Yorkin, Peg (b. 1927)

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Yorkin, Peg (b. 1927)

American theater producer, philanthropist, and feminist leader who was instrumental in bringing RU-486 to the country and has advanced the cause of global equality for women. Born in New York, New York, on April 16, 1927; daughter of Dora (Lavine) Diem (an actress) and Frank Diem (a photographer); attended Barnard College and the Neighborhood Playhouse; married Newton Arnold (an assistant director), in 1950 (divorced 1952); married Bud Yorkin (a television and film director and producer), on May 9, 1954 (divorced 1986); children: (second marriage) Nicole Yorkin (b. 1958); David Yorkin (b. 1961).

After years of providing financial support to the feminist movement, in 1991 Peg Yorkin made a public announcement at a Washington news conference: she would donate the largest gift ever made for women's rights—$10 million. As intended, the announcement made headlines across the country. It also, noted Yorkin, gave "validity to the feminist movement. … If anyone gives that much money; there must be value in feminism."

Yorkin's endowment was made to the Feminist Majority Foundation, an organization which she founded with Eleanor Smeal, Katherine Spillar, Toni Carabillo , and Judith Meuli to eradicate gender discrimination around the world. Through this donation and many others, Yorkin's funds would help fortify the infrastructure of American feminism by providing tangible means to myriad protections for women, including protecting women's rights to safe abortions; freedom from domestic violence; economic empowerment; and full equality in government. While Yorkin's dollars would build roads to these protections, the public nature with which she made her contribution to the Feminist Majority Foundation was designed to inspire other women to turn their financial power to the cause of feminism: "My gift is a wake-up call to women. Money—both mine and that of thousands of other feminists—can turn our justifiable rage into powerful action that will change the course of history. History shows that women have paid for our freedom in the past and that we must do it again in the future. The pleading by women to men in power must stop. We must empower women."

Yorkin came to these convictions after a childhood spent in genteel poverty and a failed Hollywood marriage in which she has characterized herself as a housewife of the 1950s. "I fondly like to think that I've been a feminist all my life," she noted in 1996, "but if you look at the journey… it's sure as hell not true." She was born the daughter of Dora and Frank Diem on April 16, 1927, in New York City. Although Yorkin was destined to make a name for herself in public life, it would be some time before she had a name at all: "My full birth name was Female Diem. They didn't name me until later. I don't know when." In time named Peg, she abhorred the diminutive "Peggy" and in an early display of calling the shots went by "Margaret" during her school years.

Growing up during the Depression, Yorkin lived on Hamilton Place in a once-fashionable location in Harlem. She would later recall her childhood to Susan Edmiston in Buzz magazine as "traumatic," noting the fights between her parents: "I remember sitting at the little kitchen table in New York—I can see it now in my mind's eye—watching, like a tennis match, as they hurled brickbats and epithets and whatever." Both parents worked in the film industry. Her Jewish mother Dora was an actress for D.W. Griffith, for whom her Catholic father Frank, a photographer, served briefly as a cinematographer. Frank, an alcoholic, was unable to make the transition from silents to talking pictures, and he deserted the family when Yorkin was 11, leaving his wife and daughter to live "on the kindness of my mother's relatives." With an off-the-charts I.Q., Yorkin skipped five school semesters.

Her long relationship with the theater began when she was a child, largely due to Dora's intention to make an actress of her. Dora approached the producers of the legendary Saturday-morning radio show for children "Let's Pretend" (jingle: "Cream of Wheat is so good to eat that we have it every day") and asked if her daughter could observe during the broadcasts, hoping that they would then accept Peg as a cast member. Yorkin remembers it as an excruciating time: sitting alone, apart from the other children. In the end, she did appear on the program, and her mother would continue to push her career.

Yorkin graduated from Roosevelt High School in Yonkers in 1943 and at age 16 was accepted by Barnard College on scholarship. She left Barnard after two years to attend the Neighborhood Playhouse, where she received dance instruction from Martha Graham —who attempted to correct her pupil's posture by means of scratching her fingernails into Yorkin's back ("The scratches are gone," Yorkin would later note, "but the memories linger on")—and acting instruction under Sanford Meisner and David Pressman. In addition to some early TV shows for Westinghouse, and summer stock at Hunterdon Hills, New Jersey, and Braddock Heights, Maryland, she appeared in an out-of-town tryout production in Woodstock, New York. While doing summer stock in 1950, Yorkin met Newton Arnold. They married that year and moved to Los Angeles, so that he could attend film school at UCLA. They divorced not long after, in 1952.

