Welcome to the library of congress. Im john kohl, director of the center in the book for the library of congress. I was talking to our speaker earlier tonight and described what i was doing. She said, you have a wonderful job. 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. It is american women a 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 of notable american women, just 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 forgotten heroes. It was 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 and the New York Times. An 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 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, 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. Think of the today show short features, ad libbed interviews and multiple sponsor that still structures many talk shows 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 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 NationalMedia 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, 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 made 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 queen of endearing mush. 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 a dust pan 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 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 hours and hours of advanced research and preparation that she used and then made it seem as if it were just a chat between friends. Now, here are two more clips from the interview with Tallulah Bankhead which suggests the enthusiasm that Mary Margaret brought to her show each day. And this enthusiasm it takes a little getting used to. Ive listened to so many of these tapes. I know what its like. But i imagine if youre just hearing her for the first time, it might take a little getting used to. But i think these clips also show how much fun her guests had as well, although i cant claim that they were all quite as effusive as Tallulah Bankhead was about being on the show. And she replied, its all true. But my favorite story she tells herself i think is that the time when she was in boston at a party. I think youre referring to charles gave me a party. A friend of his. That was in providence, rhode island. A very grand old ladies, blueblood. Delightful, im sure. I made small talk. Trying to be as gracious as i could as a guest. When i left, she turned to a great friend of mine, also an old bostonian blueblood who, get away from that and go into this. And who had my exhusband, by the way, came out and said he was terrified, you know. He said, this dear old lady said to eddy, when is she going to do her stuff . He said, well, shes behaving. She says, oh, if thats the case, i cant say i cant say hell on the radio, can i . No. Well, excuse me. If shes going behave like everybody else, then im going home. Do you remember the time you substituted i dont know what youre going to ask me but you look so frightened. Ladies and gentlemen, she is glowing. Shes saying, do you remember . Im scared to death of what shes going ask me. Each day when Mary Margaret sat down in front of her microphone to broadcast her radio show, she kept a clear picture in her mind of her typical listener. This really guided me as an historian as i tried to think about the links between the radio performer and her audience. And heres what she said. When i am on the air, i imagine that i am talking to a young, married woman with a couple of children. A woman who at one time had a job and is still interested in the jobs of other people, the business world. So i talk about people who do things. The world at large. I try to give her the vicarious thrill of going places and meeting people. When i describe a restaurant where i had dinner, i try to look at it as she might. And share her enthusiasm. As the host herself put it, its her program, you see, not mine. And that connection stuck. And Mary Margaret was blessed with one of the most loyal radio audiences ever. Many of them listened to her for more than 20 years straight. Long enough so that their daughters who were youngsters in the 1930s when her show debuted could tune in as housewives with Young Children of their own at the height of the program in the early 1950s. These were active, not passive listeners. And the show was a vital part of everyday life for these women. Listeners structured their day around the program. They learned from it. And they supported it by buying the products that Mary Margaret promoted on the air. This is commercial radio so if she doesnt have sponsorships, theres no show. So once they opened the show with a familiar refrain of its 1 00 and here is Mary Margaret mcbride, her listeners entered into an intimate onetoone conversation with her and her guests that took them away from their ordinary lives for the next 45 minutes. The daughter of one loyal listener remembered, this is a quote, at the appropriate time my mother would curl up in her chaise lounge and all was well. A day for my mom was not complete without listening to Mary Margaret. Nothing, but nothing, interfered. And heres a recollection from another listener almost 50 years later. I was an athome mom in the 1950s. And all of those programs were a godsend to us. I think that was probably true of many other women at the time. These listeners recognized that Mary Margaret sincerely cared about them, wanted to be part of their lives, and always took them seriously. You really are different from some of those women on the air who patronize and talk down. You never talk down, wrote one fan. Like the soap operas which shared the daytime hours, mcbrides program focused on womens lives and values in a way that was rare in Popular Culture at the time. Even