Think
of her as a kind of stone age Oprah
Winfrey without the car giveaways. In a day time talk show career that spanned more than 40 years on radio she almost invented the interview
program and a folksy, conversational style.
She was so popular that when her New
York home station wanted to celebrate the 15th anniversary of her program
they had to rent Yankee Stadium and
every seat was filled.
Mary Margaret
McBride was
born to a struggling farm family on November 16, 1899 in Paris, Missouri. Her large
family had to move frequently in search of rented land so her early formal
education was frequently interrupted.
But she was bright an ambitious and entered the University of Missouri in Columbia
at the age of 16. She graduated in 1919
with a degree in journalism.
Newspaper careers were
hard to come by for women and when they did get work they were usually assigned
to “women’s pages”, society coverage, or at best human interest feature
writing. McBride was accomplished enough
to get employment, but was limited by those restrictions.
Right
out of school she was hired at the Cleveland Press, the city’s
progressive afternoon newspaper. After
only a year there she moved on to the troubled New York Evening Mail. That paper was bought and merged into
the Evening Telegram in 1924.
McBride
discovered that she like the Big Apple just
fine and rather than pursue newspaper work that might have required her to
relocate, she embarked on a very successful career as a freelance writer contributing regularly to top magazines including The
Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and Good
Housekeeping.
She
also collaborated with others on book projects.
Typically she was the primary actual writer. Her first such project linked her with
pioneering orchestra leader Paul
Whiteman on Jazz in 1927. She
followed up with Charm a year later with Alexander
Williams. In 1928 she began teaming
with Helen Josephy on a series of
four very popular travel books highlight Paris,
London, New York, and Germany.
In
1934 she was back in print journalism when she was named women’s page editor of
the Newspaper Enterprise Association
syndicate.
McBride’s
foray into radio began the same year when WOR
hired her to do a daily advice show for women focusing on the usual topics—cooking,
housekeeping, shopping, and a dollop of marriage advice. Taking advantage of her still pronounced nasal
Missouri twang, the station presented her as Martha Deane, a kindly grandmother.
They provided her with a mythical family, including several grandchildren. She was supposed to weave stories about the
family into her chatty advice, but kept mixing up the names of the
grandchildren. In exasperation one day
on the air she admitted to the fraud and jettisoned the mythical family. It did not hurt her ratings, however, and she
continued her broadcasts as Deane through 1940.
After
leaving the press syndicate, McBride picked up a second job on the CBS Radio Network which hired her to
helm a daily talk show under her own name.
This program, and virtually identical shows that migrated with her from
network to network, is what she is best remembered for.
The
program was aimed directly at women who were still largely at home doing
housework during the day. It was
broadcast in the early afternoon and executives pictured women washing up the
lunch dishes as they listened to a friendly voice. McBride knew her audience to, but respected
them. She believed that they craved more
than the domestic tidbits she was serving up as Martha Dean. They were starving for stimulation and eager
to learn about the world.
McBride
set out to satisfy that need by presenting a fresh interview every day. She drew her guests from the worlds of
politics, literature, popular entertainment, news makers of all kinds. As her popularity and fame grew, so did her
ability to attract big name guests. Eleanor Roosevelt regularly visited
when she was in New York.
She
meticulously prepared for each guest.
If it was an author, she would stay up half the night to read the book
to make sure she could discuss it intelligently. She combed clippings, biographies, and did
library research. Her skills as a
reporter and her open, friendly demeanor made her an excellent interviewer. Guests felt comfortable and opened up. To listeners it sounded like to interesting
people chatting over coffee.
McBride’s
twang and informal manner contrasted sharply with pear shaped tones and stiff
formality of male radio announcers of the day.
She also insisted on doing her own commercial, inserting them seamlessly
into the discussion, seemingly off the cuff and almost rambling. She let it be known that she would not
endorse any product she did not personally use or believe in and refused to do beer or tobacco ads at all.
McBride
never announced her guests in advance.
She believed listeners were motivated to tune in to find out just who she
might have on when they might avoid a program they knew in advance they had
little interest in.
Whatever
the formula, it worked. McBride became
an institution in many American homes.
In
1940 McBride moved her show to NBC
where it drew even larger audiences over the next decade. During the years of World War II she added top military officers to her guest roster
and she successfully broke a rigid color
line, inviting Black guests and
treating them with the same down home friendly respect she showed everyone
else. She was becoming known as the First Lady of Radio.
In
1948 NBC brought McBride to Television with
a half hour weekly program on Tuesday evenings.
The show mimicked her radio broadcasts, right down to the rambling first
person commercial. But the time and
audience were very different. It turned
out men made the viewing choices in most households and they were definitely not
amused. On the whole, they would rather
watch wrestling. He show was met by scathing reviews—written
by men—and was cancelled after only three months. It was one of McBride’s few failures as a
broadcaster.
Through
all of these years her closest friend, business partner, and advisor was Stella Karn who was often described as
her companion. The close relationship
continued even after she married radio actor and Disney movie voice actor Bill
Thompson in 1950. Karn died in ’57 and
Thompson in 1971.
From
1950 to ’54 McBride’s show aired on ABC
before returning to its familiar home on NBC.
It was also syndicated by the New York Herald Tribune’s radio service. But as the decade wore on, her audience aged,
radio was transitioning to a medium dominated by disc jockeys and her quaint style seemed antiquated. Her long running show finally went off the
air in 1960.
McBride
and her husband moved to Upstate and lived comfortably. She returned to freelance writing and hosted
local programs. Her last show, Your
Hudson Valley Neighbor was broadcast from the comfort of her living
room three times a week on WGHQ in Kingston.
She
died at the age of 76 on April 7, 1976 at West
Shokan, a village in the Catskills. Her ashes were buried in her beloved rose
garden.
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