Transcripts For CSPAN3 Its One OClock And Here Is Mary Marga

You promote books and reading. You live with books. And you are involved with the study of books. And i said, thats true. We also promote books through events such as tonights. This is part of our books and beyond author series. Its where we focus on authors who have written new books that have Something Special to do with the library of congress. And in this case, as our speaker will tell you, there is a direct connection with the library and with an archive. And when i wrote the press release, i didnt really realize the extent of the collection that we have that supports this particular book. We have the archive not just the recordings for Mary Margaret mcbride. You will hear about that tonight from our speaker. Susan is a special friend of the library of congress. She has been here before to work on a particular project. We have some of the editors of this project here tonight. A american Women Library of congress guide for the study of womens history and culture in the United States. Its a 420page resource guide. And she not only headed the advisory committee, the Scholars Advisory Committee for the book, but she wrote the introduction. And we had a Similar Program when that particular book was published. Susan herself is a former professor of history at new york university. Shes an expert on 20th century american women. And the editor right now along with the publication of this book for the most recent volume women, justmerican published in 2004. It was prepared at the schlesinger library, institute for advanced studies at harvard university. Shes also published a number of books on women in the new deal, a biography of amelia earhart, biography of social reformer molly dusome and womens history anthology. I also have my own Favorite Book that susan put together which i have had in my collection and home for a long time and i forgot to bring it in tonight. But i love collective biographies and the book which she put together is called it wasten heroes. Published in 1998, i think, by the free press. It is a charming volume that does talk about forgotten heroes. But stories are told by well known historians who are asked to pick their favorite forgotten hero. So some of the people arent quite forgotten but people that havent gotten the attention that some of these historians felt. Tonight, thanks to susan, we are going to learn about someone who maybe has not been forgotten but hasnt been as well known as she will be with the publication of this particular book. Its my pleasure to introduce susan weir and to produce this show today. Thank you. [applause] susan thank you for that introduction. Theres obviously no better place for me to launch my book than here at the library of congress. But now i regret that we didnt decide to do this as a lunchtime presentation so that i could have opened it in real time with it is 1 00 and here is susan weir talking about Mary Margaret mcbride. But in lieu of that let me start with a short clip from 1952 to put you in the mood for what is to come. Its 1 00. And heres Mary Margaret mcbride. A Great American legend. You heard her voice. Maybe youve even read her before now but youre going to be reading her because her publishers tell me they put out a great big edition of her book. And before they could get it out, they had to start another big edition. Of course, im talking about probably the one person in America Today whose first name you know what tickled me was thinking what she would have been like if you had taken her advice. Well, it may have saved me a lot of trouble, as you know. The connotation good and bad. Its whipped up a lot of rumors and legends. And sometimes i get credit where it isnt due and sometimes blame where it isnt. But i take the blame for everything and a little credit, too. So im not apologizing. Except for loyal fans over a certain age, that voice is no longer the familiar presence it would have been in the 1940s and 1950s. I certainly had never heard of Mary Margaret mcbride before i started this project. I found her in a curious way, i think. It was while reading obituaries an the New York Times. Ulterior, but never hidden, motive for me taking on the position as editor was mining this vast database of dead women for possible subjects for future books. And in fact, at some point, i rather sheepishly realized that i was reading obituaries the way other people read the personals except that i was looking for a book topic not for a mate, which i already have. I cant claim that some eureka moment went off when i first read Mary Margaret mcbrides obituary. I think this is partly because she died in 1976. So i thought i better hold back a little bit in case there was some great moment, someone who died in 1999. But i was interested. And i put a little star on the printout of the obituary. And i left the idea percolate in my head. I was intrigued by the chance to explore a new field for me, the field of radio in a time where i had focused much of my historical work, the 1930s through the 1950s. Plus with a strong biographical focus. And i gradually over the next couple years realized that the project was, indeed, a perfect fit. Unlike novelists, historians need sources. And this book would not have been possible without the archival material that Mary Margaret mcbrides estate deposited at the library of congress in 1977. In addition to correspondence, newspaper clippings and selected writings, the collection offered almost 1,200 hours of recordings of Mary Margaret mcbrides radio shows. These recordings are a treasure trove of interviews with an incredibly broad range of public figures over three decades. Its practically anybody who was anybody everybody who