Betty Crocker History – Old Recipe Book

Is it general knowledge that Betty Crocker wasn’t actually a person or am I just late on knowing this? This whole time I thought she was a real person who had a line of baking supplies, recipe books and baking / food products… It wasn’t until I was scrolling through old newspaper articles of her recipes that I decided to look her up. I was seriously flabbergasted. I even asked my Mum about it and she didn’t know either.

We see old adverts for Betty, with her beautiful photo on the page. Yet there was no such person. Only people who portrayed her.

in this 1951 advert for Betty Crocker recipe collectors, they speak of her like she’s a real person. They even label her photo with her name. Photo via chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

Here’s what I learned about Betty Crocker and how her story started.

Betty Crocker is a brand and fictional character used in advertising campaigns for food and recipes. It was originally created by the Washburn-Crosby Company in 1921 following a contest in the Saturday Evening Post. In 1954, General Mills, an American Fortune 500 corporation branded the red spoon logo, giving various food-related merchandise the Betty Seal of Approval. ^[1] A portrait of Betty Crocker, first commissioned in 1936 and revised several times since, appears on printed advertisements and product packaging. On television and radio broadcasts, Betty Crocker was portrayed by several actresses, on radio by Marjorie Husted for twenty years, and on television by Adelaide Hawley Cumming between 1949 and 1964.

The character was developed in 1921 as a way to give a personalized response to consumer product questions. The name Betty was selected because it was viewed as a cheery, all-American name. It was paired with the last name Crocker, in honor of William Crocker, a Washburn Crosby Company director.

– Wikipedia Betty Crocker

How It All Began

Betty’s story began with a promotion run by Gold Medal Flour back in 1921. Home cooks could win a pincushion resembling a flour sack if they correctly completed a jigsaw puzzle of a milling scene. The Washburn Crosby Company, a flour milling concern and largest predecessor of General Mills, Inc., received thousands of responses and a flood of questions about baking. The name Betty Crocker was created to personalize responses to consumer inquires.

The surname Crocker was chosen to honor a popular, recently retired director of the company, William G. Crocker. Betty was chosen simply as a friendly-sounding name. Women employees were invited to submit sample Betty Crocker signatures; the one judged most distinctive is the basis for the one in use today.

– https://www.bettycrocker.com/about-us

“her picture has probably been published more often than that of any living person.”

In 1924, the Washburn Crosby Company saved a local radio station from bankruptcy, changed the station’s name to its acronym, WCCO, and presented Betty Crocker on daytime radio’s first cooking show. “Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air” was an immediate success, and the next year was expanded to 13 regional stations. Each station had its own Betty Crocker voice, reading scripts written at the Home Service Department in Minneapolis. In 1927, the cooking school became a program on the fledgling NBC network, continuing for 24 years with more than one million listeners enrolled.
via: https://www.bettycrocker.com/about-us

Betty Crocker Official Website

Here’s the entire about section on their official website.

They’ve even got a Betty Crocker YouTube channel. Though original Betty would be nearly 100, I wish they had someone portraying her today. It would really give an authentic vintage vibe to their videos.

Here’s a fun video I found that has someone saying, “hi, I’m Betty Crocker” 🙂