A new chapter in Yorkin's life began at a L.A. audition where she met Bud Yorkin, a fledgling director who would later be known for such television mega-hits as "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons." After dating for two years, they were married on May 9, 1954. "We went through the lean years and then the full fat years," she would later note, "from living in a little rented house in West Hollywood to a house we bought in the Valley." When Bud was offered both the Fred Astaire show and the Ginger Rogers show at the same time, she advised him to take Fred Astaire, "which really kind of made Bud's reputation. The show won, like, nine Emmys that year." Peg gave birth to two children, Nicole Yorkin (b. 1958) and David Yorkin (b. 1961), attended PTA meetings, was a Brownie and Girl Scout leader, and raised her children with care while the family's wealth increased: "In a world where they were brought up in show biz and with, at some point, obviously, a lot of money, they have turned out to be quite sane, not profligate in any way, and to have an idea of the value of things." Nicole and David, both writers, would go on to careers in television.

Despite Yorkin's own assertions that she was a typical housewife of the '50s, her restlessness at home ("Here I am, with an IQ—what is it—something like 168, living in Encino, thinking 'What am I doing?'") prompted her participation in SHARE (Share Happily and Reap Endlessly), an organization which raised funds for developmentally challenged children. She became SHARE's president and later chair, working with such celebrities as Janet Leigh , Sammy Davis, Jr., and John Wayne. Meanwhile, the women's movement was impacting the lives of women around the country. "I was a product of my time, as most of us are," Yorkin later remarked, "my consciousness was raised in the mid-'60s along with millions of American women." These years brought the start of Yorkin's activism for social change; she supported political candidates and became a member of organizations like the Constitutional Rights Foundation, an offshoot of the ACLU. And she began a battle at SHARE: it was her intention to change the way women were listed from "Mrs. Milton Berle, Mrs. John Wayne, Mrs. Blah-blah-blah," to their own first names. Notes Edmiston: "It was finally decided that if a member wanted to use her own name, she could; Peg was the only one who did." In the 1970s, Yorkin became increasingly involved in the women's movement. In 1977, she served as a California delegate to the National Women's Conference, and she contributed her time and financial support to the drive for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Despite her attempts to keep busy, the charitable and society events which dominated Yorkin's life in these years were not enough. She took over the L.A. Free Shakespeare Festival, bringing Shakespeare, notes her daughter Nicole, "to the disadvantaged in L.A. County through touring programs in both the schools and the parks." As her involvement in the theater world increased, she was elected president of the California Theater Council. Yorkin also became a board member of the California Arts Council and the theater panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, and she served on the executive committees of the Los Angeles Theater Association, the League of Producers, and the California Confederation of the Arts.

"Eventually," in 1982, recalls Nicole, she "transformed the L.A. Shakespeare Festival into the L.A. Public Theater [LAPT], which at that time was one of only three Equity houses in Los Angeles." During Yorkin's tenure, the LAPT became a powerhouse on the L.A. theater scene, as she produced works at the Coronet Theater by such playwrights as Christopher Durang (Beyond Therapy and Baby with the Bathwater), A.R. Gurney (Dining Room), John Guare (Rich and Famous), Anne Commire (Put Them All Together, Shay, and Melody Sisters), and Doris Baisley (Mrs. California).

Yorkin's transition into the work which was to bring her to national attention came in the 1980s, with the break-up of her marriage when she was 57. "It wasn't until a 30-year marriage had gone bust and I reaped the benefits of the California community-property laws that I was able to do something concrete about feminism." Bud deserted the relationship in 1984 while they were planning their 30th-anniversary party. Recalls Yorkin: "I said, 'I've got the list for the [party],' and he said, 'There's something I have to talk to you about,' and I said, 'You want a divorce.' And he said, 'How did you know?'" The dissolution of the marriage took a toll on Yorkin's health; she developed an ulcer. Reflecting on her life to that moment, she would later note that, for women, the path to opportunity was limited: "As a man I would have had a much greater opportunity. It would have been very different…. I could have been Bud Yorkin if I were a man." The bitter divorce was finalized in 1986. And, in the wake of the wreckage, she found freedom.

