BBC Radio 4 Podcast Digital Human and Betty Crocker

I was recently a guest on BBC Radio 4 podcast, Digital Humans, talking about AI and the how "synthetic humans" have been around for awhile, especially the most famous woman who never existed.

Listen here

Some of the Crockettes I discuss in the BBC interview

The paperback cover of my book

The reply letter my grandmother got from Betty Crocker

My favorite Betty Crocker Commercial - sounds like it was shot in front of an audience.

Getting ready for a very cool interview about Betty Crocker!

 

Did you ever think Betty Crocker was real? Even though there was decades worth of proof to the contrary? Well, you are not alone. I'll be talking about the Betty Crocker phenomenon tomorrow for a very cool podcast. 

The "New" Betty Crocker Method of Making Cake: "400 Years in 4 Minutes" ...

I was lucky enough to interview some of the women featured in this "educcational film." It was kind of funny to them to "act like they were doing their jobs." I'm grateful that I got to conduct oral history interviews with so many wonderful Crockettes. They are, of course, not with us anymore. I'm a big advocate for honoring seniors and recording their stories! Have you asked your grandparents, parents or neighbors about what their life was like back in the day? Have you recorded their stories?

Betty Crocker Secret History

There was so much secret Betty Crocker history that I couldn't include in my book, nor my documentary film because it would have reflected negatively on the current brand. At least that was the fear at the time, mostly coming from lawyers. 

But that doesn't mean those stories are lost. They're in the process of being resurrected in a new way. Expect some intriguing secret history to come your way soon! And if there's an aspect you want included, please let me know!

Devil's Food

Oh that trick apostrophe in Devil's Food. There's a whole story behind it that started in the Betty Crocker Kitchens. At any rate, I thought you might enjoy the cover art of a TV pilot I wrote. It was inspired by meeting so many Crockettes - Betty Crocker Kitchen professional home economists.

Documentary film and book on Betty Crocker

One of my favorite moments from my documentary film on Betty Crocker - The Betty Mystique. If you want to see the whole doc, just reach out and I'm happy to send you a link.

Where's the Cake?

My first documentary film 

My master's thesis turned book on Betty Crocker

Subversive history in the Betty Crocker Kitchens

I just discovered an article I was interviewed for about the Crockettes - one of my favorite Betty Crocker-related topics. As many of you know, I conducted oral histories with 40 or so former Crockettes. I'm guessing they have all passed away now, which makes it even more important that preserved their stories. I added some photos to Anne Ewbank's article, because I have so many after researching Betty all these years, writing a book and making a documentary film about her. I hope you enjoy!

The Unsung Women of the Betty Crocker Test Kitchens 

by Anne Ewbank for Atlast Obscura - Gastro Obscura 

IT STARTED WITH A PINCUSHION and a puzzle. In 1921, Washburn Crosby, the makers of Gold Medal flour, held a national contest. If customers completed a jigsaw puzzle and sent it in, they would be mailed a prize: a pincushion shaped like a flour sack.

                        

The Minnesota-based company was soon deluged in completed puzzles, along with something they didn’t expect: hundreds of letters from home cooks, asking for kitchen advice. The company took on the challenge gamely, responding to all the inquiries. According to Susan Marks, the author of Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America’s First Lady of Food, “The company felt like they should have a name attached when someone would respond back to them. And they didn’t think it should be a man. They thought that it should be a woman.”

So they invented a person. For her first name, Betty. “It was really nice and sweet, and everybody knew a Betty,” says Marks. Crocker was the last name of a well-liked company executive. The advertising department sought out female employees to respond to the letters, and eventually staffed an entire department with women who knew their way around a kitchen. “It all grew rather quickly from there,” Marks says.

That's Majorie Child Husted, head of the Betty Crocker Department in the back in the dark dress in an overly staged photo of the Home Service Department that later became the Betty Crocker Kitchens. 

Ever since, the image of a brunette white woman has stared out of advertisements, food packaging, and the pages of cookbooks. She was fictional, a marketing tool used to sell Gold Medal Flour, Bisquick, and other American staples. But at a time when women were discouraged from working outside the home, the real women behind the dozens of cookbooks, hundreds of advertisements, and thousands of letters emblazoned with the name “Betty Crocker” turned an illustration and a name into a corporate powerhouse. Despite prevalent gender discrimination, many remembered their time as “Crockettes” with immense fondness.

