Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
Speaker 2: and this is stuff you should know. Hats off, tribute,
Speaker 2: even white gloves off, tribute to a true unsung I
Speaker 2: would say, pioneer in a lot of ways, certainly sung
Speaker 2: in certain areas and certain age groups, but as far
Speaker 2: as history is concerned, I'm going to go ahead and
Speaker 2: say that Ruth Lyons is an unsung pioneer in the
Speaker 2: history of television.
Speaker 1: Agreed, And this is good a listener recommendation from I
Speaker 1: think I've been sitting on this one for a while. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: for all I know, Nick Bauer gave up on the
Speaker 1: show and won't even hear this.
Speaker 2: It's possible it happens.
Speaker 1: I also should mention that my dogs are over here
Speaker 1: today and they usually are put away, but they can't
Speaker 1: be because of work people, So they're laying down now
Speaker 1: and they're being quiet.
Speaker 2: Okay, but we'll see what happens. Hey, Momos appeared on
Speaker 2: the show at least once, so I can feel your pain.
Speaker 2: It's all right.
Speaker 1: I think we should have a policy moving forward that
Speaker 1: anytime Moe speaks in the background, Jerry just leaves that in.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm fine with that as long as Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: fine with that, no qualifiers needed.
Speaker 1: It makes you like a real person like Ruth Lyons
Speaker 1: strove to be.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't like that, then I strive to do
Speaker 2: the opposite and seem robottish and wouldn't.
Speaker 1: No, but I'm glad you introduced this as an unsung
Speaker 1: hero story because I had never heard of Ruth Lyons.
Speaker 1: But as it turns out, Ruth Lyons was quite a pioneer,
Speaker 1: and in fact, I mean, unless somebody corrects us, I
Speaker 1: would be pretty I feel pretty good about saying that
Speaker 1: Ruth Lyons invented the format of the TV talk.
Speaker 2: Show yeah, which really flies in the face of essentially
Speaker 2: everything you will find in research which credits Joe Franklin,
Speaker 2: who hosted The Joe Franklin Show, as not only being
Speaker 2: the first daytime television host talk show host, but having
Speaker 2: also invented the format. Yeah, and his show is on
Speaker 2: from nineteen fifty one, get this till nineteen ninety three. Serious,
Speaker 2: I am dead serious. He recorded twenty eight thousand plus
Speaker 2: episodes and he never missed.
Speaker 1: A show, So no shaded Joe Franklin.
Speaker 2: No, not at all, not at all. But you will
Speaker 2: not find if you look up who invented the daytime
Speaker 2: talk show, it's Joe Franklin across the board. But we
Speaker 2: have clear evidence here that our hero of the story,
Speaker 2: Ruth Lyons, definitely invented the talk show at least two
Speaker 2: years before Joe Franklin. So yeah, let's get into this,
Speaker 2: shall we, Because even aside from that that, whether she
Speaker 2: invented it or not, she was clearly an early pioneer
Speaker 2: in daytime talk and TV in general. It was also
Speaker 2: a pretty interesting person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like everything I read about her, it was just
Speaker 1: like could she get any better? Like every time I
Speaker 1: read a new thing, it was like she was a
Speaker 1: super rad lady through and through. But she, like you said,
Speaker 1: she arrived at the beginnings of TV, because as we'll see,
Speaker 1: she started on radio and then transferred to TV, but
Speaker 1: it was, you know, there were no you know, she
Speaker 1: kind of invented the formula because there were no formulas
Speaker 1: to follow, and she was like, I mean, not only
Speaker 1: a pioneer and just sort of being the first to
Speaker 1: do things and certainly the first woman to do these things,
Speaker 1: but just all these great ideas like every time she
Speaker 1: had a new idea for something for the show, it
Speaker 1: was just like a super cool idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And she not only was a TV pioneer,
Speaker 2: she was at the onset essentially of radio, So she
Speaker 2: was there for the proliferation of radio as a mass
Speaker 2: medium and the same for TV too, So just that
Speaker 2: in and of itself is pretty remarkable. But yeah, the fact
Speaker 2: that she was doing this as a woman. And then
Speaker 2: also not like I'll go out there and host all
Speaker 2: male colleagues tell me what to do, like she was
Speaker 2: calling the shots, h and she did it by building
Speaker 2: up her professional career just by being reliable, trustworthy, charming, interesting,
Speaker 2: but also like this is kind of how it's going
Speaker 2: to be. Although I never saw anything so she was
Speaker 2: described as brash here there, I never got the impression
Speaker 2: that she was one of those people who was just
Speaker 2: pushy and like this is the way it is, and
Speaker 2: never got that impression. And then similarly, she talks a lot.
Speaker 2: I read her well, skimmed her memoirs, highly readable, by
Speaker 2: the way, and she talks a lot about herself. It's
Speaker 2: her memoir but she never quite crosses the line into
Speaker 2: like boasting, So it's really that's a tough like a
Speaker 2: tough tightrope to walk, and she manages to do it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, she's just pretty great all across the board.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think brash is a word that was
Speaker 1: used and it's still used to describe women in the
Speaker 1: workplace who you know, call their own shots and behave
Speaker 1: essentially like men might. Yeah. Yeah, take no mcguffins, take
Speaker 1: no mcguffins. Oh man, why do you have to say
Speaker 1: that word again? So Ruth was born Ruth Reeves in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh five and Cincinnata, and as you will see,
Speaker 1: this is a very Cincinnati centric story, as along with
Speaker 1: some other markets in the area, but that was really
Speaker 1: her home. And as you will see, she was a
Speaker 1: big Reds fan. Yeah, even to the point of like
Speaker 1: getting people to stuff the ballot box for the Reds
Speaker 1: on the All Star team, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And we should also say one more thing, the
Speaker 2: pioneer thing. I noticed some things I certainly wouldn't call
Speaker 2: us pioneers in podcasting that people have been doing it
Speaker 2: before us, but we were there at generally like the
Speaker 2: beginning of it kind of and certainly the spread and
Speaker 2: proliferation of it becoming a popular form of media. So
Speaker 2: I kind of can commiserate here or there with some
Speaker 2: of the points throughout her career too. I thought that
Speaker 2: was kind of neat. Oh yeah, yeah, I'll point them
Speaker 2: out as we go along. How about that? All right?
