Radio stars (Dec 1938)

RADIO STARS It's typical of her that a few years ago, when she was assigned to make an ex-king tour of Europe, as the basis for a series of stories, she took her mother along. Most reporters would never have thought of doing this, but Mary Margaret had always dreamed of taking her mother away from the farm, showing her the wonders of foreign lands, the adventures of traveling. The trip was a hard one. It meant scurrying to all parts of Europe, tracking down dethroned monarchs who were in hiding or in exile. Most of them were, naturally, resentful of intruders, and proud. Rut the quiet little farm woman from Missouri had a way with ex-kings. She felt sorry for them. And she treated each one, not as a monarch, but as if he were an unhappy little boy who had been mistreated. Several of them were fanning, and to them Mary Margaret's mother gave friendly advice on the subject she knew best. They found Manuel, ex-King of Portugal, raising ducks in a little English town, and there they had a delightful visit, swapping stories on the problems of duck raising. The former monarchs, suspicious of most people, talked freely of their sorrows. Some of them even showed Mrs. McBride and Mary Margaret small boxes of earth, cherished soil from their native lands which they still loved and to which they could never return. The shrewdest reporter in the world could never have uncovered the human, touching stories that Mary Margaret and her mother were told. However, like any good reporter, many of her best stories are the result of sheer nerve and fearlessness. Her first scoop — in her early newspaper days — was a story about stunt flying. Aviation was fairly new then, and few people had been up in a plane. Most of the material written about flying was frankly second hand. When her editor told her to do a story on stunt flying, Mary Margaret did what was to her the obvious thing — she arranged to go up with a stunt flyer. Her editor was horrified. He refused to assign her to the story. If she wanted to do it, if she came back in one piece, if she wrote the story, he'd publish it. But he wouldn't assign her to so dangerous a task. She went out to the field dressed in her best clothes. The flyer gave her pants, a jacket, goggles, a helmet. Since ships in those days were open crates, they strapped her in, and the stunt flyer took off. There was a breath-taking ascent. The wind tore at her helmet, the noise was deafening. Suddenly she felt the plane stand on its nose and go into a whirling motion. By some miracle it straightened up. The pilot turned around, grinning, and shouted against the wind : "That was a spin.'' Then they went into loops, barrel-rolls, wingovers, more spins — all the hazardous exciting stunts. When they returned to earth, photographers from her paper were there, nervous friends were on hand to greet her. Later an acquaintance asked her : "What was the most thrilling part of the whole thing?'' And she answered quite honestly, "Getting my picture in the paper.-' They actually had run her picture, in the borrowed thing togs, along with her story. She is still an aviation enthusiast. And one of her radio programs that pleased listeners most was the story of her flight to Europe on the Hiiideiibitrg. When Mary Margaret came to New York, one of the first things she wanted to see was "the street with the park in the middle of it." She had seen it in the movies. Today, as a kind of fulfillment of an old dream, she lives on that street. For all her love of the farm, and all the nostalgia it holds for her, she probably will never return to it. There arc no microphones down on the farm. Besides, she also loves New York. Her fondness for the sight of golden wheat bowing before the wind, for the sweet smell of newplowed earth after a rain, for a country kitchen fragrant with baking bread, is lasting and sincere. But she finds equal rhapsody in the sight of New York's skyline studded with lights, of a ship coming ter afternoon, brushed with snow. She's one of those rare people who sees beauty Right now her dream is to have a white garden, a garden with nothing but white flowers growing in it. But even while she talks of white tulips silhouetted against evergreens, and white roses climbing a pastel wall — even when she shows you, enthusiastically, the white-garden plan which a landscape gardener drew for her — you know she'll never plant one. For she could never resist a clump of purple pansies here, a delicate spray of blue delphinium there, and violets. Yellow roses would tempt her, and old-fashioned hollyhocks, and sweet peas in a hodgepodge of color like they had down home. She's that kind of a person. A \blume of Pi™ .for his or her Old Gold -en Christinas Here's one "volume" that will never get tucked away in the book shelves to gather dust! It's filled with 100 Old Golds, the cigarettes that are as double-mellow as Santa's smile. And it costs no more than two regular "Flat-Fifty" packages. What a handsome gift it makes! Give him this "True Story of America's Double-Mellow Cigarette," and you'll give him a whole volume of smoking pleasure. Ladies will be thrilled with this Old Gold gift, too! It looks like a rare edition, richly bound in maroon and gold. TUNE IN on Old Gold's "Melody and Madness" with Bob Benehley, every Sunday night starling November 20th, Columbia Network, Coast-to-Coast 2 Open it up and you find 2 regular "flat-fifties" of Old Golds (100 cigarettes). 3 Open one of the "flat-fifties" and enyAmerica'sdoubleniellow cigarette. 55