McBride, Mary Margaret. Out of the Air [signed and inscribed]

McBride, Mary Margaret. Out of the Air [signed and inscribed]. New York: Doubleday, 1960. First Edition. [2432] 

Fine linen cloth with red and blue spine titles, 8 1/2 x 5 3/4 inches, gift inscription in ffep, some notes and marginal markings in the text, 384 pp.  Dust jacket is edge-chipped, now in a clear wrapper. The odd shading in the photos of the covers is due to the clear wrapper.   Very good in good dust-jacket. Hardcover.  

Cover title: Out of the Air: The most radio-active woman in America.  Her own story of the golden decades of broadcasting."

Inscribed "At the Sheraton East Hotel in N. Y. - 11/30/60, program for WIAV - For my dear Charles Lee with admiration, affection, and gratitude for two of the loveliest interviews anybody ever did with me - Mary Margaret McBride, November 30, 1960." Also inscribed by Lee on the last page, commenting on the author's candor and excellence in writing. Charles Lee of Philadelphia was influential in broadcasting and the literary world, working in radio and newspapers and as professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mary Margaret McBride (1899-1976), b. Paris, Missouri; d. West Shokan, New York.  A radio host and interviewer, "her popular radio shows spanned more than 40 years.  In the 1940's, the daily audience for her housewife-oriented program numbered from six to eight million listeners." - wikipedia. McBride earned a degree in journalism at the University of Missouri (1919), and worked as a reporter at the Cleveland Press and with the New York Evening Mail.  She made contributions as a freelance writer to The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping.  In 1926 she began to write travel books.  She began a daily radio program of advice for women in 1934 for WOR in New York City, and in 1937 began a series of radio shows along the same theme with the CBS radio network.  Her guests were often famous people in politics, the military, the arts, and entertainment.  Her popularity was so great that her 15th anniversary celebration in 1949 was held in Yankee Stadium in front of a crowd of 75,000 fans.