Yorkin, Nicole (1958—)

American television writer and producer. Born on November 22, 1958, in Los Angeles, California; daughter of Peg Yorkin (b. 1927) and Bud Yorkin; University of California, Berkeley, B.A.; married Tim Shaheen, in 1989; children: Julian Shaheen (b. June 23, 1994); Natalie Shaheen (b. March 12, 1998).

Born in 1958 to Bud and Peg Yorkin , Nicole Yorkin was soon joined by brother David Yorkin in 1961. The siblings grew up surrounded by the entertainment industry, with their mother working as a Los Angeles theater producer and their father as a director and producer for television and film. Both Nicole and David went on to careers in television. David, who married Alix Madigan in 1998, has been a staff writer for "The Hoop Life" and has written for "Chicago Hope" and "Picket Fences."

Initially, Nicole spent six years reporting for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. As a journalist, she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles concerning a 12-year-old prostitute. Joining forces with Dawn Prestwich , whom she met at the American Film Institute, Yorkin established a writing partnership which would take both women on to highly successful careers in television. Noted Yorkin: "Our partnership is such that we are almost lame ducks without each other. We actually write every word out loud together." Explains Prestwich: "We're actually very different voices as writers. When we come together to write, we create a third writer. Basically that third writer writes the script."

The pair worked on "Chicago Hope," "Ally McBeal," "The Practice," "The Trials of Rosie O'Neill," "Melrose Place," and the critically acclaimed "Judging Amy," for which Yorkin and Prestwich served as writers and executive producers. After signing an overall deal with 20th Century-Fox Television, they received the green light on a drama pilot to star Richard Dreyfuss, "The Education of Max Bickford." Yorkin and Prestwich worked with Dreyfuss to develop the program, which features the actor as a professor at a women's college.

A wealthy woman beholden to no one, that year Yorkin produced the star-studded NOW's 20th Anniversary Show at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. The project was brought to her by Ellie Smeal, three-time president and former chair of the National Organization for Women (NOW). In 1984, Yorkin had held a fund-raiser for Smeal, who spotted in Yorkin a like-mindedness and willingness to assist in the battle for women's rights. History

would go on to record them as a dynamic duo—the brains, brawn, and bucks of a new age of radical American feminism. "A year after [the fund-raiser]," writes Edmiston, "when Smeal called for twin marches in Los Angeles and Washington to dramatize the fact that abortion rights were quietly eroding under Reagan, she remembered Yorkin." Asked by Smeal for $10,000 for the cause, Yorkin replied: "You want tax-deductible or not tax-deductible?" At the march in Los Angeles, two participants were struck by lightning during severe thunderstorms, and Yorkin stood with fellow marchers kneedeep in mud. Smeal called Yorkin a few months later and they spoke for an hour. The following day Yorkin called Smeal back, saying "Surely you want something. … You don't spend that much time just chitchatting. Do you want to have dinner and talk about it?" Yorkin recalls that Smeal "came over at seven and left at two in the morning … and by that time I had agreed to produce NOW's 20th Anniversary Show."

If women aren't angry, they should be.
—Peg Yorkin

Yorkin and Smeal asked New York playwrights Commire and Baisley to write the stage spectacular. Directed by Commire, the event represented "the largest array of creative talent ever assembled for women's rights." The show featured greats of the women's movement and more than 100 celebrities—from Betty Friedan and Smeal to Mariette Hartley, Diahann Carroll, Betty Ford , Alan Alda, Helen Hunt, Rhea Perlman , Danny De Vito, Patty Duke, Bea Arthur, Sharon Gless, Tyne Daly, Lily Tomlin , and Cybill Shepherd —and played to an audience equally star-studded. Featuring songs like "I Am Woman," sung by Helen Reddy , the show was a celebration of women's empowerment and—with moments in the movement's history detailed by the cast members—a look at the victories and defeats in the struggle for gender equality. When the networks and cable stations declined to record the event for home video, citing the "controversial" nature of the show, Peg Yorkin Productions produced the tape. While the success of the event was a turning point for NOW, Buzz notes that it was no less so for Yorkin: "Sometime during the course of it, I said to Ellie, 'If there's anything specific you want to do, I have the money.' What I hadn't realized was that Ellie's dream was to start another organization."

