Parker's Strange Women Throwback

Mary Tyler Moore

Actress and activist Mary Tyler Moore, known for her groundbreaking roles in the television sitcoms The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show in which her characters often broke from stereotypical images of women and pushed gender norms, became a cultural icon and served as an inspiration for many younger actresses, professional women, and feminists. Her film work includes 1967’s Thoroughly Modern Millie and 1980’s Ordinary People, in which she played a role that was very different from the television characters she had portrayed, and for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She went on to do important charity work, particularly the issues of animal rights, vegetarianism and diabetes. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes early in the run of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and also suffered from alcoholism, which she wrote about in her first of two memoirs.

Han's Strange Women Throwback

Edith Piaf

Édith Piaf was one of the most iconic performers of her native country France. She was a singer, songwriter, cabaret performer and film actress noted as France’s national chanteuse and one of the country’s widely known international stars. Piaf’s music was often autobiographical and she specialized in chanson and torch ballads about love, loss and sorrow. Also known as “The Little Sparrow,” Piaf was born in Belleville, on the outskirts of Paris, on December 19, 1915 and she struggled from day one as the daughter of street performers. Her mother, a singer, eventually abandoned both Edith and her father for a solo career. Piaf spent her youth entertaining passers-by, receiving little formal education in the process. An aborted love affair left her with a baby girl at age 17, but little Marcelle died of meningitis at 2 years old. Devastated, Piaf returned to the streets she knew, now performing solo.

Her fortunes finally changed when an impresario, Louis Leplee, mesmerized by what he heard, offered the starving but talented urchin a contract. Piaf grew in status entertaining in elegant cafés and cabarets and became a singing sensation amid the chic French society with her throbbing vocals and raw, emotional power. From 1936 Piaf recorded many albums and eventually became one of the highest paid stars in the world. She was first embroiled in scandal when her mentor, Leplee, was murdered and she was held for questioning. Piaf also took to writing and composing around this time; one of the over 80 songs she wrote included her signature standard, “La vie en rose.” Although she appeared sporadically in films, it was live audiences that sustained her.

Two serious car accidents suffered in 1951 led to a morphine and alcohol addiction that left Piaf’s life skidding out of control despite a potentially happy marriage in 1952 to actor Jacques Pills. She died in poverty at the age of 47, the same age as her equally tortured American counterpart, Judy Garland.

Amanda's Strange Women Throwback

Marchesa Luisa Casati

Decadently eccentric and fashionably forward-thinking Italian heiress Marchesa Luisa Casati was a muse for the Futurists and Symbolists, Fauves, Futurists and Surrealists. She was an amazingly charismatic woman and patron of the arts, whose parties and appearances at others became legendary. With flaming red hair, black-rimmed green eyes, tall, thin and androgynous silhouette, she has long been considered the first ‘dandy’ of the early 20^th Century. She was famous for wearing live snakes as jewelry, for her diamond leashed cheetahs and for her life of scandalous excess. Dressing up was the chief embodiment of her creative vision, a type of living theatre, where there was no discernible difference between costumes and clothes – a most modern, Warholian sensibility which led her to once declare, “I want to be a living work of art.” She died penniless and was buried alongside her taxidermied Pekingese, only adding to her inimitable legend.

Elizabeth's Strange Women Throwback

Joan Carroll Cruz

Mrs. Cruz was a native of New Orleans, LA, and was educated by the School Sisters of Notre Dame. She was a member of the Discalced Carmelite Secular Order for 50 years and received the Mother Teresa Award in 2005. Mrs. Cruz was the author of 15 Catholic books, all of which received the imprimatur. She was perhaps best known for her writings on miraculous occurrences of faith which she compiled through meticulous research of foreign shrines, churches, convents and monasteries. She is perhaps best known for her book The Incorruptibles: A Study of Incorruption in the Bodies of Various Stains and Beati.

Cassandra's Strange Women Throwback

Mae West

Actress, singer, comedian, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol Mae West did it all and did it first, inspiring and entertaining generations throughout her seven decades long career. Known for her lighthearted bawdy double entendres, and breezy sexual independence, West made a name for herself in vaudeville and on the stage in New York City before moving to Hollywood to become a comedian, actress, and writer in the motion picture industry, where she became one of the first truly modern women on screen and off.