Speaker 1: So she was born in Cincinnati, She had a sister.
Speaker 1: Her parents were you know, you know, seemed like sort
Speaker 1: of middle class family. Her dad was a railroad clerk
Speaker 1: and her mother was a homemaker. Had a very close family.
Speaker 1: It seems like she was probably influenced some by her
Speaker 1: paternal grandmother, who was involved in the women's Christian Temperance Union.
Speaker 1: Because Ruth would never drink alcohol throughout her whole life.
Speaker 1: But even from a kid, she was, you know, she
Speaker 1: was like little Eddie Murphy. She was always putting on
Speaker 1: a show for the family. And if she like got
Speaker 1: on stage and did something and messed up, like, she
Speaker 1: wasn't the kind of kid to run off stage crying.
Speaker 1: She just kind of rolled with it. And that seems
Speaker 1: to be sort of a formative thing for her throughout
Speaker 1: her career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And speaking of formative, her like how she was
Speaker 2: during her formative age kind of set the stage for
Speaker 2: the rest of her life where she was a feminist
Speaker 2: in many many ways, but at the same time, she
Speaker 2: was also totally comfortable with fulfilling traditional women's roles. What's
Speaker 2: cool is they don't seem to have ever particularly contradicted
Speaker 2: each other in.
Speaker 1: Her Yeah, and it also seems like it certainly wasn't stick,
Speaker 1: but it seems like something that she was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just like you. You know, she was an every
Speaker 1: woman and she even sort of poo pooed sometimes, like
Speaker 1: you know, the movie stars with their fur coats and
Speaker 1: like they're basically unrelatable and she I don't think she
Speaker 1: wanted to be relatable. I think she just was relatable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's well put. Man. So getting back
Speaker 2: to her bio, she started dating a guy named Johnny
Speaker 2: Lyons who lived down the street. Knew the way, do
Speaker 2: you really is this the same guy?
Speaker 1: I knew him a long time ago, but when I
Speaker 1: read that, I was like, oh, yeah, Johnny Lyons, whatever
Speaker 1: happened to that dude.
Speaker 2: It's a good name, good solid name. He lived down
Speaker 2: the street and they ended up getting married about eight
Speaker 2: years after high school, and as we'll see, it didn't
Speaker 2: last very long. But in the meantime, she went to
Speaker 2: the University of Cincinnati. I think the Bearcats go Bearcatscats, Bearcats, Bearcats,
Speaker 2: thank you. And she was just there for one year.
Speaker 2: She's made it quite a splash while she was there.
Speaker 2: The first year, she's the humor editor for the yearbook,
Speaker 2: and she wrote music for the school musical and I
Speaker 2: think she became a tri delt even she was the
Speaker 2: one who coined the phrase delta Delta delta, Can I
Speaker 2: help you, help you? Help you?
Speaker 1: I saw that coming a mile away.
Speaker 2: So but she stopped. She dropped out after the first year.
Speaker 2: Her father became ill. He apparently lost a decent amount
Speaker 2: of money in the depression, and so her family was
Speaker 2: kind of hard up. And she's like, I'm really like,
Speaker 2: nothing I'm doing here is actually going to further my
Speaker 2: career down the road. I might as well drop out
Speaker 2: and go find work and help support the family rather
Speaker 2: than being a drain on the family finances.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. She was also a musician and a songwriter,
Speaker 1: something she did kind of throughout her career, even though
Speaker 1: that was definitely like a side gig that like clearly
Speaker 1: something she loved doing. But when she was young, right
Speaker 1: after she dropped out of school, she got a job
Speaker 1: playing sheet music at the Willis Music Company, which was
Speaker 1: downtown Cincinnati, and she kind of got hipped to the
Speaker 1: the local music scene, in the radio scene and did
Speaker 1: other side jobs along the way, obviously to make some money.
Speaker 1: But she was writing songs this whole time, and in
Speaker 1: fact wrote song that I wouldn't call it a hit,
Speaker 1: but her most popular song in nineteen forty six was
Speaker 1: called Let's Light the Christmas Tree. So she wrote a
Speaker 1: you know, probably in the area, as well as sort
Speaker 1: of a classic Christmas song.
Speaker 2: I g I mean, she took every thing in the kitchen,
Speaker 2: including the sink that's even remotely Christmas. Eve threw it
Speaker 2: at that one. There's bells that are peeling along with
Speaker 2: with a choir. There's children's parts. All of the lyrics
Speaker 2: are real schmaltzy, like Christmas ey stuff. It's a I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a Christmas song through and through. It's not great,
Speaker 2: but it is a Christmas song.
Speaker 1: Josh's review, it's a Christmas song, yeah, period. So Ruth
Speaker 1: Reeves got on the radio for the first time in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five, just playing piano along with the singer.
Speaker 1: But then in nineteen twenty nine, Fate came a knocking
Speaker 1: and she got a full time gig at WKRC in Cincinnati, Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: and she was assistant to the musical director there, and
Speaker 1: she was basically, you know, she organized the music, she
Speaker 1: played piano whenever they needed someone live in studio. And
Speaker 1: then another faithful thing would happen when the host of
Speaker 1: a show called The Woman's Hour got sick, she filled
Speaker 1: in and started ad libbing kind of right away, kind
Speaker 1: of Robin Williams style, a Good Morning Vietnam. She threw
Speaker 1: the script out the window, did her own thing, and
Speaker 1: afterward got called into the manager's office where it is
Speaker 1: like something out of a movie. She thought she was
Speaker 1: going to get in trouble and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: a hit.
