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.
In 1926 Postum Co. Inc. bought Igleheart Bros. Swans Down Flour company, and Mary Jean Hart, Swans Down first in-house spokeswoman left Igleheart to work at —maybe to work no where–was she even a real person? Yes, she was. Mary Jean left to work at the Mirro Test Kitchen.
Not many people questioned the authenticity of General Food’s Frances Lee Barton for Swansdown flour. In magazine ads and booklets she was the authority attached to a company department with a small picture but no tagline saying “graduate of…,” “editor of…” or any description which followed a spokesperson’s name. Did people question in the 1920s or 1930s if Betty Crocker was a real person? Fortune magazine in 1940s could have been the first to disclose that Betty Crocker was fictitious, but that’s another story.
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 at that time transforming into General Foods. There were many changes in 1926-1927, including the hiring of people to assist the new 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.
The radio show was broadcast in the General Foods Radio Kitchen, 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. Yes, it makes me wonder, but see the above gossip in a trade magazine and the facts 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 they moved their large family to the country in Salisbury Connecticut, 100 miles from Manhattan, living 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 lived in 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 what allowed any of us 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!
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 mum was the word. After Frances Lee Barton’s radio show was off the airwaves in 1935, Isabella branched out in radio and print using her own name Isabella K. Beach, with maiden name King as her middle initial. As before, she broadcast under the NBC umbrella, now advertising Proctor & Gamble brands such as Crisco, and participating in educational programming. I believe she also continued working for General Foods.
If it hadn’t been for the 1935 Variety magazine tweet, we’d have to 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 we know, didn’t have eight children and a husband. 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 all the letters and requests addressed to Frances Lee Barton, jetsetted around the world representing General Foods, and yes, she directed the radio show. She was the guardian of the fake name, no doubt about it. But when Frances Lee Barton was introduced on the radio with eight children, shouldn’t that personification of Frances Lee Barton have been front and center?