if society dismissed or rendered invisible womens contributions to their homes and families, Mary Margaret recognized and validated their hard work and commitment. Even though she herself never or had children, she reached out to and connected with women who had made those choices, offering them the opportunity to stretch their lives beyond the confines of their homebound existence through her daily show. Her basic respect for the complexities of modern womens lives, domestic lives, and womens simultaneous yearnings for connections with the broader public sphere was the core principle of her radio philosophy. Now, perhaps every radio talk show host forms a symbiotic relationship with her listeners. But there seems to be something tight about the bonds that developed between Mary Margaret mcbride and her millions of devoted fans. Even though the listeners rarely met in person remember, listening to the radio is often a solitary affair. They shared a deep bond through their shared a 70 of tuning in each day at 1 00 to listen to a radio host they considered a dear friend and practically a member of the family. Mary margaret a of listeners a link to a world of books, broadway shows, social issues, celebrities, all done with gusto and total sincerity. She was there for her listeners during the depression, the patriotic sacrifices of wartime, and the uncertainties of the cold war that followed. Celebrity,self a listeners felt she was someone they could see dropping by their homes and sharing a cup of tea and a piece of cake. Aphid appetite was very much part of the show. Her listeners wrote a voluminous amount of mail, which was not systematically kept. A lot of it was donated to scrap drives during world war ii. It wouldve presented a window on womens lives throughout the country. Historian, what if 3 million letters had been saved. Coming out ind be 30 years because i would still be reading them. The point i am making is her demonstratedity the level of intimacy and personal connection possible between listeners in a radio or some alley and fundamentally challenged any notion that radio listening was a passive activity. Her audience was just as much a factor in the show success as Mary Margarets guests or her own superb technique. Betweenbond that form Mary Margaret her listeners, nowhere was the loyalty more products,an in the which is how the sponsors who made her show possible for always described. She was very particular about which sponsor she would take on. Pass a personal taste test for her. She had to believe in the products before she endorsed them. Products play on the show is instead of just being a Necessary Evil where he would get up and it got a glass of water, listening to her to the products was actually fun. Its fun and funny often as the guests themselves. Would she be able to get them all in . Would Vincent Connolly hurry her along . Would she do a chunk of them in the middle of the show or leave the mall to the end . What timely stories would listeners have to share about their experience with the individual products . Commercialsto make interesting, suspenseful, timely, and persuasive. Anything. Could sell listeners were an important part of doing the products. Almost every show contained letters from listeners about certain products, how they had been used for a special party or as a source of an amusing anecdote. Here is a clip of Mary Margaret using listener letters to plug a soup. I brought a few of the comments that my middle western listeners sent in. A woman in chicago has written to me often. She says she tried many of the products because she liked the program. She said i wont try canned soup. There is no cant soup it for consumption. That was before last friday when i bravely brought home some onion soup. It was delicious. I went back and now she will keep them stocked here in stocked. The soup for about 15 years. There isnt anything you can tell me about it. My aunt in Michigan First told me about it. I thought it was some canadian dish. Its the better soup i can make. She calls it a foreign flavor. Doesnt that make you feel youd like to go and get all three soups that Good Housekeeping has put a seal on . It has been tasted and approved. In the three years that i have had it, i have certainly approved. You can write me if you already know about it and ask your grocer. In chicago we have added so many viewers because of those listeners. , i did something about it. I hope very much that you will. There are two sizes. Doesnt that make you want to go out and buy soup . Salmon,d do that for wax paper, gingerbread mix. She really could make anything sound like you just had to have it. One of the things i think is important about her and the connection with her audience is these are often new convenient foods being sold. She is helping her audience ok to buy is in fact a candidate soup rather than making it themselves. Its a good bargain in terms of the money. Its also a good bargain in terms of the housewives use of time. Because there is such a bond between of the radio host at her listeners, when she tells them to try new product, they will do it and grocers learned that if a new sponsor is added, they better make sure they have a supply of that. After the show is over, the listeners will be calling up and saying where is ask, why, or z . There is an important bond here. They trusted her so much and they knew she would not point them in the direction of a product that they would not find useful and a good bargain. It really is quite an moment in the history of advertising. Mary margaret ride once joked that she would die at the microphone. She continued to broadcast three times a week on a small cap to catskills