A most significant decades-long marathon for women’s empowerment was completed at the 77the Golden Globes Awards ceremony in Los Angeles.

Ellen DeGeneres receives the Carol Burnett Award honoring her achievements in television at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards.

Now it’s time to remember the other women who helped carry this baton forward…

Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball was the lead runner in this race who kicked off a grand challenge to male hegemony in television comedy in 1951. Although she was the object rather than the subject in the title of “I Love Lucy,” she was definitely the star of the show. Groundbreaking in story formatting, staging and technological innovation for its time, the monster hit, still a staple in syndication, could only push the social envelope so far.

Lucy, a consummate clown without equal, evoked laughter from her bored housewife’s attempts to crash her nightclub entertainer husband’s showbiz career. Audiences laughed mostly at her, rather than with her.

Carol Burnett carries it forward

Lucy passed the female comedian’s baton to Carol, finally subject-worthy of her own eponymously named “The Carol Burnett Show” (1967-1978). Carol assumed Lucy’s crown as the premier female clown on television, but added a biting satirical edge to the show’s comedy sketches.

Feminism was on the rise in America, and Carol’s show stoked, albeit gently, the fires of the rebellion. The bitter pill of overdue social change went down easier with the sugar of laughter. Audiences laughed with Carol as much as they laughed at her.

Ellen DeGeneres inspires a new generation

Carol passed the baton to stand-up comedian Ellen DeGeneres, whose “Ellen” launched in 1994 and soared in sitcom lovers’ hearts as well as in the ratings. But “Ellen” flew too close to the sun in 1997, when both Ellen and her sitcom avatar came out as lesbians, and the show abruptly crashed and died too soon.

The downfall was attributed to a conservative organizations’ organized boycott of the show’s sponsors, but insiders claimed ABC-TV’s owner, Disney, concocted the “Boycott” as an excuse to ax the show, which they deemed too hot to handle. But the times, they are a-changin’ – and Ellen is again at the top of the ratings and basking in the love of multitudes of fans worldwide with “The Ellen DeGenerous Show,” her talk-and variety hour launched in 2003 and now in its 17th season.

Carol Burnett herself was in attendance at the 77th Golden Globes to see Ellen being awarded The Carol Burnett Award for outstanding and lasting contributions to television on or off the screen.

It was there that Ellen completed the last hand-off of the marathon, passing the baton to Kate McKinnon, Saturday Night Live’s current sketch-stealing funny lady, whom Ellen had tapped to be the presenter of her Burnett Award.

Kate is SNL’s first openly lesbian Not Ready For Prime Time Player. In her introduction, Kate said of Ellen, “If I hadn’t seen her on TV, I would have thought, I could never be on TV, they don’t let LGBTQ people on TV, and I would have gone on thinking I was an alien, and I maybe didn’t even have a right to be here. Thank you, Ellen, for giving me a shot at a good life.”

And we thank you, Lucy, Carol, Ellen and Kate for every sidesplitting pratfall and every inspirational triumph of the spirit.

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