The First Lady of Radio: Eleanor Roosevelt's Historic Broadcasts
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The First Lady of Radio: Eleanor Roosevelt's Historic Broadcasts
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Overview
A tie-in to the American RadioWorks® documentary—with audio and video content.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s groundbreaking career as a professional radio broadcaster is almost entirely forgotten. As First Lady, she hosted a series of prime time programs that revolutionized how Americans related to their chief executive and his family. Now, The First Lady of Radio rescues these broadcasts from the archives, presenting a carefully curated sampling of transcripts of Roosevelt’s most famous and influential radio shows, including addresses on the bombing of Pearl Harbor, D-Day, V-E Day, and women’s issues of the times. Edited and set into context by award-winning author and radio producer Stephen Drury Smith—and with a foreword by Roosevelt’s famed biographer, historian Blanche Wiesen Cook—The First Lady of Radio is both a historical treasure and a fascinating window onto the power and the influence of a pioneering First Lady.
“An intriguing glimpse into the social and political changes of the period.” —Publishers Weekly
“[Eleanor Roosevelt] was terrified of speaking in public at first, and her high-pitched voice could sail off uncontrollably. Yet she became one of the most effective speakers of her time.” —David McCullough
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781620970584 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New Press, The |
| Publication date: | 07/19/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 330 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
"The Girl of Today"
The Pond's Program
Friday, December 9, 1932, 9:30–10:00 p.m. (NBC Red Network)
Eleanor Roosevelt sparked a national controversy with the first commercial radio broadcast she made as the president-elect's wife. The program was sponsored by the makers of Pond's Cold Cream. Some Americans were offended that the future first lady seemed to be cashing in on her increasing celebrity. But thousands of others were outraged at what ER had to say about girls and alcohol.
FDR had won the 1932 election in a landslide. He and the Democrats ran on a platform that called for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, otherwise known as Prohibition. In an era when Prohibition was a hotly debated topic, Eleanor Roosevelt described herself as "personally absolutely dry," though she occasionally took a drink. In the 1928 presidential contest, ER campaigned vigorously for Democratic candidate Al Smith, who ran as a "wet" anti-Prohibition candidate. In her talk on "The Girl of Today," ER described the many positive ways that society had evolved since her day, and she welcomed the wider range of opportunities open to young women. But she suggested that Prohibition created a climate where young people were more exposed to liquor than in previous generations. She regretted that "the average girl of today faces the problem of learning, very young, how much she can drink of such things as whiskey and gin and sticking to the proper quantity." Consuming alcohol was still illegal in 1932; it would be another year before Prohibition was repealed. Biographer Joseph Lash contends that ER was not urging girls to imbibe but was underscoring the failure of Prohibition to curb excessive drinking.
If so, many listeners missed the point. Angry letters and telegrams poured into the Executive Mansion in Albany, New York, where ER and the governor were living. A group of fifty prominent women in Topeka, Kansas, sent a letter of shocked protest. The pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Oklahoma City was instructed by his congregation to report their "surprise and disappointment" at ER's remarks. A group of twenty-two girls, describing themselves as "average girls of today," wrote to ER and said, "We are wholly unable to understand how there can be a 'proper quantity' of 'whiskey or gin' or any other alcoholic beverage."
Others wrote to ER expressing support. Henry Ware Allen wrote from Wichita to say that only the "most unsophisticated and uninformed" would disagree with ER's assessment. A man from Denver wrote that all the other fellows he had talked to admired her courage for speaking "so honestly and frankly." Dr. Maude E. Bleakmey cabled from Beaver, Pennsylvania, to say, "Bravo. Keep up the good work. Truth bows to no man's shrine."
The flap created headlines in newspapers across the country. But ER refrained from trying to set the record straight publicly. Instead, she responded to many of the critical letters with a copy of her speech so that people who either misheard her remarks or were responding to news stories could see for themselves. To one man she wrote that she understood she could not continue to do commercial broadcasts after FDR's inauguration, but that "until March fourth I am a private citizen and have the right to decide for myself what is wise." ER explained to another listener that she knew the Pond's broadcasts would provoke criticism, but she felt compelled to go forward because the money she earned could help the unemployed through the charities she supported.
