Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994 TAG: 9406040012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: EXTRA2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: |By LYNN ELBER| |ASSOCIATED PRESS|
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
History, they argued, was just that: all his story and little of ours.
OK, so it has the clunky sound of rhetorical overkill. But ``A Century of Women,'' an ambitious Turner Broadcasting System documentary, could change a few minds, if not dictionaries.
Try this pop quiz (answers to follow): identify Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Frances Perkins, Fannie Lou Hamer, Alice Paul, Babe Didrikson and the movements, careers or events associated with them.
Congratulations if you recognized even one or two, and welcome to Women's Studies 101 as smartly offered in ``Century of Women.'' Its three chapters - work and the family; sexuality and social justice; image and popular culture - debut 8:05-10:05 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on the TBS cable channel.
Through letters, diaries and other material from the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College, ``Century'' brings to life our times and the women who helped shape them.
Think of it as how the other half lived.
The documentary revisits the not-so-distant past when women couldn't vote, couldn't work when they were pregnant, couldn't apply for jobs because they had children. It celebrates the achievements of artists, activists and others, stripping away their invisibility.
Don't think of ``Century'' as a dry school lesson, says Pat Mitchell, who launched the project as an independent producer, and then shepherded it after joining TBS Productions as senior vice president. Jacoba Atlas, along with Mitchell an alumna of NBC's ``Today,'' is executive producer.
``It's the story of how women lived and loved and worked and played - and also changed history, of course,'' Mitchell says.
We learn about Flynn, who spent 50 years in the vanguard of labor reform. Perkins, the first female cabinet member as Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of labor. Hamer, a 1964 Democratic Convention speaker whose call for equality prompted an enraged Lyndon Johnson to pull the TV plug on her.
And Alice Paul, head of the National Women's Party who helped drive America toward granting women the vote, and Didrikson, the great athlete who gained respect for sportswomen who followed.
There's also Ida May Phillips, first to use the 1964 Civil Rights Act to fight job discrimination on the basis of sex, and Jo Carol Lafleur, a pregnant teacher barred from the classroom who refused to go meekly.
More widely known women featured in ``Century'' include Lucille Ball, Lena Horne, Gloria Steinem, Amelia Earhart, Martha Graham and Margaret Sanger.
A chorus of celebrities help give voice to history, including actresses Sally Field, Candice Bergen, Amy Irving, Halle Berry and Alfre Woodard, poet Maya Angelou and designer Donna Karan. Actress Jane Fonda narrates.
The subject seemed to neatly and naturally divide itself into the three thematic chapters, Mitchell said.
``Work and family is central to women's lives. Sexuality and social justice gave us a chance to bring in all different movements from the suffragist movement to civil rights to the feminist movement in the '60s and '70s.
``Popular culture gave us a way to celebrate the women of letters, women in the arts and music and dance,'' she said.
Linking the chapters is a playlet - scenes from a get-together of one fictional circle of women (played by actresses including Olympia Dukakis, Talia Shire and Jasmine Guy) is woven through each segment.
``When we thought of how to get the widest possible audience, we realized we were facing certain barriers, like `Oh, it's one of those women's things,' or `It's about the past, it doesn't have anything to do with me,' '' Mitchell said.
``The contemporary family mirrors all the other families and all the other women whose lives we tell. They are discussing the very same issues that women of the past discussed.''
The biographies and history, however, are free from any embellishment. It's just the little-told facts, ma'am, about women whose fame was eclipsed by virtue of their gender.
No need to dramatize there, Mitchell said.
``I don't think there's anything more powerful than knowing this is really the way women lived and what they faced and how they went through it,'' she said.
Mitchell notes that ``The Civil War,'' the acclaimed PBS documentary, had the luxury of 12 hours to detail four years. ``I felt we ought to get a few hours more to tell 100 years,'' she said.
But six, for now, was all she could wrangle. Consider it just another history lesson.
by CNB