Radio: Westinghouse Girl

During both Republican and Democratic Conventions the woman who appeared most often on the nation’s TV screens was a pretty, blonde, Manhattan-born actress named Betty Furness. Equipped with a special wardrobe of 20 dresses and a Teleprompter full of Westinghouse commercials, she was stationed in CBS’s convention hall studios, where she went on the air a total of 158 times to peddle her sponsor’s wares.

An ex-model and the mother of a 13-year-old daughter, Betty, 36, was a stage & screen actress before she went to work for Westinghouse two years ago. At the time she was rehearsing a part for Westinghouse’s Studio One TV show, which was trying out women announcers with no success. Finally, a director who liked her pleasant voice and housewifely appeal gave her some commercial copy to try. She changed the copy a little (“It was written like men think women talk”), came off fine on her try out, got the job.

In the Chicago studio she passed her spare time making a needlepoint chair seat. During her working hours at the two conventions she opened 49 Westinghouse refrigerator doors, peered into 12 Westinghouse ovens, demonstrated 23 Westinghouse washing machines and dishwashers, turned on 42 Westinghouse television sets. Before it was over, she had been on the screen in all a total of 4½ hours.