December 22, 2014 • 37 mins
Women detectives have been a prime-time staple since the 1950s. In part one of their investigation into female crime solvers on TV, Cristen and Caroline trace the literary origin of this beloved character all the way to Cagney and Lacey's game-changing roles.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And this is the first of a
two part episode that we are doing on Lady Detectives
on television because when we did our past episodes not
(00:28):
too long ago on the Golden Girls and Women of
a Certain Age, we heard from listeners about women of
a certain age who are also crime solvers. That's right,
a whole other TV genre with which I don't know.
I'm I'm pretty familiar. I grew up watching all sorts
of amazing lady crime fighter shows with my mother Caroline,
(00:49):
and I learned that we both have a shared love
for Jessica Fletcher of Murder she wrote, hence the title
of this podcast, Murder she watched. Yeah, she Jessica Fletcher
both fierce and comforting. Yeah, and she also rides her
bike around. She's got pretty cool style. I mean, honestly, today,
if you wore what JB. Fletcher wears you you'd fit
(01:10):
right into maybe a cool party, right Norm Corman whatever
that is with those big glasses. But we ended up
making this a two parter, not only because this you
could just call this our our Christmas present to you
or whatever holiday you choose to celebrate. But also because
once we started we're searching women detectives, this whole TV
(01:33):
genre and just really focusing in on TV on the
small screen, we uncovered so much information. Yeah. There, it's
it's not just about the women who were on television,
who were starring in these shows. It's about where they
came from. I mean, these lady detective characters have a
long and amazing history um of coming up through literature,
(01:57):
and then when they transition over to the small screen,
it's interesting to see how they develop through the seventies, eighties,
nineties and into today. Now that I sound like a
radio announcer, but there's also so much to talk about
in terms of femininity and masculinity in these shows. About
(02:20):
sexual violence, uh, the issue of uh you know, two
shows like s View use rape as entertainment. There's just
it's it's more than just talking about Jessica Fletcher. Although
we could have just made this about Jessica Fletcher, because
lord noth Caroline and I could just rip on and
on about her and her adventures in CatCo. But we
(02:43):
are also focusing in on TV because it's women crime
solvers in this particular genre who are the ones making
these really significant milestones in terms of actually seeing women
in lead roles on television. But long before Law and
Order spew came around and Riska Harget stole all of
(03:07):
our hearts, for sure, we need to mention where fictional
women detectives get their start. And before we dive into this,
I will say that I would love to do a
follow up podcast at some point on women detectives in literature,
because that is where they come from. But in this episode,
we're going to talk mostly about TV, but first we
(03:30):
have to talk about the women in the books. Yeah,
so this is coming from a great article in the
Telegraph back in November of um but the history of
fictional lady detectives goes all the way back to the
eighteen sixties when we see the first books featuring professional
not just amateur but professional female detectives as the heroine.
(03:54):
And these two that were about to mention remained the
only such books for about twenty years. Yeah, there was
sort of a proto a sleuth character who popped up
in eighteen forty one and Catherine Cruz The Adventures of
Susan Hopley. But like you said, it wasn't until the
eighteen sixties that we have actual female detectives. So William
(04:17):
Stephen Hayward publishes The Revelations of a Lady Detective, which
could also just be the title of his podcast, which
featured the main character, a widowed Mrs Pascal who has
featured smoking on the cover is um and around the
same time, Andrew Forrester published The Female Detective, which featured
(04:39):
Miss Gladden as the main character. And whereas Ms Gladden
doesn't reveal much about herself, she she tends to blend
in with her environment to observe she works independently and
for the police. The smoking and widowed Mrs Pascal character,
she has more of an adventurous spirit. She serves as
(05:00):
an undercover agent for the police and she also investigates
her own cases. Miss Pascal is very busy and she's
just constantly smoking or although I would like to think
of Miss Pascal she's ever revived in you know, like
a twenty first century adaptation, she'd definitely be vaping. Yeah,
But unlike Ms Gladden, she does reveal a lot about
(05:23):
herself and has a sense of adventure in her own
words from the book quote, owing to frequent acquaintance with peril,
I have become unusually hardened for a woman. Although I
think that also might have to do with the smoking. Yeah. Yeah,
that that literally is hardening your your blood vessels, they
could be that, um but yeah. This A lot of
(05:46):
these insights too, are coming from Mike Ashley, who wrote
an introduction to the new edition of Revelations of a
Lady Detective. These books, which were put down the eighteen sixties,
sort of, I mean, they were popular people like the
tradition of like Penny Dreadfuls and things like that, but
they did sort of disappear. It's not like we have
constant editions of books like this like we do with
(06:07):
like Charles Dickens books or whatever. Um. And so it
was sort of a big deal when these books got reissued.
But Ashley actually refers to Mrs Pascal as the forerunner
to both m Appeal and Sherlock Holmes. And the inspirations
for these books are also pretty interesting because the female detective,
(06:29):
Miss Gladden's book, written by Andrew Forrester, came about because
of Forrester's interest in true crime, whereas Revelations of a
Lady Detective. Miss Pascal's book was really more of a
continuation of the Penny Dreadful tradition quote, as Mike Ashley wrote,
showing that women have every bit as much true grit
(06:51):
as their male counterparts. And I will say that's something
that we see continue on through these female detectives on
TV that we're going to talk about as well. Yeah, exactly.
And going back to that quote about Mrs Pascal calling
herself unusually hardened for a woman, that's another trend as
far as like questioning whether female detective characters are just
(07:16):
being kind of squished into a male role and made
to fit that mold, or whether they're functioning as just
their own type of investigative lady character. But so in
the eighteen eighties, just to give you some context, this
is when Sherlock Holmes debuts and on the coat tails
of Homes we see a lot of a lot more
(07:37):
lady detective characters coming out, women like my favorite Mrs
Julia Herlock shows, I wonder who inspired her? I can't,
I can't put my finger on it. Shows. Well, there's
also Miss Hilda Wade, Lady Molly d Mazarine and Florence Cusack,
(07:58):
who I would like to think is the fictional ancestor
of Joan and John Cusack. I hope so um. But
when we move into the twentieth century, around the same
time in the late twenties early thirties, we get Agatha
Christie's mystery novels and also Nancy Drew. But it was
in that Agatha Christie creates the Miss Marble character, who
(08:22):
is a spinster ish amateur detective. She doesn't have children
of her own. She kind of functions under this guy's
of Oh, I'm just a gentle spin street grandmother, just
sitting here knitting, but also solving cry right because she's
she might be quiet, and she might fade into the
background because people tend to not notice older people around us.
(08:42):
But that means that she can observe all sorts of
things we might not observe. That's right. And so as
we make the transition to TV, it was in nineteen
fifty six that Miss Marple became a TV character for
the first time, and it was actually here in the
u s she was played by Gracie Fields. And then
we see like a crossover here or what will be
(09:04):
a crossover in Night, Angela Lansbury portrays Miss Marple, and
of course this character eventually inspires Jessica Fletcher of murder,
she wrote, who is played by Angela Landsbury. Yeah, and
then from Joan Hickson stars in the BBC series of
(09:24):
Miss Marple and she's usually considered everybody's favorite Miss Marple.
