Virginia Carter, the feminist activist who was hired by Norman Lear to advise him on social issues and marginalized groups, providing insight the famed TV producer would use for plotlines and characterizations in his provocative shows, has died. She was 87.
Carter died Oct. 17 of natural causes at her home in Redondo Beach, documentary filmmaker Martha Wheelock, a longtime friend, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Carter had spent 11 years as a research physicist for the Los Angeles-based Aerospace Corp., a think tank for the U.S. government, and was president of the local chapter of the National Organization for Women when she was hired by Lear’s Embassy Television as director of creative affairs in 1973. (Lear’s then-wife, Frances, had met Carter at NOW and brought her to his attention.)
Even though Lear had big hits at the time with CBS’ All in the Family and Maude, the Canadian-born Carter had never heard of him. But when they first met, “We found that we had a lot of common philosophy points of view,” she noted in a 1979 interview.
“Norman had certainly given much thought to social issues of all kinds, but he didn’t have the time that I had into the feminist community and their thinking,” she said in Robert Alley and Irby Brown’s 2001 book, Women Television Producers: 1948-2000. “But it’s equally important to note that he was sufficiently secure to be open to my thinking and to the kinds of discussions that were sure to follow from it.”
Carter took a one-year leave of absence from Aerospace in case working in Hollywood “was some crazy dream”; she would not return. As Lear’s right-hand woman, she was given a large office next to his and double the salary she was making at Aerospace, and she would provide script notes, create reports for him to read and bring in outsiders to meet and talk to him.
Lear’s companies would provide advance screenings of some touchy episodes to activists, and Carter would listen to their concerns and address them with the writers.
As an “out lesbian,” Jennifer S. Clark wrote in her 2014 book, Producing Feminism, Carter “acted as an effective conduit between Lear and LGBTQ communities.” For example, she met with the National Gay Task Force over the depiction of a same-sex couple seen in Lear’s 1975 ABC series Hot L Baltimore.
At Embassy and then Tandem Productions, Carter advised Lear on his expanding roster of shows, which came to include Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman; Good Times; The Jeffersons; One Day at a Time; The Facts of Life; All That Glitters, which featured a transgender character; and many others.
From a “cursory viewpoint, the possibility of someone from the world of physics fitting into the world of entertainment seems unlikely,” Lear explained in a 2002 interview. “But I was interested in what she could teach me and my company about the fledgling women’s movement, and, in fact, about being a decent human being.”
Virginia Louise Carter was born on Nov. 18, 1936, in Arvida, a town in Northern Quebec, and raised there. She got to spend time in Los Angeles as a youngster, and after she graduated in 1958 from McGill University in Montreal, where she majored in math and physics, she returned to L.A. to earn her master’s in physics at USC in 1963.
As the only female physicist employed by Aerospace, Carter conducted research on high atmospheric conditions and vacuum ultraviolet spectroscopy and was the first woman to successfully design and fly a satellite-based experiment. And during her stint as president of the NOW chapter from 1970-72, she increased membership there from 70 to 700.
When Carter started with Lear, she would pitch story ideas to him, take his place at read-throughs and sit in on meetings with network censors. “We understood that we had to offer real entertainment,” she said. “Once we got people watching, we could add the kind of content that would give substance to the plots.”
She was promoted to vice president in 1976, and after Lear stepped aside from day-to-day duties at Tandem, she was named head of drama.
Carter went on to launch a Made for Television movie division and executive produce such telefilms as 1981’s The Wave, which won Peabody and Emmy awards, and 1982’s Eleanor: First Lady of the World, starring All in the Family standout Jean Stapleton as Eleanor Roosevelt.
She quit Tandem in 1985 and collaborated for years with the Population Media Center, which employed TV and radio “soap operas” to deliver messages to developing countries about family, population control and the status of women.
Carter also was president of the board of Wild West Women Films, which was founded by Wheelock and Kay Weaver, and worked alongside her partner of more than 60 years, Judith Osmer, in the firm J.O. Crystal, which manufactured synthetic rubies. Osmer survives her.
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