Charlotte Brown (producer)

This article is about the television producer. For the educator and academic, see Charlotte Hawkins Brown.

Charlotte Brown
Born	(1943-10-20) October 20, 1943 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Other names	Charlotte Sue Brown
Occupation(s)	Television producer, writer and director
Years active	1972–1998

Charlotte Brown (born October 20, 1943) is a television writer who in 1977 became the first woman showrunner of a primetime network television series.

Biography

Brown was born in Cleveland, Ohio. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was unusual to find a woman inside the writers' room of a primetime network television show other than secretaries and personal assistants. A notable exception was Madelyn Pugh, who wrote for the I Love Lucy series. After the success of Treva Silverman, some showrunners began to actively recruit women writers. One of them was James L. Brooks who hired Brown to write an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Assignments soon followed on The Sandy Duncan Show, The Partridge Family, and The Bob Newhart Show. For many of the series in which she worked, Brown was often the first woman writer that had ever been hired by that particular producer.

When Brooks created Rhoda, a spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Brown was hired as a staff writer. In 1975, she received a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for writing an episode for the series. She quickly rose up the ranks, becoming the program's executive producer in 1977. As a result, Brown became one of the first female showrunners in primetime television history.

Awards and recognition

• 1975 Writers Guild Award nomination for "Parents' Day" episode of Rhoda

External links

• Charlotte Brown at IMDb
• "Valerie Harper's death reminded me of my rant about 'Rhoda' and the great response I got"
• "LA’s Women Behind ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’"
• TV Pioneer Charlotte Brown