The Mary Lee Taylor Show

It's difficult to find information on Mary Lee Taylor which is unusual for an NBC syndicated program carried on 200 radio stations. There was a time her name was as well known as Betty Crocker. A  December, 1948 issue of Billboard lists the sponsor as Pet Milk Sales Co. and the program as a renewal. The producer was Al Chance; writer, Ben Adams; Announcer, Del King; and the cast just Mary Lee Taylor... who was a fictional character. My first encounter was a KSCJ mailer from September 1950 listed Mary Lee Taylor's "Radio Recipes" which gave me some idea the program ran for at least a few years. It turned out to be one of the longest-running cooking shows in history. Yet the book Pot Roast, Politics, and Ants in the Pantry by Carol and John Fisher is one of the few sources to even describe the program in print.  

"Through the decades, additional Pet Milk cookbooks came off the press in St. Louis. Erma Proetz tested recipes for Pet Milk Company and developed the radio personality Mary Lee Taylor. The “Mary Lee Taylor Program,” a fifteen-minute radio show for the homemaker, “featured Pet recipes and meal plans, promoted cookbooks and offered household hints” with the first show airing just before Thanksgiving in 1933. Her first recipe was pumpkin pie filling using Pet Milk."

Mary Lee Taylor was a fictional character created by Erma Proetz. I learned that she was not a chef but in real life, an Executive VP at Gardner and Company advertising where Pet Milk Co. was her biggest account. She graduated from Washington University in 1910, with a degree in Liberal Arts and she was first hired at Gardner Advertising in 192 as a copywriter. The marketing description of Mary Lee as a "nutritionist and home economist" was pure marketing hoopla. The real Proetz was the first woman to be inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 1952 and somewhat of a feminist figure because of her success in business. More here and here.

PET Milk cook booklet 1960

PET was a brand of evaporated milk first made in Illinois in 1885. Born in 1891, Erma Proetz (née Perham) was barely any younger than the product. But the radio program, in focusing on nutrition, was hitting the mark during the Great Depression. Proetz first took on the account in 1924 for print advertising in the magazine Ladies Home Journal. In was in May 1927 that she created the "Pet Milk Test Kitchen" and began developing recipes. That's right, the recipes predate the radio program. Mrs. Susan Cost (née Lovitt) began voicing the character on CBS in 1933 and continued through the entire run of the series; all 21 years. More here. The 20th anniversary was acknowledged in an NBC trade release.

"Susan Cost, better known to her vast audience as Mary Lee Taylor has conducted the program from the Midwest since its inception for the same sponsor, the Pet Milk Company. The series has been on NBC radio since Oct. 23 , 19^8.  On her program of Nov. 7, Mary Lee will be congratulated by radio and TV performers Dinah shore, Ralph Edwards, Jimmy Durante, Ted Mack, and Eddie Cantor..." 

The bi-weekly radio show first launched in 1933, and the word nutrition in that era wasn't yet misused a pseudo-scientific scam. In the Great Depression nutrition was focused on getting enough calories not to literally become ill or die. Shelf-stable, affordable, calorie-dense foods were an absolute necessity for millions. [When you look at the economy in late 2025, these ideas resonate.] It's better than to think of Proetz work to be less like RFK and more like the USDA, biased about dairy products but not actually grifting per se.

In 1943 the program changed format, it was extended to 30 minutes, but the first half was a soap opera called "The Story of The Week." It featuring a young couple, Jim and Sally Carter. The show moved to NBC and KSD in 1948 and continued into 1954 outliving it's creator by a decade. Proetz died in 1944 at the age of 53 after a long illness. Susan Cost may have taken over the "Pet test kitchen" at this time. Some contemporary articles refer to her creating recipes. NBC changed the name of the program to The Pet Milk Show. More here.

The Mary Lee Taylor Show ran for 21 years on KMOX in syndication. Proetz died in 1944 which means that first advertisement I found for Radio Recipes on KSCJ is for a fictive Mary Lee Taylor, not a pseudonymous one.  In the 1940s the Mary Lee Taylor show began giving away free cookbooks. Over time, dozens off different ones were created, though with some recipe repeats. The name Mary Lee Taylor and the face of Susan Cost continued to appear on cook books into the 1960s. Cost passed in 1967 at the age of 77, outliving Proetz, her own husband Walter, Erna Proetz's husband Arthur and the program itself. More here.

It is somewhat galling that there is more written about the The Pet Milk Orchestra than Cost or Proetz. In the book Radio Program Openings and Closings, 1931-1972 by author Vincent Terrace. There are detailed descriptions about the entire cast and crew of the NBC era. He records the 1948 orchestra being directed by Bob Crosby and Gus Haenschen, Warren Sweeney is host, the "star" is Vic Damone. The talent includes singer Kay Armen and the obscure Emily Coty Singers. In 1950 the program was rebooted and comedian Jack Pearl played host; the new "regulars were Mimi Benzell, Cliff Hall and Russ Emery. The new announcer was Ed Herlihy, and conductor Gus Haenschen was working without Bob Crosby.  Somehow Terrace managed not to mention Cost or Proetz whatsoever. Sounds like the show took a budget cut in the revamp, but you'd hardly know it was a cooking show from the entry. 

There is also very little in the usual encyclopedic sources: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio by Dunning, and both the American and Women in radio Encyclopedias by Luther Sies have little more than a sentence. The book A Portrait of Progress: A Business History of Pet Milk Company by Martin Bell barely mentions Proetz. The Jay Hickerson Ultimate History of Network Radio Programming lists one recording from 1933, and a set of 49 from the NBC years. It's unusual that a 20+ year program has so little research available. It is hard not to come to the conclusion that it has something to do with it's creator being a successful feminist figure.