McBride, Mary Margaret

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McBRIDE, Mary Margaret

Born 16 November 1899, Paris, Missouri; died 7 April 1976, West Shokan, New York

Daughter of Thomas Walker and Elizabeth Craig McBride

Mary Margaret McBride, the daughter of a modestly successful farming couple, always knew she would be a journalist. Two relatives whose interest had permanent influence on McBride were her maternal grandfather, a Baptist minister, who schooled her in bible readings, and her paternal grandfather, a scholar, who gave her an appreciation of Greek and Latin poetry. The first woman in her family to aspire to a career, she attended the University of Missouri, graduating in two and a half years, and financing her education by working on the Columbus Times. Successive feature-writing positions on the Cleveland Press and the New York Mail catapulted her to a syndicated column, a woman's-page editorship, and extensive magazine freelance work.

A second and third career for McBride emerged from the Depression years when periodicals ceased publication or could no longer pay her prices. She turned to producing books and to conducting a daily program on radio (and ultimately on television), earmarking each media venture with her special vitality, her wide-ranging interests, her candor, and her respect for facts.

Though, on the one hand, McBride's work was characterized by deep-seated religious and moral convictions, plus sincere and unselfconscious sentimentality, she was at the same time a tough and searching reporter. And though she struggled against and never conquered deep feelings of guilt and insecurity, she numbered among her close friends heads of state and celebrities in diverse fields in the U.S. and abroad. Testaments to her personal popularity and magnetism were the quarter of a million letters she received annually from listeners and a party on her tenth anniversary in radio, held at Madison Square Garden and attended by 125,000 "Mary Margaret" fans.

McBride's newspaper assignments were, for the most part, self-selected. She managed, whether the story involved a parade, a political convention, or a luncheon, to make the reader feel like a ringside spectator by introducing particulars of texture, smell, and other detail. Her acute sensory awareness coupled with searching curiosity and a zealot's concern for the truth contributed to McBride's being one of the most sought-after and highest-paid journalists in the country.

When the magazine market suffered reverses in the late 1920s, McBride completed four travel books with coauthor and journalist, Helen Josephy. Though the books sold well because European travel was becoming popular, they have little value today except as social documents. Their preoccupation with where celebrities dined, resided, and shopped, made these books highly palatable to middle America and were a harbinger of McBride's modus operandi and subsequent success in radio and television, but the net result is a sensual, somewhat naive recitation of a time long past.

Several other volumes are autobiographical, nonintellectual, nonliterary, but highly readable. A Long Way from Missouri (1959) and its sequel, Out of the Air (1960), recount with modesty and pride the events of McBride's life. Both books are replete with names and anecdotes, her successes and her setbacks, all treated honestly and with the utmost simplicity. At a moment of success on a New York paper she was to confess, "but I never felt really secure in my love life or in my job, not for long, even when I had two beaux at once and a byline on front page center."

Her shift in media to radio, and later to television, made no difference in the persona of McBride, though, for contractual reasons, she assumed initially the "radio name" of Martha Deane. The same buoyancy, frankness, and cozy confidentiality prevailed. Her selection of guests, books, professions, and hobbies were examined like feature stories, utilizing, for the first time, newspaper techniques in radio presentation. To the extent that material was written, she prepared it herself, including the commercials. Products were always personally pretested for acceptability before she agreed to their sponsorship. Printer's Ink, authoritative bible of the marketing world, commenting on the slavish acceptance of her listeners, described the response to her program and her merchandising prowess as "the most outstanding example of reliance upon the word of a human being in the commercial field."

With the death in 1954 of her friend and manager, Stella Karn, McBride gave up her own program and restricted herself to guest appearances. Six years later she moved permanently to a refurbished barn in West Shokan, New York. Her own assessment of her career was characteristically candid and self-effacing: "I've enjoyed my life and don't regret any of it. But I can see that, taken altogether it is faintly, sometimes even blatantly ridiculous. I wanted to be a great writer, and now I never shall be."

Other Works:

Jazz: A Story of Paul Whiteman (with P. Whiteman, 1926). Charm (with A. Williams, 1927). Paris Is a Woman's Town (with H. Josephy, 1929). The Story of Dwight Morrow (1930). London Is a Man's Town (with H. Josephy, 1931). New York Is Everybody's Town (with H. Josephy, 1931). Beer and Skittles: A Friendly Modern Guide to Germany (1932). Here's Martha Deane (1936). How Dear to My Heart (1940). America for Me (1941). Tune in for Elizabeth (1945). How to be a Successful Advertising Woman (edited by McBride, 1948). Harvest of American Cooking (1957). Encyclopedia of Cooking (1959). The Giving Up of Mary Elizabeth (1968).