Radio: Aid for the Homely

“What shall I do? I have let myself go to seed, I’ve got fat. I’m the kind of woman nobody notices. How can I be a credit to my husband?”

For the past few weeks such plaints have been pouring into Newark’s station WOR, addressed to a program called Here’s Looking at You. Originated by Pegeen Fitzgerald, erstwhile fashion director in a Manhattan department store, and Richard Willis, onetime cinema makeup man, Here’s Looking at You is broadcast twice weekly from New York’s World’s Fair, features a 15-minute beauty and fashion analysis of studio visitors depressed by their appearance.

First to go to work on each program’s prospective Cinderella is Make-up Man Willis. To girls with buck teeth and freckles, to elderly ladies with grizzled hair, to buxom young things with fat red cheeks and curves too voluminous, he points out cosmetic errors, boldly proposes new hairdos, new foundations. Sample Willis ukase: “Using a rose-tan powder foundation cream will do a blending job. But it won’t hide freckles. In order to hide your freckles we’d have to make you as dark as an Indian and all the sparkle would be gone out of your face.” Mrs. Fitzgerald offers suggestions on clothes, occasionally recommends that a visitor climb into a girdle.

Originally WOR feared that the program would attract no volunteers, was soon assuaged in a homely rush. Tactful but frank, Fitzgerald & Willis let the ladies discuss their own drawbacks, are always hopeful even when confronted with a clock-stopping face. Typical guinea-pig comment: “I hate to be homely. My mother’s good-looking . . . and it makes me feel like such a lummox.”