THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Virginia Carter

November 18, 1936 – October 17, 2024

“The bottom line is I have had a very, very full and happy and well-adjusted, delighted life.”

Research physicist at the Aerospace Corporation. Adviser to the United States Air Force, Space Division. President of Los Angeles National Organization For Women. California ERA Coalition. Founder of Women’s Lobby, feminist consultant to Tamdam Productions and assistant to Norman Lear. Former Senior Vice-President and Head of Drama for Embassy Television, a Norman Lear Production. She was awarded an Emmy and two Peabody Awards for her work on All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, The Facts of Life, and Diff’rent Strokes. She assisted in the production of the top five most highly rated television shows in the United States during the 1980s. Among the many movies for television she produced was Eleanor: First Lady of the World, which was voted one of the top ten movies of the year. 

Filmed and interviewed by Martha Wheelock, VFA Board, 2013

Photo 1. Space physicist Virginia Carter in her lab at Aerospace Corp. in CA, 1972. Photo, Judd Gunderson, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times Photographic Archives. Photo 2. Former First Lady Betty Ford, Norman Lear and Virginia Carter at an early 1980s screening of Maude.