station before her death in 1976. In 1976, that was five years after National Public radio went on the air. The link between her brand of sophisticated talk and reportage and npr shows like terry gross are unmistakable. Just a striking are the differences. Acceptance ofic commercial sponsorships, try and imagine terry gross enthusiastically plugging wax paper, soup, or Dolly Madison ice cream. Another direction talk radio has taken is shock radio, opinionated ranting on sports, politics, and social issues, usually by men. She would have deplored its lack of civility. There are clear parallels between todays callin programs and her program when thousands of fans regularly wrote to Mary Margaret to tell her their problems in their dreams and she shared those letters on the air, talk show hosts were connecting it through the seemingly impersonal medium of radio. Perhaps the closest contemporary parallel is the Television Talkshow host Oprah Winfrey. Oprah is often referred to by her first name. She has problems of her weight. Opinionated yet sympathetic, she connects with her audience through her own life in the lives of the guests on her show. Books are among her favorite topics and she runs a successful Production Company that produces her show and many other and the panic independent projects. There is much more link to the identity politics, oprah takes her audience as seriously and tries to address their needs. The line from early talkshow pioneer like Mary Margaret ride to Oprah Winfrey is not direct, the parallels are unmistakable. It is clear that Mary Margarets talkshow operated in more restrained times. Late 20th century confessional style of getting intouch is your feelings was not for her. Nor would have been for most members of her audience. When she shared details of her life, the stories were not butessions or revelations, more like interesting tidbits that she thought would interest her listeners. Remember back to her image of the housewives home who used to have a job and still wanted to know what was going on in the world. Their workted about in their lives, but touched on more private matters only with considerable reserve. Talkshow vision of a had a fundamentally different radios then its later and television incarnations, which developed needed confrontation to win ratings. She was more a facilitator and a conduit for ideas and information than a provocateur or therapist. There was no debate or confrontation on her show. Just oneonone conversations where she and her test set down and kept talking until the time was up. To understand her and understand her relevance to broadcast history in 20th century culture is necessary to go back to where it started. Margaret mcbrides career demonstrates the importance of women to radio and the importance of radio to women. The key to her success and remarkable longevity is her ability to use the intimacy of radio to draw her audience into an imagined community of listeners who participated in making the show meaningful to their lives. The radio host that her part from the studio and it was up to the listener to meet her half way. Unlike television, there were no images or visuals to distract their attention, only her warm friendly voice ringing information and stories and products into their homes over the airwaves. Elevating rather than pandering to the taste of the female a model, she provided of how Popular Culture can add a positive force in womens lives. It wasnt just a question of mastering the craft of radio. Mary margaret bride drew loyal audience because she met so many of her listeners needs. As an intermediary of the past and the more cosmopolitan values of modern times, she straddled gender roles. Through the literate but never overly erudite conversation on her program, she provided her audience with a model of what modern womanhood could be, confident, personable, and wellinformed. She validated womens contributions and stretched their minds to confront issues beyond the domestic realm, including some of the most vexing social issues of contemporary life, racial politics, feminism, antisemitis him, and global politics. Tot the media dismissed as o dealt with the complexities of modern life. Aging listener wants confided that he still liked to say to isple its 1 00 and here Mary Margaret mick ride, even though nobody knows what the hell i am talking about. Now perhaps they will. Thank you. [applause] i would be happy to answer questions. Do notes. D she didnt how did she do that . Susan i would find little scribble pieces. Mainly they would just be prompts. Remind listeners about the Dolly Madison party in larchmont. She really did go into it cold. She would have been up. She was very much a night person. She probably would have been up before,00 the night reading the book of the person she was interviewing. She could remember dialogue from it. She was able to keep drawing them out. Sometimes thethat people she was interviewing would develop fright and clam up. She learned to phrase the question in a way that of her tests couldnt tell the story, she could. Thats where her memory really comes in. I think there are two keys to her being such a good interviewer. One was growing up on a farm in listening to conversations she heard her mother talking to the women. The other was being a reporter. How she was able to use her training as a journalist made her such a good interviewer. Was she using that casual and informal style from the very beginning . Does the archive go back far enough . Did you develop into that . I would say she was always a warm presence on the radio. Is in the 30s when she was being martha dean, it was more just her. She would talk about things she had done. She