McBride, Mary Margaret, 1899-

Radio commentator and author.

Mary Margaret McBride (1899-1976) was a journalist and the host of an immensely popular daily radio program from the mid 1930s into the 1950s.

Biographical Note

Biographical Note

Mary Margaret McBride (1899-1976) was a journalist and the host of an immensely popular daily radio program from the mid 1930s into the 1950s. Her first program, Martha Deane, was broadcast on station WOR from 1934 until 1940. In 1937 CBS hired her to host a fifteen-minute talk show under her own name, but her most popular program, a forty-five-minute interview and talk show on NBC, ran from 1941 until 1950.

McBride's daily program featured interviews with over twelve hundred leading public and political figures of her time, such as entertainers, other radio personalities, authors, educators, doctors, and adventurers, but she also talked with average people who had interesting stories to tell. Interviewees included Eleanor Roosevelt, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Frank Lloyd Wright, Bob Hope, Carl Sandburg, Margaret Bourke-White, Zora Neale Hurston, Tennessee Williams, Joe DiMaggio, a man leading a campaign to improve teenage driving skills, a female test pilot, the woman who invented crossword puzzles, and the American Mother of 1942.

McBride's interviews provide a highly personal perspective on American life during the Great Depression through World War II, its aftermath, and the beginning of the Cold War. They constituted the first thirty minutes of her show and were followed by informal discussion of household matters and advertising. Commercials were targeted at McBride's primary audience -- women -- who eagerly purchased the products she promoted and made McBride a favorite with sponsors. Her popularity with listeners and sponsors alike allowed her to retain both editorial and commercial control of her program.

McBride moved to ABC in 1950. She died on April 7, 1976, at age 76.