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Article: Donna mills: she got what she wanted on '80s TV with power, shoulder pads and makeup. Here, Camille Paglia revisits an unlikely feminist icon. (TV Legend).(Interview)
- Article from:
- Interview
- Article date:
- November 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Before she won the vixen role of Abby Cunningham on CBS' Knots Landing in 1980, Donna Mills had made nearly 20 TV movies where she played victims stalked by stranglers and rapists. In her nine years on Knots (currently being rebroadcast by the Soapnet Network), she made Abby one of the strongest and most fascinating women characters in pop history. Mills gave Abby intelligence, wit, grace and style.
Treating men as tools, Abby is a fusion of the mythic femme fatale with the blonde American cheerleader. (Sandy, the Olivia Newton-John role in Grease, 1978, was based on Mills as a Chicago teenager.) Abby is fashion personified--a shimmering apparition glittering like ...