The New Entrepreneurs: An Institutional History of Television Anthology Writers

CHAPTER 1. Between the Television and Book Publishing Industries: Anthology Writers and Their Struggle for Authorial Identities

BETWEEN THE TELEVISION AND BOOK PUBLISHING INDUSTRIES: ANTHOLOGY WRITERS AND THEIR STRUGGLE FOR AUTHORIAL IDENTITIES For an anthology writer, having a public reputation as an author offered cultural benefits. Public reputations allowed writers to position themselves in mass-culture debates. Americans in the post– World War II era placed faith in experts to manage social life, and many citizens looked to intellectuals to understand the value of mass-produced culture . Several intellectual responses to mass culture existed, ranging from extremely pessimistic evaluations of this cultural phenomenon, which envisioned it as a type of mind control and a debasement of art, to somewhat optimistic assessments that theorized mass culture was a democratic forum with the capacity to be shaped for the better by ordinary people. These ideas circulated through intellectual circles and through popular culture. As a result, many television anthology writers wanted to craft their public personas within this discursive arena in order to present themselves as intellectuals with opinions about mass culture. This would allow writers to align the value of their television scripts with the more hopeful arguments about the quality of mass culture. If writers could control their reputations, they could regulate how the public evaluated them as authors and how the publicunderstoodtheirworkaspartofthemassmedia . Publicreputationsalsobecamecommodities,proving to other media industries that television writers 1 had marketable personalities that offered some assurance that their scripts would generate profits. While there were clear incentives for writers to develop public reputations , the centralized power structure in the broadcasting industry made this task impossible. Networks and advertising agencies refused to promote the individual identity of any writer because no writer was under an exclusive network contract. Thus, no network viewed any writer as its property and hence worth the time and money it took to develop a promotional campaign to publicize a writer as an author. As new entrepreneurs, though, television anthology writers created their public reputations as authors by moving between the television and book publishing industries. When writers published collections of their scripts in the mid to late 1950s, they took these opportunities to craft their authorial personas in lengthy introductions and reflections on specific scripts. More than any other nonbroadcasting venue, these books offered writers the best means of building their public reputations; the script collections allowed writers to address the public directly about their experiences working in the television industry. Operating in a decentralized field of power between the broadcasting and book publishing industries gave anthology writers the opportunity to define their work within postwar intellectual debates about mass culture. In the pages of their books, writers presented themselves to the public as liberal intellectuals who believed in the democratic possibilities of ordinary people wresting control of the broadcasting industry away from crass executives to improve the quality of television. Why Television Anthology Writers Became Identified as Authors Although television anthology writers developed their authorial personalities in the book publishing industry in the latter part of the 1950s, the idea of them as authors developed in the television industry between 1947 and 1955. The industry used terms such as “playwrights” and “dramatists” to describe anthology writers. These terms came from the theater and did not originate in the television industry itself. In fact, the construction of anthology writers as authors was the result of the prominence of theatrical directors working as producers of early television drama. When these theater personnel entered the television industry, they brought with them a theatrical understanding of writers authoring texts. But the cultural history of the term “author” in the early television industry is a complicated one involving complex institutional battles and exchanges between the theater, broadcasting, film, and journalism industries. What emerges b etween telev is ion and book publishing | 27 28 | the new entrepreneurs from this history is an explanation of why television anthology writers had to look to a non-broadcasting industry to move from being identified as authors to being recognized as individual public figures. The television industry began using theatrical discourses of authorship as early as 1947, but it did so not to suggest that television writers were the equivalent of playwrights. In fact, playwrights and novelists, not television writers, were television’s first authors. Between 1947 and 1950, live television anthology dramas mostly featured adaptations of classic dramas and novels. The television industry and its critics first used terms such as “playwright ” and “artist” in reference to the...