But speaking of Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher, another theme
that you'll see too as you really start to focus
in on this very particular kind of detective character, the
female detective, is that they usually are rather spinster ish.
(09:46):
They're often you know, they often have no children. They
might have a romance on the side maybe, but usually
they're single. They're kind of you know, these islands unto themselves.
Well yeah, I mean when you look back at Mrs
p Scale, for instance, So she's a middle aged widow
and she smokes, uh, And I think that goes along
(10:07):
with the whole thing of like, all right, if you're
putting a woman in a non feminine, non traditionally female role,
you know, she's already transgressing gender norms and social rules
and stuff like. It wouldn't make sense almost in that
time period to make her a married mother, for instance,
because well, that's her role, that's her life. She's a
(10:28):
married mother, she's a wife and mother raising her children.
Whereas oh, well, a widow with no kids who's smoking.
Just I mean, I just love the imagery. People were like,
oh my god, she's smoking on the cover. Um, you know,
she's already transgressing all of these norms, so she might
as well be a detective having all sorts of adventures. Yeah.
By not giving her that domestic familial role, she actually
(10:51):
has time to be a sleuth. All right. And now
that we've given you this super amazing and colorful look
at Victorian lady detectives in literature, we're gonna take a
quick break and we come back. We'll get into how
the second waivers of second wave feminism helps spawn a
whole new generation of lady crime fighters, but this time
(11:11):
on television. And now back to the show. We are
now going to move out of literature and into television
because there is so much to cover, and when you
look at the history of women in American television, we
are going to focus a lot on US TV. It's
(11:32):
really women, female detectives who are breaking some of the
glass ceilings. So, for instance, in N seven, the show
Decoy starring Beverly Garland as undercover cop Casey Jones, premiers
and I did not realize this before researching for this podcast, Caroline,
(11:54):
this was the first woman in the history of US
television to start in the title role of a full
season dramatic series. And to put that in some context,
and how huge of a deal that's still is. Between
ninety and out of five d fifty five dramatic primetime series,
(12:15):
just thirty six of them starred a woman. Interesting, Yeah,
and it was the female detective, the undercover cop who
broke the mold. Well, I mean, I think what you're
saying to me, what I'm hearing is the exact same
thing that we just talked about with Mrs Pascal's character about, Well,
if we're going to break boundaries by putting a woman
(12:37):
in a starring role on TV, she might as well
be in a role that we're you know, it's just
so outside of the female norm. But by making a
lot of these, especially earlier characters more undercover than straight
p i or detectives, that also lends itself to allowing
(12:59):
her to wear more feminine costumes and say, just a
straight cop Unicorn or the trench Coat and Fedora. Yes,
so she can still function as very feminine in a
role that is not feminine traditionally. So let's look first
if we're going chronologically at Diana Rigg, who start in
The Avengers as m appeal and that show aired from
(13:21):
sixty nine. It's something I had no idea about. I
literally had never thought about before reading this, but all
of a sudden, it makes so much sense that I'm
never gonna unhear this. Emma appeals name came about a
shorthand literally, this is not a joke for man appeal.
They they wanted so badly to maintain the feminine, to
maintain to have this woman in an exciting, adventurous role
(13:44):
but also be super feminine and hot and all that stuff.
They wanted her to have a lot of man appeal.
So they started out by naming her Samantha Peel I'm
not kidding, and shortened it to manth Apeel. So it
sounds like, yeah, well then that was just awkward, right
because whose name Mantha Antha? No? I don't, Yeah, No
offense is Samantha's listening to go by Mantha? Although probably
(14:07):
there are none of you. Yeah, probably not. Well, so
they eventually abbreviated it as the letter M period appeal,
so man appeal they shortened it to that way. But
then the more they said m appeal, M appeal, that
makes more sense. We get him appeal. That is so
much effort to go to. Yeah, no kidding, who thinks
(14:28):
about that? I mean, talk about some subliminal messaging. But
that's such a great example too of how not only
do we have second wave feminism starting to creep in,
but this is also in the context of you know,
Cold War era. We're really interested and fascinated by um
spy movies and novels and James Bond and undercover espionage happening.
(14:51):
So m appeal really fits all of those things. Yeah. Well,
so then we have Anne Francis in the show Honeyweb
from nineteen sixty five to sixty six, and her character
was really envisioned as a cross between the hardened male
detective character Trope and Marilyn Monroe. And she had a
(15:11):
pet awful lot. Oh I know that in the show?
Are in really in the show? Yeah? She was a
swanky dame and she was inspired initially by Pussy Galore
in the double oh seven movies, I see. Al right. Well,
then of course we have Peggy Lipton in Mod Squad,
which was on from sixty to seventy three, and then
(15:32):
a really awesome important character of Teresa Graves who start
in Get Christie Love in nineteen seventy four. I think
it was a TV movie and a series, but she
was the first African American woman to star in her
own hour long series. And this was a pretty revolutionary
role to be portraying on television because in the political
(15:53):
context at the time, you have Title seven of the
Civil Rights Act being enforced, which led to police departments
having to quit gender discriminating in their hiring practices and
bring more women onto their forces. And it's the same
kind of thing that we talked about a lot in
our Fire Women Women Fireman episode. And so this was happening,
(16:19):
and a lot of people were concerned and not happy
with female police officers being more common. They didn't think
that they could protect them as well enforced crime or
infor enforce the law as well. So that's happening in
the real world, this discomfort with women taking charge in
police uniforms. But then you also have you know, civil
(16:42):
rights still going on, and so to have a black
woman in this role as a cop, it was almost
too much for the mainstream white viewership to handle. So
it didn't last very long, but I mean a pretty
significant role. To remember it. I wasn't aware of the
show existed until this, although I will say, um, the
(17:05):
the intro to Get Christine Love is like two minutes long.
It's so long, and it's just it's it's real seventies,
is it. Teresa Graves like running around with a gun,
like peeking around corners. Yeah, And her trademark line in
it is You're under arrest, sugar. So there's that. I
(17:26):
love that so much. But going off of what Christy
was talking about, with more and more women being recruited
for police forces during this time, we have to talk
about Angie Dickinson, who started in Police Woman from nine
to seventy eight, and in one source that we were
looking at talking about this show in particular, Dickinson was
(17:47):
saying how flattered she was that there was this spike
in women joining police forces after her show premiered, so
she didn't necessarily take into account the fact that there
were a lot of other political and social things going
on at the time, correlation causation, exactly perfect example. But
so Angie Dickinson's character and police Woman was of course,
(18:09):
she's very fashionable, she's very beautiful, she has great hair,
all of this stuff. But she has actually said since
then that she felt very exploited during the filming of
the show, particularly because of things like shower scenes that
you know, why do you need a shower scene? But anyway,
she said that she was. She's actually very glad to
see how the genre has evolved since then. Well, and
(18:32):
hers is another example of how she was often in
undercover roles that would require her to be in a
bikini or in a sexy evening gown or some kind
of highly you know, feminine and attractive outfit. And it's
notable too. This was something that we were reading about
in this book Hard Boiled and High Healed all about
(18:54):
fictional women detectives, about how Teresa Graves and Angie Dickinson,
you know, both launched their lady detective series at the
same time in ninety four, but Policewoman was the first
successful hour long primetime TV drama starring a woman, whereas
Get Christie Love lasted a season and then was canned
(19:15):
and in hard boiled and high heel. They think that
it is largely because of the fact that Angie Dickinson
was a blonde, white female often put in these very
like feminine costumes. It kind of made the role more palatable,
unfortunately for viewers at the time, whereas Get Christie Love
(19:37):
was almost two too much. Yeah, there was no HBO
around at the time that could that had the resources
to take chances on shows that were in his mainstream.
