The First Lady of Radio (4 page)

Many of the scripts for Eleanor Roosevelt's radio broadcasts are archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York. But the paper record is far from complete. When giving a public address before a crowd or group, ER frequently spoke from brief notes or completely extemporaneously. If the speech was being broadcast nationally—as many of hers were—it is often the case that no transcript was produced, or at least did not survive. ER's commercial programs were all scripted in advance. Most of these are preserved at the FDR library. Many scripts are clearly the copies that ER used on the air. Like any radio professional, she often made last-minute word changes by hand. Hers is a distinctive and sometimes hard-to-decipher scrawl.

Piecing together a complete and authoritative list of ER's radio appearances may be impossible. She was on the radio so frequently—often as a guest on local and national programs hosted by others—that no central count appears to have been made; references to her radio broadcasts keep popping up in local newspapers and other sources.

It was sometimes a challenge for ER to fit the radio broadcasts into her crowded daily schedule. She traveled the country tirelessly, both for her own purposes and to report back to FDR on real-world social conditions during depression and war. ER's radio contracts stipulated that her broadcasts might originate from the nearest radio station as well as network studios in New York or Washington. In July 1934, ER broadcast the first of her Selby Shoe programs from Chicago, after a busy day at the Chicago Century of Progress International Exposition. In June
1937, she left the receiving line at the Delaware wedding of her son, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., just long enough to make a broadcast for Pond's and slip back to the festivities.

Unlike her husband, Eleanor Roosevelt was not considered a radio natural, at least not at first.
Variety
panned her initial series of commercial broadcasts as “social register ballyhoo.” It said ER “speaks rather banally and abstractly—and is perhaps not the best mike voice.”
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In 1935,
Radio Guide
said “her work before the microphone left much to be desired.”
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Her voice, initially, was criticized for being too high-key. So she hired a voice coach and practiced. In 1940,
Movie and Radio Guide
ranked ER number two of radio orators; FDR was number one. By 1945, ER was praised in the
New York Times
as a model speaker, with a “kindly” voice and “smooth delivery.”
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ER churned out a lot of words: a daily newspaper column, dozens of radio scripts, thousands of letters, speeches, lectures, essays and magazine articles, and twenty-seven books. Occasionally an advertising agency or one of the organizations she was representing would offer a draft script for her to consider. ER always insisted, however, that she was the final author of all the material connected to her name. In much of her day-to-day writing, ER appeared to spend little time on close revision. She often dictated pieces to her secretary, Malvina Thompson. In many of the radio scripts, whole sections were crossed out, a common practice to shorten the program after rehearsal so it would fit the allotted time.

By contrast, FDR and his speechwriters might labor over one of his Fireside Chats through many drafts. FDR aide and speechwriter Samuel Rosenman remembered: “The preparation of some of the speeches or messages took as many as ten days, and very few took less than three.”
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FDR also conserved his use of the chats for times of crisis or political urgency. Many average citizens wrote to him asking that he appear more often on the radio, even weekly. But Roosevelt held back. While
he appeared hundreds of times on radio, it was most often while at some kind of event, such as dedicating a bridge, addressing the Boy Scouts, or campaigning for office. The Fireside Chats were different. FDR spoke slowly and directly to the American people. The nation responded by supporting his policies and electing him four times.
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On more than a dozen occasions, Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt appeared on the radio on the same day, often broadcasting from different cities. They rarely appeared together on the same radio programs, and these broadcasts were generally from such public events as the laying of a cornerstone for a building. It seems they never reached into American homes, as a pair, in the kind of intimate broadcast they both specialized in separately; ER never sat down with FDR by the radio fireside.

