Radio, retirement
From its debut in 1924, with Home Service's Blanche Ingersoll as Betty, until 1953, Gold Medal Flour Home Service Talks,[18] later known as Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air was a daytime broadcast.
At first the show was only on the Minneapolis radio station that Washburn-Crosby acquired and named WCCO. The show expanded to stations throughout the country, with different women featured as Betty, until 1936 when recording equipment became more widely available, making a single voice as Betty possible. During the 1950s, the five minute show Time for Betty Crocker broadcast nine times a week. Laura Shapiro writes in her 2004 book Something from the Oven that these shows existed "before broadcasting enforced any important distinction between editorial content and advertising."[19][20]
Husted wrote all of Betty Crocker's scripts for the cooking school show[2] and took over as the radio voice in 1926 or 1927 and remained so for perhaps up to two decades,[21] but she played a larger role in expanding Betty Crocker's character.
She interviewed "eligible bachelors" and visited movie stars like Joan Crawford, Dolores del Río, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable and Cary Grant to ask them about their life at home.[2] She created games and quizzes and drama pieces based on letters she received. During World War II, Crocker starred in Our Nation's Rations and after the war Husted helped start The Betty Crocker Magazine of the Air.[22] Shapiro says, "Under her direction, Betty Crocker became a figure of dignity who treated homemakers with respect."[23] Husted strove to make Crocker appear to be a home economist with professional experience, not a home cook.[8] By 1948, Betty Crocker was known to 91 percent of American homemakers.[24]
In 1946, Husted was named a consultant to the officers and executives of General Mills. In 1948 she was made consultant in advertising, public relations, and home service. Husted researched and published Betty Crocker's Good and Easy Cookbook in 1950, which sold 18 million copies, and ultimately the Betty Crocker cookbooks numbered about 50 titles that sold 45 million copies.[25] She retired from the company in 1950 when she formed the consultancy Marjorie Child Husted and Associates.[12]
