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Maggie Growls. Video/2002/56 min. A film by Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater. Attie and Goldwater Productions. Associate Producers: Shannon Kane-Meddock and Patricia McLaughlin. Distributed by Women Make Movies, 462 Broadway, Suite 500WS, New York, NY, 10013. 212-925-0606. E-mail: orders@www.com. Web: www.wmm.com/. Rental $90, purchase $275.

Aging advocacy organizations and the Gray Panthers, in particular, are experiencing a rebirth. The ascension of boomers to leadership positions and their role in filling out the ranks of membership lists suggest implications for both how and who promotes aging issues. Advocates, scholars, and citizens are wise to turn to the life of Maggie Kuhn (1905–1995), a master of the craft of advocacy, to glean insights into how to shape policy agendas for the 21^st Century. Fortunately, an excellent resource exists in Maggie Growls, a documentary by Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater.

The video combines commentary, interviews, and secondary sources (including black and white photos and descriptive cartoon sequences commissioned for the film) to tell the life story of Maggie. While most of America remembers her "second career" at the helm of the Gray Panthers in the 1970s and 1980s, her activist spirit was nurtured throughout her life. The film does a particularly good job of reminding the viewer that leaders are made over time. Born in Buffalo in 1905, she was a passionate social activist whose earlier career was imbued with Progressive values. Maggie entered the workplace in 1926 with a job organizing poor and working women at the YWCA in Cleveland. She went to factories and recruited women to enter unions. A highly effective cartoon segment shows her father opening up her head and throwing out all the new stuff she was getting into, and then putting a lock through her lips. In the cartoon another Maggie crawls out of the back of Maggie's locked head, and she resumes her organizing. We learn that she even taught sex education classes at the Y through an interview with an African-American woman who shared her joy of teaching that subject.

In 1950, she began a 20-year stint in the Social Education and Action Office of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. It was a job she clearly adored, and one that kept her in the forefront of social activism for decades. When she turned 65 and was forced to retire, Maggie decided that she would not fade away quietly. Her motto was "Don't agonize. Organize." She met with a small group of friends that had recently been forced to retire and—reminding them that they had nothing to lose—she launched her second career for which she is renowned: as founder and leader of the Gray Panthers.

Beginning with what political activist Ralph Nader called "the most significant retirement in modern American history," Maggie created one of the most potent social movements of the century—one that was committed to justice, peace, and fairness to all, regardless of age. Although other groups existed to promote the rights of older adults, none of them had the impact of the Gray Panthers on policy making. Her style of political leadership relied on creative synthesis by integrating the techniques of forceful civil rights groups, such as the Black Panthers, with goals of the early ageism-fighting groups.

Maggie's second career unfolded in television appearances with Johnny Carson; on Capitol Hill, in Congress, where she chided senators and congressmen; and on the picket line, fighting injustice for all people, wherever she could. The media quickly latched onto Maggie, perhaps because of her disarming mixture of humor, shock value, and common sense. Looking like the stereotypical sweet little old lady, Maggie deftly used her high visibility to combat media stereotypes that denigrated elders and went on to champion universal health care, nursing home reform, shared housing, and consumer protection. There was also a very human side to her revealed through her fond recounting of her many love affairs and close friendships. Maggie's insistence on talking publicly about sex, a tactic which often made her listeners squirm, led to a serious rethinking about what growing old was all about. As she said, "Sex and learning end only when rigor mortis sets in." She clearly advocated old women having affairs with young men, and we learn that she had an affair with a man 50 years younger than her.

Maggie Growls looks at the forces that shaped the movement as well as its leader, using Maggie's life as a lens through which to examine the intertwined issues of social reform and aging in America. Her outrage and determination fueled a political chain reaction that forever changed the lives of older Americans, repealing mandatory retirement laws and proving that "old" is not a dirty word. The video utilizes many montages demonstrating her power to use words effectively. For example, we hear Maggie tell when she witnessed the signing of a pension bill under President Gerald Ford, and she raised her hand and finally got his attention. President Ford said, "And what to you have to say, young lady?" And she bore down on him and said, "First of all, I'm not a young lady. I'm an old woman." Studs Terkel, who gets some of the best lines in the documentary, remarked, "She was making the word old an adjective of affirmation."

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of Maggie Kuhn's birth and the 10^th anniversary of her death. What lessons should be drawn from the life of both this iconic figure and creative leader? Kuhn was very much a person both of and ahead of her time. Imbued with progressive values, she advocated for issues that had personal significance throughout her lifetime. Her interest in individual rights, justice, and peace were life long. However, she adapted both the message and the medium to the era. This inspiring documentary is an important addition to the home library and appropriate for courses in American Studies, History, Women's Studies, Gerontology, and Sociology. At its conclusion, many viewers may well stick out their tongue, and practice hissing with a long ahhhh!

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