The Book That Started It All: Why I Wrote Uncredited

Before many readers knew my work through later biographies, the actress who first convinced me that overlooked women deserved fuller stories was Virginia Gregg, a woman whose career had already touched nearly every major branch of twentieth-century entertainment long before most people realized how often they had encountered her work. 

Virginia became the subject of my first biography because the more I uncovered, the more astonishing her professional range became. She was one of Hollywood’s most quietly durable working actresses, building a career that stretched across radio, film, and television with unusual steadiness. She performed in thousands of radio broadcasts during the height of radio’s influence, including major programs such as Suspense, Dragnet, Lux Radio Theatre, and The Whistler. As television became central to American life, she appeared in hundreds of programs, with memorable work on Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, and Mission: Impossible. Her film career moved just as steadily, with appearances in I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955), Operation Petticoat (1959), Spencer’s Mountain (1963), and Forbidden Love (1982).  

For many people, her most famous contribution remains her voice in Hitchcock’s Psycho, where she provided the voice of Norma Bates, yes, that Norma Bates, helping create one of the most haunting identities in film history. It is one of those extraordinary contributions many audiences know intimately without attaching it to her name. Yet Virginia’s career was far larger than that single achievement. She appeared across dramatic anthologies, westerns, mysteries, live television, and studio films, becoming one of those dependable performers whose work consistently strengthened whatever production she entered. 

What fascinated me just as much as the breadth of her work was the structure of her life behind it. Virginia maintained that remarkably linear career in Hollywood while raising three boys as a single mother, continuing to work steadily in an industry often defined by interruption and unpredictability. That kind of sustained professional presence was no small accomplishment. She moved through decades of changing media while carrying both creative and personal responsibility in ways that are often underappreciated when people look back at Hollywood careers. 

She contributed something increasingly rare in any era of entertainment: durability without self-promotion. Whether on radio, in television guest roles, or in supporting film performances, Virginia brought reliability, intelligence, and adaptability to her work. She was the kind of actress producers trusted, audiences recognized, and history somehow still managed to understate. 

That was precisely what drew me to her story. She represented an entire class of gifted women whose work helped build American entertainment while their names often remained secondary to the productions themselves. Writing Uncredited taught me that biography is often an act of restoration, giving full shape to lives that history has only partially preserved. 

Looking back, I can still see how much that first book shaped everything I wrote afterward. Uncredited was not simply my first biography. It established the kind of stories I would continue to pursue: women whose influence was real, lasting, and far greater than most people realize. As a good friend of mine always says, “Virginia Gregg is always on television somewhere in the world no matter what time it is.” Do you recognize her? 

Virginia in Hazel Season 1, Episode 33, “Heat Wave” (1962)