Betty Crocker Unveiled

In 1945, Fortune magazine named her the second most popular woman in America, behind that other first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.

And, when the Betty Crocker big red picture cookbook first came out in 1950, sales rivaled those of the other big book, the Bible.

She's certainly had more than a few looks over the years, observes CBS News Correspondent Cynthia Bowers on CBS News This Morning.

Still, have you ever wondered, just who is Betty Crocker? And where might she be?

Among the thoughts expressed by passersby to Bowers: "I think she's long dead"; "She's probably alive and like 95, hanging out, enjoying her recipes"; "Retired, with a lot of money somewhere."

Author Susan Marks first became intrigued with Betty while working as a tour guide in the Minneapolis Milling District and, she told Bowers, "I used to tell people about the history of flour milling…and how flour milling was once king in Minnesota. …And I noticed that, whenever I told people that they were standing near the birthplace of Betty Crocker, the old Washburn Crosby mill, people would start to come to life with stories about Betty Crocker."

"It was the first cookbook I got for my wedding from my mother," one woman noted at a Marks book signing.

"I have the Betty Crocker future homemaker award from the state of Wisconsin back in -- ooh, do I have to say the year? 1961," another fan chimed in.'

"And," Marks says, "the more I listen to people, the more I realize that people had a strong emotional connection to her. And I thought, 'I have to find out why.'"

So Marks went hunting, and found out that Betty Crocker was born in a mill in 1921, to proud corporate parents at the Washburn Crosby Company which, in 1928, became General Mills.

"Do you think that people still think Betty Crocker was or is real?" Bowers asked Marks.

"Oh, absolutely," came the response. "I'd say about half the people I talk to are surprised to hear that Betty Crocker's not real. And I feel bad about being the bearer of bad news. But so many people have said to me, 'Well, she was real at one time, right?' And I don't know how to tell them."

She lets readers down easy, in her new book Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food, but it still comes as a shock, even to some in the audience at the book's launch last month at Minneapolis' Mill City Museum."Do people feel duped?" Bowers wondered.

"I don't know if they're aware of all the other home economists and corporate figures that were out there at the time that were all claiming to be real," Marks answered. "But yeah, I do think some people feel a little duped by General Mills and Betty Crocker."

She could have been talking about one man at the book signing, who admitted. "I was surprised and felt a little taken advantage of, maybe. And something was cheapened a little bit."

In fact, Bowers notes, "Betty wasn't born to deceive. She was an accident, and as it turns out, a happy one."

Marks explains that, "The Washburn Crosby Company ran an ad in the back of the Saturday Evening Post for their gold medal flour. And it was a puzzle, like a picture puzzle that you put together."

If you solved the puzzle, you could win a pin cushion in the shape of a sack of gold medal flour.

"It was an intoxicating lure," Marks points out, "because 30,000 people sent puzzles back expecting to get this little pin cushion. But what surprised the company was the couple hundred letters that also arrived asking for cooking and baking advice."

Sam Gale, the company advertising director, decided to answer those letters. He even sent along recipes from the company's home economists. But when it came time to sign the letters, "He felt sorta strange about it," Marks says. "He thought a woman at home does not want advice from a man who supposedly doesn't know his way around the kitchen. …So he came up with the idea of Betty Crocker, a woman, who would answer this mail and be a friend to the homemaker."

Gale decided the name Betty sounded wholesome and cheery. The surname Crocker was in honor of William Crocker, a recently retired company director.

"Why was this such a necessary thing? Bowers wanted to know. "I mean, even before Betty became an icon, people were already writing letters, needing help, needing suggestions."

"Well," Marks says, "you hit on something really big: There was a need. And this need came from women leaving their rural roots, coming to urban centers, moving away from their mothers. …and so they had new appliances, new technology had changed things. So instead of wood burning and coal burning stoves, they had electric and gas ranges. And food was starting to be processed."

Women had become strangers in their own, newly-modern kitchens, Bowers says. They had questions, and once "Betty" started answering them, thousands more letters poured in.

"I love this one," Marks told Bowers as they poured through letters together. "It's one of my favorites from 1929: 'I don't make your fudge cake because I like white cake. But my neighbor does. Is there any danger of her capturing my husband?'"

Men wrote in, too, for a different kind of help, thinking "Betty was a dating service," Marks says.

"In fact in the height of Betty Crocker's popularity," Marks adds, "she got anywhere between 4,000 and 5,000 letters per day. The only known amount of mail that's more than that would be the amount that the Roosevelts got during the war. And that was about 7,000 a day."

