Finding Betty Crocker

by Susan Marks

  Pre-McMein version of Betty Crocker.

  The first official portrait of Betty Crocker, created by Neysa McMein in 1936.

  General Mills vice president Sam Gale was known as the “father of Betty Crocker.”

  While McMein’s Betty, with her serious, remote expression, may reflect the cares of her era, Betty’s admirers were simply and instantly smitten. “You look exactly like I thought you would!” one woman excitedly wrote to Betty upon first glimpse. Letter after letter poured out enthusiasm for the long-awaited sight of Betty’s face on food packaging and in print advertisements. Exuding authority, confidence, and an eagerness to help her customers, Betty seemed every inch a real woman.

  In the press, Betty was pegged as “an ageless 32.” While McMein’s technique (she was known for her work with pastels) may have softened her features, most would agree that thirty-two is a bit of a stretch. No matter. Endowed with a voice, a personality—some would say a heart—and now a recognizable face, Betty Crocker took a step closer to lifelike status.

  To date, McMein’s Betty Crocker is the longest-running portrait, having survived almost twenty years. The wardrobe palette McMein devised—vivid red with white accents—has never been altered in any subsequent official portrait. Yet many unofficial visions of Betty remain tucked away in the recesses of the General Mills archives. Several interpretations of the McMein paintings reveal at least half a body, as Betty sits to serve food at a table or stands at her recipe files. She smiles broadly in one version and wears a green-and-white outfit in another. During the 1940s and the early 1950s, several of these variations found their way into recipe booklets, packaging, and print advertising campaigns. McMein’s distinctive style offers artistic insurance. Her subject, perfectly poised for a cup of coffee and a chat, is unmistakably Betty Crocker.

  As Seen on TV

  By 1948—just three years after Betty Crocker was named the second most popular woman in America—a million American homes had television sets. Betty was already a multimedia star in Hollywood and on radio; it was only a matter of time before she conquered television. And with television sales expanding by 600 percent that year—to a total of 2 million sets nationwide by August—the moment was fast approaching.

  But who would play Betty? General Mills’ James S. Fish, who in 1955 would be elevated to advertising director, was highly involved in the selection process. “I want to be remembered as the guy who fought for Betty Crocker,” Fish was quoted as saying. The logical leading candidates were the many actresses who over the years had given Betty her radio voice—Zella Layne, Betty Bucholz, and Adelaide Hawley. Each was invited to screen-test for the part.

  None of the actresses resembled McMein’s Betty—Hawley, for example, was “stunningly blonde.” Yet Hawley offered a particularly intriguing intangible, “a dream in her eyes all women will be quick to recognize.” Audiences spotted it immediately, awarding Hawley’s screen tests top marks, and landing her, along with understudies Madelon Mitchell and Jane Webb, the role of a lifetime. “I am the current incarnation of a corporate image,” Hawley told the press.

  From 1950 to 1958, Hawley as Betty starred in several cooking shows and variety programs. Her half-hour Betty Crocker Show aired on CBS from 1950 to 1952, followed by the Betty Crocker Star Matinee and Bride and Groom, both for ABC, in 1952. There was also Time for Betty Crocker, a fifteen-minute dramatization of letters to Betty. In 1952, Hawley made television history by appearing as Betty Crocker in CBS’s very first color commercial (CBS’s color technology had been approved as the national standard in October 1950). Betty Crocker even made the cast list of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. From 1955 to 1958—seasons five through eight of the series—Betty took her cue from such lines as “I don’t know how to bake a cake, Gracie, but here is Betty Crocker to show us how.” Live, during the sponsor breaks, Hawley “taught” Burns and Allen to use a simple and easy Betty Crocker cake mix. Hawley—playing it straight—seamlessly contributed to the famous couple’s comedy routine, consoling Allen on her poor cooking skills, assuring her that even she could succeed with Betty Crocker products.

  Several actresses and home economists played the role of Betty Crocker on radio and television, but Adelaide Hawley stole the spotlight with her memorable television appearances on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.

