Non­fic­tion

The Only Woman in the Room: Episodes in My Life and Career as a Tele­vi­sion Writer

  • From the Publisher
October 19, 2015

Rita Lakin was a pio­neer a female scriptwriter in the ear­ly 1960s when Hol­ly­wood tele­vi­sion was exclu­sive­ly male. For years, in cre­ative meet­ings she was lit­er­al­ly the only woman in the room.” In this breezy but heart­felt remem­brance, Lakin takes read­ers to a long-for­got­ten time when women were not con­sid­ered wor­thy or wel­come at the cre­ative table. Wid­owed with three young chil­dren, she talked her­self into a sec­re­tar­i­al job at Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios in 1962, despite being unable to type or take dic­ta­tion. With guts, skill, and humor, she rose from sec­re­tary to free­lancer, to staff writer, to pro­duc­er, to exec­u­tive pro­duc­er and showrun­ner, meet­ing hun­dreds of famous and infa­mous show biz leg­ends along the way dur­ing her long and unex­pect­ed career. She intro­duced many women into the busi­ness and was a fem­i­nist before she even knew she was one. The gen­er­al pub­lic did not know her name, but Lakin touched the lives of mil­lions of view­ers week after week, year after year. The rel­e­vance of her per­son­al jour­ney charm­ing yet occa­sion­al­ly shock­ing will be an eye-open­er to present-day who take for grant­ed the abun­dance of female cre­ative tal­ent in today’s Hollywood.

Rita Lak­in’s Vis­it­ing Scribe Posts

Get­ting Old Can Kill You

Go by the Country

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