Speaker 2: That's right. And sadly so as apparently this woman she
Speaker 2: replaced her filled in for, was out for one day
Speaker 2: and she came back in and lost her job the
Speaker 2: next day because Ruth had made such a splash. So
Speaker 2: she inadvertently took this poor woman's job and went on
Speaker 2: to not only host Woman's Hour, she added another one
Speaker 2: called Open House, and then another one, so she's hosting
Speaker 2: three different radio programs. Third one's called The Woman's View
Speaker 2: on the news, and she was not only hosting those,
Speaker 2: she was also still working with the musical director, and
Speaker 2: very like quickly made a name for herself. And again
Speaker 2: this is where Johnny Lyons comes back in and exits
Speaker 2: almost as quickly, because they got married in nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 2: and shortly after that, Johnny was transferred to Cleveland, and
Speaker 2: Ruth's like, I'm just starting my career here and it's
Speaker 2: going really well. I'm gonna stay in Cincinnati. Let's try
Speaker 2: this long distance. And anyone who's familiar with Ohio geography,
Speaker 2: the drive from Cincinnati to Cleveland is not a short drive.
Speaker 2: It's just long enough to be like a long drive,
Speaker 2: you know, So I can imagine in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 2: it was even harder, and it said to say it
Speaker 2: didn't quite work out, and they ended up staying married
Speaker 2: for about seven years, but I have the distinct impression
Speaker 2: that they were basically consciously uncoupled long before then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like it. Very sadly, she kept that name. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Ruth Lyons was the name she started her radio career with,
Speaker 1: so I think she kept it for name recognition from
Speaker 1: that point forward, even after getting remarried, as we'll see later.
Speaker 1: And she didn't really talk about that first marriage a lot.
Speaker 1: It's not at her memoir. She did say in you know,
Speaker 1: when she was talking about her second marriage, I think
Speaker 1: in interviews later on, that she didn't think she would
Speaker 1: ever marry because she thought men would hate her success.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if that had anything to do
Speaker 1: with their marriage or if it was just the long
Speaker 1: distance thing, but at any rate, they got divorced, and
Speaker 1: maybe that is a decent time for a break.
Speaker 2: I'd say Ruth Lyons would approve.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll be right back with more on Ruth
Speaker 3: Lyons learn.
Speaker 2: And stuff with Joshua John stuff fu shin up. Okay, Chuck,
Speaker 2: So we're back. We held the seance in the break,
Speaker 2: and maybe we did verify that. Ruth Lyons thought it
Speaker 2: was a great time for us to take a break.
Speaker 2: So that was great. Yeah, And I said that she
Speaker 2: had made a name for herself pretty quickly on Cincinnati
Speaker 2: radio and one of the things that came along that
Speaker 2: really helps her with that, which I guess if you
Speaker 2: can ever be helped by a flood, she was. There
Speaker 2: was a huge flood in nineteen thirty seven. I saw
Speaker 2: that it was described as up to the street lights,
Speaker 2: which is a pretty decent sized flood, and it was
Speaker 2: a catastrophe for Cincinnati. And at the time, again, radio
Speaker 2: was like really just kind of starting out, and this
Speaker 2: is one of the ways that it proved itself as
Speaker 2: a medium where you could help people thoroughly. She stayed
Speaker 2: on the air essentially for forty eight hours, reading bulletins
Speaker 2: I think from the local authorities on where to go
Speaker 2: for help, or how to donate to the Red Cross,
Speaker 2: or where to go get sandbags, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And just that right there kind of showed Cincinnati that
Speaker 2: she was a trustworthy voice to be listened to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't know if it was that or
Speaker 1: just her overall butt kicking at the job, but she
Speaker 1: got a promotion. She got promoted to program director. This
Speaker 1: is a woman in the nineteen thirty so she's already
Speaker 1: sort of you know, breaking new ground and breaking glass
Speaker 1: ceilings all over the place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to point out, she had by this time,
Speaker 2: Venus Fly Traps job, Johnny Fever's job, and Andy's job
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: That's right, So she was she didn't have Lennie Anderson's job.
Speaker 2: That's the key there, right, she Hadnie Anderson in about
Speaker 2: seventeen other people working for her.
Speaker 1: That's right. One of the other great things she did
Speaker 1: was worked with kids. She started a Christmas song. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like a sort of an early version
Speaker 1: of Toys for Tots. I was in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: She put on a show at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and
Speaker 1: was like, these kids need more than this, and so
Speaker 1: she found out what was called the Christmas Fund and
Speaker 1: raised about a thousand bucks from listeners in that first year.
Speaker 1: And that is a fun that is still going strong
Speaker 1: today long after she has passed, and I think they
Speaker 1: do it every year on her birthday. They started up
Speaker 1: on October fourth, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And that was something she had a talent for, was
Speaker 2: getting people that donate money to causes that she felt
Speaker 2: were important. You said they raised one thousand dollars that
Speaker 2: first year in nineteen thirty nine. Four years later they
Speaker 2: were up to raising fifty four thousand dollars and this
Speaker 2: is nineteen forty's money, so it was pretty substantial to help.
Speaker 2: They spread out very quickly after that to include children's
Speaker 2: homes and other hospitals and other area is that the
Speaker 2: broadcast reached, like as far as I think Indianapolis. So
Speaker 2: it was a big deal right off of the bat.
Speaker 2: And she so, I think nineteen forty two. She's been
Speaker 2: doing this for about ten years, a little less, no,
Speaker 2: about ten years, and she made a move to a
Speaker 2: different radio station. They offered the plum can't turn it
Speaker 2: down deal of an extra ten dollars a week over
Speaker 2: what she was making at her original station, and she
Speaker 2: said sold. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think this had more to do with getting out
Speaker 1: to more voices because Crossley Broadcasting was broadcast in several
Speaker 1: more markets than just local Cincinnati radio. So the station
Speaker 1: definitely like publicized on her notoriety at that point. And
Speaker 1: they said, let's have a contest where we have listeners
Speaker 1: right in to name her new show. The name wasn't great.
