Their Own Best Creations

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

• ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Craftsmen and Work WivesThe Gendering of Television Writing    2. “A Sea of Male Interests”Your Show of Shows and the Comedy of Female Mischief    3. Gertrude Berg, Peg Lynch, and the “Small Situation”of the Stay-at-Home Showrunner    4. “What Girl Shouldn’t?”The Many Children of Irna Phillips    5. “Knowing All the Plots”Presenting the Woman Story Editor    6. “A Girl’s Gotta Live”The Literate Heroines of the Suspense Anthology Drama    ConclusionBetter Than It Never Was    NotesBibliographyIndex

"Berke’s imagination — bolstered by insight, expertise, and scholarship — reveals stunning depths. Authors’ intent may be unknowable, but critical interpretations are their own kind of creative work. Berke’s interpretations are generative and convincing accounts of the way that art and artists can come to reflect each other."