didnt have as many guests. Me, ass interesting for i listen to shows from different parts of her career, i saw her developing what i call eight social conscience, especially during the 40s and 50s. She gets very involved in wartime patriotism in large part by her favorite guest who was eleanor roosevelt. Involved in postwar politics and civil rights. That kind of political consciousness or awareness is absent in the shows from the 1930s that have survived. Chatty. Much more about gets more serious as it goes along. It still keeps this light tone. This is not Walter Lippman or somebody like that. This is a conversation. Its a very highlevel conversation. When she and her National Broadcast . In 1954, she was only 55. It was early to be retiring. I think a lot of people thought that. She could have continued to stay on the air for a while longer. Was ill with cancer and she died three years later. The low was the one who held the program together. That personal reason for pulling back, i think it was getting harder for her area 20 years of her doing 15,000 shows every day. She thought she would maybe like to do something else. She hadnt tried television appeared one of my favorite chapters in the book is about her trying television. It was 1948. I thought the reason she would fail on television would be so obvious. She weighs 200 pounds. She is old. She is not going to make it. Its more complex than that. The intimacy of a oneonone conversation rather than all of these lights and things like that. Ability it cut into her to make people feel at ease and having watched some for television shows, its much harder to sustain 50 minutes of attention. On a radio show, having one or two guests is plenty. There were differences between the medium of radio and the medium of television. Why shethat explains was happier at radio than she was a television. If she had tried to keep this show going, she would have run topgainst the beginnings of 40 broadcasting and the soap operas were taking on even more of a role during daytime. There wasnt an audience for this kind of literate talk. Thats where we jump forward to npr. There are strong parallels there. Air. Dea was to be off the she wrote a cookbook. She did that. New yorkin a small station, she went back on the air. I think that kept her same. She loved it. Sometimes she would get guests from york to come in. She would have her local neighbor talk about how she grew squash. There is no such thing as an uninteresting guest. Its how you draw them out. There was a match between her and radio that really fit. There wasnt going to be a future for her in terms of the National Trend in radio. Another . Is there a list of all her interviews . Is that available . Ask the main archivist. It is possible to search. The programs we do have are in the catalog. The guests are all listed. You can get a good view of most of the programs that we have. Type listed my desk that we check also. Very oftens were structured where she would have a nationally known person at a local interesting person. Sometimes the names are difficult to find. The local person didnt write a book. Usually they were chairing a benefit. Sometimes they are hard to find. As a historian, i have written about so many characters in the 20th century. Througho encounter them pictures. It really is quite different when you listen to someones voice and hear them being interviewed, even someone like eleanor roosevelt. You get a different sense of her. There is a range of people and it gives you a different side to them. I have sent some people to the library of congress. You ought to go listen to her. Listen to marry margaret interview her and it will give you a broader appreciation of what your subject is like. That was one of the most fun things about doing the project. Not only getting to know Mary Margaret and learning the importance of radio, which i think we all know. It this brings it home. Encountering this cast of characters she had on her show, that was a great privilege and i hope i could encourage other people to do that. Its a good place to stop. Thank you again for coming. [laughter] thank you for choosing the line pray library of congress. You have given us a story about a character that is ms. Wellknown as she should be. Im sure the book is just as perceptive. You have put it in the cultural framework we appreciate. You said some important things about the resources of the library of congress. The radio resources, they are quite incredible. This is cosponsored by the Motion Picture broadcasting section. I dont know much about the radio resources. I thought what came out tonight thanks to you is important and i hope it will launch a new thread of research. I know a little bit about a single project brought to the library of congress, the Radio Research project. I have listened to some of those tapes. In a sense, i think we got frightened out of it project because one of the things that happened was when he brought his friends on for this year and a it was calledught american treasures. He said looking your attic. See which you have and bring it to the library of congress. Wed be happy to take it. That didnt last very long. It brought on this power of the radio directly. The library of congress was getting flooded with requests. Thats enough. Were moving to the book signing now. We can talk with our author and conclude the final round of applause. [applause] youre watching American History tv all weekend, every weekend on cspan3 to join the conversation, like us on facebook. Were standing on the ground of fort anderson, while the forts on the Cape Fear River past the protecting city of wilmington. We speak to an author about the history of the fort