was anybody in those years appeared on her show. And one of the goals of this book is to alert other scholars to the possibilities for using this resource in their own research. And i hope that many other historians as well as documentary filmmakers and radio producers find their way to the mcbride collection. I promise you you will not be disappointed. Now, another source that greatly enriched the book were letters from former listeners who responded to an authors query i placed an the New York Times book review at the beginning of the project. And these reminiscences and recollections mostly from fans but also with some negative comments thrown in, like a girl who hated having Mary Margaret mcbride on the radio when she came home from school for lunch each day and couldnt wait until she went to have high school. Went off to high school. But these memories really allowed me to understand how a Radio Program could be so important to its listeners and how those memories and loyalties could still be warm and strong five decades after the flagship show went off the air. Now, i called this book a radio biography. That term is meant to draw attention to its hybrid nature. As both a recreation of daytime radio from the 1930s through the 1950s and the biography of one of its most important characters. It does not, however, follow the traditional birthtodeath structure of most biographies. As ive been doing throughout my career as a historian and biographer, especially in an earlier book on amelia earhart, i find myself stretching the boundaries of biography in ways which i hope readers will find successful and stimulating. The book starts with a description of Mary Margaret mcbrides radio show at the height of its influence in the late 1940s and early 1950s. And after readings have gotten to know Mary Margaret thats how i refer to her. Everybody was on a first name basis with her and we will be too, tonight. But after people had learned about Mary Margaret and learned why her program was so successful, the narrative backtracks to tell the story of her upbringing and early career and how she came to radio. A story which would have been intimately familiar to her listeners since she share it with them on many occasions. Then the third part of the book picks up the story after world war ii and takes it through her death in 1976. While an epilogue discusses the contemporary talk show phenomenon with a look back to Mary Margaret mcbrides earlier role. Now, mcbrides radio career was something of a fluke. Born in paris, missouri, or in 1899, she always wanted to be a writer. And set her sights early on new york. By 1920, she had made it to the city where she excelled not as a fiction writer as she had hoped but as a reporter and then as one of the highest paid freelance journalists in the decade. Along the way, she teamed up with stella carn, a hardtalking, no nonsense character who became her manager and lifelong companion. When the stock market crashed in 1929, wiped out her and stellas savings and then the depression dried up Mary Margarets lucrative freelance career, she found herself at rock bottom. A chance radio audition in 1934 opened the door to her new career. Stella served as her producer. They worked successfully as a team until mcbride gave up her daily show 20 years later. At the height of her popularity, Mary Margaret mcbride attracted between six million and eight million listeners a day. Men as well as women. Comprising 20 of the available broadcast audience in her time slot. Five times a week her blend of current affairs, literary trends and tidbits, news of the world of broadway theater and hollywood film and more offered listeners a literate yet accessible radio conversation that both entertained and informed. Each show was different. There were no repeats. Guests were never announced in advance. So you never knew who you were going to hear each day. Her shows, i can attest after many hours in a sound booth in the recording sound, remain remarkably fresh and interesting today. More than five decades after their original broadcast. And im not sure that that statement is true of all of old radio. But these have really held up quite well. Now, mcbrides radio career is important to broadcasting history, womens history and history of 20th century Popular Culture. Im a historian so i step back and draw these conclusions. Drawing on her years as a freelance journalist for womens magazines, she pioneered the magazine style format. Nk of the today show short features, ad libbed interviews and multiple sponsor that still structures many talkshows on the air today. In addition, she and stella early on realized the freedom and power they could exercise by producing their own show independently of the networks agencies which produced most of the content for radio especially in the 1930s. And the model of being their own Production Company is now the norm for many successful media personalities. Most importantly, Mary Margaret mcbride realized the cultural and political importance of talk radio. And she was one of the first to exploit its potential. The phenomenal bond that she formed with her listeners is critical to understanding Popular Culture in 20th century american life. Now, even though Mary Margaret mcbride spent her entire career broadcasting out of a new york city studio, she had a surprisingly national reach. She started out locally, a halfhour afternoon show geared towards housewives that ran until 1940 when she turn it and its copyrighted name over to bessy beatty. From 1937 to 1941 she broadcast a second 15minute show under her own name. Youve got one person thats appearing on a radio both as martha dean and Mary Margaret mcbride and sometimes people got a little confused. They would say theres this other woman imitating you. Shes nowhere near as good as you are. But the attraction of this other 15minute show was that it was nationally syndicated. And it also aired in new york on cbs. For a year after she gave up martha dean, she also had a 15minute nationally syndicated show sponsored by the florida Citrus Growers association, in association. 