Curated playlist
20th-century American women writers
- Elizabeth TaylorAfter Rock Hudson said he was dying of AIDS, Elizabeth Taylor helped found a research foundation in 1985.
- Joan CrawfordA 1938 ad called Joan Crawford "box office poison," but Mildred Pierce later won her an Academy Award.
- Bette DavisBette Davis's tombstone reads, "She did it the hard way." A director suggested the epitaph after All About Eve.
- Jamie Lee CurtisJamie Lee Curtis accepted a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 78th Venice International Film Festival in September 2021, and she did not sound like a person winding down. "I feel so alive, like I'm this 14-year-old person just…
- Linda McCartneyLinda McCartney was the first woman to put a photograph on the cover of Rolling Stone.
- Stevie NicksStevie Nicks, born Stephanie Lynn Nicks on the 26th of May 1948, could not pronounce her own name as a toddler. The best she could manage was "tee-dee", and that slip turned into the nickname Stevie. Decades later, Rolling Stone placed her…
- Dolly PartonDolly Parton refused to give Elvis Presley half the publishing rights to "I Will Always Love You."
- Joan BaezJoan Baez was singing at a music festival called Bratislavská lýra in Communist Czechoslovakia in May 1989 when someone cut off her microphone. From the stage, she had just greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human-rights group.…
- Barbra StreisandBarbra Streisand once filed a lawsuit that sent a crowd of strangers to look at a single photograph. In 2003 she claimed that a website documenting coastal erosion had invaded her privacy. Among its more than 12,000 images, one happened to…
- Courtney LoveCourtney Love walked on stage at the Reading Festival on the 26th of August 1994 as the singer of Hole. It was her first public performance since the death of her husband, the Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. MTV called the set "by turns…
- Sally RideSally Ride quietly passed along the key clue to what caused the Challenger explosion.
- Joan KellyIn 1976, historian Joan Kelly asked: Did women have a Renaissance? Her answer was no.
- Angela DavisAngela Davis was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, then acquitted by an all-white jury.
- Elinor OstromUCLA rejected Elinor Ostrom's economics application for lacking math. She later won a Nobel Prize in economics.
- Samantha SmithA ten-year-old from Maine wrote to the Soviet leader and got an answer. She then visited Moscow as his guest.
- Penelope GilliattPenelope Gilliatt was born Penelope Ann Douglass Conner on the 25th of March 1932, and she died on the 9th of May 1993. The English writer worked as a novelist, a short story writer, a screenwriter and a film critic. She held all four…
- Linda RonstadtLinda Ronstadt sings harmony on Under African Skies, a track on Paul Simon's album Graceland, and its second verse contains a line written for her. The line reads, "Take this child, Lord, from Tucson, Arizona...." Simon's tribute suits a…