With Katherine Spillar, Toni Carabillo, and Judith Meuli, in 1987 Yorkin and Smeal founded the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) and the Feminist Majority (FM), of which Yorkin serves as chair of the board. The FMF's mission is "to create innovative, cutting edge research, educational programs, and strategies to further women's equality and empowerment, to reduce violence toward women, to increase the health and economic well-being of women, and to eliminate discrimination of all kinds[:] sex, race, sexual orientation, age, religion, national origin, disability, and marital status." The FM meanwhile focuses on legislative issues and public policy. The term Feminist Majority emerged as a result of a Newsweek-Gallup poll which indicated that 56% of American women—the majority—identified as feminists, a number that would continue to grow in upcoming years, in large part as a result of initiatives like those taken by Yorkin's organization. The FMF notes that their definition of feminism is "simple yet broad: 'the policy, practice or advocacy of political, economic, and social equality for women.'"

Despite the nation's feminist majority, the organization's insistence on using words like "feminist" and "abortion rights" set the stage for it to be considered the radical arm of the contemporary women's movement. "[M]ore than any other mainstream feminist organization," notes Edmiston, "[the FMF] has the potential for radical action. Because it is more of a feminist foundation than a membership organization, it can move quickly, creatively, and effectively." Gloria Steinem reinforces the assessment: "I don't think anyone would characterize them as less than radical." In noting the importance of the words the FMF embraced, Smeal explained in Buzz: "We feel that all the euphemisms—women's rights, women's equality—do not really encompass what we are…. The word really is feminism. 'Choice' is not what we're talking about; we're talking about a woman having a legal abortion. It should be said. It's not a swear word."

So prominent would the FMF be in the fight for women's rights that the organization's history reads as the history of contemporary American feminism—an ongoing global battle for freedom and protection for women. Among their initiatives are the National Clinic Defense Project, "to defend women's health clinics from anti-abortion extremists"; the Campaign for RU-486 (mifepristone) and Contraceptive Research; the Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women, to assist "women domestic workers from Southeast Asia who were raped and beaten by Kuwaiti employers, police and the military"; the Task Force on Women and Girls in Sports; the National Center for Women and Policing, to increase the number of women in law enforcement; National Feminist Expositions, which drew women from around the globe to promote women's empowerment; the Feminization of Power Campaign, "to increase the numbers of women running for and winning elective office"; Rock for Choice, to organize young people around abortion rights; Women United for Equality, to warn against anti-affirmative action measures; and the Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan, chaired by Mavis Leno , "to restore women's rights to work, education, healthcare and freedom of movement" in a country where the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban militia deny women's most basic human rights. In 2001, when Taliban-hosted terrorists were implicated in the deaths of more than 5,000 people in the single worst attack against the U.S. in history, Leno and the FMF would be nationally recognized for their earlier efforts to make the country aware of the terrorist-inspired nature of the Taliban regime; many would voice profound regret that their warnings had not been heeded.

In the war for abortion rights, the FMF has been a leading force in protecting clinics from anti-abortion violence and opposing the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. "We use the war room concept," Yorkin told Buzz. "We have huge blowup maps of the freeways, cellular phones, moles. We have people mobilized so we can say, 'They're heading east on the 605.'" Smeal notes that more than half of America's clinics suffered violence in 1994, a number which has shown a slow but steady decline as a result of the organization's protective measures. The video "Killing in the Name of Life," narrated by Gillian Anderson and produced by the FMF as an educational tool to address anti-abortion violence, records that "since 1989 [the FM's Clinic Access Project] has mobilized and trained more than 43,000 community volunteers to assist clinics in 43 cities in 25 states." When John Salvi arrived at a clinic in Norfolk, Virginia, to continue his killing spree after murdering clinic workers Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols in Brookline, Massachusetts, he could not get inside "because ten days earlier the FMF's clinic defense team had helped secure the facility."

