Finding Betty Crocker

by Susan Marks

  Unlikely Hero

  But Betty’s holiday cheer could stretch only so far. Her loyal correspondents were frequently moved to confessions of despair. To be sure, the war ushered in a special brand of abysmal insecurity, as women reeled not only from the shock of a worldwide crisis, but from the very real possibility of losing their husbands, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. Wartime letters to Betty Crocker numbered in the thousands daily. Some contained devastating accounts of loved ones missing in action. Others simply asked what citizens could do to help win the war. Women often hoped Betty would take a special interest in news of their sons’ successful flying missions, medals, or impending return from combat. Betty replied to each and every note with sympathetic encouragement and a congratulatory comment on the strength of American women. To a woman whose son and husband were both serving, Betty wrote:

  Millions of us are praying for this awful war to end so all these young people serving their country so unselfishly may come home to peace and happiness. And I understand, too, how much you and your husband long to return to your little Cape Cod house on the coast of Maine! But how wonderful that he could serve his country again in this time of need! You and your loved ones have had a big part of this “war to end all wars!”

  Cordially,

  Betty Crocker

  Many of the wartime letters sent to Betty echoed the concerns of millions of women trying to “do their part.”

  In regard to Home Defense, my idea is that we women should concentrate on the proper nutrition of our families. In this way we will have more strong bodies, sharp eyes and steady nerves. We should see to it that every American citizen is supplied with foods, well balanced and abundant. In this way we can help our nation greatly in meeting any emergency of Home Defense.

  *

  I feel that the home, church and schools must work together. In so doing, I find satisfaction and happiness. To me, this is more vital than being in an assembly line. This is my contribution for a better world.

  *

  I have nine children, four married and gone, five still at home, so housekeeping is my war job.

  *

  Teach us the best, most wholesome, least expensive foods and food values for individual health—and we’ll show you how we homemakers can bend our wills and our hearts and our very best efforts to aid those we love—and the country we love will profit by it. We each want to help—many of us don’t know how—if someone can give us the tools and teach us how to use them wisely, I know that every homemaker, however inglorious her position may seem by comparison, will be the power by which all else moves and has its being.

  *

  I’m so sorry that I can’t listen to your program any more Betty Crocker, I got myself a job in a defense plant to help end this thing.

  The Betty Crocker Home Legion

  The richer the dialogue between American women and Betty Crocker, the more convinced Marjorie Husted became of the need for proper recognition of homemaking. Husted believed every woman was essentially a homemaker, regardless of whether she held a paying job, because the brunt of the cooking and housework was hers to bear. With the strength of millions of letters behind her, in 1944 Husted created the Betty Crocker American Home Legion Program. Over the radio, Betty Crocker proclaimed the Legion’s mission statement, and solicited enrollment:

  BETTY CROCKER I do hope you’ll take the time to let me know how you feel about my idea of banding together in a Home Legion to see that more recognition is given to homemakers for their contribution in the world. I can’t tell you what an inspiration it is to me to get letters such as this, from a friend in Jasper, Indiana:

  WOMAN ’ S VOICE … What these women need is to have their lives glorified—into the glamorous thing it is. If a woman is staying home with her children instead of going off to work in a war plant, she [too] is making a very important contribution to her country and should be told so. If she succeeds in rearing her children in a real home with a loving mother who is always willing to share her time with her children, she is surely going deeper into the real joys of life than the woman who must park her family on someone else to rear. Please keep up the good work of glorifying the home!

  Seventy thousand Betty Crocker American Home Legion members received a copy of the Homemakers Creed, suitable for framing.

  BETTY CROCKER Now perhaps some of you may have suggestions as to how we can all work together to glorify home life and to show the importance of homemaking…. Industry has developed a system of recognition for men. And men have the stimulus of competition with others doing the same type of thing they’re doing. But women in their own homes usually are working alone without that sort of stimulus—without the recognition of having salary raises or having the boss tell them they’ve done a good job—and without being cited as an example to others…. And during the war years, you women have been doing double. Farm women have been taking the place of one or more hired men to produce the food to win the war. City women have gone into war plants and taken over war activities all along the line to help hold the home front safe and secure until our boys return. And in addition, most of these women are carrying on home duties too, working long hard hours to cover them all.

  To further the cause of women’s much-deserved recognition and moral support, Betty counted on listener feedback via written registration. There was no charge to join. Once registered, Betty invited each woman to complete a homemaking questionnaire detailing the goals Betty laid out on air. Legionnaires were eligible for prizes such as war bonds, and all received a copy of the Betty Crocker Homemaker’s Creed (suitable for framing, of course).

  The Homemakers Creed scroll does a lot for my home front morale. Whenever I glance at it, it reminds me of my duty to my home, my family and myself. I am a homemaker and proud of it. In fact, my Homemakers Scroll means more to me than my Bachelor and Master of Arts sheepskins.

  *

  I want to thank you for the Homemaker’s Creed. I think it is so nice and means so much to me. I never realized home could be such a heavenly place until I heard your program. It really has done wonders for me and I love it. You must be a grand person.

