially in the movie stars in the thirties and forties were were pioneers they were trying to pay its way that nobody had done before i mean a working very long hard hours but the husbands for the most part are all time then who can accept this a look you look good the second time because i thought i had missed a woman who would have seen the maid naturally under way in your book and they've issued their own unless you're here i think i just mentioned share i share is definitely someone who appropriately be

included know like chair i think she's fine i think she said she also has had a career in spite of all the values she has had a career in the movies and television and in music is so she's clearly and she's kind of an independent lilith to an independent and the eve of the yeah now you feature her just because it as you well know you have to be selected through some point that's right well done the less talk about making their usual and you would think would be even and all of the media but then mentions mary tyler moore and dinah shore and are done doris day right you get a sense of them they are in and what they can be and they make their own mark that's right i in fact that's what makes that's why these i would argue that's the paradox that's why these images both endure and they change at the same time mary tyler moore i think is particularly important because she's i consider a transitional figure when you look at her on our first the year the dick van

dyke show and then in the mary tyler moore show and she dominates television in the seventies into the eighties but on the dick van dyke show she's a traditional very she's a an obedient path see what his role and she has a little sun and she always refers to her husband in his his buddies and their show together and everything is always find together with them but when she comes out to her own show and she begins and one in some ways its path breaking she's a single woman and there was talk when they were first creating that show should she be divorced should she be a single mom what every you'll realize in an early seventies television which you know isn't that long ago this was considered path breaking kind of stuff but as you well know in the newsroom she's very deferential to mr grant everybody else cause and luke oh sure she calls him mr grant these would be evidence is i would argue where she still the mary she still pierce says she's still obedience she still demure but as the show goes on she

becomes more independent she becomes more assertive either some wonderful episodes for the middle and end of the show where she goes in and she tells them she wants a raise that everybody else at her level or below are earning more money if there died and then she is and she becomes a certain i think she's a transitional figure both on television and in american life she's the end she makes in a sense feminism acceptable you know the stride and feminism and often the median the late sixties and early seventies only want to hear the most strident a feminist you know johnny carson would put on some woman who would scream and yell and you know and the more obnoxious you know the better but the media generally had a negative way you don't look a little lower now that's true mary tyler moore makes independence ok she makes it respectable because she's such a nice person you know nobody not lights mary tyler moore but she's she kind of gives it respectability that you know women do have our rights and if they have talent and experience they should be paid the same amount of money as men and they should be given recognition

and promotions and titles and so a disease a very important transition figure from the mary where more women were sent to the to the lil of as you say the next link in the chain yes murphy brown is there in many ways and i can i have a whole section is you know where i compare her to roseanne or both of them are nine ten years on television the late eighties in the middle nineties marty brown is in a sense is takes feminism one step further and and lilith one step further by she's at a recovering alcoholic go according to the show's biography very egocentric is now ok for a woman to be the center you know it's always been okay for men to be though centric to be ambitious to be interested in asserting themselves and achieving and their own i always say i think i use the example in the book that murphy brown if there is one donut left in the back she takes it in and everything's that as anybody else if they'd like this year the doughnut or they want a

doughnut enough she takes the donut well selfishness has always been seen as a male characteristic women have always been seen as selfless so murphy brown carries feminism and the lowest image one step further how much how much of a role playing is real life i go back and look at the star the role of films and television now and maybe even in the area of music the art form lots of write how much in the end it is the start of the row all of the real life version well i think it varies depending upon when we're talking about two i think in the earlier periods as i was saying earlier i am a heparin

or rise when russell who always played a korean recruiter beginning then right exactly and she too comes from any upper class background college educated hepburn and russell of the most outstanding examples of college educated women in hollywood which is not typical most were working class women are so i would argue that the personal biography and the roles they played off when we're together in a case of music there is some overlap i'm thinking about the blues singers and thinking about bessie smith mr rainey and the great black blues singers but they didn't use the case to where the individual talent than the individual personality an added dimension bessie smith often talked about you know men who died are wrong and you know faceless lovers anne but she also said you know get rid of all you know if they're not doing good and if they're not behaving properly and get rid of them so they begin in this genre of the blues which is romance and love lost which is considered a woman's domain you know men sing that to but it was certainly as you know something that women did a lot of

and from all accounts her personal life was a turbulent life taking of bessie smith's that example so her songs and become confessionals or songs become examples of experience that she knew about firsthand and when you come to love and about and think the relationship with tracey right and when you look at the two academy awards and the n and your chart on the academy award the first thing to really to get too academy award winning wanted literally propping up spencer tracy this is going to dinner and the other is propping up fonda in them on a pond right right and again that was the real life role and she more than anybody else led me to ask the question but it does seem to me that in terms of divorces in terms of the money they earned in terms of the way they lived their lives their number

of instances where reality yes and i think here's a case where you might this is one of the beauties of the richness i think of popular cultural figures like women entertainers and that is the audience is blur the differences between the screen rolls their personal biography and they know about both and a time and meets each other words as an enlarged figure their stars are acting out natalie their own personal experiences with sometimes shared experiences that audience members have with them and it had in effect you could argue that the the actresses that do that the best in the most successfully our actresses who have a long enduring career when we talk about i'm a west or katharine hepburn out where john crawford these women had very long careers and i think one reason is is because they enlarge the audience's experiences as well as their own munroe gets a couple mentioned you don't lower now well first was he

well now she's got a lot of attention but i i think that maryland row is out more of ahab as say a child like character she's she is you know we talk about whether the us beginning can marry ever be an e now moreau is it she's both a maryann any i think she's somebody who has this kind of childlike innocence at the same time that her sexuality screams out at you and clearly the commercial aspects are andy the camera is always emphasizing her physical assets but i would argue that the audience response to an identifies with her vulnerability they don't respond to it because when they log maryland wrote just as well as amended you know where is the main western mainly a male audience you know as young college was allowed to ranching is marilyn monroe was loved by both men and women for different reasons and so i think that's an important point you know you coveted great span of time here or follow century somewhere in this one jumped out at me the more things change the more listings and yes oh

you mean well i don't think we really gotten beyond these images i think these dominant image is still prevail that's not to say that they are entranced muted and you know sometimes the actresses capable of taking a role in redefining it but i would argue that the situation is even more dire in the late twentieth century and television it's not what points i make is that the images are being expanded and in rich on television they're more opportunities for women on television i'm always today for the most part i argue ignore women i that they can deal with the complexity of women's lives that they simply ignore women and i think what my charts their shows youtube era for five contemporary women actresses who have all the roles you know meryl streep is the aid actress today in a way that heparin and davis were in the thirties and forties and so all the good roles of the one good role here is offered to meryl streep of that to her to susan sarandon it's not her to jessica lange and that's pretty much it show deals with his sets of books are written

and in your case it's all the valves yesterday the show's yes i listen the music yes how indeed you'd take that solar research a different cell research and put it into prose you know that's a good question because what are things that just as a pet peeve average film criticism which as is wrong just wrong in terms of the narrative and it leads me to think that some film critics especially in earlier periods or even those who rely on them today i write about movies they haven't seen solely as a historian i think source material as critical so i look at movies i look of song lyrics i look at television no no