1941, she dropped that and returned to doing a local show on weaf, the main nbc station in new york. 45 minutes at 1 00, her favorite time slot. In 1949, she went to a full hour. When nbc resisted her request to take the show national, she bolted to abc in 1950 where she stayed until she gave up her regular show in 1954. Starting in 1951, the abc show was widely syndicated in a cooperative arrangement in which the new york show was cut down to 30 minutes and local commercials added by Mary Margaret, stella and announcer Vincent Connelly before the new version was distributed by wgn of chicago. The wide if selective reach of her program over the years explains why even though a majority of Mary Margarets loyal listeners were in the new york metropolitan area, she could still count on a nationwide following. While not every radio listener had a chance to hear Mary Margaret every day, every year, she was definitely one of radios best known stars in the heyday of radios pretelevision popularity. In addition, as a result of the Extensive National Media Coverage she received, Mary Margaret had a presence in Popular Culture that transcended the millions who were her regular listeners, allowing the radio personality to reach into corners of the United States where her radio broadcast was not carried. Her name was a familiar one to americans across the country in the 1940s and 1950s and can still illicit a warm if somewhat vague spongs when the three response when the three words Mary Margaret mcbride are mentioned today. And yet mcbride has been practically forgotten. Both in radio history and in the history of 20th century Popular Culture. Primarily, i argue, because she was a woman and because she was on daytime radio which in her case turned out to be a lethal combination. In the 1930s and 1940s, daytime radio was dismissed as the world of the feminine, dominated by weepy soap operas and the crude commercialization typified by the Soap Companies that sponsored the cereals. By contrast, nighttime radio was seen as more serious, less commercial. In a word, more masculine and therefore, more important. It didnt matter that women up the majority of audiences for both day and nighttime radio. The gender perceptions ruled and helped to confine Mary Margaret mcbride to historical oblivion. Even while her show was outdrawing everybody else, mcbride often found herself the target of negative stereotypes linked to her gender, her predominantly female audience, her unmarried status and her ample physique. Those of you of a certain age, think kate smith. Im covering all of those bases. Newsweek ran this description of mcbride in 1949. This is a quote. I could not make this up. Mary Margaret Mcbride is a 48yearold spinster with a talent for backfence gab and an hour a day in which to display her talents. Her audience is almost wholly feminine, fluttery, middleaged and purely housewife. Men as a rule disdain the show. In good housewifely tradition , she dotes on and drools over anything that pleases her, particularly food. She is built along the lines of a bulldozer with a face as unlined as an english farm girl. It does actually go on for even more. Unfortunately, as i found when i researched the press coverage she got, such demeaning coverage was nothing new to the radio talk show host. In 1940, time titled an article about her with a single word. Goo. And later anointed her radios clean of endearing mush. Mush. aci sh. Ndearing mu and by using such dismissive language, commentators made it sound like her show amounted to nothing more than whatever came into her head on the spur of the moment as opposed to a carefully orchestrated show by a shrewd performer who was perhaps the best interviewer radio has ever seen. Mary Margaret Mcbride took her listeners seriously. And my book takes Mary Margaret mcbride seriously. A magazine might dismiss her audience as dust pan army. aci dustpan army. But she never talked down to them which especially endeared her to female listeners tired of being patronized by radio personalities and advertising executives who assumed all they were interested in was recipes and curtains. Mary margaret did not discriminate. Treating women and men equally when it came to their desire for interesting conversation and involvement in the world at large. She treated her guests just as respectfully. She never spoke from notes. She had a phenomenal memory. Nor would she let her guest use them. This sometimes upset guests. They came in with their little prepared remarks and she would often nothing kind of often kind of conveniently swoosh them off the table leaving the person just to be able to talk. And people who were on her show really said that she put them so much at ease that they really felt that they were just having a conversation. The two of them. I think that is one key to her great abilities as an interviewer. The other thing that really distinguished her was that she always put the guest first. She really wanted to show off the guest. She didnt care what she sounded like. It was more that she wanted to make sure that the guest was able to say what he or she wanted to and do it in a way that would be interesting to the listeners. But what seemed on the face of it just a simple conversation was often the result of ours and ours of advanced research and hours of advanced research and preparation that she u