Gloria Steinem, the journalist and feminist icon whose death at age 92 was announced Thursday, spent more than half a century appearing on late-night television.
And while those appearances gave Steinem a platform for the causes that defined her life, they also showcased a somewhat less remarked-upon ingredient in her success: Gloria Steinem was funny.
She had the timing for television, an instinct for the memorable one-liner and an ability to turn an argument into a joke without losing the argument. Those qualities would become hallmarks of her writing and public speaking, but they had roots in an unlikely early job.
Before Steinem became famous as an activist—or co-founded Ms. magazine—she was a television comedy writer.
Steinem wrote for NBC’s American adaptation of That Was the Week That Was, the topical satirical series hosted by David Frost in the mid-1960s. The show’s formidable writing staff also included Buck Henry, Tom Lehrer, Thomas Meehan, Herb Sargent, and Calvin Trillin, and Steinem was among the writers nominated for an Emmy in 1965.
In other words, decades before The Daily Show and The Colbert Report made jokes about the news a nightly television institution, Steinem was already writing them.
That part of her résumé makes what followed a little less surprising.
By the end of the 1960s, Steinem had moved from behind the camera to the talk-show couch, making regular appearances on Dick Cavett’s ABC late-night show alongside the likes of Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Marlo Thomas, and Roberta Flack, and guesting with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
She was not simply there to deliver a position paper. Steinem could banter.
That became increasingly important as Steinem’s place in American culture changed. Her earliest late-night appearances cast her as a journalist and spokeswoman for a movement many viewers were still encountering in real time. Over the years, though, she became something else: a celebrity intellectual with a persona familiar enough that late-night shows could not only interview her, but play with it.
She appeared twice on Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow, and three times during the early years of Late Night with David Letterman.
By 1995, Steinem was playing herself appearing on a fictional talk show on HBO’s Larry Sanders Show.
In the fourth-season episode “Larry’s on Vacation,” Sandra Bernhard takes over Larry Sanders’ late-night show, with Steinem booked as one of her guests. Backstage, Artie (Rip Torn) instructs the staff to be careful around her—not merely because she’s a famous feminist, but because “she’s still a journalist.” Jeffrey Tambor’s lecherous Hank Kingsley, naturally, proceeds to corner Steinem.
She kept making appearances on real late-night shows, too.
Her later résumé included visits to The Dennis Miller Show, Politically Incorrect, Chelsea Lately, four appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher, four on The Colbert Report, Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. By then, Steinem’s wit was as much a part of the booking as whatever book or cause she had come to discuss.
That quality was hardly confined to television. Her essays and speeches were filled with the same kind of compression: the ability to make an ideological point land because the sentence had a kicker.
Late night simply provided the ideal showcase for it.
Perhaps the purest example came on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2019.
Steinem was 85 when she walked onto the set during “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell,” Meyers’ recurring segment with writers Amber Ruffin and Jenny Hagel. It was a format built around the notion that identity sometimes determines who can get away with delivering a particular punchline.
Steinem required no explanation.
Meyers set up a joke about Hasbro introducing Ms. Monopoly, a version of the board game intended to celebrate women.
“It’s just like regular Monopoly,” Steinem said, “but when you pass go you only get $158, and that’s only if you’re white.”
The appearance was funny partly because of the novelty of seeing Gloria Steinem doing a late-night desk bit. But she wasn’t merely the famous person brought out to make the joke work.
She knew how to deliver it.