You know, like you really had to sort of cater
to cater to the viewers and pay attention to the numbers. Yeah,
and it's unfortunate that catering to the viewers meant that,
you know, you have actresses feeling exploited because they're working
(20:00):
unnecessary shower scenes two shows exactly. And then coming into
the eighties, there's Betty Thomas on Hill Street Blues which
was eighty seven, Heather Locklear on t J Hooker from
a T two to eighties six, and Holly Robinson Pete
on twenty one Jump Street, which was airing from and
(20:20):
she's another one who complained about what was going on
on the show at the time. Specifically, Pete complained that
there were too many plots that relied on rape, which
is something you hear a lot of people still talking
about today, not only in terms of shows like SDU
which of course has everything to do with sexual assault, rape,
(20:40):
things like that, um, but but a lot of shows
out they're still sort of revolve around using rape and
sexual assault as a primary plot device. And Holly Robinson
Pete basically took issue with that. And we'll get more
into that portrayal of rape and a lot of these
shows and how that kind of intersects with the characterizations
(21:02):
of these fictional detectives on TV later in the podcast.
But now we have to actually step back a little
bit in our timeline to focus in on probably the
most groundbreaking TV show, prime time TV show for women
detectives on television. And it's not Charlie's Angels, sorry, folks,
(21:24):
Although they play a role in what we're about to
talk they do play a role. But we've got to
talk about Cagney and Lacy, which aired from to and
it's history. It's televisual history is fascinating because it, I mean,
there's there's so much. Let's I won't I won't even
preface it with anything, let's just dive in. Yeah, and
(21:46):
what's so great about the story of Cagney and Lacy
is the fact that it is so much a product
of its time. There is so much super fascinating social
and political history that is affecting the show. And so
this is coming from the A V. Clubs story on
Cagney and Lacy, which was a great read. But they
talked about how back in nineteen four, TV producer Barney
(22:07):
Rosenswig has this epiphany while he's out on a date
with a young feminist writer, Barbara Corday. They were seeing
Scent of a Woman, and Rosenswig realizes through Corday's eyes
that the female characters in the movie are totally objectified
and treated like crap, and so he encourages Babs Barbara
Barbara Corday and her writing partner Barbara Avedon to a
(22:31):
team of babbs is to come up with something like
to come up with their own more female empowered plot line,
and so they write a screenplay for Cagney and Lacey
featuring two career driven woman who caught bad guys and
fought sexism at the same time. But the project was
never made. Yeah, and so of course, you have to
(22:54):
take into account the context, the political and social backup
of the time. A realistic, straight forward woman led cop
show just did not appeal to network suits in the
seventies because that's too gritty, it's too unfeminine. They should
be glamorous, like Wonder Woman or like Charlie's Angels. Yeah,
Rosen's Wig actually worked on Charlie's Angels, which was created
(23:17):
by Aaron Spelling, and it was a huge hit, obviously,
and did open the door just enough for a more
serious show like Cagney and Lacy about two female detectives,
not necessarily running off to glamorous locales and being directed
by Um just a voice of a very wealthy man Um.
(23:41):
And Rosen's Wig did actually work on Charlie's Angels, which
was created by Aaron Spelling, and it was a huge hit, obviously,
and it's notable that it did feature three women with
fantastic hair. They worked together to take on evil male characters,
and so a lot of people see Charlie's Angels as
(24:03):
a positive example of women on television, although you could
make arguments on both sides of that, but nonetheless, Charlie's
Angels opened the door network wise just enough because it
was so successful that allowed a more serious show about
two female detectives actually working in an office, going out
(24:26):
on the streets fighting daily sexism that other women watching
would encounter in the real world to finally get into development. Yeah,
and so in night one, the team gets a Cagney
and Lacy made for TV movie on the air and
Rosen's wig. He must have really benefited from going on
that date with core Day back in the day, because
(24:47):
he ended up promoting the show to Gloria Steinem and
Miss Magazine, which then turned around and featured the show's
leads on their October one cover. Gloria Steinham was so
excited about this show to to the point where she
went on Dona Hue with one of the lead actors
is not Tyne Daily, but Loretta Swift, who will talk
about in a minute, went on Donna Hue with this
woman and they both talked about the show so earnestly,
(25:11):
I can't remember who was talking about, Like they talked
about it as if you're going on and talking about war.
But these two women went on and they're like, this
is an incredible show. And Gloria Stina obviously threw her
weight behind it, and it ended up attracting forty two
percent of American TVs the night it aired, which resulted
in CBS ordering six full episodes. Now, one of the
reasons though, why the TV movie Cagney and Lacy was
(25:35):
so popular, wasn't not only because Gloria Sign and probably
rallied a lot of female viewers and it got a
lot of press at the time, but also because Cagney,
being played opposite Tyne Daily, was being played by Loretta Switt,
who was on Mash, which was wildly popular as well.
So she brought some you know, some name cash to
(25:56):
do the role as well, but she had to keep
go She had to go back to MASH so she
couldn't be on the television show version of it. So
the early episodes feature Meg Foster as Cagney, whose quote
energy was considered too similar to Time Daily's hard driving
energy as Lacy, and a lot of the TV criticism
(26:19):
at the time really just hated Meg Foster's face. Let's
be honest, They thought that she looked too masculine, and
especially both Time Daily and Meg Foster. You can Google
image them and I recommend you do it because there
is such a shift from the look of Meg Foster
to Sharing Glass, who we would think of today as
(26:40):
Um Cagney. But they I think that the two of
them together in police uniforms just was a little too masculine. Yeah,
people in general, critics especially definitely thought there needed to
be a more feminine presence opposite time. Daily they were
okay with their being like one hard driving, more math skilling,
(27:00):
more serious character, but there needed to be some sort
of blonde, bubbly uh foil for her. And so before
we have the shift, and when Meg Foster was still
playing Cagney in one early episode, the to dress up
as prostitutes to have a bad guy as a way
of being like, hey, look they're in dresses with high heels.
(27:20):
They're totally feminine. Look at all this eyeshadow. There was
so much eyeshadow, so much Now, not everybody was thrilled
about Cagney and Lacey, particularly the portrayal of two women
doing police work. And we found this quote from Robert J.
Thompson's Television's Second Golden Age, and he writes, they Cagney
(27:44):
and Lacey were too harshly women's lib The American public
approves of women getting the same play for some jobs.
But the public doesn't respond to the bra burners, the fighters,
the women who insist on calling man hole covers people
hole covers, which side out made me felt loud when
I read it. These women on Cagney and Lacey seemed
more intent on fighting the system than doing police work.