Speaker 1: They came back the winning one was a Petticoat party line.
Speaker 1: She added more show that because that's what Ruth Lyons does.
Speaker 1: She added a morning show called the WLW Consumers Foundation,
Speaker 1: And this one was like gangbusters with the company because
Speaker 1: it was great for advertisers and that they had a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred women test out products and then come
Speaker 1: back on the air and report what they found out.
Speaker 1: So advertisers always loved her. They kind of gussied it up.
Speaker 1: She added music and then games and eventually changed that
Speaker 1: terrible name to Morning Mattinee, much much better name, and
Speaker 1: also had a game show called Collect Calls from Lowenthal's,
Speaker 1: which was a first.
Speaker 2: Store, right, and if you kind of go back and
Speaker 2: look at the Morning Matinee in addition to you know,
Speaker 2: having women test products and then come in and say like, well,
Speaker 2: this is what I thought of this, adding music and
Speaker 2: games that kind of stuff, like all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: it's starting to take like a morning show format. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure, you can start to see the contours of
Speaker 2: it just kind of coming into view here or there.
Speaker 2: And she one of the things she did was she
Speaker 2: we'll talk about this a little more later, but she
Speaker 2: was really good at just understanding that you need ad
Speaker 2: revenue to survive and that you're going to make more
Speaker 2: ad revenue and also keep your viewership if you are
Speaker 2: forthright and honest about your advertisers. And so one of
Speaker 2: the things she did was she would turn down. She
Speaker 2: negotiated the ability to say Nope, not them, I don't
Speaker 2: believe in their product, because, like her ads were all endorsement.
Speaker 2: So for her as a very ethical person. She didn't
Speaker 2: do any endorsements that she didn't personally believe in, which
Speaker 2: was a big deal, especially at the time, and also
Speaker 2: led her to tons of disagreements and headbutting with the
Speaker 2: ad sales department, but she would typically win because that's
Speaker 2: how powerful she had become again as a woman in
Speaker 2: broad casting it in the forties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, she, you know, I mentioned earlier, she got
Speaker 1: married again. She married a guy named Herman Newman this
Speaker 1: time who was a semantics professor, and he was a
Speaker 1: big liberal guy, progressive guy, which meant that he didn't
Speaker 1: mind her having a lot of career success. He was
Speaker 1: very supportive of her and which was awesome and I
Speaker 1: think aligned with her political values as well as we'll see,
Speaker 1: you know, with some of the things that she did.
Speaker 1: They had one kid in nineteen forty four. It was
Speaker 1: a little bit of an unusual situation and that they
Speaker 1: announced the birth of young Candace, who they called Candy.
Speaker 1: Later on people found out that she very sadly suffered
Speaker 1: a still birth at six months and adopted an orphan newborn.
Speaker 1: At the time that she had lost her her own baby,
Speaker 1: So she didn't, you know, she didn't cover it over
Speaker 1: or anything, but she didn't come right out and say it.
Speaker 1: But everyone knew the timeline of her pregnancy, so you know,
Speaker 1: you could probably figure it out if you were paying
Speaker 1: attention right right.
Speaker 2: So, Yes, and Kandy became their beloved child like like
Speaker 2: she was just that. Her parents absolutely adored her, and
Speaker 2: she would go on to kind of make appearances here
Speaker 2: or there on the radio show and then later on
Speaker 2: the TV show. And I guess she made her first
Speaker 2: appearance at six weeks old on the MICYK for Morning Mattinee. Yeah,
Speaker 2: her quote was you. So she came up with another program,
Speaker 2: Ruth did. She said, Hey, guys, I got a great idea.
Speaker 2: There is a there are a lot of women out
Speaker 2: there who haven't and may never have the chance to
Speaker 2: have a really fancy luncheon at a nice hotel downtown.
Speaker 2: So we're not only going to give them that opportunity,
Speaker 2: we're going to make a show out of it. And
Speaker 2: she called this the fifty Club because there was room
Speaker 2: for fifty paying customers. You paid a dollar each was
Speaker 2: about eighteen dollars to day to have a smashing lunch
Speaker 2: at the Gibson Hotel and after lunch you were treated
Speaker 2: to her radio show, you were part of the studio audience,
Speaker 2: and it was a smash hit right out of the gate.
Speaker 2: They ended up selling tickets to the thing. They would
Speaker 2: sell them in three and four year chunks at a time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so big that they had to double the
Speaker 1: audience and get a new venue. And so that's why
Speaker 1: her show ended up being called the fifty to fifty Club.
Speaker 1: Pretty smart to keep that fifty in there instead of
Speaker 1: calling it the one hundred club or the seven or
Speaker 1: the club.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's a lot of studio audience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So in nineteen forty nine, they said, you know what,
Speaker 1: the fifty club is going great. Fifty fifty clubs even better.
Speaker 1: So let's make this thing a TV show, because that
Speaker 1: radio station also had a TV counterpart. And she was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know about this, Like I'm a radio person.
Speaker 1: I don't like these studio lights. They get really hot.
Speaker 1: I don't like, you know, I feel like I could
Speaker 1: be more myself without this camera in my face, especially
Speaker 1: with these interviews I'm doing with people. And you know,
Speaker 1: she was flying off, you know, flying by the seat
Speaker 1: of her pants and sort of off the cuff on
Speaker 1: the radio and wanted to do that on TV, but
Speaker 1: that's a bigger problem for TV because of lighting and
Speaker 1: blocking and stuff like that. So it was all a
Speaker 1: bit of a challenge. But you know, she got on TV,
Speaker 1: and of course immediately executives started saying, like, you need
Speaker 1: to lose weight, lady.