The rest of ER's thirteen-week series for Pond's stuck to what must have seemed generally safer subjects of interest to women. She spoke on raising babies, working women, the virtues of chaperones, and keeping husbands happy. The nation was in the depths of the Depression when ER made these broadcasts. More than ten thousand banks had failed since the stock market crash of 1929. Only a quarter of unemployed families got any kind of government relief. In 28 percent of the nation's households, no one had a job. In this context, the subject of women working outside the home was highly charged. The 1930 census showed that 11 million women had jobs, about 24 percent of the women in the country. Historian Susan Ware says that women, especially married women, "faced strong public hostility to their very participation in the workforce."
Many radio programs of the day combined popular music with commentary by guest speakers. In addition to ER, The Pond's Program featured vocalists and the Leo Reisman Orchestra. It was broadcast on the NBC Red Network, which had more stations and generally carried programs with wider appeal than the smaller Blue Network. NBC Blue was often the venue for so-called sustaining programs, which the network produced without a commercial sponsor. Sustaining programs typically involved speeches, serious dramas, educational productions, and patriotic appeals.
ER used the money she made from her early commercial radio work to support two places in New York City where unemployed women could get lunch and rest. One was in the Women's Trade Union League clubhouse, the other at the Girls' Service League headquarters. ER also gave money directly to people who wrote asking her for help. "I do not question that I often gave to people who were not worthy," she later recalled, "but in those years it seemed better to take that risk than to fail those who were worthy," ER eventually directed the bulk of her commercial radio earnings to the American Friends Service Committee.
ER made her final Pond's broadcast the evening before FDR's inauguration. She explained to her audience members how she pictured them in her mind's eye as she made her talks. While ER had told the press that she would cease her commercial activities once FDR took office, she hinted to listeners that she might be back if she felt she had helpful or important words to say. "I shall always hope in one way or another to keep in touch with you, the American people." That, she would.
ANNOUNCER: The Pond's Program, presented by the makers of Pond's Cold Cream and Pond's Vanishing Cream, under the direction of Leo Reisman!
(ORCHESTRA: "LOVE ME TONIGHT" MEDLEY)
ANNOUNCER: When something nice happens once you think it might be luck. But when it happens thousands and thousands of times you know it can't be luck. That's why you can be so sure the two Pond's Face Creams will beautify and protect your complexion. These two famous creams are adding to the loveliness of thousands and thousands of women all over the world. Many women who don't have to think about cost prefer these reasonably priced creams to all others because they have found by experience that the two Pond's Creams have special beautifying qualities.
Pond's Cold Cream cleanses the skin and then lubricates it too. The pure, delicate oils go to the bottom of every pore and float the dirt to the surface and at the same time make your skin soft, flexible, alive. Pond's Vanishing Cream gives your skin a satiny finish and provides a perfect powder base, and then in addition protects your skin against the wind, sun, and dust.
Why put off getting the lovely complexion you can just as well have? Begin tomorrow to use the two Pond's creams, Pond's Cold Cream and Pond's Vanishing Cream.
(ORCHESTRA: "DRUMS IN MY HEART")
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen! We are proud and happy to present tonight the first of a series of informal talks by a distinguished and charming woman, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the wife of the president-elect of the United States. Mrs. Roosevelt will speak to the Pond's audience on live, human topics of interest to every man and woman. Tonight she is going to consider some of the problems that confront the modern girl. It is an honor to present Mrs. Roosevelt!
ER: It is almost impossible to compare the girl of today with the girl of thirty or forty years ago, not because the girls have changed, in spite of what some of my contemporaries think, but because the world we live in has changed so greatly. When I was eighteen, automobiles existed but they were still rare enough to cause the horse I was driving, in the quiet country spot on the Hudson where we spent our summers, to leap over a stone wall, taking the two-wheeled cart and its occupants with him! It was all so sudden that I came to see the horse grazing in the field, while we picked ourselves up off the ground and saw a disappearing car in the dim distance! Now my children's horses take an automobile as a matter of course and even pay little attention to an airplane flying low overhead!