It is unclear how closely FDR or his administration paid attention to ER's radio work. Some of his aides and cabinet members worried about potential political fallout when ER addressed racial prejudice or other controversial topics. In an autobiography published after FDR's death, ER said, “He never asked me to refrain from speaking my own mind.”
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But in 1936, the
New Yorker
reported that FDR either instructed or asked ER to decline a series of thirteen commercial broadcasts. “He has put his foot down several other times, too. We don't know what the objections have been,” the article said.
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It was an election year in 1936, and ER kept a markedly low radio profile. She did no commercial broadcasting that year, and made far fewer unpaid radio appearances than in other years.

In 1939, columnist Arthur Krock discerned an increasing level of coordination between FDR's political agenda and ER's statements and writings. They were clearly a “political team,” he wrote.
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Blanche Wiesen Cook points out that while FDR rarely acknowledged ER's influence, he encouraged her to engage in the public debate on issues. Cook writes: “She served as a sounding board and a front runner. He knew he could restrain her, but he rarely tried.”
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Samuel Rosenman
said ER would often read a draft of the president's speeches, and was “very helpful” on scripts related to youth, education, or consumer interests.
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Joseph Loviglio contends that FDR's radio speeches tended to emphasize national unity, while ER's radio talks emphasized diversity and respect for social, cultural, and gender differences. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin observes that the Roosevelts were extraordinary political allies, and that they relied on each other to achieve their separate, sometimes parallel, goals. Goodwin writes, “She was the agitator, he was the politician.”
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FDR died on April 12, 1945, just a few months into his fourth term as president. When her coffee-sponsored program ended in 1942, ER had ceased doing commercial radio broadcasts for the duration of the war. But during wartime she appeared frequently on radio to promote the Allied effort. Less than a month after FDR's death, on May 8, 1945, ER made a brief broadcast to mark V-E Day. In the following months and years, ER would be deeply involved in building public support for the United Nations. In December 1945, US President Harry S. Truman appointed ER as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. She played a central role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Historian Allida Black observes that once ER was “freed from the constraints of the White House,” she challenged American liberals to fight harder for civil rights, civil liberties, and world cooperation.
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Three years after the death of her husband, ER resumed her commercial broadcasting work. In 1948–49, she appeared on a daily American Broadcasting Company (ABC) radio program with her daughter, Anna Roosevelt. It was called
The Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt Show.
Anna hosted while her mother checked in from various parts of the country and the world. Topics ranged from homey subjects to international relations. In 1950, ER teamed up with her son Elliott for a daily, forty-five-minute program on NBC. The 12:30 p.m. slot became
available when veteran daytime broadcaster Mary Margaret McBride switched from NBC to ABC. It was a peculiar rivalry—if it even was a contest—because ER and McBride were old friends and even appeared on each other's programs. In the course of 233 broadcasts, Eleanor and Elliott Roosevelt interviewed a wide range of notables, from the colorful actress Tallulah Bankhead to author John Steinbeck to D-Day hero Gen. Omar Bradley. Critics praised Mrs. Roosevelt's performance but lamented her son's sometimes crass readings of commercial announcements that linked ER with the product being pitched.

Like many other radio veterans, ER made early forays into television. She both hosted and appeared on current-events programs. But radio was a more familiar and natural fit. The intimacy and reach of network radio helped ER humanize and expand the conventional dimensions of the first lady's role. Many people hated her and her husband. But millions of Americans came to regard Eleanor Roosevelt as a frequent and welcome guest in their homes, sitting down next to the radio as if they were sitting next to her. In 1940, one of those listeners was Rosa Allen in Long Beach, California. Allen wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt, “No other First Lady of the Land has ever thought [to] give quite so much attention to the people at large, and I want to assure you that this has brought you very near the hearts of most of us.”
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In 1934, Marie Hurley wrote to say that, as a “shut-in at the age of 84,” she was blessed to be able to hear the voice of “the most remarkable woman, who has to my knowledge, ever occupied the White House.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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Dr. Maude E. Bleakmey cabled from Beaver, Pennsylvania, to say, “Bravo. Keep up the good work. Truth bows to no man's shrine.”
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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.”
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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.”
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