(28:06):
We perceived them as insert derogatory word for lesbians. Yeah, people, Yeah,
I think people who had sort of been spoon fed
shows like a Policewoman or Charlie's Angels didn't know how
to handle mentally a show about two women who were
actually like serious police officers and detectives. But if we
(28:30):
look at some character notes sharing Glass, who Christian mentioned earlier,
she eventually comes on board as Cagney, and this sparks
this great chemistry that we know today as being such
a big part of Cagney and Lacy. And interestingly, Lacey's
husband tined Daily's husband, Harvey, it was really the one
domestic presence on the show. He's the one who cooked
(28:51):
and took care of the kids while the wife was
out running around doing police work. Yeah, she was a
full time working mom. And then Cagney was a single
woman on the show, which I'm sure was also a
rather revolutionary pairing to see as well. And one thing
we haven't mentioned is that in the process of the
show being on the air from the network tried to
(29:15):
cancel it two times unsuccessfully and finally then the third
time stuck. But one of the writer's notes said that
out of one under twenty five episodes quote, an amazingly
high percentage of them have women involved in the writing process,
even when compared to most dramas today, and so it's
(29:35):
probably part of the reason why Glorious Steinham, for instance,
wrote a cover piece for TV Guide on why Cagney
and Lacy is the best show on television. Uh. They
wanted Gloria Steinham to make a guest appearance on the
show because the plot line involved Cagney and Lacy having
to go to this Equal Rights Amendment rally, I think,
(29:57):
and they were going to have to actually protect a
Phillis shaff Lee type character who in real life was
this arch conservative enemy of a second wave feminism who
said with all sorts of awful things about women and
equal rights. And Uh, Steinham demured she she didn't show up. Yeah,
(30:18):
she didn't want to be on the show, I guess
for whatever reason. Well she did love it though, she
did love it, Oh, absolutely so, Caroline. We could go
on and on and on though about Cagney and Lacey,
because honestly, I had no idea up until this point
how significant this show was to this entire genre, no idea.
I had no idea about the background information about the writers,
(30:39):
that there were not only so many women writers, but
that the show was helmed by two incredible women. Yeah.
And to the point though, that there's even an entire
book that we have been citing devoted to this called
Defining Women Television in the case of Cagney and Lacey
by Julie DIACEI and just that very the exist sense
(31:00):
of that. Once I saw that, I realized that, Wow,
there's so much more of the show than just amazing
uh you know, bo blouses academia. Man, there there's a
book out there for everything. Indeed. Um, But now it's
time for us to put a pin in our Lady
Detective conversation because we've got so much more to talk about.
(31:24):
But now we want to hear from listeners about their
favorite classic female detectives on television or if there were
some lady detectives from literature that they especially loved as well.
Right to us, Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
Com is our email address, and we've got a couple
of letters to share with you right now. So I've
(31:51):
got one here from Monica on our episode about women
and a Bola, and she writes, thank you so much
for your podcast on women and Bola and for adding
the humanity back to the debate on this horrible disease.
It was also wonderful to hear you portray the West
African women who are affected by the disease as people
with agency, women who despite the huge challenges, are making
(32:13):
do the best they can with limited resources. One thing
I would mention there's been a lot of talk about
West African burial rituals, as if this were some exotic
for an awful thing. It's not. The burial rituals in
question are simply the washing of the body, which is
exactly what it's done here in the US, but just
by an undertaker or another professional, so not scary, not for,
(32:35):
and not some sort of voodoo ritual that these silly
Africans are doing and then getting infected. Since two thousand
and eight, i've spent significant time in Sierra Leone, mostly
supporting women journalists, training them and helping them adapt new
technology to get information to those who don't have it,
generally rural women and girls. They are smart, sassy women,
not just the journalists, and they don't need an NGO
(32:57):
to go and preach to them. They need the information
so that they can make their own decisions on their
lives and their health. Literacy rates and Siri Leone are
about and much lower for women and girls. The vast
majority of people get their news from radios, both national
broadcasters and community radio stations, and radio has played a
very important role in getting information to the population in
(33:20):
times of crisis. Just another note about Sierra Leone. These
were the most fearless, resilient, and friendly people I have
ever met. Sierri Leone is a beautiful country, and I
have some close friends there who have suffered more than
anyone has ever deserved to suffer. When you mentioned pregnant
women being turned away from hospitals, that's a regular occurrence,
even in the best of times. Very very few women
(33:43):
give birth in hospitals. A friend of mine there delivered
a baby five weeks early. We drove her around to
every hospital in the capital, Freetown, and none of them
had a working incubator. The child died after several days,
and he was not the first baby she had lost.
As we focus on a bowl on more people are
actually dying of preventable and curable diseases in Sierra Leone,
(34:03):
like typhoid, malaria, and even seemingly not serious infections. Just imagine,
for instance, dealing with a U t I and having
no antibiotics. Keep up the good work, Monica, and thank
you so much Monica for your photos. She sent some
incredible photos from her time in Sierra Leone and also
offering those really important insights. Okay, I have a letter
(34:25):
here from Alessandra, who works with the United Nations Foundation.
She says, in light of your recent podcast Annie, Bola
and Women, I wanted to share some fascinating information. I
came across this summer from a small round table held
at the U n Foundation with a return World Health
Organization communications emergency responder who had been in Liberia for
several weeks early in the crisis. Her role in Liberia
(34:47):
was to assist the World Health Organization in spreading internal
prevention and care information within Liberia and externally reporting back
to the WHO in the world at large about the situation.
She talked about many roadblocks and trying to executor job.
For example, the difficulty with the actual delivery of their message.
Liberious population is still staggering ly illiterate, so for many
(35:08):
reading the information was out of the question. As poor
education and illiteracy disproportionately affect women, I imagine that would
contribute to a higher rate of women being affected. Furthermore,
newspapers in Liberia and indeed in many parts of Africa,
do not work the same way they do in the West. There,
if you want something in the newspaper, you have to
pay to have it printed. This results in news not
(35:29):
being included for its merit or integrity, but for commercial gain.
The WHO, with their limited resources, has been hesitant to
enter into paying for such a corruptible information distribution source,
but scammers who falsely claim to have a cure have
been paying for such newspaper coverage. Thus, that leaves radio
as a hopeful method for disseminating information to remote villages
who are disproportionately affected by the outbreak. Even then, there's
(35:52):
so many local dialects that you cannot have one broadcast
that would be able to communicate with all these villages. Instead,
they use radio to intech village leaders and spokespeople and
rely on them to educate their neighbors. Finally, she talked
about the wilful disbelief an ebola in the region. While
there are a few who think it's a conspiracy, most
people believe it exists but don't want to acknowledge it
(36:13):
on their doorstep. If you have a family member who
gets sick with symptoms that might be ebola, but might,
perhaps wishfully, also be malaria, many people would rather believe
that it's malaria and continue to foster hope. To admit
that it's at bola is essentially to commit your family
member to death. You are no longer able to nurse
them or keep them as close for fear of contamination
to the whole family, and without many hospitals having room
(36:35):
to take in patients, you're forced to helplessly watch. As
a mother. Can you imagine admitting you have to stop
doing anything you can as the main caregiver for your child.
