Gallant American Women on the Airwaves: Telling Women’s Histories in the 1930s

Decades before American universities treated women’s history as a serious academic subject, biographies of female historical figures pervaded popular culture.  Historical drama became a prominent radio genre, exemplified by Cavalcade of America (1935-1953).  A collaboration of advertising agency BBDO, the DuPont Company, and scholars, this influential anthology of biographical plays featured pioneering women’s rights activists amidst the more frequently celebrated male politicians and entrepreneurs.  Other radio series focused entirely on women, asserting that they had long made active, progressive contributions to public life, even through their everyday activities as mothers, consumers, and businesswomen.  Historians Bonnie Smith and Julie Des Jardins have identified amateur historical writing and historical preservation as alternative approaches forged by early twentieth-century women excluded from the academic profession.  This study considers how activists and women workers used popular media to broadcast feminist histories.

Throwing contemporary listeners into historical re-enactments, radio encouraged identification with women of the past while simultaneously rejecting the idea that women’s capabilities were biologically-defined and thus continuous across time.   Between 1936 and 1939, the Philadelphia Club of Advertising Women produced local radio plays dramatizing diverse subjects, from the legendary Molly Pitcher to Godey’s Lady’s Book editor Sarah Hale, as precedents for contemporary businesswomen’s participation in public activities.  Meanwhile, historian Mary Ritter Beard, journalist Eva vom Baur Hansl, and scriptwriter Jane Ashman collaborated with the Office of Education, Federal Security Agency, Works Progress Administration, and NBC’s Women’s Activities Division on Women in the Making of America and Gallant American Women.  Broadcast in 1939 and 1940, these programs publicized Beard’s World Center for Women’s Archives in New York and dramatized women’s diverse contributions as “co-makers” of history in politics, law, education, science, the press, and business.  Melding feminist activism with corporate and network goals, radio’s revisionist histories urged wide audiences to reconceptualize the past.