In 2002, Barbara Jo Davis sat down with Linda Cameron, an interviewer for the Minnesota Historical Society. Davis is an accomplished businesswoman, the president and owner of a barbecue sauce company and the first president of the Coalition for Black Development in Home Economics.

As a child, though, Davis didn’t want to grow up to be a businesswoman. “Actually, when I was about 12, I decided I wanted to be Betty Crocker,” Davis told Cameron. By the time Davis first heard of Betty Crocker, the brand had decades of experience in advertising their near-scientific but homey approach to food.

In the early 1920s, Washburn Crosby sent women to teach community cooking classes. This was their way of piggybacking off the home-economics movement. Since the 1800s, the field of “domestic science” aimed to standardize and apply scientific principles to how people worked in the home, especially cooking. In the first half of the 1900s, many women studied home economics at universities, which often required credits in chemistry, biology, dietetics, and mathematics, opening up new fields to female workers.

To capitalize on this interest in modern cooking, Washburn Crosby bought a failing radio station in 1924. The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air brought the dulcet tones of actresses playing Betty Crocker to millions of Americans. By the time Washburn Crosby merged with other flour companies to become General Mills, she was a bona-fide phenomenon, receiving more mail than a Hollywood starlet every week. The Betty Crocker formula—genuinely helpful kitchen advice, a familiar but slightly mysterious hostess, and lots of product placement—proved to be a powerful combination.

The secret to the success of Betty Crocker, says Marks, was the talent in the kitchen. And while hundreds of women worked under the Betty Crocker name, one in particular shaped the character for decades. Marjorie Child Husted, hired at Washburn Crosby in 1924, became head of the Home Service Department in 1927. She often scripted the Betty Crocker radio show herself, and showed a keen understanding of what her listeners wanted: fellowship with both the voice on the air and with other listeners. The early 1900s were a tumultuous time, with technology developing at a rapid place and millions of people living far away from their families. Having a calm, authoritative voice direct you on how to cook a roast or pinch a pie crust must have been a relief, even if that voice also constantly encouraged you to buy Gold Medal Flour.

Radio shows and responses to personal letters weren’t enough Betty for the public. General Mills began releasing recipe pamphlets under her name. There was 1933’s Betty Crocker’s $25,000 Recipe Set Featuring Recipes From World Famous Chefs For Foods That Enchant Men and Betty Crocker’s 101 Delicious Bisquick Creations As Made And Served by Well-Known Gracious Hostesses; Famous Chefs, Distinguished Epicures and Smart Luminaries of Movieland. These booklets often featured fast dinners, innovative treats for shock and awe at the church potluck, and culinary knowledge, with most, if not all recipes containing at least one General Mills product for homemakers to buy.

To sell the maximum amount of flour, General Mills needed recipes, and lots of them. In Husted’s opinion, such recipes had to be nearly perfect in order to maintain Betty Crocker’s aura of omniscient culinary prowess. So, Marks says, “they developed what they call triple-testing, which sounds like three tests, but it’s three series of tests.” First, staff thought up a recipe, adjusting measurements and baking times over and over. Then, the recipes were sent to hired home cooks in the Minneapolis area, who tried the recipe and took copious notes. Those notes went back to company headquarters, where kitchen staff under Husted incorporated the suggestions into the final product. If a recipe successfully made it through this testing gauntlet, then it was good to go. If not, it was filed away into a massive library, perhaps to be unearthed as inspiration someday.

Working at the Home Services Department, soon to be called the Betty Crocker Kitchens, was prestigious. “You needed a degree in home economics,” says Marks. Only the best could work out of the test kitchens at the downtown headquarters. Advertisements even featured headshots of the employees, along with their degrees and accomplishments.

“These women that I interviewed, and they’ve all passed away now because it was so long ago, they said working for the Betty Crocker Kitchens was the most glamorous job you could get if you were in home economics,” says Marks.

