In June 1927 Frances Lee Barton was “born” to represent Swans Down Flour, and because of production lead times for magazines, Frances Barton was “born” a bit before April 1927.
Swans Down Flour was represented by a real person, Mary Jean Hart, the brand’s first in-house spokeswoman. In 1926 Postum Co. Inc. —soon to change their name to General Foods (GF)—bought Igleheart Bros. company, creators of Swans Down Flour, so Mary Jean left to work at the Mirro Test Kitchen–a straight North train ride.
Not many people questioned the authenticity of General Food’s Frances Lee Barton for Swans Down flour, but then again Betty Crocker wasn’t questioned until a 1940s earth-shattering article in Fortune magazine. Frances Lee Barton was the authority in advertisements and booklets with a small picture but no tagline saying “graduate of…,” “editor of…” or any description which traditionally followed a real spokesperson’s name.
Frances Lee Barton, later just Frances Barton, was a name created by marketing staff to serve the new acquisitions by Postum Co. Inc, which was transforming into General Foods. There were many GF changes in 1926-1927, including the hiring of people to assist newly purchased brands.
I believe it was in 1926-1927 when the two people who were “Frances Lee Barton” were hired by General Foods at Battle Creek, Michigan–Isabella Beach and Marie Sellers.
The radio show was broadcast in the General Foods Radio Kitchen [google books], the more recent location on Park Avenue in NYC equipped as a kitchen and broadcasting studio. The link is to a picture of the kitchen and the host depicting Frances Lee Barton. The show was at times just called Frances Lee Barton, talk, and other times more completely called the Cooking School of the Air, following in the footsteps of Betty Crocker’s Cooking School of the Air. The show was on WEAF and 35 associated NBC radio stations reaching 2,500,000 people, mostly women.
Isabella Beach when representing Frances Lee Barton used details of her real life, yet kept her real name, Isabella Beach, confidential–actually she kept it top secret to this day–her descendants have no mention of their grandmother’s alias although they do know of her radio shows after GF. Yes, it makes me wonder, but finding the rare disclosure in Variety magazine confirmed and allowed facts to line up.
Here are facts that Mrs. Beach, I mean Frances Barton, would not have shared on the radio show–Isabella Margaret King was born in Scotland in the 1890s and immigrated with her family to the States. They lived in Hyde Park, Massachusetts and her father was a paper mill supervisor. They moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan by 1917. At 23 years old, Isabella King married the co-owner of the local Fischer Music Store, becoming Mrs. Harry Beach. Harry A. Beach was 27 years old, light blue eyes, light colored hair, and supporting his long-widowed mother. Harry grew up without a father since before he was ten.
In 1927 the newly-named General Foods in Battle Creek was a quick trip to the front door of the Harry and Isabella Beach family in Kalamazoo, with accessible train travel and expanding access to automobiles. Honk! Honk! Isabella and Harry were busy with their new family, but because General Foods company was only 24 miles away, Isabella could readily commute to General Foods after being hired to assist the Swans Down flour brand.
By the end of 1927 the young Beach family had seven children. Somewhere between Summer 1927 and Fall 1929, maybe to be closer to NYC broadcasting, they moved their large family to the country in Salisbury Connecticut, 100 miles from Manhattan. They lived on the same street as Isabella’s two brothers and widowed mother. We don’t know yet which part of the family moved there first. In Salisbury the last Harry & Isabella Beach child was born to fulfill the future radio disclosure of “Mrs Barton” having eight children–
“MOTHER OF EIGHT IS AIR VETERAN, Frances Lee Barton Begins New Program Friday. A mother of eight children, Mrs. Frances Lee Barton has been broadcasting the Cooking School of the Air every Thursday morning for the last three years. Her long practical experience and her genuine interest in housewives’ problems have made hundreds of thousands of radio friends…” — The Buffalo News, Feb 2, 1935
By 1935 the Beach family moved to Westchester county, closer to Manhattan. The same year there was the following “needle-in-a-haystack” disclosure in an advertising executives’ magazine. This 1935 old-fashioned “tweet” was the only disclosure allowed anyone to know that Isabella Beach was the real Frances Lee Barton! —
“Frances Lee Barton (Mrs. Harry Beach) sails for Scotland on July 16 for a two-week vacash in her native heath. Her place on Gen. Foods show while away will be taken by son James Beach, 15 years old, one week, and Elizabeth Beach, 11 years old, the next week..” –Variety, July, 1935
So much information in 50 words! Because of those breezy two sentences—see last column pdf online page 100—we [think we] know who the real Frances Lee Barton is, as it is not disclosed anywhere we could find online except in our article and that tiny 1935 Variety magazine insert in the middle of a dense paragraph on a busy page! When I think of the chances that this would have been kept swept under the rug except for a breezy gossip column!
In the census, Isabella Beach officially had “no occupation” until after her stint as Frances Lee Barton, for General Foods radio hosting between 1932 to 1935. We believe she worked for General Foods all those years and five years before, but no one said a word. After Frances Lee Barton’s radio show was off the airwaves in 1935, Isabella continued in radio and print using her own name Isabella K. Beach, with maiden name King as her middle initial. Her face is the same face portrayed in earlier GF literature. As before, she broadcast under the NBC umbrella, now advertising Proctor & Gamble brands such as Crisco, and participating in educational programming. I believe she may have continued working for General Foods in occasional other projects.
If it hadn’t been for the 1935 Variety magazine tweet, the world would believe that this next person, Miss Marie Seller, was “Mrs. Frances Barton.”
Marie Sellers was the director of General Foods’ Consumer Service Department, hired at the same time that I believe Isabella Beach was hired. Miss Sellers “took the fall” and disclosed all to the Chicago Tribune when she retired in 1950–
Quote: “Miss Sellers, who just rounded out her 24th year with General Foods, 15 of them as head of the biggest consumer service department in the country (staff of 92, almost half of them home economists)…During her years with General Foods, Miss Sellers was the official Frances Lee Barton, the company’s symbol of consumer services. One of her many responsibilities has been directing the daily Cooking School of the Air program…“
Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1950, pg. 29.
Marie Sellers may have “directed” the Cooking School of the Air, but let’s be honest, she didn’t quite step into the shoes of the beloved radio personality Frances Lee Barton. This kind of mix-up was common with fictional spokespersons. We had one “Frances Lee Barton” for the Consumer Department, and another “Barton” for radio voices, TV hosts, and whatnot. Miss Sellers, on the other hand, was single, and as far as I know, didn’t have eight children. Sure, she was the head of the Consumers Service department at a multinational company – a pretty complex job if you ask me. She had her staff handle the letters and requests addressed to Frances Lee Barton. She traveled the world representing General Foods, and yes, she directed the radio show which included managing the big picture of Barton and scripts for the on-air personality. She was a major guardian of the fake name, no doubt about it. But when Frances Lee Barton was introduced on the radio with eight children—children who actually showed up and talked, shouldn’t that personification of Frances Lee Barton be the one that remains the real Francis Lee Barton?