Mae wrote 9 of 13 films she starred in and her quotes are still used by women of all ages today. Her outspokenness made her one of the more controversial movie stars of her day. She encountered many problems, especially censorship. She bucked the system, making comedy out of prudish conventional mores, and the Depression-era audience admired her for it. In short, Mae found a way. Asked about the various efforts to impede her career, West replied: “I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.”

Lydia's Strange Women Throwback

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Madalyn Murray O’Hair was an activist, founder of American Atheists, and the organization’s president from 1963 to 1986. She created the first issues of American Atheist Magazine. O’Hair is best known for the Murray v. Curlett lawsuit, which led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling ending official Bible-reading in American public schools in 1963. That case came just one year after the Supreme Court prohibited officially sponsored prayer in schools in Engel v. Vitale.

In 1995, O’Hair, her son Jon, and her granddaughter Robin disappeared from Austin, Texas. They were later found to have been kidnapped, murdered and mutilated by three men – including a convicted felon on parole and a fellow career criminal.

Kate's Strange Women Throwback

Joni Mitchell

At the age of nine Mitchell, the Canadian born singer/songwriter, contracted polio and turned her attention away from athletics and focused more on creative talent, eventually becoming one of the most important singer-songwriters of her generation. Rolling Stone called her “one of the greatest songwriters ever” and AllMusic has stated, “When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century.” Drawing from folk, pop, rock, and jazz, Mitchell’s songs often reflect social and environmental ideals as well as her feelings about romance, confusion, disillusionment, and joy. Throughout her career, she has won various accolades, including 9 Grammy Awards.

Kat's Strange Women Throwback

Dana Cowin

Cowin is the former chief creative officer of Chefs Club International and editor of Food & Wine magazine. During her decades-long tenure as editor in chief, she was instrumental in shifting the way people think about and interact with the food world.  She now hosts the podcast Speaking Broadly where she conducts intimate interviews with brilliant, powerful women in the food world about their lives and careers.

Lindsey's Strange Women Throwback

Florence Nightingale

Strange Women Throwback for this week’s episode is Florence Nightingale. Nightingale was a trailblazing figure in nursing who greatly affected 19th- and 20th-century policies around proper care. She was known for her night rounds to aid the wounded, establishing her image as the ‘Lady with the Lamp.’ She was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820. Part of a wealthy family, Nightingale defied the expectations of the time and pursued what she saw as her God-given calling of nursing. During the Crimean War, she and a team of nurses improved the unsanitary conditions at a British base hospital, greatly reducing the death count. Her writings sparked worldwide health care reform, and in 1860 she established St. Thomas’ Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. A revered hero of her time, she died on August 13, 1910, in London.

Franklin's Strange Women Throwback

Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson is one of the most brilliant and influential authors of the twentieth century. She was popular during her life and her work has received increased attention from literary critics in recent years. She has been cited as an influence on a diverse set of authors, including Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Sarah Waters, Nigel Kneale, Joanne Harris and Richard Matheson. She is best known for the short story “The Lottery” (1948), which reveals a secret, sinister underside to a bucolic American village, and for The Haunting of Hill House (1959), which is widely considered to be one of the best ghost stories ever written.^[3] In her critical biography of Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when “The Lottery” was published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that “no New Yorker story had ever received.” Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, “bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse.”

Caitlin’s Strange Women Throwback

Gretchen Worden

Worden was the director of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. She turned the little-known medical museum, which exhibits medical deformities, pathologies and medical anomalies, like the horned woman, the man with the giant colon, deformed fetuses and a plaster cast of the Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker, into a museum with a worldwide reputation. She put together a book of photographs from the museum’s collection of human oddities and outdated medical models and made several appearances on Late Night With David Letterman shocking him with such things as Victorian surgical tools and human hairballs. There was a serious message behind Worden’s sometimes madcap affect: that the human body is not to be feared or loathed, even when horrifically damaged or monstrously distorted. “While these bodies may be ugly,” she wrote in her book of the museum’s mute inhabitants, “there is a terrifying beauty in the spirits of those forced to endure these afflictions.”

