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Editorial Review Product Description
While Betty Crocker is often associated with 1950s happy homemaking, she originally belonged to a different generation. Created in 1921 as a “friend to homemakers” for the Washburn Crosby Company (a forerunner to General Mills) in Minneapolis, her purpose was to answer consumer mail. “She” was actually the women of the Home Service Department who signed Betty’s name. Eventually, Betty Crocker’s local radio show on WCCO expanded, and audiences around the nation tuned her in, tried her money-saving recipes, and wrote Betty nearly 5,000 fan letters per day. In Finding Betty Crocker, Susan Marks offers an utterly unique look at the culinary and marketing history of America’s First Lady of Food.
Susan Marks is a writer/producer/director with her own production company, Lazy Susan Productions.
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Finding Betty Crocker
When I got this book,I started reading it right away and it was so interesting that I could'nt put it down. It brought back so many good memories to me. Times I spent with my grandmother in the kitchen and watching her use her Betty Crocker cookbook and making such delicious recipes from it. I highly recommend this special book.
An amazing look at an enduring culinary and marketing history figure
Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food is the true story behind a commercial icon of 1950's homemaking - Betty Crocker. Created in 1921 as a "friend to homemakers" for the Washburn Crosby Company (a forerunner of modern-day General Mills), "Betty Crocker" was in fact the collective women of the Home Service Department who signed Betty's name. Betty Crocker's local radio show on WCCO expanded, as audiences across the nation learned to appreciate her money-saving recipes and wrote her nearly 5,000 fan letters a day. An amazing look at an enduring culinary and marketing history figure, illustrated with vintage black-and-white photographs.
Found Her
This is a delightful book! Susan Marks has researched it well, and tells the story of the selling of American women with clarity and humor.That our mothers were so shamelessly manipulated is appalling, but many good meals came out of it, and, in all honesty, Betty Crocker inspired many women to branch out and create their own recipes using mixes and prepared foods as a basis. It was a very pleasant read and a marvelous depiction of a period in the evolution of American women.
What a waste of time...
I suppose there's a book coming out for the male counterpart to Betty Crocker, Mr. Duncan Hines.What, there's no Duncan Hines?Well, then surely we'll get biographies of Mr. Clean or the Tidy Bowl Man next then.As if decades of fooling a guillible mass-consumer market weren't enough, here "she" goes again by getting those to buy into "her" biography hook, line and sinker.What fun.Enjoy this garbage if you are into it.Otherwise, avoid.
A tribute to an American icon
Over eight decades, Betty Crocker has been one of the most recognizable American advertising icons.Marks' book focuses not just on the image of Betty Crocker, but on her relationship with the American housewife and how she shaped the face of American homemaking.Betty's recipes revolutionized homemaking, and she called for standard pan size and baking temperatures while recommending that only high quality Gold Medal flour be used in baking.Later, Betty's mixes made the homemaker move away from scratch cooking and toward a standard, pre-packaged baking product.
I was fascinated by the Betty Crocker radio program and by the letters from homemakers to Betty.Marks' book is comprehensive, full of excellent illustrations of advertisements, recipes, magazine spreads, letters, and more, and it makes for gripping reading.
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