Writers Guild Office Boy 1971 (xix)

In early 1971, the only woman Writers Guild member who worked at the networks that I delivered contest scripts to judge who wore pants and dressed like a liberated woman was Marlene Sanders. In early 1971, Marlene Sanders was a writer in the ABC television news department at the ABC studios on West 66th Street and, when I delivered the contest scripts to her office there, she looked like a slightly older Newsreel/Movement white woman, although she wore more make-up and lipstick than most white Movement women at that time.

Sanders seemed to be in her late 30s or early 40s in early 1971 and looked like she would be considered attractive by most men of that time—unless they had been conditioned to reject women who wore pants to the office in early 1971, instead of dresses or skirts which enabled them to show off their legs. But Sanders also seemed to be under a lot of stress and pressure when I delivered the contest scripts to her. Although she was polite to me, you got the sense that Sanders felt somewhat alienated from having to work within such a male chauvinist-dominated institution as ABC’s television network was under Leonard Goldenson’s control during the early 1970s.