Intrigued by the professional air that General Mills encouraged, visitors to Minneapolis often wanted to see the Crockettes at work. It was reminiscent of how visitors to Silicon Valley today haunt the outskirts of the Facebook and Apple campuses. But unlike secretive tech companies, General Mills threw open their doors and even provided a phone number for tour requests. Over the decades, foreign royalty and American presidents came to pay their respects. Awed fans came in asking if Betty was at work that day. Often, wrote Marks in her book, receptionists kept tissues on hand for the inevitable tears when visitors were told that she didn’t actually exist.

It didn't get any better than Majorie Child Husted.

                  

In a way, though, she did exist. Husted ushered Betty Crocker through the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression, and World War II. Despite the enormous dip in American incomes in the 1930s and the rationing of the 1940s, Betty Crocker helped keep General Mills flourishing. Husted approached her work with pride and upheld Betty Crocker as a resource and a friend to women working hard for their families with little support or recognition. “Women needed a champion,” she told a magazine in 1948. “They needed someone to remind them that they had value.”

For the women working in the Betty Crocker Kitchens, the role provided not only a salary but glamor and a creative work life. The number of curious visitors to the kitchens kept growing, and when General Mills moved its headquarters to the suburbs in 1958, they took special care to turn the Betty Crocker Kitchens into a destination, a fantasy of themed cooking spaces. Over the years, there was the Arizona Desert Kitchen, the Cape Cod Kitchen, the Chinatown Kitchen, and the Hawaiian Kitchen. To be fair, these were generally just for show. Some of the kitchens, though, were the sites of real, grueling work.

Ralcie Ceass, also interviewed by Cameron in 2002, started out her career as a Kitchens tour guide in 1966. Ceass, though, had a home-economics degree, and soon rose to the role of supervisor, overseeing the Kamera Kitchen. There, products and recipes were photographed and filmed for Betty Crocker cookbooks and commercials. For a single commercial, she told Cameron, her team would bake seven to eight cases of cake mix: 84 to 96 mixes, total.

“They were required to do so much,” says Marks. “So it wasn’t just cooking and baking and recipe testing and outreach with women that would come into the kitchens. They were also part of the marketing and part of the advertising.”

But despite the role Husted and other women played in building Betty Crocker into a major brand, they were often overlooked and under-appreciated by the mostly male executives.

“They had such an important role, and they were really running the show,” Marks says. “[Still] in many ways, it was considered women’s work and not all that important to the company.”

Davis certainly thought that was the case. She started at Betty Crocker in 1968 as one of the home economists, then within a few years became a supervisor, then a manager. “We were expected to, you know, make birthday cakes for the management and all of that kind of thing,” she recalled. “We were just thought of as the girls in the kitchens and no one respected us as professionals who had degrees and who knew what we were doing.”

She particularly recalled one incident. According to her, General Mills executives wanted to piggyback off the successful 1970’s partnership between Bundt and Pillsbury, and pushed through the Ring Cake Supreme mix without the usual careful testing. If you followed the directions to the letter, the cake came out perfect, “but the majority of consumers out there could not duplicate it. People were mailing us their cakes; they were that bad,” Davis said, calling the product release “a disaster.”

It was something of a comeuppance for those who didn’t trust Crockette input, Davis believed. “It had the R&D people scrambling. We, in the kitchens, said, ‘This cake should not be on the market,’ but, you know, we were just ‘the girls in the kitchen.’”

Nevertheless, Davis excelled in the Betty Crocker Kitchens. One of her achievements was helping to develop Hamburger Helper, the one-pot stovetop casserole introduced to the Betty Crocker line-up in 1971. After working there for decades, she considered herself a historian and mentor to younger staff. “I think what I loved most about that part of the job as a supervisor and, then, as a manager was the personnel development side, watching these young home economists develop and learning their jobs,” she said.

By the 1980s, the star of the Betty Crocker Kitchens and Betty Crocker herself had faded somewhat. Most women no longer yearned to be homemakers (if they ever truly did) and more opportunities than ever were available outside the home. The Kitchens closed to public tours in 1985, leaving a wave of sadness in its wake. “Reports from the few people I know who visited the seven kitchens leave me yearning,” says a regretful cook in Marks’s book. “They speak of the Hawaiian room, the Southwestern room, of multiple microwave ovens and of clever magnetic strips for holding recipes at eye level. They recall glamorous women measuring everything with precision, cooking colorful, imaginative meals from scratch.”