I just thought i'd share this inside Scoop. Thanks for
the podcast, and thank you so much. Alexandra, and thanks
everybody who's written in to us. Mom stuff at how
stuff Work dot com is our email address and for
links all of our social media as well as all
(36:56):
of our blogs, videos and podcasts, including this one, and
with all of our sources so you can read along
with us, Head on over to stuff mom Never Told
You dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And this is the first of a
two part episode that we are doing on Lady Detectives
on television because when we did our past episodes not
(00:28):
too long ago on the Golden Girls and Women of
a Certain Age, we heard from listeners about women of
a certain age who are also crime solvers. That's right,
a whole other TV genre with which I don't know.
I'm I'm pretty familiar. I grew up watching all sorts
of amazing lady crime fighter shows with my mother Caroline,
(00:49):
and I learned that we both have a shared love
for Jessica Fletcher of Murder she wrote, hence the title
of this podcast, Murder she watched. Yeah, she Jessica Fletcher
both fierce and comforting. Yeah, and she also rides her
bike around. She's got pretty cool style. I mean, honestly, today,
if you wore what JB. Fletcher wears you you'd fit
(01:10):
right into maybe a cool party, right Norm Corman whatever
that is with those big glasses. But we ended up
making this a two parter, not only because this you
could just call this our our Christmas present to you
or whatever holiday you choose to celebrate. But also because
once we started we're searching women detectives, this whole TV
(01:33):
genre and just really focusing in on TV on the
small screen, we uncovered so much information. Yeah. There, it's
it's not just about the women who were on television,
who were starring in these shows. It's about where they
came from. I mean, these lady detective characters have a
long and amazing history um of coming up through literature,
(01:57):
and then when they transition over to the small screen,
it's interesting to see how they develop through the seventies, eighties,
nineties and into today. Now that I sound like a
radio announcer, but there's also so much to talk about
in terms of femininity and masculinity in these shows. About
(02:20):
sexual violence, uh, the issue of uh you know, two
shows like s View use rape as entertainment. There's just
it's it's more than just talking about Jessica Fletcher. Although
we could have just made this about Jessica Fletcher, because
lord noth Caroline and I could just rip on and
on about her and her adventures in CatCo. But we
(02:43):
are also focusing in on TV because it's women crime
solvers in this particular genre who are the ones making
these really significant milestones in terms of actually seeing women
in lead roles on television. But long before Law and
Order spew came around and Riska Harget stole all of
(03:07):
our hearts, for sure, we need to mention where fictional
women detectives get their start. And before we dive into this,
I will say that I would love to do a
follow up podcast at some point on women detectives in literature,
because that is where they come from. But in this episode,
we're going to talk mostly about TV, but first we
(03:30):
have to talk about the women in the books. Yeah,
so this is coming from a great article in the
Telegraph back in November of um but the history of
fictional lady detectives goes all the way back to the
eighteen sixties when we see the first books featuring professional
not just amateur but professional female detectives as the heroine.
(03:54):
And these two that were about to mention remained the
only such books for about twenty years. Yeah, there was
sort of a proto a sleuth character who popped up
in eighteen forty one and Catherine Cruz The Adventures of
Susan Hopley. But like you said, it wasn't until the
eighteen sixties that we have actual female detectives. So William
(04:17):
Stephen Hayward publishes The Revelations of a Lady Detective, which
could also just be the title of his podcast, which
featured the main character, a widowed Mrs Pascal who has
featured smoking on the cover is um and around the
same time, Andrew Forrester published The Female Detective, which featured
(04:39):
Miss Gladden as the main character. And whereas Ms Gladden
doesn't reveal much about herself, she she tends to blend
in with her environment to observe she works independently and
for the police. The smoking and widowed Mrs Pascal character,
she has more of an adventurous spirit. She serves as
(05:00):
an undercover agent for the police and she also investigates
her own cases. Miss Pascal is very busy and she's
just constantly smoking or although I would like to think
of Miss Pascal she's ever revived in you know, like
a twenty first century adaptation, she'd definitely be vaping. Yeah,
But unlike Ms Gladden, she does reveal a lot about
(05:23):
herself and has a sense of adventure in her own
words from the book quote, owing to frequent acquaintance with peril,
I have become unusually hardened for a woman. Although I
think that also might have to do with the smoking. Yeah. Yeah,
that that literally is hardening your your blood vessels, they
could be that, um but yeah. This A lot of
(05:46):
these insights too, are coming from Mike Ashley, who wrote
an introduction to the new edition of Revelations of a
Lady Detective. These books, which were put down the eighteen sixties,
sort of, I mean, they were popular people like the
tradition of like Penny Dreadfuls and things like that, but
they did sort of disappear. It's not like we have
constant editions of books like this like we do with
(06:07):
like Charles Dickens books or whatever. Um. And so it
was sort of a big deal when these books got reissued.
But Ashley actually refers to Mrs Pascal as the forerunner
to both m Appeal and Sherlock Holmes. And the inspirations
for these books are also pretty interesting because the female detective,
(06:29):
Miss Gladden's book, written by Andrew Forrester, came about because
of Forrester's interest in true crime, whereas Revelations of a
Lady Detective. Miss Pascal's book was really more of a
continuation of the Penny Dreadful tradition quote, as Mike Ashley wrote,
showing that women have every bit as much true grit
(06:51):
as their male counterparts. And I will say that's something
that we see continue on through these female detectives on
TV that we're going to talk about as well. Yeah, exactly.
And going back to that quote about Mrs Pascal calling
herself unusually hardened for a woman, that's another trend as
far as like questioning whether female detective characters are just
(07:16):
being kind of squished into a male role and made
to fit that mold, or whether they're functioning as just
their own type of investigative lady character. But so in
the eighteen eighties, just to give you some context, this
is when Sherlock Holmes debuts and on the coat tails
of Homes we see a lot of a lot more
(07:37):
lady detective characters coming out, women like my favorite Mrs
Julia Herlock shows, I wonder who inspired her? I can't,
I can't put my finger on it. Shows. Well, there's
also Miss Hilda Wade, Lady Molly d Mazarine and Florence Cusack,
(07:58):
who I would like to think is the fictional ancestor
of Joan and John Cusack. I hope so um. But
when we move into the twentieth century, around the same
time in the late twenties early thirties, we get Agatha
Christie's mystery novels and also Nancy Drew. But it was
in that Agatha Christie creates the Miss Marble character, who
(08:22):
is a spinster ish amateur detective. She doesn't have children
of her own. She kind of functions under this guy's
of Oh, I'm just a gentle spin street grandmother, just
sitting here knitting, but also solving cry right because she's
she might be quiet, and she might fade into the
background because people tend to not notice older people around us.
(08:42):
But that means that she can observe all sorts of
things we might not observe. That's right. And so as
we make the transition to TV, it was in nineteen
fifty six that Miss Marple became a TV character for
the first time, and it was actually here in the
u s she was played by Gracie Fields. And then
we see like a crossover here or what will be
(09:04):
a crossover in Night, Angela Lansbury portrays Miss Marple, and
of course this character eventually inspires Jessica Fletcher of murder,
she wrote, who is played by Angela Landsbury. Yeah, and
then from Joan Hickson stars in the BBC series of
(09:24):
Miss Marple and she's usually considered everybody's favorite Miss Marple.
But speaking of Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher, another theme
that you'll see too as you really start to focus
in on this very particular kind of detective character, the
female detective, is that they usually are rather spinster ish.