  The Betty Crocker American Home Legion Program inspired cultlike devotion, its ranks swelling to more than 700,000 women. Legionnaires and prospective members readily shared some of their most private thoughts with Betty:

  Betty Crocker, I feel the need for the Home Legion very keenly-since through an unhappy atmosphere, and poor cooking, I lost my husband to another woman.

  *

  I think I also have been more interested in my home since I have joined your Home Legion. It has given me a little thrill inside to know that I could join such a club.

  *

  This letter is going to be filled with headaches but if I tell you just how it is, I think (I hope) you will be able to help me. To begin with, I am one of the poorest housekeepers there is. I have two children, and I never have any time for them. I’m short-tempered with them too. In fact, I never have time for anything. I can cook enough to get by, but that is all. It never looks nice, and no one seems to enjoy it. It seems I’m always working, but the house is always a mess. I know I’m dumping a big load in your lap. But I do wish you could help me. Please send me anything you have that will get me straightened out. No one can blame my husband for being disgusted—I don’t. That is why I want and need your help.

  *

  I was one who was beginning to believe that I had missed my calling so to speak, in the round of everyday homemaking. Thanks so much for the lift your Home Legion has already given me.

  *

  I’m very much interested in your Home Legion project and sincerely hope you can accomplish wonders with the average homemaker. Your Home Legion has given me real encouragement in my work.

  *

  Dear Miss Crocker, may I add my two cents, so the saying goes, about your Home Legion? The service you are giving housewives is marvelous. I must say you boost my morale 100% whenever I hear
you.

  In Betty’s world, Mom and homemade apple pie were heralded as American treasures worth fighting for. The celebration of homemaking is often interpreted as reinforcing the role as women’s best—and preferably only—aspiration. Yet, Betty Crocker’s messages were never quite that simplistic. In the words of one letter writer, the Home Legion Program was “the finest thing that had ever been done for the American home-maker.” For Betty’s ever growing staff of career-minded women, this accolade was not a stopping point, but rather a challenge-to assess homemaking’s precarious place on the edge of societal consciousness, to address the needs and the concerns of every kind of “working woman.”

  Keeping the Home Fires Burning

  In 1945, the Office of War Information (OWI) enlisted Betty as the daily host of Our Nation’s Rations on NBC radio. This four-month noncommercial venture explored home defense, the purchase of war bonds, Red Cross blood drives, consumer conservation, and other common home-front topics. Betty Crocker interviewed soldiers, civic leaders, nutrition experts, and government officials and their wives, and she updated listeners on worldwide food shortages and procedures for sending Christmas packages overseas. On March 14, 1945, the Our Nation’s Rations broadcast began with the song: “Keep the Home Fires Burning.”

  ANNOUNCER Are Americans doing their part on the Home Front? What do you think? Betty Crocker thinks that the majority of them are—and she’s here now to tell you why. As you know, she’s one of America’s best-known food authorities—so you can depend on her for some worthwhile suggestions that will help you make the most of your share of our nation’s rations. She comes to you through the courtesy of National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Office of War Information….

  BETTY CROCKER When people are skeptical of whether American civilians are doing their part in the war—when someone asks a question as to how many women are really doing their share-I always wish they could see the letters from my radio friends, for they reveal how many know that this is the time for greatness! Older women are caring for their grandchildren while the mother does war work—younger women have gone into war plants and into the armed services. And all you homemakers have gardened for victory—and canned. And you’ve salvaged tin, and fats—and you have established meat stretching and sugar saving habits. You have saved and saved—and gone without. Upon you have fallen the brunt of these routines, daily, humdrum activities. They don’t bring medals or parades with cheering crowds, but there is no greater patriotism—there is no truer greatness—than giving of yourself constantly, day after day, in these simple inglorious tasks….

  The Golden Era of Betty Crocker

  The government placed its faith in Betty Crocker above all others to reach, educate, and influence American women and, to a larger extent, the entire nation. Betty was simultaneously accessible and untouchable. In war as well as in peace, her arsenal of helpful tips and recipes was unparalleled. Betty overshadowed other home service spokespersons, real or invented. But her vast achievements did not deter the competition from vying for a piece of Betty’s pie.

  Competitors were willing to pay top dollar for any successful approximation of the Betty mystique. During her Golden Era, would-be Bettys, each name safer-sounding and each face more homogeneous-looking than the last, paraded before Mrs. Consumer. Martha Logan for Swift meats, Mary Alden for Quaker Enriched Flour, Jane Ashley for Karo Syrup and Linit Starch, Nancy Haven for Western Beet Sugar, Anne Marshall (later Carolyn Campbell) for Campbell Soup, Martha Meade for Sperry products, Mary Lynn Woods for Fleischmann’s Yeast, Aunt Jenny for Spry Shortening, Mary Lee Taylor for PET Milk, Ann Page for A&P retail stores, Sue Swanson for Swanson’s, Kay Kellogg for Kellogg Cereals, Virginia Roberts for Occident Flour, for General Mills’ chief rival, Pillsbury Flour, Mary Ellis Ames (later Ann Pillsbury, though Ann never had a face)—competed for consumer dollars and brand loyalty.