Marks takes a more equivocal stance towards the Betty Crocker mystique. “The women who worked there were almost subversive in the way that they elevated this character and with it, this idea of ‘You can do it, and Betty can help you,’” she says, quoting the slogan used by Betty Crocker for decades. “You can argue, too, that it kept women down, because it was in such a stereotypical role. There’s merit to that.”

Yet home economist Ruby Peterson, who worked at the Kitchens in the 1950s, and who Marks remembers with fondness, would likely disagree. “She said that every person you talk to will say the same thing, that the best experience in the world was working at Betty Crocker Kitchens,” Marks recalls.

“Although, did they get paid enough?” Marks adds with a laugh [Marks' note: I would add the word "mirthless" in front of "laugh"]. “Probably not.”

Repost: The dark and light side of telling Betty Crocker's story UPDATED

Update: Betty Crocker - in particular the Betty Crocker Kitchens - have been on my mind lately because of some fictional work I'm writing based on my experiences conducting oral history interviews with former "Crockettes" - the women who worked at "the Kitchens" in the 1940s - 1960s. They had a lot of great stories and dang it, not a one made it into my book. But that doesn't mean they won't wind up in something new...

In 2021 Betty Crocker celebrates her 100th year. Such great, deep history that no other advertising character can match. 

Lately I've been reflecting a lot on my journey with Betty Crocker. People ask me all the time how I got interested in writing a book and making a documentary film about Betty Crocker. 

My book on Betty first published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster.

The short answer is that no one had done it yet. It is and was a shockingly good story, far too good to pass up. And how often does that happen in a person's life? It truly felt like Betty chose me. 

From my documentary film on Betty.

But the long answer is much more complicated.

I was a tour guide for the Minnesota Historical Society and about to start a graduate school program in American Studies and Film Studies at the University of Minnesota. On my tours people would get downright giddy when I pointed to the Washburn A Mill ruins (which soon after became the Mill City Museum) and explained that it was Betty Crocker's birthplace. People had so many questions about Betty and I had questions too. Like, why was everyone so giddy about Betty? And didn't they know she wasn't real? 

It happened so often that I decided to read the book on Betty Crocker's history because clearly, I wasn't getting something so significantly shared by tourists. I quickly discovered that there was no book on Betty. So I tried to find the documentary film. There wasn't one of those either. Curiouser and curiouser. 

I was blown away that this rich history that had been ignored by authors, historians, documentary filmmakers, etc. However, it did make sense to me that many people simply would not be able to get past the corporate narrative and see the compelling story underneath. 

So, I naively set out to make a film and write a book about Betty Crocker. I hadn't written a book nor made a documentary film, but at that point I had read so many poorly written books (and horribly edited ones) and seen so many cheesy, boring documentary films that I knew I could as least do better than most. And I folded my research into my graduate work, so I was getting constant feedback about the academic merits of my work. 

The journey was long and arduous and I discovered why no one had written a book nor made a film on Betty. The key was access. At the time, the General Mills archivist was cagey and suspicious of anyone outside of the company writing about Betty. She was very concerned about tarnishing the Betty brand and didn't want me poking around. But after a few requests and the knowledge I shared through Betty Crocker radio broadcasts I found in an academic library, she did allow me to come into the archives and research the letters sent to Betty - for which I am still grateful. 

I had to get creative and get serious with my research. Beyond reading history books (secondary research), I conducted oral history interviews (primary research) with women who lived through the height of Betty Crocker's popularity in the 1940s and 1950s. I put the word out that I was looking to interview anyone who worked at the Betty Crocker Kitchens - especially under the direction of Marjorie Child Husted. I wrote an article for the Hennepin County History Museum (Minneapolis) and wrote an op-ed piece to solicit Betty stories. 

Additionally, I researched in special collections at libraries, historical societies, and even church archives. I eventually tapped into a network of retired home economists from the Betty Crocker Kitchens aka "The Crockettes." I conducted oral history interviews with many over the phone and I traveled to meet face to face with some of them. 

