Betty Crocker? Is She Real?

Some personalities are born, while others are cooked up.

The latter was the case with Betty Crocker.

In October 1921, the Washburn-Crosby Co. (which would later evolve into General Mills) advertised a contest giveaway in the back of The Saturday Evening Post. In order to get a pincushion shaped like the company’s principal product — Gold Medal Flour — 30,000 readers completed a cut-out puzzle of townspeople rushing past a Gold Medal sign. Lots of the finished puzzles were bundled with letters containing baking queries from women. At the time, the Gold Medal advertising department had an all-male staff, while the Home Services personnel (initially charged with developing recipes and giving demonstrations) were entirely female.

For a while, the advertising team responded to the letters, seeking insight from the home services staff. But advertising manager Samuel Gale thought the women writing in would rather hear from another woman, so he had his reports invent a chief of correspondence named Betty Crocker. The advertisers thought “Betty” sounded wholesome and friendly; “Crocker,” meanwhile, was a nod to the company’s recently retired director, William G. Crocker. 

Beginning in 1924, a new Washburn-Crosby home economist named Marjorie Child Husted voiced (and wrote) the Betty Crocker character on daytime radio’s first cooking show, “Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air.” Although the show was based in Minneapolis, national distribution soon followed — as did hundreds of marriage proposals. Among the longet-running radio broadcasts in U.S. history, “Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air” lasted for 24 years, even overlapping with “Our Nation’s Rations,” a 1945 program Betty Crocker (Husted) hosted at the request of the U.S. Office of War Information (the show was devoted to helping home cooks make the most of rationed foods). Betty Crocker then made her way to television with The Betty Crocker Show (1950–1952) and the Betty Crocker Star Matinee (1951-1952.

Actress Adelaide Hawley Cumming assumed the namesake role in both projects, and afterwards provided in-character baking demonstrations in walk-on commercials during The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show for several years.

While Betty Crocker was taking on the entertainment world, General Mills commissioned a line of Betty Crocker products, starting with a dried soup mix  in 1942. Today, Betty Crocker groceries are sold on every continent except Antarctica. And if you call the General Mills headquarters  in Minnesota, there’s always a “Betty Crocker” standing by, ready to answer your culinary questions. 

Who knew?