Mary Margaret McBride(1899-1976)
- Writer
Missouri-born Mary Margaret McBride was a 1919 journalism graduate of
the University of Missouri. She worked as a reporter for a Cleveland
newspaper, then moved to New York and got a job as a reporter for the
New York Evening Mail. In 1924 she began writing freelance, and her
work appeared in many of the top magazines of the day. She also wrote a
number of best-selling travel books, and in 1934 began her career as a
radio broadcaster, hosting an advice show for women on a New York radio
station using the pseudonym "Martha Deane," a grandmotherly type who
projected kindness and a common-sense wit, and the broadcast proved
tremendously popular. In 1935 she began another weekly radio program,
this time using her own name, which consisted mainly of her views on
the times and interviews with popular celebrities of the era, and this
program also proved to be hugely popular--so much so, in fact, that it
ran for several years on each of the three major radio networks, as
they kept hiring her away from each other. In addition to her radio
shows, she also wrote a syndicated newspaper column and continued to
write magazine articles. In 1948 she tried her hand at hosting a
television show using the same type of commentary/interview format that
proved so successful on radio, but the show turned out to be a rather
large flop and was canceled after three months. Her radio programs
still proved to be tremendously popular, though, and in the last days
of her life she hosted the show from her own living room. She died in
West Shokan, New York, in 1976.