I loved interviewing Crockettes and they often shared their personal photos with me from working in the Betty Crocker Kitchens.

Eventually, the General Mills archivist retired and the new archivist, Katie Dishman embraced me and my storytelling, allowed me access to everything Betty related in the archives. She even put me work as a contractor researcher on the history of the Chex brand. 

Now there's a common misconception about corporate archives that they save everything. They do not. I'm not sure how this rumor started but the General Mills archives did not tell the full picture of Betty's history, so I wound up having to fill in the gaps.

I purchased a lot of Betty Crocker ephemeral items like cookbooks, ads, letters, radio show scripts, tv scripts, photos, radio recording, recipe booklets, menus from the Betty Crocker short-lived restaurant, the Betty Crocker magazine, etc. from eBay and antique dealers. It really was amazing what I could find to help fill out the story. While I kept a lot of rare gems, much of it I donated to the General Mills archives in thanks for letting me in. If I hadn’t, I could have easily opened up my own Betty Crocker museum.

But there's a dark side to all this. 

I rarely talk about it because "all's well that ends well" and for a historian, I ironically don't like to dwell in the past. But last week when I was talking with a friend we joked about how if it weren't for Betty Crocker, we wouldn't even know each other. 

She read my book, blogged about it, we started talking and soon we were good friends. I made an off-handed comment about how I’m glad that I didn't listen to all the people who were against me writing the Betty book and making the film. She wasn't remotely surprised but encouraged me to not be shy about telling that side of the story. She's a successful public figure who knows a thing or two about the naysayers and the damage they do. 

We wound up talking about how friends, acquaintances, coworkers, etc. said some truly detrimental and discouraging things to me in an attempt to get me to give up on my hopes and dreams. Or they just wanted to put me in my place and make me feel bad because it would make them feel better about themselves. (People like that are truly the worst and will always be chasing that fix.) 

Weirdly, until she encouraged me to talk about it, I had almost completely forgot about all those trash conversations and the damage people tried to inflict on me. When memories like this surface it’s a reminder to how ugly people can be when you're an artist starting out and how threatened people are by anyone who is doing something special with their lives. 

In the beginning of my Betty journey I was out of my comfort zone every single day, just trying to tell a story that hadn't been told before. I was vocal, transparent, vulnerable and excited. 

I thought my friends and acquaintances would be excited and happy for me because I had found my thing. And I always shared in their excitement over their hopes and dreams. And of course, some were lovely and wonderfully supportive every step of the way and I'm deeply grateful to them.

Although if I'm being honest, many did not become outwardly supportive until the actual book was published, I had a book launch, was making national tv appearances and went on a book tour. 

I had a very memorable stop on my book tour to Toronto. But I don't remember taking this picture at all. Ha! 

But back to what people don't usually talk about. 

A lot of people did not support me. In fact, they wanted to take me and my enthusiasm out. They told me in direct and indirect ways that there was no way I could write a book, get it published nor make a film. I didn't have enough experience. General Mills wouldn't allow it. General Mills would sue me. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I was in over my head. I was full of sh*t. I wasn't an established author, so I wouldn't be able to find an agent. I would have to team up with a historian to write the book because I didn't know enough on my own. It went on and on. 

A few people even rolled their eyes and laughed in my face saying, "Why would you want to write a book on Betty Crocker?” and “I would never want to see that movie.” As I’m writing this I keep wondering, was it that really that bad? Am I exaggerating? But sadly, I think I’m underselling it. Ugh, people can be so awful and hurtful and even get a thrill from their cruelty.

Over time, I welcomed the challenge. I liked that I had this giant project outside of my everyday work and I enjoyed talking about. (This is laughable to me because now I rarely talk about my writing and doc filmmaking until a project is done. I’m simply not the same person.) And if people wanted to argue with me about it, I thought, "Fine. Let's do this." What was it that was so ridiculous about me and Betty Crocker? 

It usually came in the form of someone claiming to be "worried about me." They would grill me about how I planned on making it all happen. And of course they would focus in on any part of my plan that was out of my control. (Like getting an agent, publisher, funding for the film). It made them feel fantastic that there were elements of fate to my plan that they could throw back in my face as proof that none of it would work out. When I reminded them that all artists need to be open to fate, have faith and take risks, it made their blood boil. 