  Betty’s years on the small screen coincided with the exponential growth of television; in 1950, 8 million American homes had sets; in 1958, the figure was 41 million. But Betty’s television shows never came close to equaling her radio programs, either commercially or financially. By the late 1950s, they had all been canceled in favor of commercial spots. Hawley’s association with General Mills ended in 1964; she went on to earn a doctoral degree in speech education from New York University in 1967. Upon Hawley’s passing in 1998, General Mills eulogized, “Certainly she was a broadcasting pioneer and probably the most visible Betty of all time.”

  The Business End of Betty‘s Spoon

  Betty—who, between Marjorie Child Husted and Adelaide Hawley, was not unfamiliar with stand-ins—was spelled in 1954 by a different sort of pinch hitter, a red spoon logo embellished with her signature. The design firm Lippincott & Margulies was hired by General Mills to create this visual shorthand for Betty’s image, trademark, and customer services. Given a prominent place on Betty Crocker food packaging, the red spoon befits Bettys longtime association with the kitchen, and the mixing done there every day. With its smooth and rounded dimensions, the spoon is universally suitable for infants and adults, unlike the sharp-edged knife or pointy-pronged fork. And, unlike the human representation of Betty, a spoon has no wardrobe or hairstyle to go out of date. A 1988 Forbes profile strongly hinted at the corporate tensions surrounding Betty’s perpetual portrait makeovers. “Of the two”—Betty’s face and the logo—“the red spoon is the more attractive,” one executive joked anonymously. Today the red spoon graces more than 200 products.

  Actress Adelaide Hawley as Betty Crocker films a television spot.

  Grandma Betty

  Around the time Betty made her television debut, McMein’s Betty fell from grace. The discrepancies between Betty as seen on TV and Betty as seen on cake mix boxes were just far too great. Extensive market research conducted in 1953 by the psychologists Ernest Dichter and Burleigh Gardner concluded that a Depression-era Betty did not suit the new prosperous postwar America. An elaborate two-year search for the perfect new Betty Crocker ensued. By 1954, six commissioned artists, including Norman Rockwell, painted their interpretations of America’s First Lady of Food. The six portraits, plus McMein’s version and a portrait of Adelaide Hawley, were presented to a cross-section of 1,600 homemakers, who were asked to consider: Would you want her as a friend? Does she look honest? Does she look like a housewife or a career woman? Does she look relaxed or tense? The photograph of Hawley placed a high third, Rockwell’s version came in a close second, and the artist Hilda Taylor’s rendition of Betty Crocker took the proverbial cake.

  Taylor’s Betty, unveiled in 1955, is the version that many Baby Boomers fondly remember from childhood. The new Betty appeared older, friendlier, softer-looking, and more grandmotherly. Like McMein’s version, Taylor’s Betty is wearing red and white; her eyes are blue, her hair streaked with gray. In stark contrast is Taylor’s transformation of Betty’s complexion to ruddy and glowing. Taylor painted a series of Betty Crocker portraits, at least three of which were used officially by General Mills. In one version, Betty is smiling, but with a closed mouth. In another, Betty is showing some teeth, with a broad, bright smile. The third and final version—Betty in three-quarter profile—captures in Betty’s sidelong glance some of the same mystique suggested in McMein’s version. Taylor’s neighbor and friend Muriel Wadsworth posed for the portrait and has spent a lifetime hearing that there is something strangely familiar about her face.

  Norman Rockwell and five other artists were commissioned to paint new portraits of Betty Crocker for public selec
tion in 1955.

  Dramatic Departures

  Taylor’s Grandma Betty reigned for ten years, but in the 1960s was undone by America’s growing glorification of youth. In 1964, Mercedes Bates became the new director of the Betty Crocker Kitchens; one of her first acts was to plan the dethroning of Queen Betty for a younger Princess Betty. Bates’s reasoning was simple: Betty Crocker was out-of-date and her matronly image was inaccessible to younger customers. “Aside from the fact that copies of the portrait hang in some of our sales offices and in the main lobby, we have moved farther and farther away from the presentation of a real live Betty Crocker figure. It’s a change in the times … because since the radio days, we have never really personified Betty Crocker.”

  Bates engaged her former staff at McCall’s to make over Betty Crocker. A model who looked like Taylor’s Betty was flown from Minneapolis to New York, where top beauty professionals cut and dyed her hair, then updated its style, along with her makeup, clothes, and jewelry. Countless photographs of the model in her Betty best were handed over to a McCall’s illustrator, Joe Bowler, who was charged with creating a Betty Crocker fit for a new generation.

