As I have mentioned before, American radio executives were not enthusiastic about hiring women to broadcast hard news. They believed that American listeners were perfectly happy to hear women read ads on the air, talk about about recipes and housework, or even, interview guests. But despite the success of radio personalities like Mary Margaret McBride, and to a lesser extent, *ahem*, Sigrid Schultz, radio executives were sure the American public did not want to hear a female voice delivering the news.

The most egregious example of this is the case of Betty Wason (1912-2001). She had tried unsuccessfully to get work with CBS before World War II began.  Then Germany invaded Norway on April 9, 1940  Wason was in Sweden at the time and received a call from the CBS representative in Berlin. The network needed someone to broadcast from Scandinavia NOW.  She found a woman who could translate breaking news from the Swedish papers for her first broadcast, which allowed her to scoop the other networks. She followed the first broadcast with more war news from deep in Norway.  In May she got a call from CBS asking her to find a man to broadcast in her place because her voice was too young and feminine for war news.  She reached out to a male reporter, coached him through his first broadcast, taught him how to write for radio, and lost her job to him. (Grrr.)

The story doesn’t end there.  Wason traveled to the Balkans, which had become a hot spot.  Her replacement followed her.  She filed a few print stories from Turkey.  Then she went to Athens, where she reported for CBS again, and was again asked to hire a male broadcaster.  This time she hired a young secretary from the American embassy in Athens to be her voice. Unlike his predecessor, he had no interest in replacing her, in fact, he introduced himself as “Phil Brown# speaking for Betty Wason.” She continued to run the CBS bureau in Athens until the Nazis occupied the city in April 1941.  The Germans held Wason and several other American reporters for almost two months. They were finally allowed to leave when German correspondents were ordered to leave the United States. They flew from Athens to Vienna, where they were detained as suspected spies, and then transported to Berlin by train under Gestapo guard.

Wason returned to the United States, where the Newspaper Women’s Club honored her “for the daring and courage she had shown in her war coverage in Norway, Finland, Greece and elsewhere. Despite their recognition, she was not able to get broadcasting work with CBS.  She turned to print journalism and wrote a book about her experience in Greece, titled Miracle in Hellas (1943). After the war, she built a successful career, publishing another 23 books, many of them cookbooks, and working as an editor for women’s magazines. She also found work in radio, as a talk show host rather than a broadcast journalist.

#Not his real name

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Two weeks and counting until The Dragon from Chicago releases.  In case anyone wants to know.