NEW YORK — Peggy Anderson, who never wanted to become a nurse, like her mother, but wrote a best-selling book to correct stereotypes about the profession, died Jan. 17 in Philadelphia. She was 77.
The cause was cancer, said Mary Ellen Krober, a friend.
Ms. Anderson, a former newspaper reporter, believed that nurses were not portrayed accurately in films and television shows.
"They were either cruel, like Nurse Ratched in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' or silly, like the nurses in 'M*A*S*H,' " she told The New York Times in 1979. "They were never taken seriously."
She recruited a 27-year-old nurse from Philadelphia, gave her the pseudonym Mary Benjamin, conducted scores of interviews with her, and produced a first-person narrative in 1978 titled simply "Nurse," which recounted eight weeks of her often grueling, conflicted, undervalued, and immensely gratifying job.
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The book sold millions of copies in hardcover and paperback and inspired a TV movie and a series starring Michael Learned, who had played Olivia Walton on the CBS show "The Waltons." Learned earned an Emmy in 1982 for her role in "Nurse," which also starred Robert Reed.
The nurse, who received $2,000 of a $15,000 advance and 5 percent of the profits, adamantly declined to be identified (St. Martin's Press hired a New York nurse to promote the book) and retired from nursing after the book's publication.
Despite the bland title (Ms. Anderson had rejected a friend's suggestion of "Scar Wars"), the book offered revealing insights into the job's challenges, such as warding off a patient's sexual advances and drugging dying patients to ease their pain.
Margaret Joan Anderson was born in Oak Park, Ill. Her father, Wilbert Anderson, had been a toy buyer for Montgomery Ward in Chicago and was running a plumbing and heating company in 1970 when he was murdered during a robbery. Her mother, Catherine, was a nurse.
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She leaves a brother, Peter Anderson, and a sister, Kathryn Pamela Anderson.