Bessie Beatty

Elizabeth Mary "Bessie" Beatty (January 27, 1886 – April 6, 1947) was an American journalist, editor, playwright, and radio host.

Bessie Beatty
Bessie Beatty in 1927
Bessie Beatty in The Film Year Book of 1927
Born
Elizabeth Mary Beatty

January 27 1886
DiedApril 6 1947 (aged 61)
EducationOccidental College
Occupations
  • Journalist
  • editor
  • playwright
  • radio host

Early life and education

Elizabeth Mary "Bessie" Beatty was born and raised in Los Angeles, one of four children of Thomas and Jane Boxwell Beatty, both immigrants from Ireland.[1] As a child in Long Beach, she staged a children's show to raise money for the Red Cross, casting her siblings in some of the roles.[2] She attended Occidental College, but did not graduate.[3][4]

Career

Her first job in journalism was with the Los Angeles Herald, while she was still in college.[5] She had a regular column at the San Francisco Bulletin from 1907 to 1917, called "On the Margin."[6] While on assignment covering a miners' strike in Nevada, she wrote and published Who's Who in Nevada, a biographical dictionary.[7] Beatty accompanied fellow journalists Rheta Childe Dorr, Albert Rhys Williams, Louise Bryant and John Reed on a trip to Russia in 1917.[8] There she interviewed Leon Trotsky, and members of the Women's Battalion, whose courage and strength impressed her. Her book about that trip, The Red Heart of Russia, was published in 1918. "I had been alive at a great moment, and knew it was great," she wrote of her time in Russia.[9][10]

Beatty worked as a freelance journalist for much of her career. She was editor of McCall's Magazine from 1918 to 1921.[11] She was American Secretary of the International P. E. N. Club. In 1932 a play she co-wrote with novelist Jack Black, Jamboree, was produced briefly on Broadway.[12] From 1940 until her death, she hosted a popular radio show in New York City; her on-air persona was once referred to as "Mrs. Know-it-all" in Time magazine.[13] During World War II she used her show to sell over $300,000 in war bonds, and was recognized by the Women's International Exposition of Arts and Industries with their annual radio award in 1943.[14]

As an activist, she was a member of the feminist group Heterodoxy.[15] She wrote "A Political Primer for the New Voter" (1912), a pamphlet designed for California women newly exercising the right of suffrage.[16] In 1919 she gave testimony at a Senate hearing on "Bolshevik Propaganda."[17]

Personal life

Beatty married actor William Sauter in 1926. The lived in Los Angeles, and later in New York City. Their wire-haired terriers, Biddy and Terry, were frequently mentioned on Miss Beatty's radio program, and even received fan mail.[18] Beatty died suddenly by heart attack in April 1947, age 61.[19] There was a tribute program aired the day after her death.[20]

References
  1. "Bessie Beatty, 61, Commentator, Dies; Ex-Editor Broadcast Women's Program on WOR--Former Foreign Correspondent," New York Times (April 7, 1947): 23.
  2. "Red Cross Benefit: Children to Present Tableaux at Long Beach for the Cause," Los Angeles Times (August 12, 1898): 6.
  3. Morgan Flake, "Bessie Beatty: An Exhibition of Twentieth-Century Oxy Alumna and Journalist Bessie Beatty," Occidental College Special Collections & College Archives 2011.
  4. "Sob Sister Now Famous: Bessie Beatty was Under Rifle Fire; Was War Correspondent and Magazine Editor," Los Angeles Times (October 8, 1922): III33.
  5. "Patrick Golden, "Bessie Beatty," Editor's Notes, Emma Goldman Papers online". Archived from the original on 2014-10-21. Retrieved 2014-10-10.
  6. Katherine Burger Johnson, "Bessie Beatty," in Bernard A. Cook, ed., Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present (ABC-Clio). ISBN 1851097708
  7. Bessie Beatty, Who's Who in Nevada (Home Printing Company 1907).
  8. Robert Service, Spies and Commissars: The Early Years of the Russian Revolution (Public Affairs 2012). ISBN 1610392396
  9. Bessie Beatty, The Red Heart of Russia (New York: The Century Co. 1918). ISBN 1173235469
  10. Lisa M. Jankoski, "Bessie Beatty: One Woman's View of the Russian Revolution" (MA thesis, Villanova University 1989).
  11. Jaime Harker, America the Middlebrow: Women's Novels, Progressivism, and Middlebrow Authorship Between the Wars (University of Massachusetts Press 2007): 37-38. ISBN 1558495975
  12. "Jamboree," Internet Broadway Database.
  13. "Radio: Mrs. Know-It-All," Time (September 21, 1942).
  14. "Bessie Beatty, 61, Commentator, Dies; Ex-Editor Broadcast Women's Program on WOR--Former Foreign Correspondent," New York Times (April 7, 1947): 23.
  15. Judith A. Allen, The Feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gillman: Sexualities, Histories, and Progressivism (University of Chicago Press 2009): 180. ISBN 9780226014623
  16. Bessie Beatty, "A Political Primer for the New Voter" (San Francisco: Whittaker and Ray-Wiggin Co. 1912).
  17. "Testimony of Miss Bessie Beatty," Congressional Edition volume 7599(March 5, 1919).
  18. "Where She Goes, He Goes: That's Bessie Beatty and Bill Sauter," New York Post(January 22, 1941): L3.
  19. "Bessie Beatty, 61, Commentator, Dies; Ex-Editor Broadcast Women's Program on WOR--Former Foreign Correspondent," New York Times (April 7, 1947): 23.
  20. Bessie Beatty memorial program, broadcast April 7, 1947 (Washington DC: Library of Congress Magnetic Recording Laboratory 2002).
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