  Hilda Taylor’s portrait (one of three she made) was deemed the best suited to Betty’s persona.

  Taylor’s 1955 Betty Crocker portrait shows some teeth.

  Taylor’s 1955 profile of Betty Crocker.

  In 1965, Bowler introduced a “dramatic departure” from Bettys past. With a few strokes of the paintbrush, Betty lost ten to fifteen years and pounds, gaining sophistication and polish. She wears a red suit with three strands of white pearls around her neck, à la Jacqueline Kennedy. Her dark brown hair has auburn highlights, and her grays are gone. Her perfectly oval face just hints at a smile. Most distinctly, Betty Crocker does not look as if she spends any time at all in the kitchen—at the symphony, perhaps, but not in the kitchen. One writer suggested that it would be more appropriate to call her “Elizabeth rather than Betty.” It’s hard to say if younger homemakers related to this Betty, especially since her image was rarely used on food packages and advertisements. Instead, General Mills’ advertisers favored the simplicity and easy recognition of the red spoon with Betty’s signature.

  Nevertheless, Betty was updated again four years later. James S. Fish, who by this time had succeeded Sam Gale as the company’s advertising director, maintained that updating Betty’s portrait was the best way to keep Betty Crocker alive, vibrant, and attuned to the modern generation. Again, Bates consulted her McCall’s colleagues for advice on hair, makeup, and fashion, inviting Bowler to update Betty Crocker but not reinvent her. After careful consideration, Betty Crocker’s creative team instructed Bowler to take the “bubble” out of her hairstyle, ditch the pearls, add an ascot, lighten up the lipstick, emphasize the eyes, and deemphasize the eyebrows.

  Bowler’s modified Betty, completed in 1969, met with mixed reviews. Bowler’s 1969 Betty (often misdated as 1968), has a softer look with more-tanned skin. One journalist referred in retrospect to the 1969 Betty as a “dead ringer for Mary Tyler Moore.” Though her expression is vaguely sensuous and the set of her eyes uneven, this Betty never deviates from the traditions of her sisters—red-and-white dress, brown hair, and blue eyes. Betty’s earrings are by Monet—then a subsidiary of General Mills—and her overall style reflects a fashionable 1960s alternative to hippie chic. As with McMein’s Betty, there is a ghostly antiquated quality to the way the edges of her suit disappear into a milky white background. While not a stranger to the kitchen, neither does this version of Betty look intimately acquainted with the place.

  Betty Crocker’s 1965 “presidential” portrait update, by magazine illustrator Joe Bowler.

  Betty Crocker’s 1969 (often misdated as 1968) portrait update, by Bowler.

  By 1972, plans were under way for yet another makeover, the third in seven years. The creative staff behind Betty’s last two updates decided that a new portrait was long overdue, given that more women than ever before were graduating from colleges and universities, establishing careers in the paid workforce, and participating in politics. Accordingly, emphasis was to be placed on the American woman’s significant role outside the home. Consultation with trend experts yielded a more businesslike look for Betty Crocker. But before General Mills could go public with the new portrait, a made-for-media protest tarnished Betty’s otherwise squeaky-clean image.

  Betty Crocker at Large

  In July 1972, the Minneapolis-St. Paul chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW) filed a class action complaint against General Mills, charging that Betty Crocker’s portrait was both racist and sexist. According to NOW’s attorney, “Betty Crocker is an image that women are expected to live up to—a stereotyped image. She is not an image that many women can identify with.” Betty Crocker’s Caucasian representation was viewed by NOW as discriminatory toward minority women. The outspoken Minneapolis journalist Barbara Flanagan responded in her column, “To me and to most women, Betty Crocker is just another advertising gimmick. I find it no more threatening to my ego than the Campbell Kids.” She questioned NOW’s priorities and wondered out loud why the organization wasn’t targeting Julia Child for being a white woman who cooks. Several more local journalists echoed Flanagan’s sentiments, claiming that deconstructing and villainizing Betty was not the answer, suggesting that NOW focus on the denial of equal rights and employment opportunities for women.