(09:46):
They're often you know, they often have no children. They
might have a romance on the side maybe, but usually
they're single. They're kind of you know, these islands unto themselves.
Well yeah, I mean when you look back at Mrs
p Scale, for instance, So she's a middle aged widow
and she smokes, uh, And I think that goes along
(10:07):
with the whole thing of like, all right, if you're
putting a woman in a non feminine, non traditionally female role,
you know, she's already transgressing gender norms and social rules
and stuff like. It wouldn't make sense almost in that
time period to make her a married mother, for instance,
because well, that's her role, that's her life. She's a
(10:28):
married mother, she's a wife and mother raising her children.
Whereas oh, well, a widow with no kids who's smoking.
Just I mean, I just love the imagery. People were like,
oh my god, she's smoking on the cover. Um, you know,
she's already transgressing all of these norms, so she might
as well be a detective having all sorts of adventures. Yeah.
By not giving her that domestic familial role, she actually
(10:51):
has time to be a sleuth. All right. And now
that we've given you this super amazing and colorful look
at Victorian lady detectives in literature, we're gonna take a
quick break and we come back. We'll get into how
the second waivers of second wave feminism helps spawn a
whole new generation of lady crime fighters, but this time
(11:11):
on television. And now back to the show. We are
now going to move out of literature and into television
because there is so much to cover, and when you
look at the history of women in American television, we
are going to focus a lot on US TV. It's
(11:32):
really women, female detectives who are breaking some of the
glass ceilings. So, for instance, in N seven, the show
Decoy starring Beverly Garland as undercover cop Casey Jones, premiers
and I did not realize this before researching for this podcast, Caroline,
(11:54):
this was the first woman in the history of US
television to start in the title role of a full
season dramatic series. And to put that in some context,
and how huge of a deal that's still is. Between
ninety and out of five d fifty five dramatic primetime series,
(12:15):
just thirty six of them starred a woman. Interesting, Yeah,
and it was the female detective, the undercover cop who
broke the mold. Well, I mean, I think what you're
saying to me, what I'm hearing is the exact same
thing that we just talked about with Mrs Pascal's character about, Well,
if we're going to break boundaries by putting a woman
(12:37):
in a starring role on TV, she might as well
be in a role that we're you know, it's just
so outside of the female norm. But by making a
lot of these, especially earlier characters more undercover than straight
p i or detectives, that also lends itself to allowing
(12:59):
her to wear more feminine costumes and say, just a
straight cop Unicorn or the trench Coat and Fedora. Yes,
so she can still function as very feminine in a
role that is not feminine traditionally. So let's look first
if we're going chronologically at Diana Rigg, who start in
The Avengers as m appeal and that show aired from
(13:21):
sixty nine. It's something I had no idea about. I
literally had never thought about before reading this, but all
of a sudden, it makes so much sense that I'm
never gonna unhear this. Emma appeals name came about a
shorthand literally, this is not a joke for man appeal.
They they wanted so badly to maintain the feminine, to
maintain to have this woman in an exciting, adventurous role
(13:44):
but also be super feminine and hot and all that stuff.
They wanted her to have a lot of man appeal.
So they started out by naming her Samantha Peel I'm
not kidding, and shortened it to manth Apeel. So it
sounds like, yeah, well then that was just awkward, right
because whose name Mantha Antha? No? I don't, Yeah, No
offense is Samantha's listening to go by Mantha? Although probably
(14:07):
there are none of you. Yeah, probably not. Well, so
they eventually abbreviated it as the letter M period appeal,
so man appeal they shortened it to that way. But
then the more they said m appeal, M appeal, that
makes more sense. We get him appeal. That is so
much effort to go to. Yeah, no kidding, who thinks
(14:28):
about that? I mean, talk about some subliminal messaging. But
that's such a great example too of how not only
do we have second wave feminism starting to creep in,
but this is also in the context of you know,
Cold War era. We're really interested and fascinated by um
spy movies and novels and James Bond and undercover espionage happening.
(14:51):
So m appeal really fits all of those things. Yeah. Well,
so then we have Anne Francis in the show Honeyweb
from nineteen sixty five to sixty six, and her character
was really envisioned as a cross between the hardened male
detective character Trope and Marilyn Monroe. And she had a
(15:11):
pet awful lot. Oh I know that in the show?
Are in really in the show? Yeah? She was a
swanky dame and she was inspired initially by Pussy Galore
in the double oh seven movies, I see. Al right. Well,
then of course we have Peggy Lipton in Mod Squad,
which was on from sixty to seventy three, and then
(15:32):
a really awesome important character of Teresa Graves who start
in Get Christie Love in nineteen seventy four. I think
it was a TV movie and a series, but she
was the first African American woman to star in her
own hour long series. And this was a pretty revolutionary
role to be portraying on television because in the political
(15:53):
context at the time, you have Title seven of the
Civil Rights Act being enforced, which led to police departments
having to quit gender discriminating in their hiring practices and
bring more women onto their forces. And it's the same
kind of thing that we talked about a lot in
our Fire Women Women Fireman episode. And so this was happening,
(16:19):
and a lot of people were concerned and not happy
with female police officers being more common. They didn't think
that they could protect them as well enforced crime or
infor enforce the law as well. So that's happening in
the real world, this discomfort with women taking charge in
police uniforms. But then you also have you know, civil
(16:42):
rights still going on, and so to have a black
woman in this role as a cop, it was almost
too much for the mainstream white viewership to handle. So
it didn't last very long, but I mean a pretty
significant role. To remember it. I wasn't aware of the
show existed until this, although I will say, um, the
(17:05):
the intro to Get Christine Love is like two minutes long.
It's so long, and it's just it's it's real seventies,
is it. Teresa Graves like running around with a gun,
like peeking around corners. Yeah, And her trademark line in
it is You're under arrest, sugar. So there's that. I
(17:26):
love that so much. But going off of what Christy
was talking about, with more and more women being recruited
for police forces during this time, we have to talk
about Angie Dickinson, who started in Police Woman from nine
to seventy eight, and in one source that we were
looking at talking about this show in particular, Dickinson was
(17:47):
saying how flattered she was that there was this spike
in women joining police forces after her show premiered, so
she didn't necessarily take into account the fact that there
were a lot of other political and social things going
on at the time, correlation causation, exactly perfect example. But
so Angie Dickinson's character and police Woman was of course,
(18:09):
she's very fashionable, she's very beautiful, she has great hair,
all of this stuff. But she has actually said since
then that she felt very exploited during the filming of
the show, particularly because of things like shower scenes that
you know, why do you need a shower scene? But anyway,
she said that she was. She's actually very glad to
see how the genre has evolved since then. Well, and
(18:32):
hers is another example of how she was often in
undercover roles that would require her to be in a
bikini or in a sexy evening gown or some kind
of highly you know, feminine and attractive outfit. And it's
notable too. This was something that we were reading about
in this book Hard Boiled and High Healed all about
(18:54):
fictional women detectives, about how Teresa Graves and Angie Dickinson,
you know, both launched their lady detective series at the
same time in ninety four, but Policewoman was the first
successful hour long primetime TV drama starring a woman, whereas
Get Christie Love lasted a season and then was canned
(19:15):
and in hard boiled and high heel. They think that
it is largely because of the fact that Angie Dickinson
was a blonde, white female often put in these very
like feminine costumes. It kind of made the role more palatable,
unfortunately for viewers at the time, whereas Get Christie Love
(19:37):
was almost two too much. Yeah, there was no HBO
around at the time that could that had the resources
to take chances on shows that were in his mainstream.
