The Happy Homemaker (and Homewrecker)
Sue Ann Nivens was the relentlessly perky star of The Happy Homemaker on Mary Richards' fictional WJM-TV in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her program delivered advice to housewives on cooking and decorating. She chose unusual and sometimes ludicrous themes for some episodes, such as "What's all this fuss about famine?" and "A salute to fruit". Nivens was a perfectionist; she once confessed she would rather flush her Veal Prince Orloff down a toilet than serve it reheated. She was also full of helpful hints for all occasions and always ready to make lemons into lemonade; she once suggested buying colorful, happy goldfish as companions for the infirm and then, when the goldfish died, using them as fertilizer for houseplants.
Although Sue Ann presented an image of a sweet, perfect wife and homemaker on-screen, she was actually sardonic, man-obsessed, and very competitive, with a tumultuous home life off-screen. Always with her trademark dimpled smile, she was cruel and snide toward people she did not like or considered a threat.
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Famous quotes containing the word happy:
“A photo of someone else’s childhood,
a garden in another country—world
he had no part in and has no power to imagine:
yet the old man who has failed his memory
keens over the picture— ‘Them happy days—
gone—gone for ever!’”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)