  The debate is potent and compelling on both sides, making it difficult to view Betty strictly through the either/or lenses of right/wrong, black/white, sinner/saint, good witch/bad witch. Critics of Betty Crocker are not far from wrong in claiming that stereotypes can be toxic, that they distort reality and can perpetuate harmful prejudices. NOW’s criticism of Betty Crocker stems from a political strategy within the women’s liberation movement of publicly smashing highly visible cultural icons—such as Betty Crocker—that represent a limited view of women.

  Yet many women claimed that Betty Crocker was empowering and genuinely helpful in their time of need. And many more took from Betty what they needed—whatever was convenient—discarding the rest and never buying into the idea that Betty Crocker’s face represented all a woman could be.

  Within a couple of months the media lost interest in the NOW-versus-Betty Crocker controversy and Betty’s 1972 portrait update was back on schedule. The Minnesota artist Jerome Ryan captured Betty the businesswoman in a red David Crystal suit (another erstwhile subsidiary of General Mills), over a frilly white blouse, Monet pin, and fussy hair. Her vibrant blue eyes aged slightly and her expression is rather subdued. Some say that the 1972 Betty resembles another First Lady—Lady Bird Johnson—though in this particular guise the First Lady of Food spent more time in the kitchen than in the public eye. Betty’s portrait hung in the lobby of the Betty Crocker Kitchens, along with four other official Betty portraits. She was featured in some cookbooks, but most of the products bearing Betty Crocker’s name were portrait-free.

  Betty Crocker’s 1972 portrait update, by Jerome Ryan.

  In 1980, the whole familiar cycle started up again, with Betty’s executives despairing anew that her 1972 hair, makeup, and clothes were hopelessly outdated for the thirty-something target market. This time, however, General Mills dispensed with beauty experts and market researchers and turned to Madison Avenue. A Manhattan design team delivered a 1980s beauty with full lips, a short, wavy hairdo, and a simple, understated red-and-white outfit.

  Six years later, General Mills chose the New York artist Harriet Pertchik to do the honors. Pertchik had already successfully updated such advertising characters as Mama Celeste and Blue Bonnet Sue, and her preliminary sketches of Betty challenged a few ingrained notions. One concept imagined Betty dressed in a white suit and red blouse, though that did not meet with company approval. Like so many artists before her, Pertchik was asked to retouch the portrait, this time to add some “character lines” around Betty’s eyes and mouth.

  In Pertchik’s final ver
sion, Betty’s blue eyes changed to a glimmering green. Dainty gold hoop earrings and golden highlights complete the picture. Around her neck is an impossible white bow that one observer called a “fire hazard over a hot stove.” Betty’s head is tilted to the side and she’s wearing a slightly crooked smile, an expression that inspired one observer to remark that Betty looks as though she might have her mind on something other than cupcakes. A General Mills press release calls Pertchik’s Betty “a professional woman, approachable, friendly, competent and as comfortable in the boardroom as she is in the dining room.” Since she had seemingly been freed from kitchen duty, Betty’s white bow was out of harm’s way.

  Betty Crocker’s 1980 portrait update, by a New York design firm.

  Betty Crocker’s 1986 portrait update, by Harriet Pertchik.

  The press never seems to grow tired of Betty Crocker’s facelift stories. “Betty Crocker at 65 Looks Like a Million Bucks” headlined the Minneapolis Star-Tribune report that the 1986 makeover cost about a million dollars, factoring in “extensive consumer research,” and “the cost of developing cookbooks packaging her new image.” Several journalists called Betty a “yuppie” while others extolled the virtues of her new lifelike appearance. It did not escape notice that Betty Crocker had turned sixty-five yet never looked younger. She looks “a little bit like … the librarian-like Betty of the late 40s and the Betty-bobsher hair version of the 50s,” explained the National Public Radio newscaster Linda Wertheimer. But there was a “real problem” with the 1986 Betty Crocker: “She [is] younger than me. I hate that! … Whatever she looks like, she better be at least Betty of the Baby Boomers or I will have to disassociate myself.” While Wertheimer’s portrait dates were off, her point, that we have definite ideas of how Betty should look, was right on.