It isn't, however, so much the fact that we now have all these new inventions, such as cars and airplanes, telephones, radios, electric light, and movies, but the change which they have wrought in the speed of life. We can know and see so many more people, we can do so much more in a day, even if we have work to do in our homes. It is so much easier and quicker to do if you can afford to use modern inventions that the girl of parents who are moderately well off, even a girl on a farm, may do things that would have been out of the question when I was young.
My generation's problems fundamentally were much the same as are the problems of the girl of today. We had home responsibilities and we accepted them or shirked them much as does the girl of today. But our chief preoccupation was getting to know people, girls and boys, and making friends. We were having as good a time as we could have, doing some work and incidentally finding out what in this world — which at that time we felt largely was created for us alone — really was of interest to us and vital enough to become a permanent part of the life which we were planning for ourselves.
Isn't this about the same thing which the girl of today is doing? Only instead of horses and buggies, she has a roadster or sedan. Instead of going to one place in a day and seeing a few people, she can go to four or five and see an almost unlimited number. Instead of being tied down many hours by work at home or in a shop, she has more hours to play. Instead of seeing her friends at home, or in a neighbor's house, she goes to a movie in a nearby town, to people's houses whom her parents do not know, or to a dance hall away from home. There is greater opportunity to develop, perhaps, and with wise parents the girl of today is perhaps earlier able to judge between worthwhile people and undesirable ones. She is better able to take care of herself because her experience is greater.
But on the other hand, there are more temptations and they come courting her more frequently. She is away from parental supervision much younger than was the case in my youth. Unless the parents have been wise and trained her young to judge for herself, and decide between right and wrong, she is apt to have some rather bitter experiences. Also she will have some sad disillusionments about people. For youth is apt to clothe the object of its enthusiasms with the virtues which a fertile imagination can produce, and it is a sad awakening to find that human nature is far from perfect, and that people cannot always be trusted.
In my youth, all of us saw wine upon the table in our homes. And many of us saw a good bit of excessive drinking. But very few girls, whether in high school or private school or college, drank anything beyond a glass of wine at home. And it never would have occurred to the young man to carry a flask to an evening party. He carried it traveling or on a hunting trip, but not to social gatherings, for his host provided him with whatever might be necessary. And it did not brand a girl as a prig or unsocial if she did not join in whatever conviviality was going on in the way of drinking. But Prohibition seems to have changed that to a certain extent. So that the average girl of today faces the problem of learning, very young, how much she can drink of such things as whiskey and gin and sticking to the proper quantity.
One of the things that we hoped for in Prohibition was protection for the weak, and I regret to say that I feel that conditions brought about by Prohibition require more strength of character than any conditions that I remember in my youth. The greater freedom of manners makes for franker and freer associations between young men and women today. Some people think this a pity. Undoubtedly, some of the old mystery and glamour is gone. But perhaps, on the whole, it is not a bad thing that boys and girls know each other a little bit better nowadays.
In one essential, things are undoubtedly far easier for the girl of today than they were for girls of my generation. There are more avenues open to her for education and more ways in which she can earn a living and have an interesting life. For this reason I feel that, on the whole, the girl of today, if she has sympathetic and wise parents, has a better chance of facing her problems successfully and making her life a valuable and interesting one than had the girl of thirty years ago.
(ORCHESTRA: SIGNATURE THEME)
ANNOUNCER: This is the National Broadcasting Company.
CHAPTER 2"Woman's Career vs. Woman's Home"
The Pond's Program
Friday, January 20, 1933
ER: I never like to think of this subject of a woman's career and a woman's home as being a controversy. It seems to me perfectly obvious that if a woman falls in love and marries, of course her first interest and her first duty is to her home. But her duty to her home does not of necessity preclude her having another occupation. A woman, just as a man, may have a great gift for some particular thing. That does not mean that she must give up the joy of marrying and having a home and children. It simply means, when we set them in opposition to each other, that we haven't as yet grown accustomed to the fact that women's lives must be adjusted and arranged for in just the same way men's lives are. Women may have to sacrifice certain things at times. So do men.
