Peg Lynch, a trailblazer for women in broadcast entertainment who wrote, owned and starred in one of television's first sitcoms, "Ethel and Albert," has died.
She was 98according to The LA Times.
The writer of more than 11,000 scripts for television and radio, Lynch died Friday, July 31, 2015 at her home in Becket, Mass., her daughter, Astrid King, told The Times. Lynch's health had declined rapidly after recent hip surgery.
Decades before "Seinfeld" became known as the sitcom about nothing, and Tiny Fey wrote and starred in "30 Rock," Lynch's presciently modern sitcom — which aired on radio and all three major networks — celebrated the understated humor of average married life.
Lynch created the husband and wife duo Ethel and Albert in the late 1930s at the small radio station KATE in Albert Lea, Minn. The fictional couple, voiced by Lynch and a male radio announcer, appeared in three-minute filler sketches that aired during other programming, according to Lynch's website.
Lynch took her characters with her when she moved to radio station WCHV in Charlottesville, Va., and then to WTBO in Cumberland, Md., where "Ethel and Albert" became a 15-minute feature.
In 1944, Lynch moved to New York City, where she turned down an offer for "Ethel and Albert" from NBC Radio, which wanted to co-own the show. She refused to sell it.
"She said, 'It's the only thing I've got, and if I give that away, I won't have anything,'" King told The Times.
"The Private Lives of Ethel and Albert" went national that year with a 15-minute, weekday slot on Blue Network, which later became ABC. The network persuaded Lynch, with her high-pitched voice, to play Ethel.
In 1950, Ethel and Albert (by then played by Alan Bunce) moved to television, first as a segment on NBC's "The Kate Smith Hour" variety show and later as a half-hour weekly stand-alone series.
The show later moved to CBS and then ABC before going off the air in 1956. All of the shows were written by Lynch, and most were performed live.
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