  Postwar ad for Betty’s labor-saving Pyequick.

  Betty Crocker partnered with Wesson Oil, Spam, and Carnation Evaporated Milk for this postwar Dutch Pantry Pie ad campaign.

  These label ladies churned out recipe booklets, hosted homemaking radio shows, and answered consumer mail, just as Betty did. But lacking the cult of personality that surrounded Betty, her competitors faded into obscurity. As a brand icon in a class by herself, Betty Crocker had qualities—and secrets—her sisters could not buy or borrow, copy or steal.

  Necessity is often credited as the mother of invention, but competition may be a close second. Betty’s unprecedented success is responsible, in part, for launching the most famous baking contest in American history—the Pillsbury Bake-Off. According to an unpublished manuscript from one of the founders of Leo Burnett, a key advertising agency used by Pillsbury:

  Now that all the new Pillsbury activity was in full flight, thoughts in 1949 began to turn to the bellwether of all Pillsbury products: Pillsbury’s Best Flour. Although it had been in stores since Lincoln was President, it was strictly second fiddle to General Mills’ Gold Medal Flour. Why was Gold Medal such a leading seller? Because it was backed by the claim “Kitchen-tested by Betty Crocker” and supported by a constant stream of home service aids from Miss Crocker. This was one of the greatest concepts of all time and clearly indicated that you had to constantly help the housewife with recipe ideas and procedures if you expected to sell family flour. Furthermore, it meant that an entirely new form of home service had to be created if Pillsbury hoped to compete…. Instead of creating recipes (Betty Crocker) and supplying them to women, the process was reversed. The women created the recipes and sent them to us for the use of all women just like themselves.

  The Betty-like Martha Meade for Sperry Flour.

  One of Betty’s fiercest competitors, Ann Pillsbury for Minneapolis-based Pillsbury flour, didn’t even have a face.

  In her newspaper column, Eleanor Roosevelt championed the Bake-Off as a “highly American” contest that “reaches far down into the lives of the housewives of America.” Yet General Mills had news of its own. In its survey of homemakers conducted around the time of the Bake-Off debut, 44.3 percent of participants named Betty Crocker the “most helpful” home economics personality. Aunt Jenny, Betty’s fiercest competition, came in a distant 5.6 percent, followed by the Ladies’ Home Journal food editor, Ann Batchelder, at 4.1 percent. Ann Pillsbury rounded out the top four, at 2.7 percent.

  America‘s First Lady of Food

  The war years and the decade that followed were Betty Crocker’s sweetest era. During the war, her mail volume shot up to 4,000 to 5,000 letters daily. By comparison, the popular radio personality Mary Margaret McBride received approximately 5,000 letters weekly.

  Betty’s visibility, or “impression” in marketing terms, shifted from lifelike to larger-than-life. So extensive was her popularity that a wartime poll showed Betty Crocker was known in nine out of ten homes across the nation. And in 1945, Fortune magazine called Betty Crocker the second most popular woman in America, trailing behind only Eleanor Roosevelt. The piece went on to hail Betty affectionately as America’s First Lady of Food.

  In 1945, Fortune magazine called Betty Crocker the second best known woman in America—second only to Eleanor Roosevelt. General Mills helped spread the word in a full-page ad.

  As fond as Fortune seemed to be of Betty, in the glowing profile the publication had no qualms about delving into her quasi-secrets. The magazine publicly “outed” Betty, calling her “purely imaginary” and divulged her net worth: “$1 on the General Mills accounting books.” The exposé might well have damaged Betty’s pristine reputation—as her company must have been aware. But apparently they were confident that Betty’s public cared more about her service than her true identity. As it happened, Betty’s news didn’t stop her adoring fans from buying her products, listening to her radio shows, and writing her letters.

  Kitchen Dystopia

  As peacetime came, Betty Crocker had her own cause for cele-bration: nearly a quarter-century spent with Mr
s. American Homemaker. As the thrifty rationing of the war years gave way to postwar consumerism, General Mills called on her to rally the troops anew. Selling Mrs. Consumer was the task of the day, and Betty’s work was cut out for her. The latest ideal had American women setting up housekeeping with ex-G.I’s in sprawling new suburbs, with the latest electrical appliances. Neighborhoods were pristine and middle-class. Well-adjusted children greeted Father as he arrived home from work, while Mother efficiently tended to the family in a starched dress, tidily coiffed hair, and high heels. Everyone was happy, or so it seemed.

  In the era of postwar abundance, Betty Crocker’s name increasingly appeared on prepackaged food items.

  The glossy images of this era, epitomized by early black-and-white television shows like Leave It to Beaver and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, come straight from central casting. Only a Norman Rockwell painting could be so selectively “perfect,” especially when it came to the day-to-day lives of women. After the war, many working women were instructed to relinquish their jobs to veterans and resume their domestic stations. At the moment when patriotic pride easily trumped any impulse toward gender equality, women were left with little recourse than to enact what the editors of House Beautiful called the “biggest morale job in history” on their combat-weary husbands. Women’s sudden loss of wartime independence bred disturbing new trends in depression and substance abuse.