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Gene Arias
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Linda Bloodworth-Thomason introduced a new kind of liberated woman to the small screen: politically progressive and defiantly southern; confident and assertive, yet ladylike; fond of men, but outraged by sexism; and full of articulate, funny, pointed, glorious talk, talk, talk. This genus is traced to her landmark series Designing Women, a critical and popular smash hit distinguished by its literate, socially engaged subject matter and the effervescent chemistry of its four leads, who represented an ideal “New South,” one that honored tradition and eccentricity while insisting upon fairness, compassion, and tolerance. It was funny, too. The fine series Evening Shade and Hearts Afire followed, respectively continuing and deepening the southern and political themes of Designing Women. No stranger to controversy, Bloodworth-Thomason would publicly—and with serious professional consequences—devote herself to the Clinton presidency, making good on the political commitment espoused in her television work. “The best way for a woman to obtain power in Hollywood is to become a creative force,” she has observed. Mission accomplished.
Linda Bloodworth-Thomason was born in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, in 1947, joining an improbably colorful family of passionate, articulate, driven personalities. This family, and their beloved town, nestled near the Arkansas border, would provide the template for much of Linda’s distinctive writing. Her father, Ralph, was a lawyer and liberal firebrand. Her mother, Claudia, venerated the genteel customs of the South and emphasized the virtues of grace and decorum. Bloodworth-Thomason remembers a typical exchange: “My dad would teach me things like, ‘No one is better than anyone else,’ then my mother would overhear us and say, ‘Well, I’m certainly better than a lot of people I know…’” The reconciliation of these ostensibly conflicting qualities would become the hallmark of the archetypical Bloodworth-Thomason character.
Encouraged by her father to be fiercely independent and to think critically, Bloodworth-Thomason developed a feminist point of view early on: “I used to tell my mother, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to come back here and help the girls,’” she recalls. Bloodworth-Thomason attended the University of Missouri with the intention of following her father’s example and practicing law. Upon graduating, she decided on a whim to follow friends to Los Angeles, where she worked in journalism and taught disadvantaged students at an inner-city high school. Frustrated by the hopeless conditions of the school, Bloodworth-Thomason’s fortunes brightened when she met a young writer and actress named Mary Kay Place. Bloodworth-Thomason had enjoyed writing plays as a child; Place suggested they collaborate on a “spec” script for The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was rejected, but caught the eye of writer/producer Larry Gelbart, who encouraged the duo to write something for his series M*A*S*H. Their first effort, “Hot Lips and Empty Arms,” netted Place and Bloodworth-Thomason an Emmy nomination. Good-bye, law career.
Bloodworth-Thomason continued to write for M*A*S*H on a freelance basis, and contributed scripts to other shows, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, and One Day at a Time. In 1982, CBS accepted her pilot script for a soap opera parody called Filthy Rich. It folded after a season, but the experience led to another fortuitous meeting: Harry Thomason, an Arkansas-bred filmmaker and producer, worked for the same studio, and quickly hit it off with Bloodworth-Thomason. They married in 1983. The couple formed a company, Mozark Productions (named for their respective home states of Missouri and Arkansas), to develop television projects. The first was Lime Street, a drama that followed the adventures of a tony insurance investigator. The show was not a hit with critics or audiences, and was soon canceled. Angered by network interference with content of the program, Bloodworth-Thomason vowed to retain full creative control over her future projects. Her next series brought together two actresses from Filthy Rich (Delta Burke and Dixie Carter) with two from Lime Street (Jean Smart and Annie Potts). It was set in a southern interior-design agency and featured the kind of passionate, witty, literate, provocative conversation that had characterized her youth. She called it Designing Women.
Designing Women premiered in 1986. It felt and sounded like nothing else on television. Critical reaction was divided; some felt that the show was anti-male and were put off by its “preachy” tone. Bloodworth-Thomason countered, “The show is preachy by design. The women are southern, and being southern is being preachy.” Bloodworth-Thomason single-handedly wrote a staggering thirty-five consecutive episodes of Designing Women, often focusing her scripts on controversial issues facing contemporary women, such as sexual harassment, domestic abuse, and breast cancer. After a rocky start (CBS briefly canceled the series in 1987, until outraged fan reaction brought it back), Designing Women became one of the most popular comedies on television, earning eighteen Emmy Award nominations (it would win a single Emmy—in the hairdressing category).
The success of Designing Women and a subsequent series created by Bloodworth-Thomason, the Emmy-winning Evening Shade—a low-key, affectionate look at southern eccentricity starring Burt Reynolds and Marilu Henner—led to a landmark development deal with CBS, reportedly for between forty-five and fifty million dollars. It was money well spent—in the early nineties, three Bloodworth-Thomason comedies occupied slots in the ratings top twenty, with a combined audience of forty million viewers. First off the block was 1991’s Hearts Afire, a romantic comedy starring Markie Post as a liberal journalist working for a conservative legislator. Hearts Afire found its profile raised considerably by the 1992 presidential campaign; the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton, was a close personal friend of the Bloodworth-Thomasons, and the couple contributed significantly—and publicly—to his campaign. The Bloodworth-Thomasons would devote much of the next eight years to supporting the Clinton presidency: Linda provided lines for his speeches, advised the president on matters of public relations, and produced the Clinton documentary The Man from Hope, a highlight of the 1992 Democratic Convention.
The Bloodworth-Thomasons’s close association with the Clintons would bring them no small amount of controversy. Hearts Afire’s Washington setting and political subject matter came under particularly close scrutiny for its perceived pro-Clinton slant. The friendship with the Clintons ultimately took a professional toll—Bloodworth-Thomason has observed that, in 1992, she had three shows on the air and a thriving company with three hundred employees, but, “By the end of the Clinton presidency, I had not one television show, a single secretary, and Ken Starr had in his possession every piece of paper I’ve ever owned.”
Bloodworth-Thomason returned to situation comedy with Women of the House in 1995, and with Emeril in 2001. Neither show found a strong audience or much favor with critics. She again found success with her debut novel, Liberating Paris, familiarly peopled with eccentric southern characters given to articulate, florid, and entertaining conversation—a major movie adaptation is in development. Her Claudia Company, founded in 1989 and named in honor of her mother, continues to help disadvantaged girls in Arkansas and Missouri pay for college. Her promise to go back and “help the girls” has been kept.
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