Child Star Robin Morgan Became Poet, Feminist Force

Robin Morgan, a wholesome child star of the 1940s and '50s before becoming a force behind both feminist media and literature, has died. She was 85. Morgan died Saturday in New York, her son said, after dealing with Parkinson's disease for years, per the AP. Her death followed by days that of longtime ally Gloria Steinem, with whom she and Jane Fonda founded the Women's Media Center. In a statement, per Deadline, Fonda said: "Robin Morgan was an artist, a poet, an activist, and in my eyes, a living legend—a woman whose anthology series, Sisterhood is Powerful, Sisterhood is Global, and Sisterhood is Forever provided the evidence needed to launch a feminist revolution, and it was part of my feminist education that led to the movie, 9 to 5."

After starting as a model, Morgan hosted the Little Robin Morgan radio show at age 5 and was featured on the radio—later TV—game show Juvenile Jury. From 1949-57, per the AP, she appeared in the hit TV series Mama and appeared on Robert Montgomery Presents, Kraft Theater, and other shows. On Juvenile Jury, she once was asked whether a boy deserved to be spanked. Morgan was supposed to joke that he should wear padding under his pants, but she instead declared that all physical punishment was wrong. Her first serious childhood poem ran counter to her image, beginning, "Go, rage, winter the world with despair."

Morgan was as editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine from 1989 to 1994 and later created and hosted the Women's Media Center's weekly program, now the long-running podcast Women's Media Center Live with Robin Morgan. Once labeled an "anarchist housewife" in a government report, Morgan confronted the establishment on the left and right. In 1970, she and fellow protesters were jailed after occupying the offices of the avant-garde Grove Press, whose owner, Barney Rosset, was fighting employees' efforts to unionize. In the widely reprinted 1970 essay "Goodbye to All That," she called out libertines and activists including Hugh Hefner and Abbie Hoffman.

Women's Media Center President Julie Burton described Morgan as "one of the architects of the contemporary women's movement," citing her global activism, more than 20 books, and decades of work to expand women's visibility in media. In her 2001 memoir Saturday's Child, Morgan expressed joy and amazement at how her life turned out and how she was able to retain "a threadbare, somewhat surreal sense of humor." She added, "Put that in your apple pie and smoke it."