Penny Singleton, Harry Cohn, and Rod Serling

TV Confidential with Ed Robertson

TVC 672.3: Part 2 of a conversation that began just before the holidays with Steve Randisi, author of Penny Singleton: A Biography, a comprehensive look at the life and career of the actress who not only achieved worldwide fame in the 1930s and ’40s as the star of the Blondie movie series from Columbia Pictures (and, later, to TV audiences as the voice of Jane Jetson on the original Jetsons TV series and, later, the Jetsons movie), but who made history in 1958 when she became the first female president of an AFL-CIO union, the American Guild of Variety Artists. Topics this segment include how Singleton was nearly fired from the first Blondie picture because of an incident over a cigarette; the values she formed while growing up in South Philadelphia; and how her longtime connection with Rod Serling resulted in her appearance opposite John McGiver in the Twilight Zone episode “Sounds and Silences.” Penny Singleton: A Biography is available from Bear Manor Media.