Tender Contempt
A Career in British Television

By Elizabeth Cowley
1998
ISBN: 1-85776-291-6
126 p. illus.
$48.95 Cloth

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This is the autobiography of Elizabeth Cowley who as a mainstay of the legendary Tonight program of the 1960s daily met stars like Peter Sellers, John Lennon, Noel Coward, Gloria Swanson and Duke Ellington. But things were not always so glamorous. When she stepped off The Queen Elizabeth in the London of 1949 she knew no one, had nowhere to live and no job. After a spot of nude modeling, and the advantages of getting a much reduced rent by running up and down stairs barefoot for a landlord with a foot fetish, she found herself writing advertising copy for Harrods. From there she moved through women's magazines to stargazing for the old army paper Reveille. After a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to interview Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Dr. Kinsey on one trip, she embarked on a career in television, eventually becoming an executive producer for both BBC and ITV. Her starry eyed rite of passage through the media world of the Fifties and Sixties is a fascinating behind-the-scenes insight; touching and hilarious, filled with encounters with the famous, and suffused with a wicked sense of humor.

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