Adelaide Hawley Cumming

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Adelaide Hawley Cumming (born Dieta Adelaide Fish ; born March 6, 1905 in Willet (New York) , Cortland County , † December 21, 1998 in Bremerton ) was an American actress of Vaudeville , a radio presenter and television actress. She is best known for playing Betty Crocker , a General Mills advertising icon . Adelaide Hawley Cumming, who previously spoke as radio broadcaster Betty Crocker, was given the role she appeared in numerous television shows, despite the lack of appearance of this advertising character. Cumming made television history because she appeared in her role as Betty Crocker on CBS in the first commercial to be broadcast in color.

Life

Early years

Cumming first studied piano and singing at the Eastman Schoof of Music at the University of Rochester and then joined forces with two friends to form the vaudeville trio Red, Black and Gold .

From 1937 to 1950 she was the host of the Adelaide Hawley Program , which was first broadcast by NBS radio and later by CBS Radio. As a daily talk and news broadcast, this broadcast was audible throughout the United States. It is estimated that the show had three million listeners every day. With the increasing spread of television, she also took on the role of moderator for television programs. She hosted the show Fashions on Parade from 1948 to 1949.

Betty Crocker and General Mills

Washburn Crosby Company, the forerunner of Generals Mills, developed the advertising character Betty Crocker in 1921. In the fall of 1924, the company decided to establish a radio cooking show with Betty Crocker and acquired a radio station that could be received in a region from California via Illinois to Tennessee. On October 2, 1924, the first radio cookery program was broadcast under the title Good Food . Less than a year later, on September 21, cooking programs began to be broadcast throughout the United States. Under the direction of Marjorie Child Husted , Betty Crocker became a widely recognized icon for the company. She became so well known that in 1945 Fortune Magazine chose Betty Crocker as the most popular woman after Eleanor Roosevelt . On September 8, 1950, the Betty Crocker Cookbook was also published with a circulation of 950,000 , which became a long-standing bestseller in the USA.

Adelaide Hawley Cumming was one of the actresses who voiced Betty Crocker during those years. When General Mills decided to add television broadcasts to radio broadcasts in the late 1940s, when more than a million American households already had a television, General Mills chose them as the embodiment of this advertising icon. The light blonde Cumming, however, did not correspond to the image that General Mills had spread of her in public. Drawings showed the fictional character as a brunette, conservatively dressed middle-aged woman. However, screen tests showed that Cumming's personality came closest to the image that existed in public for this advertising character.

Shows with Cumming as Betty Crocker

Cumming played Betty Crocker until 1964. She appeared on the following programs:

  • Betty Crocker Show , a half-hour television show that aired on CBS from 1950 to 1952.
  • Betty Crocker Star Matinee , for ABC from 1951 to 1952. In a total of 26 episodes there were stars such as Audrey Hepburn , David Niven , Veronica Lake , Basil Rathbone , June Lockhart , Raymond Massey , Thomas Mitchell , Teresa Wright , Celeste Holm and Robert Cummings to guest.
  • Bride and Groom , also for ABC in 1952
  • Time for Betty Crocker , a dramatization of letters to the editor Betty Crocker received.
  • From 1955 to 1958, Betty Crocker appeared regularly on the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show , hosted by well-known US comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen . Although the character Betty Crocker was integrated into the respective show, it was clearly a pure commercial break. Her appearance was introduced by the two presenters with sentences like I don't know how to bake a cake, Gracie, but here comes Betty Crocker, who can show us how to do it . Cumming then showed Burns and Allen how to make a cake quickly and easily with a General Mills baking mix. One of the recurring elements of the show was that Cumming, in her role as Betty Crocker, consoled Gracie Allen for being inept at baking - with Betty Crocker products, Allen would be able to shine in the kitchen, too.

End of television career and further life

Although the number of American households with televisions increased from 8 million in 1950 to 41 million in 1958, Betty Crocker did not achieve the level of television character she had previously enjoyed as a radio character. General Mills therefore decided towards the end of the 1950s to no longer produce their own television programs, but only to advertise their own products using television advertising. Cumming's contract with General Mills ended in 1964. Cumming, who began to study language education at New York University at the same time as her television career was over, completed this training in 1967 with a doctorate. She taught English as a foreign language until the end of her life.

literature

  • Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food. University of Minnesota Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8166-5018-7 .

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker. P. 221.
  2. ↑ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker. P. 34.
  3. ↑ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker. P. 116.
  4. ↑ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker. P. 219.
  5. ↑ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker. P. 221.
  6. ↑ Susan Marks: Finding Betty Crocker. P. 221.
personal data
SURNAME Cumming, Adelaide Hawley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fish, Dieta Adelaide (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actress and radio killer
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Willet (New York) , Cortland County
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1998
Place of death Bremerton