Speaker 2: She said in her memoirs that she had gained a
Speaker 2: bunch of weight from all the delicious pies and cakes
Speaker 2: she ate at lunch at the Gibson every day. Sure so, yeah,
Speaker 2: So there was one other thing that she had a
Speaker 2: complaint about with being on television. She said that the
Speaker 2: engineers are in complete control, which was a reversal of
Speaker 2: what she was used to in the radio studio. She said,
Speaker 2: one even wore a beret with an exclamation point and everything.
Speaker 1: So she ends up because she's an overachiever. Clearly, we've
Speaker 1: established this at this point. She was program director at
Speaker 1: w LW, and so all of a sudden she has
Speaker 1: authority on television as well, after she had already sort
Speaker 1: of asserted herself on the radio for you know, quite
Speaker 1: a while at this point. But you know, like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, she was inventing the model. She couldn't look
Speaker 1: to other shows to see what people were doing. Also,
Speaker 1: not a lot of people were watching This was a
Speaker 1: you know, very early in the days of TV. I
Speaker 1: think the whole station in nineteen forty six was a
Speaker 1: bit of an experiment. So not a lot of families
Speaker 1: had TV sets in the early nineteen fifties, which was
Speaker 1: kind of good. It was kind of like us in
Speaker 1: a way starting out with podcasting, Like we weren't very
Speaker 1: good for a while, but not a lot of people
Speaker 1: were listening to podcasts, so you had a lot of
Speaker 1: room to sort of grow and learn the craft, just
Speaker 1: like she did exactly.
Speaker 2: That was definitely one of the things that came up
Speaker 2: that I was like, yeah, I can totally identify with that.
Speaker 2: That's certainly how we managed to kind of get along
Speaker 2: at the beginning, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One other thing I noticed at the time TVs were
Speaker 2: so new, this is the early fIF fifties that she
Speaker 2: was making these TV shows, that a lot of people
Speaker 2: had to stand around often outside furniture stores, just like
Speaker 2: you see in movies to watch a TV show from
Speaker 2: one of the models on display in the front window.
Speaker 2: And that's just like podcasting. People used to stand outside
Speaker 2: of furniture stores to listen to podcasts. You can make
Speaker 2: a really good case that Rooms to Go is at
Speaker 2: least as important as in podcasting as Apple is.
Speaker 1: So she's crushing it on regional TV now, so much
Speaker 1: so that NBC is like, hey, we want to take
Speaker 1: you national. It would be the first national daytime talk
Speaker 1: show hosted by a woman, obviously, because it's nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: one at this point. And they did. They put it.
Speaker 1: It was literally less than a year. They put it
Speaker 1: on the across the country for eleven months, I think,
Speaker 1: and it seems like it basically stopped because she didn't
Speaker 1: want to move to New York. They said, hey, why
Speaker 1: don't you come to New York give it more of
Speaker 1: a sort of a national appeal because you're there in Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: Nobody cares in nineteen fifty one about the show out
Speaker 1: of Cincinnati across the country. So they said, she said no,
Speaker 1: She said, I want to stay here, and so she
Speaker 1: went back to the Crossley market, which was I think Indianapolis, Columbus, Dayton,
Speaker 1: and of course Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so there's something really important to know about that.
Speaker 2: So she stayed true to her roots. But she didn't say, like,
Speaker 2: I don't really want to make it big time. I
Speaker 2: just want to go stay in Cincinnati, New York scares me.
Speaker 2: Despite going back to being a local or regional talk show,
Speaker 2: she was. She had the highest rated daytime program in
Speaker 2: the country right from nineteen fifty two to nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: Even national, nationally broadcast talk shows could not beat her
Speaker 2: ratings in basically four markets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, she had seven million viewers over that
Speaker 1: time span. That's an incredible amount, like in the early
Speaker 1: days of TV especially, I mean, that's a lot now.
Speaker 1: But you know, her audience was growing because it was
Speaker 1: also broadcast on the radio, so she had even more
Speaker 1: people listening there, and they were reaching sort of across
Speaker 1: the Midwest with the radio by that point. And she was,
Speaker 1: like I said, she was always a sort of a
Speaker 1: beloved figure for advertisers, so she was making a ton
Speaker 1: of money for the company, and tickets were selling out
Speaker 1: four years in advance to come to the studio audience, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One other thing I saw is that she mentioned
Speaker 2: that it was kind of common for school kids to
Speaker 2: go home during lunch and watch the show with their
Speaker 2: mother in the middle of the day. And it turns
Speaker 2: out one of those little kids and this is totally genuine.
Speaker 2: I'm not making a joke. Here was David Letterman who
Speaker 2: credits Ruth Lyons as intracing him to the entire concept
Speaker 2: of a talk show, and yeah, she was one of
Speaker 2: his inspirations.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: So too.
Speaker 1: She also inspired a lot of people to get color
Speaker 1: TVs because in nineteen fifty seven, it was one of
Speaker 1: the first shows in the region to air in color,
Speaker 1: and people wanted to see everything in color. They want
Speaker 1: to see Ruth lines in color, so they bought up
Speaker 1: so many color TV sets in Cincinnati that it became
Speaker 1: known as Colortown USA for a while. And she didn't
Speaker 1: love to switch to color. They hired a makeup artists
Speaker 1: to you know, kind of help her through that transition,
Speaker 1: and she didn't like that. She didn't like the foundation
Speaker 1: they put on her. So in a very Ruth Lion's way,
Speaker 1: she turned that into a bit and had the artists
Speaker 1: do makeover for her, like in front of the audience
Speaker 1: and then have the audience vote about, like which look
Speaker 1: they liked better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they sided with her, of course. So let's
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about the show format you want.
Speaker 1: To Yeah, I mean, it was a straight up talk show.