You know, like you really had to sort of cater
to cater to the viewers and pay attention to the numbers. Yeah,
and it's unfortunate that catering to the viewers meant that,
you know, you have actresses feeling exploited because they're working
(20:00):
unnecessary shower scenes two shows exactly. And then coming into
the eighties, there's Betty Thomas on Hill Street Blues which
was eighty seven, Heather Locklear on t J Hooker from
a T two to eighties six, and Holly Robinson Pete
on twenty one Jump Street, which was airing from and
(20:20):
she's another one who complained about what was going on
on the show at the time. Specifically, Pete complained that
there were too many plots that relied on rape, which
is something you hear a lot of people still talking
about today, not only in terms of shows like SDU
which of course has everything to do with sexual assault, rape,
(20:40):
things like that, um, but but a lot of shows
out they're still sort of revolve around using rape and
sexual assault as a primary plot device. And Holly Robinson
Pete basically took issue with that. And we'll get more
into that portrayal of rape and a lot of these
shows and how that kind of intersects with the characterizations
(21:02):
of these fictional detectives on TV later in the podcast.
But now we have to actually step back a little
bit in our timeline to focus in on probably the
most groundbreaking TV show, prime time TV show for women
detectives on television. And it's not Charlie's Angels, sorry, folks,
(21:24):
Although they play a role in what we're about to
talk they do play a role. But we've got to
talk about Cagney and Lacy, which aired from to and
it's history. It's televisual history is fascinating because it, I mean,
there's there's so much. Let's I won't I won't even
preface it with anything, let's just dive in. Yeah, and
(21:46):
what's so great about the story of Cagney and Lacy
is the fact that it is so much a product
of its time. There is so much super fascinating social
and political history that is affecting the show. And so
this is coming from the A V. Clubs story on
Cagney and Lacy, which was a great read. But they
talked about how back in nineteen four, TV producer Barney
(22:07):
Rosenswig has this epiphany while he's out on a date
with a young feminist writer, Barbara Corday. They were seeing
Scent of a Woman, and Rosenswig realizes through Corday's eyes
that the female characters in the movie are totally objectified
and treated like crap, and so he encourages Babs Barbara
Barbara Corday and her writing partner Barbara Avedon to a
(22:31):
team of babbs is to come up with something like
to come up with their own more female empowered plot line,
and so they write a screenplay for Cagney and Lacey
featuring two career driven woman who caught bad guys and
fought sexism at the same time. But the project was
never made. Yeah, and so of course, you have to
(22:54):
take into account the context, the political and social backup
of the time. A realistic, straight forward woman led cop
show just did not appeal to network suits in the
seventies because that's too gritty, it's too unfeminine. They should
be glamorous, like Wonder Woman or like Charlie's Angels. Yeah,
Rosen's Wig actually worked on Charlie's Angels, which was created
(23:17):
by Aaron Spelling, and it was a huge hit, obviously,
and did open the door just enough for a more
serious show like Cagney and Lacy about two female detectives,
not necessarily running off to glamorous locales and being directed
by Um just a voice of a very wealthy man Um.
(23:41):
And Rosen's Wig did actually work on Charlie's Angels, which
was created by Aaron Spelling, and it was a huge hit, obviously,
and it's notable that it did feature three women with
fantastic hair. They worked together to take on evil male characters,
and so a lot of people see Charlie's Angels as
(24:03):
a positive example of women on television, although you could
make arguments on both sides of that, but nonetheless, Charlie's
Angels opened the door network wise just enough because it
was so successful that allowed a more serious show about
two female detectives actually working in an office, going out
(24:26):
on the streets fighting daily sexism that other women watching
would encounter in the real world to finally get into development. Yeah,
and so in night one, the team gets a Cagney
and Lacy made for TV movie on the air and
Rosen's wig. He must have really benefited from going on
that date with core Day back in the day, because
(24:47):
he ended up promoting the show to Gloria Steinem and
Miss Magazine, which then turned around and featured the show's
leads on their October one cover. Gloria Steinham was so
excited about this show to to the point where she
went on Dona Hue with one of the lead actors
is not Tyne Daily, but Loretta Swift, who will talk
about in a minute, went on Donna Hue with this
woman and they both talked about the show so earnestly,
(25:11):
I can't remember who was talking about, Like they talked
about it as if you're going on and talking about war.
But these two women went on and they're like, this
is an incredible show. And Gloria Stina obviously threw her
weight behind it, and it ended up attracting forty two
percent of American TVs the night it aired, which resulted
in CBS ordering six full episodes. Now, one of the
reasons though, why the TV movie Cagney and Lacy was
(25:35):
so popular, wasn't not only because Gloria Sign and probably
rallied a lot of female viewers and it got a
lot of press at the time, but also because Cagney,
being played opposite Tyne Daily, was being played by Loretta Switt,
who was on Mash, which was wildly popular as well.
So she brought some you know, some name cash to
(25:56):
do the role as well, but she had to keep
go She had to go back to MASH so she
couldn't be on the television show version of it. So
the early episodes feature Meg Foster as Cagney, whose quote
energy was considered too similar to Time Daily's hard driving
energy as Lacy, and a lot of the TV criticism
(26:19):
at the time really just hated Meg Foster's face. Let's
be honest, They thought that she looked too masculine, and
especially both Time Daily and Meg Foster. You can Google
image them and I recommend you do it because there
is such a shift from the look of Meg Foster
to Sharing Glass, who we would think of today as
(26:40):
Um Cagney. But they I think that the two of
them together in police uniforms just was a little too masculine. Yeah,
people in general, critics especially definitely thought there needed to
be a more feminine presence opposite time. Daily they were
okay with their being like one hard driving, more math skilling,
(27:00):
more serious character, but there needed to be some sort
of blonde, bubbly uh foil for her. And so before
we have the shift, and when Meg Foster was still
playing Cagney in one early episode, the to dress up
as prostitutes to have a bad guy as a way
of being like, hey, look they're in dresses with high heels.
(27:20):
They're totally feminine. Look at all this eyeshadow. There was
so much eyeshadow, so much Now, not everybody was thrilled
about Cagney and Lacey, particularly the portrayal of two women
doing police work. And we found this quote from Robert J.
Thompson's Television's Second Golden Age, and he writes, they Cagney
(27:44):
and Lacey were too harshly women's lib The American public
approves of women getting the same play for some jobs.
But the public doesn't respond to the bra burners, the fighters,
the women who insist on calling man hole covers people
hole covers, which side out made me felt loud when
I read it. These women on Cagney and Lacey seemed
more intent on fighting the system than doing police work.
