It's One O'Clock and Here Is Mary Margaret McBride: A Radio Biography

I couldn't put the book down and took it with me on a flight to Seattle, then finished it on another flight to San Diego. What a ride! Susan Ware, one of the editors of NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN, has gone back way in the past for this one. McBride was the premiere radio interviewer in the US in the 1940s and 1950s; as Ware astutely observes, she was yesteryear's equivalent of Oprah Winfrey, but plus . . . Plus what? Through the privileged relation then of radio to home, McBride created an intimacy with her listeners--seventy percent of them women--which even Oprah can't approximate, though she's certainly tops at what she does. Even Oprah's struggles with her weight, which have endeared her to millions of us, had their original rehearsal in McBride's huge girth, and in one famous incident in 1948 she got caught in a zipper and had to delay coming on to her own show--with complete honesty and charm she told the studio audience what had happened, and people loved her even more. She came from a rocky girlhood in Missouri, and Ware is at her best showing us how she survived all kinds of grim childhood tragedies with a poignant determination to escape poverty. She never looked back; well, except to pen a series of best-selling memoirs of her youth a la Maya Angelou; and she brought her family with her, making sure all were well taken care of. Her mother was a frequent guest on her program, and when the mother died all America cried with her. Mary Margaret never accepted advertising from any sponsors whose products she had not personally tried and approved. Every episode of her show had her, interrupting herself constantly, to talk about up to 14 different ad campaigns. She called this "doing the products," and she believed in sponsorship religiously. Ware is very good showing how McBride helped to bolster, indeed create, middlebrow culture, but her distinctions are problematic. McBride, like Oprah, specialized in book promotion, and Ware says that she shunned highbrow culture and never had Hemingway, Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, or Eugene O'Neill on the program. And yet as Ware allows, McBride welcomed William Carlos Williams, James Thurber, Tennessee Williams, Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Erskine Caldwell. Not to mention the cultural figures like Orson Welles, Martha Graham, etc. Like it or not, these authors are just as much a part of "modernist culture" as Faulkner and Company. There's a strange diffusion to some of Ware's arguments in this direction; if she wants to argue one thing, she reads Evidence Item X to prove it, but she then turns around and uses the same item to argue something completely different. In this case, it's arguing for McBride's disdain of modernism and yet her sympathy for writers of color; of course the paths intersect more than Ware wants to admit. The same diffusion is present also during her discussion of whether or not Mary Margaret McBride might have been a Lesbian, or were she and Stella Karn (her prod

Although I enjoyed this book I was surprised to find an antecdote describing a time when Miss McBride was supposed to have Eleanor Roosevelt as a guest. When Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt failed to show, she substituted Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt who happened to be a studio guest that day. Unfortunately,in the book,author Susan Ware states that Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt's name was also Eleanor. It was not. It was Edith. Even if Miss McBride got this wrong, I was disappointed that Ms. Ware didn't inform the readers - especially those that care about history - of her mistake.

If you don't recognize the name of radio personality Mary Marget McBride, don't worry: she was one of the major radio show hosts of the 1940s and 1950s and had her own popular daily one o'clock broadcast where she interested presidents and famous personalities alike. Five decades after their broadcast her shows still hold relevance today: Susan Ware explores how Mary McBride influenced formats many talk shows still use, capturing the world of 1930s to 1950s radio broadcasting in all its social and political importance. It's One O'clock is the first in-depth examination of McBride's popularity and radio show, following both her life and upbringing and her impact on media as a whole. Susan Ware edits the biographical dictionary Notable American Women and is in the perfect position to lend depth and authority to McBride's achievements.

I loved this book it tells how things were in the 1920's-1950's for a driven young woman who became the first talk radio personality. Every chapter is fun and informative.

I work in Radio so I bought it out of obligation to the subject matter and boy was I surprised. I'VE READ IT FOUR TIMES. It is a fascinating story of how great radio is made and what makes a radio star. And she was a true star. Everything she did is true of every radio star I know working today--the news is, she did it first. I would give this to everyone thinking of working in radio and every young person (it will be inspiring to women in particular) who wonder what it takes to be a success in media. It takes every cell in your body. Bravo!!!!