Much of the funds from Yorkin's $10 million contribution to the FMF in 1991 were earmarked for the Fund's efforts to bring the French abortion pill RU-486 (mifepristone) to the United States. While organizations like the National Right to Life Committee hoped to keep RU-486 out of the country by making such claims as the drug "injures and kills women," early scientific research suggested the absolute contrary: mifepristone may prove to be a breakthrough in the treatment of severe conditions which affect the population in general and women in particular, including progesterone-dependent breast cancers, endometriosis and fibroid tumors. Mifepristone may inhibit the proliferation of ovarian cancer cells, and meningiomas (brain tumors) have shown response to the drug in clinical trials. Smeal has noted that people suffering from Cushing's Syndrome have found relief from mifepristone, and the drug's "anti-gluticorticoid action may have profound indications for the treatment of HIV virus, Alzheimer's, depression and other diseases and conditions related to elevated levels of cortisol."

It was largely due to the efforts of Yorkin and Smeal that the U.S. finally followed in the footsteps of France, Great Britain, and Sweden in making mifepristone available to women for nonsurgical abortions. In November 2000, Sharon Bernstein would report in the L.A. Times: "The long and tangled journey of the abortion pill to the United States … began with the zeal of two women, who marshaled a force of moneyed activists to do for themselves what the major pharmaceutical companies would not." In 1989, armed with 700,000 petitions and a team of scientists, Yorkin and Smeal headed to France, where the drug had been on the market for approximately a year, to determine its efficacy and then to convince French manufacturer Roussel Uclaf to sell mifepristone to America. By making abortion both more accessible and more private, it was hoped that mifepristone held the potential to circumvent anti-abortion violence in the U.S., where attention is largely focused on clinics and doctors who provide women with surgical abortions. "But," writes Bernstein, "the Catholic Church in France had mounted a huge lobbying campaign against the drug, as had anti-abortion forces in the United States. The new corporate owners of Roussel Uclaf, German-based Hoechst AG, wanted nothing to do with the messy, sometimes violent, politics of abortion in America."

Among those who would play prominent parts in the effort were scientists associated with the Population Council, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, abortion-rights activists, and President Bill Clinton. Pharmaceutical economist Michael Nichol noted the deviation from protocol that the venture represented, terming those who were responsible for bringing mifepristone to America "a kind of cobbled-together group of interests to see this product through the marketing process in the United States…. This is a very unusual way for a pharmaceutical product to come to market."

Under then-President Bush, the FDA had banned mifepristone from entering the country, and the FMF concentrated their efforts on providing information about the drug and lobbying heavily in Washington. A turning point came when Clinton succeeded Bush as president and issued a directive to the Department of Health and Human Services to "promote the testing, licensing and manufacturing in the U.S. of mifepristone," only three days into his term. While the new administration pushed Roussel Uclaf to give up its patent rights in the U.S. if it would not bring the drug to the country, Yorkin turned up the pressure on the company, making three trips to Germany, "a country—and Peg is not a biased person," notes Smeal, "but a country she will never forgive and vowed never to spend a dime in." On May 16, 1994, a major advancement in the mifepristone cause was made when Roussel Uclaf transferred its U.S. patent rights to the Population Council, a non-profit family-planning think tank in New York.

What followed was a long and winding road of clinical trials required for FDA approval in the U.S. and the raising of the vast sums which would make possible the same. Yorkin was among those who pledged additional monies. Danco Laboratories was established to distribute mifepristone. "Citing fear that anti-abortion activists might foment violence against those who make and distribute the drug," writes Bernstein, "Danco refuses to release the names of its executives and investors." The names of the FDA researchers who oversaw approval were shielded and, notes Bernstein, "[e]ven FDA spokesmen—the public relations specialists who field reporters' calls to the agency" would not disclose their names "as a condition of being interviewed about the drug."

On September 28, 1998, Yorkin could claim a major victory when the FDA approved mifepristone for use as a safe and effective drug in America. Immediately, however, anti-abortionists began working to restrict the use of the drug. Already, wrote feminist historian Toni Carabillo, "some Republicans have successfully pushed for local laws that require the offices of doctors who prescribe it to meet the same physical standards as abortion clinics: number of rooms, width of hallways, number of employees, etc., to discourage distribution."