Speaker 2: It was. There were some So again this is not
Speaker 2: like she's like I want to be I want to
Speaker 2: do what Kathy Lee and Hoe to do, or I
Speaker 2: want to do what Kathy Lee in Regis did. She
Speaker 2: they based their stuff on her. So one of the
Speaker 2: things that she did that definitely became a thing, especially
Speaker 2: in the next couple decades seventies eighties. The studio, the
Speaker 2: set looked like a living room. It was meant to
Speaker 2: be comfortable, like she was inviting the viewers and the
Speaker 2: people she was interviewing into her home, just to kind
Speaker 2: of make it that much more casual and laid back. Right.
Speaker 2: And she also this is different that never got picked up.
Speaker 2: But her interview seat, in the seat she normally sat in,
Speaker 2: was a love seat that was also a rocking chair.
Speaker 2: Love those rockers a rocker loves seat. Though you don't
Speaker 2: see that very often, even Rooms to Go only has
Speaker 2: a few of them.
Speaker 1: We have outdoor versions of those that are called gliders.
Speaker 2: Okay, yes, sure, maybe that's why I was having trouble
Speaker 2: conceiving of what it was. It's a glider.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love those gliders. But if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: a picture of Ruth, you know there's not a ton
Speaker 1: of stuff out there, sadly, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: you might see her holding on stage a bouquet of
Speaker 1: flowers and with a guest, and you I think, well,
Speaker 1: that's an odd thing to do, or maybe she's just
Speaker 1: giving flowers. She actually had her microphone inside the bouquet
Speaker 1: of flowers. That was her thing, which I think is
Speaker 1: just a very sort of lovely thing to have on television.
Speaker 2: It is, It's pretty cool. I actually did see some
Speaker 2: pictures of her, and there's one from I think she
Speaker 2: was about thirty years of age, something like that, and
Speaker 2: she is the spitting image of a cross between nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties peak cute Meg Ryan and the bride from the
Speaker 2: New Maggie Jillenhall movie, but without the ink blot on
Speaker 2: her face. Oh okay, I mean just per like if
Speaker 2: you put those two together fifty fifty percent, you would
Speaker 2: have Ruth Lines at age thirty.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll let the public decide, okay. So she stayed,
Speaker 1: you know, with her sort of off the cuff thing.
Speaker 1: That was just what she was known for in her career.
Speaker 1: And you know, she played it very loose, which for
Speaker 1: TV now would be sort of a nightmare. But at
Speaker 1: the time, like you said, no one knew what they
Speaker 1: were really doing, so they just kind of rolled with it,
Speaker 1: but they would put, you know, various male sidekicks alongside her.
Speaker 1: Over the years. Was always her show, though, and she
Speaker 1: had some real heavy hitters. That was even though it
Speaker 1: was regional. Like we said, she had a ton of viewers.
Speaker 1: So I mean, she had Sammy on the show. She
Speaker 1: had Duke Ellington, Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller, the Smothers Brothers,
Speaker 1: Carol Channing, she had a horse on stage. She had
Speaker 1: Ry Rogers and Trigger at one.
Speaker 2: Point, Yeah, Peter Paul and get this Mary Yeah came
Speaker 2: and performed Clara Bell the Clown from Howdy Doody. Who
Speaker 2: I didn't know this, but the first person who played
Speaker 2: Clara Bell the Count was Captain Kangaroo.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yes, that's just like a slight list of it.
Speaker 2: If you read her memoirs, like the entire middle part
Speaker 2: is just story after story about the different like celebrities
Speaker 2: she met and like interview and what they were like.
Speaker 2: And she's got some pretty pretty interesting stories. I would
Speaker 2: encourage anybody to go read her memoir Remember with Me
Speaker 2: from nineteen sixty nine and on the cover it's got
Speaker 2: a cute little like a bouquet with a microphone sticking
Speaker 2: out of it. So we're not going to get into
Speaker 2: that much. I would just say, read the read the book, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get out there. I think you can just get
Speaker 1: it online, right you can.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's like a PDF out there of scan I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know who does this. People who literally change
Speaker 2: page after page and scan entire books. And you can
Speaker 2: tell it's a person too, because every like third or
Speaker 2: fourth page is like kind of diagonal because there wasn't
Speaker 2: flat enough for the scanner. So God bless people who do.
Speaker 1: That, oh for sure. So you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: her show being financially successful because of the advertisers, but
Speaker 1: she had an odd way of dealing with advertisers that
Speaker 1: people seem to love. She didn't love just regular sort
Speaker 1: of boring ad copy. She liked to kind of make
Speaker 1: things up and ad live and I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: the sponsors kept coming back, even though at times she
Speaker 1: was even bagging on the sponsors, so it must have
Speaker 1: worked just to get attention. There was one example where
Speaker 1: she was talking about a food product that they said
Speaker 1: was big brownie, bold and brave. It would make kids
Speaker 1: big brownie bold and brave. And she said, yeah, the
Speaker 1: next V word that comes to mind is baloney. So
Speaker 1: she would definitely give guff to like the people that
Speaker 1: were paying her money.
Speaker 2: Which is interesting, sure, yeah, a lot, like some podcasts
Speaker 2: read their stuff today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, other shows do that. We've been told we can't
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's interesting though.
Speaker 1: I hear it all the time. I'm like, well, how
Speaker 1: do they do it?
Speaker 2: But whatever, Yeah, it's it's kind of a thing where
Speaker 2: one of the rare ones that don't do it like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: There's another great anecdote about the cloud that she had.
Speaker 2: As far as advertisers go, there was a a can
Speaker 2: or a brand of canned vegetables that bought a ten
Speaker 2: week add by on her show and from number seven
Speaker 2: to number one. And I looked into the brand. It
Speaker 2: was Black Brand canned broccoli clouds and Bachulin Squeezings. I mean,
Speaker 2: she took that from number seven to number one.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. I think, well, it's time for a late
Speaker 1: break and then we'll come back and finish up with
Speaker 1: Ruth Lions.
Speaker 2: Learn and stuff with Joshua John Stuff fu shin up.