Christine's Strange Women Throwback

Bette Gordon

Gordon is said to be “known for her bold explorations of themes related to sexuality, violence and power.” Her film Variety, which Christine Vachon worked on in the edit room, explores the relationship between women, pornography and voyeurism. The title character of the film “turns the tables on men” by renegotiating the historically exploitative relationship between men and women with respect to pornographic films.

Gordon is now a part of the film department of Columbia University School of the Arts. Some of her films are part of the permanent collections in several different museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Tish and Snooky's Strange Women Throwback

Debbie Harry

Tish and Snooky had many throwbacks, which you’ll hear in the episode – everyone from The Shangri-Las and The Exciters to their old friend, actress Cleo Rose.  But Debbie Harry, most famous for leading Blondie, probably taught them most about what they’ve built their grassroots empire on — makeup and hair. The sisters sang back up for Blondie in 1975 and they never looked back. Debbie Harry is one of the most influential singers of all time, with her musical know-how and mesmerizing aesthetics, she became a pop icon, influencing many female singers to come.

Pam's Strange Women Throwback

Leonora Carrington

Carrington was an English-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City, and was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. She was also a founding member of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s. Carrington stated that: “I painted for myself…I never believed anyone would exhibit or buy my work.”

Divya's Strange Women Throwback

Martha Maxwell

Martha Maxwell was an American naturalist, artist and taxidermist. She helped found modern taxidermy. Maxwell’s pioneering diorama displays are said to have influenced major figures in taxidermy history who entered the field later, such as William Temple Hornaday and Carl Akeley (the father of modern taxidermy). Maxwell was born in Pennsylvania in 1831. She was the first woman to exhibit at the World’s Fair – her exhibit was titled Woman’s Work.

Evan's Strange Women Throwback

Poly Styrene

Styrene was the founder and lead singer of the punk band X-Ray Spex, Styrene is known as an archetype for modern-day feminist punk (Billboard Magazine), largely because she was bi-racial, wore dental braces, stood against the typical sex object female of 1970s rock star, and sported a gaudy Dayglo wardrobe. She was “one of the least conventional front-persons in rock history, male or female.” X-Ray Spex launched their debut single in 1977.

Evan met Styrene in London when she was a young woman handing out copies of her Goth fanzine. Styrene, by then, was a devout Hare Krishna and told Evan to go home and clean herself, get off the streets.

Alison's Strange Women Throwback

Poly Styrene

Founder and lead singer of the punk band X-Ray Spex, Styrene is known as an archetype for modern-day feminist punk (Billboard Magazine), largely because she was bi-racial, wore dental braces, stood against the typical sex object female of 1970s rock star, and sported a gaudy Dayglo wardrobe.  She was “one of the least conventional front-persons in rock history, male or female.”  X-Ray Spex launched their debut single in 1977.

Styrene’s overt feminism and mixed-race heritage marked her out among her punk contemporaries and won her legions of fans for generations to come. Beth Ditto, singer with Gossip, said: “Poly Styrene [was] so ahead of her time. She recreated punk,” and in this episode Moyet explains how seeing Styrene perform gave her the confidence she needed to become a performer herself.

Shannon's Strange Women Throwback

Victoria Woodhull

Victoria Woodhull was an American leader of the woman’s suffrage movement. In 1872, Woodhull ran for President of the United States. The only place women had a platform to speak in public was in the Spiritualist community. Leaders such as Victoria Woodhull and Susan B. Anthony were able to run for office and appeal to the public on such controversial matters as equal rights was because of Spiritualist communities namely, Lily Dale, NY. Woodhull made her first fortune as a magnetic healer and went on to make her second fortune with her sister as the first women to start a Wall Street firm.

Ilise’s Strange Women Throwback

Edith Clifford

Clifford learned the art at the age of 13 and could swallow 24 swords simultaneously, razor blades, bayonets, and saws. When she was a veteran, Harry Houdini witnessed her act and was so impressed that he wrote about it in 1920 in his book “Miracle Mongers and their Methods”: “The sensation of her act was when the point of a bayonet 23 1/2 inches long and fastened to the breech of a cannon was placed in her mouth and the cannon discharged with the recoil driving the bayonet down her throat.”