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Barbara Welles is, in private life, the wife of Elmer L. Knoedler— here she has dinner with him at a night club.
SPLIT PERSONALITY
Women's commentator Barbara Welles, whose show is heard Monday-Friday at 4 P.M., WOR.
WOR's women's commentator Barbara Welles is part pugnacious reporter and part dulcet hostess — the acme of tact. Half her day is spent burrowing the eastern seaboard for news, for items from every field of endeavor, for new experiences, for guests who will translate their work, interests and accomplishments to the listening audience of WOR's The Barbara Welles Show heard Mondays-throughFridays from 4 to 4:30 P.M.
When asked about her sources of information, Barbara replies, "Everything is grist to my mill. I like to report the unusual and cover events from the middle of things."
She once conducted a broadcast from a submarine where she interviewed all hands aboard and recently, she got up at 5 A.M. to tape-record part of a broadcast from Manhattan's wholesale fruit auction. Another time she went aloft with the late globe-circling pilot Bill Odum to record an interview.
Her most extensive broadcasting junket was an eighteenday tour of Great Britain in September 1949. With her portable recorder, Barbara talked to Britons virtually from pub to palace.
Barbara was born Helen Hall in Kansas City, Missouri. She spent most of her youth in Florida and attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts for two years. She obtained a scholarship to the Royal Academy in London but was twice delayed by illness and decided to study privately with Tamara Daykarhanova in New York City. She played summer stock for two seasons with the Davey Jones Locker Theatre in Rockport, Massachusetts, and the Band Box Players in Sheffield, Connecticut. On the strength of her performances with both companies, she was called to New York for a screen test by 20th Century-Fox, but her film opportunities were nipped in the bud when the war cancelled all such tests.
She turned to radio in Baltimore, Maryland. There she was for two years the only woman commentator in that city's radio history She also wrote and presented her own women's program, covered special events such as the opera and elections and introduced a new series on the Naval Academy, broadcast from Annapolis, Maryland, over the full Mutual network. During this period she also broadcast another Mutual show, a weekly commentary from Washington, D. C, on which she interviewed wives of government officials.
Since 1948, she's been heard as WOR's Barbara Welles, interviewing celebrities, reporting news features and covering events ranging from the discovery of a new sewing machine attachment to Broadway openings and international episodes.