Speaker 1: All right, So finishing up with Ruth Lyons, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about the fact that she always said that,
Speaker 1: you know, in her words, she was just a housewife
Speaker 1: with a radio program, all in an effort to be
Speaker 1: relatable to people that were watching her. The audience called
Speaker 1: her mother, her staff, and everyone there called her mother,
Speaker 1: which I think is like super kind of cool. And
Speaker 1: she would, you know, she would get on the air
Speaker 1: and talk about housekeeping and stuff like that, which sponsors
Speaker 1: obviously loved, and then sometimes she would turn that into
Speaker 1: a bit like when her housekeeper quit, she brought in
Speaker 1: her husband's laundry and had an ironing contest for the audience,
Speaker 1: which of course incorporated spray starch as an advertiser.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she did what you would call integrated advertising today,
Speaker 2: like where people just suddenly you realize they're talking about
Speaker 2: a product and it's not actually part of the show.
Speaker 2: She kind of did stuff like that which we don't do.
Speaker 1: No, I mean people, I think people accused us of that.
Speaker 1: When I talked about KFC recently, I was like, I
Speaker 1: just like KFC.
Speaker 2: Or the whole pepsi ad that we did that we
Speaker 2: said at the beginning was an ad seemed to have
Speaker 2: confused people a lot too, So we still don't do
Speaker 2: integrated advertising everybody.
Speaker 1: That's right. So she wasn't without her detractors, of course,
Speaker 1: because she was a woman on the air. Just like today,
Speaker 1: you're going to have people that are going to be
Speaker 1: picking apart her appearance in nineteen sixty Ladies Home Journal
Speaker 1: of all places, there was a reporter named Betty Hannah
Speaker 1: Hoffman who said that she has a bad slouch and
Speaker 1: a sandpaper voice. And someone from that story, it was
Speaker 1: an anonymous source, said she was a very dominating kind
Speaker 1: of woman. She needles and browbeats the men on her program,
Speaker 1: and this delights the housewives. You know, again, I think
Speaker 1: this is all just coded language for somebody having fun
Speaker 1: on the air. And maybe if she was poking fun
Speaker 1: of men on the air to the delight of housewives,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure that was the thing she did,
Speaker 1: because that's funny, it's comedy.
Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, I think that's kind of what I was
Speaker 2: talking about at the beginning. That some people were like,
Speaker 2: she's a little brash or whatever, but they didn't know
Speaker 2: what they were talking talking about. They were just being Cattie,
Speaker 2: that's right, And you had said earlier too, that she
Speaker 2: was one of those people where the more you found
Speaker 2: out about her, the better she kept go getting. And
Speaker 2: I'm sure that this is one of the things that
Speaker 2: struck you because it did me as well. But I
Speaker 2: think in nineteen fifty two, she had a singer on,
Speaker 2: a black singer named Arthur Lee Simpkins, who was performing
Speaker 2: in town. She'd seen him perform the night before with
Speaker 2: her husband, and she invited him to be on the
Speaker 2: show the next day, and she noticed that while he
Speaker 2: was singing his first number that he looked very nervous.
Speaker 2: So she went over to him and started dancing with him,
Speaker 2: and they danced for a couple of minutes, and then
Speaker 2: he did some more performances and loosened up and everything
Speaker 2: was great. Well, that caused quite a scandal because a
Speaker 2: white woman danced on television with a black man. And
Speaker 2: this again was nineteen fifty two, And apparently while she
Speaker 2: was doing this, it didn't even occur to her that
Speaker 2: this was going to be a thing that was kind
Speaker 2: of how she was as a person. But she got
Speaker 2: a lot of pushback about it, and then simultaneously she
Speaker 2: got a lot of like kudos and thanks for just
Speaker 2: basically I saw one woman wrote that that she demonstrated
Speaker 2: heartfelt love for another human being without being hampered one
Speaker 2: bit by the color of his skin. And she didn't
Speaker 2: shrink from that controversy at all, Chuck. She came on
Speaker 2: the next day and spent fifteen minutes talking about how
Speaker 2: there was nothing wrong with what she had done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pretty great, like very publicly. She was
Speaker 1: also very supportive and tried to advance to the careers
Speaker 1: of other women on her staff. And we definitely should
Speaker 1: mention Elsa Sewele, who was the executive director for her
Speaker 1: show from nineteen forty four until she retired from the show.
Speaker 1: So it was one of those things where she was
Speaker 1: sort of like our Jerry. She wasn't on camera, but
Speaker 1: she talked to her off camera, so everyone knew who
Speaker 1: Elsa was, and you know, she ran the contest. She
Speaker 1: even wrote some of the songs, some of the charity
Speaker 1: songs that Ruth Lyons performed, and she kept working there
Speaker 1: after Lyon's retired. She worked as associate producer for The
Speaker 1: Bob Bron Show because Bob Bron would take over. He
Speaker 1: was one of the sort of sidekicks that they used
Speaker 1: he would take over after she retired.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one more thing about her, she sho's pro
Speaker 2: union too.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah. She you know, the musicians went on strike
Speaker 1: at a certain point, and she was like, oh, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, I'm a musician. I've always thought of myself
Speaker 1: as a musician as well, so I'm going to go
Speaker 1: on strike with these people. And the station immediately pulled
Speaker 1: back and was like, oh, oh, oh, well, we can't
Speaker 1: have that.
Speaker 2: So they gave in, right, all right, So you said
Speaker 2: that she retired. She ended up retiring I think in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven, but that was after a few really
Speaker 2: hard years that began in nineteen sixty four, starting with
Speaker 2: the death of her sister, Rose Reeves Lupton, who also
Speaker 2: who was a coworker of hers, also a WLWT, and
Speaker 2: she had been living with cancer for ten years and
Speaker 2: succumbed to it eventually again in nineteen sixty four, and
Speaker 2: that was kind of the beginning of a bunch of
Speaker 2: hardships that she faced.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was it was really tough. She had a
Speaker 1: stroke herself, a very minor stroke, but it was enough
Speaker 1: that she felt like she needed to take a break
Speaker 1: for a little while, just a few weeks after that
Speaker 1: and this is just brutal. Her daughter, Candy, at twenty
Speaker 1: years old, was diagnosed with breast cancer, had a mastectomy,
Speaker 1: and she thought about retiring. At the time Ruth Lyons did.