There was a time in our development in this country when the keeping of a home took all the strength and time that a woman had. That, today, is over and there are few women who have been in this country more than a short time and whose husbands earn more than the bare necessities of life, who are not able to do something besides keeping their home. They may choose to play bridge or golf. Or they may choose to do some part-time work, or even full-time work, in some job that interests them. If so, the only people to be concerned about it are the members of the family. To be sure, sometimes children resent the fact that their mother has a job and is not at their beck and call at any hour of the day or night. This is only so, of course, when her work is not needed for the necessities of life. But granted that the father provides the necessities, sometimes the children are jealous of the fact that a mother should want any interest outside of theirs. They are justified if something really vital goes out of their lives. But if their physical needs are cared for and if their mother, on her return, has enough vitality to keep in touch with their daily lives and know what has happened to them and to give them her sympathetic interest and advice, then it is probably far better for the future lives of these children that they should have to exercise a little unselfishness, a little thought for themselves and for others, because their mother is not always on hand. They have a right to expect that if they have a problem she will listen to it. But they have no right to expect that she will give up that which she loves because they would like to have her home at five o'clock instead of six o'clock.
Do not make the mistake of thinking when you are married you need make no further effort about your family relations. The very best thing that comes to a woman with a job is the fact that she has to use her brains to work her job in with her home duties. This keeps her brain from stagnating. She has something new to talk to her husband about and he never will get the feeling that she is just like the old chair which he has always sat in — comfortable, but thoroughly familiar and never changing. The job of being a home-keeper, a wife, and a mother — plus some other job or some other work — is quite a job. If any woman has the health and vitality and the desire to do both, it seems to me that it ought make for a happier relationship at home instead of a discontented one.
In this emergency, however, I am getting innumerable appeals asking that married women be not allowed to hold jobs which might be filled by married men or single men and women. That point of view is possible during an emergency and it may be necessary to voluntarily relinquish your work if the other partner is earning enough for the family to live on. But as a permanent concession to the needs of society, I rebel. For it seems to me that we have built up our nation on the theory that work was honorable, that those who could do something creative and productive might be doing some intangible good to their own souls, which if they were not allowed to express themselves in work, might mean a loss to themselves in enrichment of personality, and in their happiness, and a loss to the community at large.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The First Lady of Radio"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Stephen Drury Smith.
Excerpted by permission of The New Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Transcripts
Foreword by Blanche Wiesen Cook
Introduction
“The Girl of Today”
“Woman’s Career vs. Woman’s Home”
“A Mother’s Responsibility as a Citizen”
“Concluding Broadcast”
“Negro Education”
“When Will a Woman Become President of the US?”
“Shall a Woman Be Herself?”
“A Day in the White House”
“Peace Through Education”
“World Court Broadcast”
“Making the Wheels Go ‘Round in the White House”
“Keeping House on a Budget in the White House”
“What It Means To Be the Wife Of The President”
“Education of a Daughter for the 20th Century”
“Problems of Working Women”
“Life in a Tenement”
“Eleanor Roosevelt Interviewed on the Causes and Cures of War”
“Domestic Workers and Government Housing”
“Questions About the White House”
“Democracy”
“Political Conventions and Campaign Trips”
“Planning for War and Post-War Periods”
“Peace, Democracy and Ideals”
“Address to the Democratic National Convention”
“Shall We Arm Merchant Ships?”
“Freedom of Speech”
“Propaganda”
“Isolationists”
“Pearl Harbor Attack”
“Civilian Defense”
“Preparedness for War”
“Enemy Aliens and Women in War Work”
“Answering Her Critics”
“Broadcast From Liverpool”
“Wartime Conditions in Great Britain”
“D-Day Message”
“V-E Day Radio Message”
“V-J Day Radio Message”
Endnotes