(28:06):
We perceived them as insert derogatory word for lesbians. Yeah, people, Yeah,
I think people who had sort of been spoon fed
shows like a Policewoman or Charlie's Angels didn't know how
to handle mentally a show about two women who were
actually like serious police officers and detectives. But if we
(28:30):
look at some character notes sharing Glass, who Christian mentioned earlier,
she eventually comes on board as Cagney, and this sparks
this great chemistry that we know today as being such
a big part of Cagney and Lacy. And interestingly, Lacey's
husband tined Daily's husband, Harvey, it was really the one
domestic presence on the show. He's the one who cooked
(28:51):
and took care of the kids while the wife was
out running around doing police work. Yeah, she was a
full time working mom. And then Cagney was a single
woman on the show, which I'm sure was also a
rather revolutionary pairing to see as well. And one thing
we haven't mentioned is that in the process of the
show being on the air from the network tried to
(29:15):
cancel it two times unsuccessfully and finally then the third
time stuck. But one of the writer's notes said that
out of one under twenty five episodes quote, an amazingly
high percentage of them have women involved in the writing process,
even when compared to most dramas today, and so it's
(29:35):
probably part of the reason why Glorious Steinham, for instance,
wrote a cover piece for TV Guide on why Cagney
and Lacy is the best show on television. Uh. They
wanted Gloria Steinham to make a guest appearance on the
show because the plot line involved Cagney and Lacy having
to go to this Equal Rights Amendment rally, I think,
(29:57):
and they were going to have to actually protect a
Phillis shaff Lee type character who in real life was
this arch conservative enemy of a second wave feminism who
said with all sorts of awful things about women and
equal rights. And Uh, Steinham demured she she didn't show up. Yeah,
(30:18):
she didn't want to be on the show, I guess
for whatever reason. Well she did love it though, she
did love it, Oh, absolutely so, Caroline. We could go
on and on and on though about Cagney and Lacey,
because honestly, I had no idea up until this point
how significant this show was to this entire genre, no idea.
I had no idea about the background information about the writers,
(30:39):
that there were not only so many women writers, but
that the show was helmed by two incredible women. Yeah.
And to the point though, that there's even an entire
book that we have been citing devoted to this called
Defining Women Television in the case of Cagney and Lacey
by Julie DIACEI and just that very the exist sense
(31:00):
of that. Once I saw that, I realized that, Wow,
there's so much more of the show than just amazing
uh you know, bo blouses academia. Man, there there's a
book out there for everything. Indeed. Um, But now it's
time for us to put a pin in our Lady
Detective conversation because we've got so much more to talk about.
(31:24):
But now we want to hear from listeners about their
favorite classic female detectives on television or if there were
some lady detectives from literature that they especially loved as well.
Right to us, Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot
Com is our email address, and we've got a couple
of letters to share with you right now. So I've
(31:51):
got one here from Monica on our episode about women
and a Bola, and she writes, thank you so much
for your podcast on women and Bola and for adding
the humanity back to the debate on this horrible disease.
It was also wonderful to hear you portray the West
African women who are affected by the disease as people
with agency, women who despite the huge challenges, are making
(32:13):
do the best they can with limited resources. One thing
I would mention there's been a lot of talk about
West African burial rituals, as if this were some exotic
for an awful thing. It's not. The burial rituals in
question are simply the washing of the body, which is
exactly what it's done here in the US, but just
by an undertaker or another professional, so not scary, not for,
(32:35):
and not some sort of voodoo ritual that these silly
Africans are doing and then getting infected. Since two thousand
and eight, i've spent significant time in Sierra Leone, mostly
supporting women journalists, training them and helping them adapt new
technology to get information to those who don't have it,
generally rural women and girls. They are smart, sassy women,
not just the journalists, and they don't need an NGO
(32:57):
to go and preach to them. They need the information
so that they can make their own decisions on their
lives and their health. Literacy rates and Siri Leone are
about and much lower for women and girls. The vast
majority of people get their news from radios, both national
broadcasters and community radio stations, and radio has played a
very important role in getting information to the population in
(33:20):
times of crisis. Just another note about Sierra Leone. These
were the most fearless, resilient, and friendly people I have
ever met. Sierri Leone is a beautiful country, and I
have some close friends there who have suffered more than
anyone has ever deserved to suffer. When you mentioned pregnant
women being turned away from hospitals, that's a regular occurrence,
even in the best of times. Very very few women
(33:43):
give birth in hospitals. A friend of mine there delivered
a baby five weeks early. We drove her around to
every hospital in the capital, Freetown, and none of them
had a working incubator. The child died after several days,
and he was not the first baby she had lost.
As we focus on a bowl on more people are
actually dying of preventable and curable diseases in Sierra Leone,
(34:03):
like typhoid, malaria, and even seemingly not serious infections. Just imagine,
for instance, dealing with a U t I and having
no antibiotics. Keep up the good work, Monica, and thank
you so much Monica for your photos. She sent some
incredible photos from her time in Sierra Leone and also
offering those really important insights. Okay, I have a letter
(34:25):
here from Alessandra, who works with the United Nations Foundation.
She says, in light of your recent podcast Annie, Bola
and Women, I wanted to share some fascinating information. I
came across this summer from a small round table held
at the U n Foundation with a return World Health
Organization communications emergency responder who had been in Liberia for
several weeks early in the crisis. Her role in Liberia
(34:47):
was to assist the World Health Organization in spreading internal
prevention and care information within Liberia and externally reporting back
to the WHO in the world at large about the situation.
She talked about many roadblocks and trying to executor job.
For example, the difficulty with the actual delivery of their message.
Liberious population is still staggering ly illiterate, so for many
(35:08):
reading the information was out of the question. As poor
education and illiteracy disproportionately affect women, I imagine that would
contribute to a higher rate of women being affected. Furthermore,
newspapers in Liberia and indeed in many parts of Africa,
do not work the same way they do in the West. There,
if you want something in the newspaper, you have to
pay to have it printed. This results in news not
(35:29):
being included for its merit or integrity, but for commercial gain.
The WHO, with their limited resources, has been hesitant to
enter into paying for such a corruptible information distribution source,
but scammers who falsely claim to have a cure have
been paying for such newspaper coverage. Thus, that leaves radio
as a hopeful method for disseminating information to remote villages
who are disproportionately affected by the outbreak. Even then, there's
(35:52):
so many local dialects that you cannot have one broadcast
that would be able to communicate with all these villages. Instead,
they use radio to intech village leaders and spokespeople and
rely on them to educate their neighbors. Finally, she talked
about the wilful disbelief an ebola in the region. While
there are a few who think it's a conspiracy, most
people believe it exists but don't want to acknowledge it
(36:13):
on their doorstep. If you have a family member who
gets sick with symptoms that might be ebola, but might,
perhaps wishfully, also be malaria, many people would rather believe
that it's malaria and continue to foster hope. To admit
that it's at bola is essentially to commit your family
member to death. You are no longer able to nurse
them or keep them as close for fear of contamination
to the whole family, and without many hospitals having room
(36:35):
to take in patients, you're forced to helplessly watch. As
a mother. Can you imagine admitting you have to stop
doing anything you can as the main caregiver for your child.
I just thought i'd share this inside Scoop. Thanks for
the podcast, and thank you so much. Alexandra, and thanks
everybody who's written in to us. Mom stuff at how
stuff Work dot com is our email address and for
links all of our social media as well as all
(36:56):
of our blogs, videos and podcasts, including this one, and
with all of our sources so you can read along
with us, Head on over to stuff mom Never Told
You dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
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