Speaker 1: She was like, I just don't you know, this is
Speaker 1: just too much. But Candy wouldn't have it. She was like, no,
Speaker 1: you got to keep doing the show. This is your life.
Speaker 1: She started coming in more and more on the show
Speaker 1: as a regular guest, and as she got worse, it
Speaker 1: was pretty clear that she, you know, it was a
Speaker 1: terminal case. So in nineteen sixty six, they took a trip,
Speaker 1: a family trip to Italy, and that was sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, the last trip they would take. I think
Speaker 1: they knew that going in and very sadly, Candy passed
Speaker 1: away just at twenty one years old in June of
Speaker 1: that year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on the trip on the ship they were taking,
Speaker 2: and it was very sad, and the public grieved with
Speaker 2: her because, you know, just like other parts of her life,
Speaker 2: she shared that whole tragedy with Candy with them as
Speaker 2: as it played out, and that was that was pretty
Speaker 2: much it. Like she came back and she was she
Speaker 2: tried to kind of keep going, but she'd miss a
Speaker 2: lot of shows, and when she was there, she had
Speaker 2: trouble just doing what. She wasn't herself any longer after
Speaker 2: Candy died, and so the writing was on the wall
Speaker 2: to her, and she retired officially the next year after
Speaker 2: Candy died. She was sixty. She had been doing this
Speaker 2: for decades by then, and she couldn't bring herself to
Speaker 2: tell the public that she was retiring, so she had
Speaker 2: the station's vice president announce it, and apparently even the
Speaker 2: crew hadn't hadn't been informed before then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, super super sad for the for the audience, for sure.
Speaker 1: But she wrote that book that you talked about. She
Speaker 1: also wrote a song book called Sing a Song in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. But she never got on TV again.
Speaker 1: She was asked a lot, of course, everyone one wanted
Speaker 1: her to come on TV and be on their show,
Speaker 1: but she never did it again. She was the honorary
Speaker 1: chairman in nineteen seventy two for the Save the Terminal campaign,
Speaker 1: which rescued the Art Deco the beautiful Art Deco Union
Speaker 1: Terminal in Cincinnati because they're going to tear that down.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of one of her big public
Speaker 1: final acts. But she would go on to live for
Speaker 1: a while. She passed away at the age of eighty
Speaker 1: one and nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one last footnote. The nineteen fifty seven Major
Speaker 2: League Baseball All Star Game heavily stacked with Cincinnati Reds
Speaker 2: players who were outmatched by plenty of other players around
Speaker 2: the league, but they had gotten more votes because this
Speaker 2: is when the public voted, i think for the first time,
Speaker 2: and that was because, like you said, Ruth Lyons had
Speaker 2: led a stuff the ballot box drive to get as
Speaker 2: many Reds players on the All Star Our team as
Speaker 2: possible because she was a huge fan.
Speaker 1: That's right, Go Reds. I've always liked the Reds.
Speaker 2: Sure. Remember Eric Davis, he was awesome. Yeah yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: Well that's it for Ruth Lyons again, hats off to you.
Speaker 2: White gloves off and I think, Chuck, it's time for
Speaker 2: listener mayw. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is one of those cool things that happen sometimes
Speaker 1: where somebody we reference on the show, maybe someone who's
Speaker 1: written a book or something, writes in because they heard
Speaker 1: it and this is great. This is from Stephen Kursey,
Speaker 1: who wrote the nonfiction book The Quiet Zone, and he
Speaker 1: listened to our episode on the National Radio Quiet Zone
Speaker 1: and had a correction. He said, the National Security Agency
Speaker 1: remains very much active at Sugar Growth station, guys, which
Speaker 1: means the NSA Defense Department remains a major unseen force
Speaker 1: and influence behind the National Radio Quiet Zone. You guys
Speaker 1: cited an old news story about Sugar Grow being partly
Speaker 1: sold off, which is accurate. The US Navy had ended
Speaker 1: most of but not all, of its operations in sugar
Speaker 1: Grove and much of the military housing community was put
Speaker 1: up for auction in twenty sixteen, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if it actually sold. In any case, the government retained
Speaker 1: ownership and usage of the highly secretive classified radio antennas
Speaker 1: at Sugar Grove, which are up a guarded mountain holler
Speaker 1: that is out of public view. However, you can see
Speaker 1: the facility if you go up another mountain road, as
Speaker 1: I've done. That's Stephen talking. You can also see the
Speaker 1: facility and it's half dozen antennas on Google Maps. The
Speaker 1: Intercept did an excellent piece on Sugar Grove in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: I still have contacts at the Green Bank Observatory, and
Speaker 1: they'd know if the NSA was no longer active in
Speaker 1: Sugar Grove, and nobody has said they're not. So hope
Speaker 1: this has shed some light on this for you guys.
Speaker 1: And that again is from Stephen Cursey, author of The
Speaker 1: Quiet Zone.
Speaker 2: Very cool. I wrote them back too and said it's
Speaker 2: always neat to hear from the per who literally wrote
Speaker 2: the book on whatever it is we're talking about, you know.
Speaker 1: Always great.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Steven. I'm not sure how how we
Speaker 2: missed that that the NSA actually hadn't cleared out, although
Speaker 2: down I think about it, it's probably easy to do. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we were manipulated by the NSA. Probably. If
Speaker 2: you want to be like Stephen Kurzy and write to us,
Speaker 2: you don't have to be an expert, that's okay. You
Speaker 2: can send your email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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