Looking back, it's astounding that people would get so worked up over me writing and book and making a documentary film about Betty Crocker, (where were my giddy people?) but I think it says more about how they underestimated me from the start and found my ambitions a threat to them. 

And where are those people today? Not a single one of them is in my life. They just faded away. (With the exception of a few friends and family members who will always have a “bee in their bonnet” about me and Betty. Ha! Big babies.) And no one ever apologized to me nor admitted I was right all along. I guess that only happens in the movies. 

But seriously, what would have happened if I had listened to those people? What if I shrunk to fit their idea of who I was or dulled my shine to make them feel brighter? What if I hadn't taken the risks? Because after all, there was no guarantee that I would get published or finish the film. What if I didn't even start because it was so difficult to be out of my comfort zone? What if I didn't dare to dream because there wasn't a risk-free path to follow? 

I learned to not listen to anyone. (And I cannot emphasize enough how mad this made people - especially Baby Boomer men). I stopped listening because it became crystal clear to me that none of them knew what they were talking about. It was obvious just by looking at their low-risk lives. Plus, I'm just made of tougher stuff than them. There was no way I was going to quit because someone rolled their eyes at me. Or told me I was going to get screwed over by my publisher, if I ever got one. Or that my book idea was so niche that only a few people would ever read it. Were any of these people experts in indie documentary filmmaking, publishing or marketing? No, again, they knew nothing other than how to spot a risk. 

Interestingly, when I told people I got a book deal the very first question out of their mouth was always, "Who is the publisher?" And I proudly told them Simon & Schuster and they were always stunned silent. They wanted to pick that apart too, tell me they never heard of that publisher, but of course everyone knows about S&S. So I left them out of moves. 

So, in the end, I won. It took me seven years but I wrote the book, made the film, went on a book tour and launched my creative career. I made more films, wrote more books and screenplays. I won awards, fellowships, screened my films internationally, spoke to crowds of 1000s of people, screened one of my films at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (very few people can ever say that). I sold and optioned screenplays and had meetings with some of Hollywood's elite about adapting my work. All of which came with a whole new set of much bigger problems and issues than people telling me to give up on Betty Crocker.

But I think this all these negative memories resurfaced for a reason. Someone or perhaps several people need to hear this and hopefully it will help. I got treated like a punching bag because I dared to dream big and be open about it. But I also got very used to it and thought it came with the territory. But now I see that I could have done more to stop the verbal and emotion abuse that comes with chasing your dreams. Bottom line: People should not have treated me that way. And you shouldn't allow people to treat you this way. I learned the hard way so you don't have to.

Your success can feel like an affront to others because they choose to feel small and act impulsively. Too bad for them and thank God you aren't them. It's a backhanded compliment to you, so just walk away. Don't engage. Over time, you'll stop attracting people like that in your life. And you will learn more about setting boundaries and being selective about what you share. 

Constant criticism is often a dream crusher. And if you read this whole post and think, "Wow. I have no idea what this lady is talking about" then you are likely blind to the fact that you are crushing other people's dreams. So now that you know here's your tough love moment: Choose to be a better person. Even if you feel threatened by someone else's dream or you are so jaded that you only see failure or feel the need to control things. Just smile and say, "Good for you! I'll support you every step of the way." 

Let's all try being supportive to anyone who is doing something positive, getting out of their comfort zone - especially in the arts. Writing is tough. Documentary filmmaking is even tougher. People everywhere need healing, not for you to cause them more pain. 

Obviously, there's a lot more to my journey. I've oversimplified quite a bit and I left out a lot. But if you are the person I unearthed this for, I wish you nothing but light on your journey and feel free to reach out and tell your story. Please don't give up. Write your dream on a post-it note, look at it each day and honor your path. 

Mine said: "I'm so happy that I’m the first person to write a book and make a documentary film about Betty Crocker!" I wrote that post-it seven years before my dream was realized. And guess what? I'm still the first and only person to do these things. Apparently, I'm a tough act to follow. And I know in my heart that you are too.