Crocker, Betty

LC control no.	n 80067014
Descriptive conventions	rda
Personal name heading	Crocker, Betty *Browse this term in* LC Authorities or the LC Catalog
Variant(s)	Crocker, Betty, pseud.
Found in	Dichter, Ernest. A psychological research study on the effectiveness of Betty Crocker in promoting General Mills products, 1953 (Betty Crocker; a fictitious person created by General Mills, Inc., to represent an idealized American housewife; also used in advertising and as a brand name on certain General Mills products; Dichter's research revealed that General Mills, Inc., had been very successful in its objective to fool consumers into thinking that "Betty Crocker" was indeed a real person; cookbooks issued under the name "Betty Crocker" are actually the work of anonymous teams of writers employed by General Mills, Inc.; there has never been only one individual who has used "Betty Crocker" as a pseudonym) Wikipedia, October 8, 2013 (Betty Crocker is a cultural icon, as well as brand name and trademark of American Fortune 500 corporation General Mills. The name was first developed by the Washburn Crosby Company 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. Marjorie Husted was the creator of Betty Crocker. She was a home economist and businesswoman under whose supervision the image of Betty Crocker became an icon for General Mills.) Who was Betty Crocker?, via Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media website, October 8, 2013 (One of the best-known women of the interwar years--Betty Crocker--never existed. The Washburn Crosby Company of Minneapolis, one of the six big milling companies that merged into General Mills in 1928, received thousands of requests each year in the late 1910s and early 1920s for answers to baking questions. In 1921, managers decided that it would be more intimate to sign the responses personally; they combined the last name of a retired company executive, William Crocker, with the first name "Betty," which was thought of as "warm and friendly." The signature came from a secretary, who won a contest among female employees. (The same signature still appears on Betty Crocker products). In 1924, Betty Crocker acquired a voice with the radio debut of the nation's first cooking show, which featured thirteen different actresses working from radio stations across the country. Later it became a national broadcast, The Betty Crocker School of the Air, which ran for twenty-four years. Finally, in 1936 Betty Crocker got a face. Artist Neysa McMein brought together all the women in the company's Home Service Department and "blended their features into an official likeness." The widely circulated portrait reinforced the popular belief that Betty Crocker was a real woman. One public opinion poll rated her as the second most famous woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt. Over the next seventy-five years, her face has changed seven times: she became younger in 1955; she became a "professional" woman in 1980; and in 1996 she became multicultural, acquiring a slightly darker and more "ethnic" look.)