Every single letter got answered. "Betty" had help, a team of highly-skilled home economists who tested recipes first-hand in the Betty Cocker kitchens, and even traveled around the country, spreading Betty's gospel: "You can do it, and I can help."

But it was radio that made Betty Crocker a star, Bowers says.

"It's time for Betty Crocker and here she is, America's first lady of food, your Betty Crocker, brought to you by General Mills," the announcer would say.In 1924, Betty hit the Minneapolis airwaves. Within a year, her show went national, with actresses across the country reading from the same approved scripts. "Hello, everybody! Cooking school time again. …Gold Medal is the flour we recommend in our recipes," the actresses playing Betty would say.

Before long, Betty Crocker was sharing her recipe for everything from meatloaf, to marriage: "It's so nice to have a spouse who likes to bake."

Before Dear Abby, people looked to her for advice with love or with raising children, balancing the budget, even battling depression.

But it was during the Great Depression that Betty and her staff really rolled up their sleeves, offering recipes for leftovers and advice on how to make nutritious meals with less.

During World War II, it was Betty to the rescue, with tips on how to make do with rations.

So it's perhaps no wonder Betty's popularity withstood her 1945 outing in Fortune magazine.

The article "called her a fraud, called her a fake," Marks says. "I never found any documentation that said that they were trying to keep it secret. I found something in the archives that said something about how, and this is in the early '20s, if people asked for a photograph of Betty Crocker we should write a letter back saying that she doesn't like to have her photograph taken.

But real or not, for most folks, it didn't seem to matter.

"And many times," Marks continued, "they did know that she wasn't real. They just wanted that connection with someone who seemed to know it all. …Whether she was real or not, they could get a response back from her. And that actually helped her be -- to become almost real."

Some folks, such as author and culinary historian Laura Shapiro, argue that the fictional Betty Crocker is more in touch with reality than that other real-life kitchen icon, Martha Stewart.

"I would say that Betty Crocker is the real person," Shapiro asserts. "I think Martha Stewart lives in much more of a fantasy world that many people would love to have for themselves. Betty Crocker didn't deal in fantasy at all. …She was all about the real world."

Still, with time and technology, Betty has changed.

In the 1950s, her television personality seemed more concerned with selling cake mix than helping folks do it themselves.

"For instance," Shapiro points out, "she appeared with Gracie Allen on the George Burns and Gracie Allen show, and Gracie would say to George, 'I have to make something for my bridge club tonight. And I don't know what to do.' And George would say, 'Why don't you ask Betty Crocker?'

"And a moment later, a marble cake would materialize. And Gracie would say, 'This new Betty Crocker marble cake mix is so easy, even I can do it.' So, that was the message. It's so easy that even you, dumb, silly, frivolous, low rent housewife can make this cake.

"That is a very different message from the message Betty was pouring out in the '40s and the early '50s, about how you can really cook. You are the housewife with a respected occupation. You are somebody that people should admire and applaud."

And, Bowers observes, as that message began to disappear, so, too, did Betty Crocker.

"At some point in the late '50s, early '60s," Shapiro says, "Betty Crocker herself does not appear at all in these cake mix ads. You see a spoon dancing around in a little bowl. It's like there's no woman at all necessary."

Still, even today, the mere mention of Betty Crocker brings a smile to the face of folks who grew up with her: "Every Christmas," one admirer told Bowers, "we make the candle salad, with banana the cherry on top. It's a tradition in our family. And that's from Betty Crocker's children's cookbook."

Not to mention first-timers.

"She has a special place in the hearts of many baby boomers," Marks says. "But I do know that Betty's definitely changed with the times."

But her recipes haven't: from reliably cinnamonny snicker-doodles to creamy chiffon cake, everyone has a favorite.

Today, you can still ask "Betty Crocker."

"I called the Betty Crocker hotline once, for a cooking demonstration. I was going to use a cake mix. And I had never made one before, and I didn't understand one of the directions. And she answered, and she answered and answered my question," Shaprio recalls, with laughter.

"She does exist to this day as a source of authority. People will write to her or call her, hotline…and it's amazing, an amazingly long life for an advertising icon.

She continues to help folks not quite at home in their kitchens, people like Marks: "I'm not actually known for my cooking and baking but (there are recipes) I can nail each time. …In fact, I was an adult before I realized that you could make chocolate chip cookies without Bisquick.

Real or made up, Betty Crocker lives on, in our hearts, and in our stomachs."