The FMF's dedication to abortion rights has been matched by their resolve to change the face of American government. In 1987–88, Yorkin's organization established the Feminization of Power Campaign, traveling the country to increase the number of women running for elective office. A study conducted by the FMF revealed that, unless more women run, not until the year 2333 will women achieve full equality in Congress. As "increasing representation of women in elective office" moved to among the top priorities of the women's movement, Yorkin notes that the FMF embraced a Thelma and Louise strategy, in a reference to one of her favorite films: "We're tired of begging men for what should be rightfully ours…. The Feminization of Power is a plan for women to rise up in the hierarchy of everything…. When we try to recruit women for office, we're not Democratic in the big D sense…. We believe both Democrats and Republicans are f——ed…. Both parties have screwed women from the get-go." In an attempt to flood tickets with women, Yorkin has become what Senator Barbara Mikulski has referred to as "virtually a PAC for women candidates" unto herself. Noted Senator Barbara Boxer in regard to herself and Senator Dianne Feinstein : "[Peg] worked her heart out for both of us." To provide for the country's future, Yorkin knew she had to provide for the future of the FMF. Having watched movements fade away because of a lack of real estate, she purchased a building in Beverly Hills to serve as a permanent women's center and home for the organization.

She has advanced the cause of women from myriad angles. By her willingness to fund the nonpartisan Women in World History—a biographical encyclopedia of historically important women from all walks of life—Yorkin made possible a scholarly work intended to be a major contribution to the general reference world. She was approached in 1992 by Anne Commire, who, in the years since their work together on the NOW show, had continued her work as an editor of successful reference titles. Determined "not to leave a mother, wife, duchess or daughter unturned," editors Commire and Deborah Klezmer knew that the size of their proposed work would require enormous funding. Yorkin did what no publisher would have done, pledging more than $1 million for the project. Scheduled for completion in four years, the work grew to include more than 10,000 women and took nearly a decade to come to fruition. The 17-volume Women in World History, produced in conjunction with the Gale Group, received the coveted Dartmouth Medal, bestowed annually by the American Library Association for the most outstanding reference work, in 2001. Note editors Commire and Klezmer in their introduction: "[Peg Yorkin] gave us her belief, risked over one million dollars, left editorial control to the editors, and, with phenomenal patience, kept this project alive for those nine years. Without her, there would be no Women in World History."

It is fair to speculate that without the support of Peg Yorkin, many of the achievements made by women, for women, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries might not have been made. She has been characterized by friends as tough and serious, and she cites anger as a motivating force in her work, telling the L.A. Times: "I'm smart. By virtue of money, I'm powerful … but not as powerful as I would be if I were a man. I'm angry." Yet Yorkin is also noted for her compassion and superior wit, as well as for her honesty. (Adds Smeal, "sometimes her brutal honesty: [Peg] supports free speech, which she treasures and uses.") Although she generally does not attend demonstrations because "I'm too old and too short," Peg Yorkin has been called larger than life, commanding attention in any room and returning it in kind to those who do not insult her intelligence. At age 74, she is well versed in the lingo of the youth culture and gives the impression that there is no friend to the movement with whom she could not converse with ease and comfort. Stating simply, "I'm putting my money where my mouth is," she has inspired admiration for her generosity and dedication to society over self. "In a world that says you can't have enough," notes Women in World History editor Sharon Malinowski , "Peg Yorkin has said, 'I have enough.'"

In addition to supporting a wide range of women's organizations and projects—including NOW and the American Film Institute's Directing Women's Workshop as well as rape crisis and battered women's centers—Yorkin has given to causes like the United Farm Workers (long-time friend Dolores Huerta serves on the board of the FMF), the Holocaust Museum, AIDS, and the movement to end oppression against gays and lesbians. When asked by Edmiston what she hoped to achieve in life, Yorkin replied: "To change the world … I think we can do that if we have women in positions of power. It's not just me, but all of us. If we could succeed in changing the complexion, the face of this country, I would think maybe I've done something. It's changing time."