The motif of magic has played an important part in the history of commercial television since the industry’s inception. It is with the phrase: “I introduce you to the magic of television” that BBC announcer Leslie Mitchell began the first public television broadcast on August 26, 1936. Advertisements for television sets frequently utilized magic as a theme in images and texts. A 1949 Dumont ad, for example, that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post featured a little girl being transported to a storybook land through the “enchanted mirror” of TV.
In the first two decades of American commercial television locally produced shows made up a large part of the broadcast day. Hosted children’s cartoon shows were a popular and profitable format and were ubiquitous throughout the country. Nearly half of these shows had “character hosts,” i.e., hosts playing a role such as space adventurers, sailors, and cowboys. Twenty-percent of these character hosts were based on fantasy figures from children’s literature, fairy, and folk tales. It is within this group of fantasy themed hosts that women performers had the largest representation.
In my presentation I will explore the role of these women hosts – the fairies, pixies, princesses and story ladies – with regard to presentations of gender, race, and class on children’s shows in post-World War II America. I will also examine the politics of gender in the hierarchy of the local affiliates specifically with regard to the production and presentation of the shows.
About the presenterVibiana Bowman Cvetkovic
Vibiana Cvetkovic is a Reference Librarian and the head of Access and Collection Services at Rutgers University. She has edited scholarly press books and authored peer-reviewed articles on the topics of intellectual honesty and children’s visual culture. Ms. Cvetkovic is a PhD candidate in the Childhood Studies program and Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey.