Invisible Stars

A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting

Donna Halper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317520177
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Invisible Stars was the first book to recognize that women have always played an important part in American electronic media. The emphasis is on social history, as the author skillfully explains how the changing role of women in different eras influenced their participation in broadcasting. This is not just the story of radio stars or broadcast journalists, but a social history of women both on and off the air. Beginning in the early 1920s with the emergence of radio, the book chronicles the ambivalence toward women in broadcasting during the 1930s and 1940s, the gradual change in status of women in the 1950s and 1960s, the increased presence of women in broadcasting in the 1970s, and the successes of women in broadcasting in the 1980s and 1990s. The second edition is expanded to include the social and political changes that occurred in the 2000s, such as the growing number of women talk show hosts; changing attitudes about women in leadership roles in business; more about minority women in media; and women in sports and women sports announcers. The author addresses the question of whether women are in fact no longer invisible in electronic media. She provides an assessment of where progress for women (in society as well as broadcasting) can be seen, and where progress appears totally stalled.

1

The 1920s

The Radio Adventure Begins

Bertha Brainard did not expect to become a role model, assuming there was such a concept in 1920. She had driven an ambulance for the Red Cross during World War I, but she really wanted to be involved with theater and was looking for a job writing reviews for a newspaper. Marie Ciesielski had married Robert Zimmerman and was undoubtedly planning to work on her family’s farm in Jessup, Iowa. Eleanor Nesbitt Poehler’s husband was a wealthy doctor; they had a baby boy, and Eleanor enjoyed doing volunteer work and singing in her church choir. Eunice Randall had played basketball in high school, but professional sports for girls was not a possibility in those days, and besides, she really hoped to be an artist. It is doubtful that any of these women envisioned a radio career as they were growing up, and they probably had no idea that radio would soon change their lives.

What we know as radio was still called “wireless” during the first two decades of the twentieth century, and it was not yet a career path. Radio was the domain of amateur hobbyists and engineers, and nobody expected to make a living at it. To be on the air usually meant sending and receiving Morse code. Hams, most of whom were boys or young men, spent many hours building and modifying their equipment, improving on the technology until they were not only sending code, but also speaking to other amateurs in far-off cities. By the middle of the second decade of the 1900s, some hams had also begun to play phonograph records or read sports scores for their audiences. And while the word broadcasting did not yet conjure up images of beautiful studios, famous dance bands, or glamorous celebrities, for the growing number of fans attracted to the amateur game, it was both educational and fun.

Given that ham radio required a solid knowledge of mathematics and engineering principles, as well as some skill at carpentry, it is not surprising that most of the early amateur radio operators were male, since these particular subjects were not commonly taught to girls. For many men, that was exactly as it should be. Carroll Pursell’s essay, “The Long Summer of Boy Engineering,” suggests that as women gradually broke down barriers in society and began to participate more in the public sphere, some men were not happy about the change, even though gender roles per se had not shifted all that much. The arrival of the new radio technology enabled men to recapture the public sphere for themselves. “Public space—politics, commerce, war, engineering—was the special place of men, which they not only controlled, but from which women were excluded.”¹ Advanced scientific training, which was almost exclusively reserved for white males, gave status to those who possessed it; few women (and even fewer minorities) were encouraged to take any advanced science courses in school. The proliferation of after-school ham radio clubs also catered to the overwhelmingly white and male. And in page after page of science and hobby magazines, boys were invited to join the adventure of electronics. Advertisements stressed the benefits of learning the new technology; girls, if portrayed at all, were typically shown watching in amazement as brother and father built something together. The “boy engineer,” resourceful, innovative, and clever, quickly became a familiar character in books (as in the popular Radio Boys adventure series) and magazines.

Yet, although girls and women were not expected to enjoy ham radio except as passive observers, a few enterprising females found their way into the hobby and managed to persuade a father or brother to teach them more about it. While ham radio call books from that era listed very few women’s names, magazines like QST and Radio Amateur News had some pictures of girls and young women who operated their brother’s or father’s station, even though the license was held by the male. But it is certainly true that females constituted only a small number of the participants in amateur radio during the first two decades of the 1900s. And since it was mainly the amateurs who created what became commercial broadcasting, it is not surprising that the names associated with radio’s beginnings all belong to men: David Sarnoff, Lee DeForest, Frank Conrad, Harold Power, Charles “Doc” Herrold, and Edwin Howard Armstrong, to name just a few.

Women’s Place in 1920

While its founders may indeed have been men, it would be inaccurate to say that early radio was all male or even that broadcasting had traditional gender roles. The newness of commercial radio allowed for considerable experimentation, and with an all-volunteer staff, whoever knew how to do a certain job would be expected to help, be that person male or female. In 1920, when commercial radio first began, the subject of women’s proper place was still being hotly debated, and a number of changes had already occurred. After years of marches, demonstrations, and parades, 1920 was the year the woman’s suffrage movement finally saw passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, giving American women the right to vote in national elections. But three years earlier, in 1917, a woman from Montana, Jeanette Rankin, had already been elected to Congress (a few states had given women the vote before the Nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified). And women had also achieved considerable visibility as a result of their ongoing efforts to ban alcoholic beverages. From the late 1800s, when Frances Willard of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the crusading Carry Nation led the fight, on through the early 1900s when women from religious and civic organizations took up the challenge, women were the ones who spoke the most eloquently about the negative impact of liquor. Thanks to a strong media campaign filled with tragic stories of children abandoned by alcoholic fathers and wives left destitute as a result, a majority of Americans gradually came to accept the need for Prohibition; the Eighteenth Amendment finally became law in January 1919.

Women were also becoming more visible in aspects of public life other than those typically associated with the female gender, such as volunteering for charitable or religious causes. More and more women were now working for pay; so many of them had entered the job market that the U.S. Department of Labor established a Women’s Bureau to “promote the welfare of wage earning women.”² Also, as the new decade opened, a steadily increasing number of women were going to college: by the early 1920s, 40 percent of college enrollment was female.³ During the recently concluded World War I, American women had joined the military and served as wireless operators, freeing up men for combat duty. Some of these women had come from privileged backgrounds, yet in their desire to serve their country, they took courses in subjects that women had never been asked to study. The Signal Corps found that the new female recruits quickly mastered wireless telegraphy, and several of them rose to the rank of captain of their unit.⁴

In daily life, young women were rejecting long hair in favor of much more practical styles, and their choice of clothing reflected a preference for more comfortable dresses and varied styles. The Sears Roebuck catalog now carried more than ninety illustrated pages of women’s clothing. As for married life, syndicated columnist Dorothy Dix was instructing husbands to treat their wives as partners rather than servants, and she did not condemn the woman who wanted a career.⁵ Some newspapers of the time still questioned whether a married woman should work outside the home, but no longer were all the writers in agreement that she should not.

Most young women entering the workforce found that there were jobs, but the choices were not very glamorous. One woman, quoted in Literary Digest, spoke of the problems women working in factories encountered, including foremen who refused to explain the job or answer questions and a lack of sinks that would allow women doing dirty jobs to wash their hands before lunch.⁶ There had already been a series of workers’ strikes during 1919 to protest low wages and poor working conditions; as many as 4 million workers, some of whom were women, took part. A strike at the New England Union of Telephone Operators was one of the few that had a positive outcome for the workers.⁷ Despite previous labor problems, most women still preferred being telephone operators to working in the factories. But although the work was certainly much cleaner and not as strenuous, the job itself remained strictly regulated: an operator was only allowed to use certain phrases, which she had to speak in a certain tone of voice.⁸ Women who aspired to professional careers, such as nursing or teaching, had somewhat more freedom, but even late in the second decade of the 1900s, articles lamented the low salaries that schoolteachers were given.⁹ Some women were entering nontraditional occupations like law, and by 1915, there were several hundred women lawyers. Most of them could only find work by joining a husband’s, brother’s, or father’s legal practice.¹⁰ Still, more American women than ever before were in the public sphere, although only certain career fields were considered appropriate. However, one occupation that accepted women almost immediately was radio.

Women as Radio Pioneers

It was not because radio was inherently egalitarian that the new medium welcomed female participation. It was actually a very practical reason that caused owners to make the studios available not only to women but, in some cities, to minorities as well. Early stations had small budgets with which to pay for talent. The original vision of owners had been that their station would be a vehicle for promoting their own business, so they seem to have assumed their own workers would provide the entertainment. This, however, was not always a wise assumption. The majority of the employees at Westinghouse or AMRAD or General Electric were men with an electronics background. They built the radio studio and designed the equipment the station used, but they probably had not been hired with the expectation that they would also perform for a radio audience. Given the times, some engineers undoubtedly did have musical ability, since it was expected in the early 1900s that any educated person should know how to play a musical instrument, and music courses were taught even in the public schools. In commercial radio’s first few months, the engineers who manufactured the radio equipment during the day then operated the company’s station at night, and it was up to them to find people to entertain. Since audiotape had not been invented and there were problems getting phonograph records to sound good when played through very primitive amplification, there was an immediate and constant need for live performers, some of whom were recruited from the company and from friends or relatives who enjoyed singing. The engineers tried their best to keep the station functioning: Eunice Randall recalls working her shift in the AMRAD factory and then taking her tum announcing on station 1XE, as well as doing some engineering and repairing anything that broke. When guests could not be found, she and another engineer would sing duets to entertain the audience.¹¹ But even though some engineers and their friends could sing fairly well, it was evident that this was not the ultimate solution. As radio’s popularity increased and its audience appeal widened, there were not enough singing engineers to go around. Someone needed to be assigned the task of finding talent and making sure a variety of performers was available. The person chosen for this important role was often a woman.

Eunice Randall, one of the first women announcers, is shown in the studio of station IXE (later WGI), Medford Hillside, Massachusetts, in 1921. (Author’s collection, with thanks to Alan Douglas)

Although Eunice Randall Thompson had retired, she still loved ham radio. Her call letters were W1MPP, and she is shown here in the early 1960s. (Author’s collection, with thanks to Eunice Stolecki)

Again, the reason was not necessarily that early owners believed in feminism. What they believed in was having somebody on the staff who had good contacts with musicians and other performers. Women ran many of the music schools (another occupation that soc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The 1920s: The Radio Adventure Begins
• 2 The 1930s: The Women Behind the Men
• 3 The 1940s: Visible for a While
• 4 The 1950s: Forward into the Past
• 5 The 1960s and 1970s: And When It Changed
• 6 The 1980s and 1990s: Progress and Possibility
• 7 The Early 2000s: Invisible No More? Women in the New Century
• Selected Bibliography and Suggested Readings
• Index
• About the Author