Hello, Girls!

"Would you like to make a non-slip tie rack? In that case put a couple of cup hooks on the back of the closet door and stretch a rubber band between them, one that's about an inch wide, and your husband's ties won't slip. Now if only you could be as sure of your husband ..."

It was yet another sundry household hint, served up with a side of sarcasm by Allen Prescott, 'The Wife Saver'---a daytime fifteen minute radio show that ran for most of the 1930s on the NBC-Blue Network. In a wilderness of sobbing soap operas and matronly home economists, his was a voice unique: a man that didn't feed off the fears of housewives or speak of them as ladies as they toiled over the washtub.  They were just the girls.  Sure, such a greeting today is cringe-worthy unless delivered in clear camp mode, but in the context of the times such a salutation was also an invitation to step back from the daily household grind and muse doesn't this job stink just a little?

And, perhaps, a very few of the girls understood just what kind of man Prescott was.

Hello, girls!

Radio was just as good as Hollywood in making up stories, yet the ever-pending-disaster situation that was live broadcasting was fertile ground for one-in-a-million chances and freak successes.  It could be true that Prescott pestered his boss so much for a coveted newsman slot that the boss stuck him with the job of dispensing household advice. It could also be nothing less than a personal insult from his boss.  Whatever his beginnings, Prescott performed a perfect I'll show you.

And show them he did.  The radio industry didn't understand the success of 'The Wife Saver', or at least pretended not to. The men that ran that industry and the sponsors that paid for it all never asked women their opinion of it, even if the show was resolutely broadcast to them.  Daytime radio tread a very fine line in trying not to offend anyone's sensibilities, however archaic or male-centric.  Women were not to be too distracted from their household duties, so their entertainment was best if it was musical, instructional or inspirational in a soapy kind of way.  Comedy was too distracting or even subversive---and besides, no one ever studied what women thought was funny anyway.  The only judge of success was fan mail and, into the later 1930s, ratings.

When pressed, the radio industry thought the success of 'The Wife Saver' was based on the very idea of a bachelor telling women how to run their household.  Could anything be more ridiculously funny?  After all, of the other very few forays into daytime comedy, such as 'Sisters of the Skillet', the men were always mocking the household hints genre and those who queened over it.  However, Prescott  publicized the anger, frustration, and boredom of the nation's housewives with knowing asides.  For example, when he suggested that women find a new way to do an old household chore, he claimed that doing so would "leave you wide open to find something else you'd rather not do".

 Prescott presides over a male fantasy of housewifery. 

Unsurprisingly, Prescott's sense of humor required manhandling by publicity.  In his initial splash of national success, he was photographed with scantily clad 'housewives' while posing with a string mop like a demonic Roman orator.   This is how radio brass and the sponsors wanted to imagine the girls he endlessly addressed on the air, and by inference, project the idea of him as a crazy straight man.  The photo, however, tells a certain truth in that Prescott's interest does not linger on the illusion presented, but is focused directly on his true audience.

As 'The Wife Saver' labored on into the 1940s, Radio and Television Mirror reported that Prescott was "a husky, handsome chap who doesn't fit in at all with one's mental picture of a man who presents household hints on the air."  The taint of femininity never was far behind him, and great daytime success kept the man in his place and away from the prime time he always coveted.  Yet his $20,000 annual salary (over $250,000 in today's dollars) was a pretty nice consolation prize.

In 1941 Prescott changed the name of his show to 'Allen Prescott Presents', but the show's content was basically unchanged: household hints, sewn together with humor and music.  NBC did give him a prime time trial in 1944, when radio talent was scarce due to World War II, but nothing long term came of it.  Then Prescott himself went off to war, serving in the Air Force on the Aleutian Islands---in a huff of sorts, one can imagine.   He was forty years old and in a mid-life crisis.

Prescott returned to radio in 1946 and into the burgeoning syndication market.  Improved technology allowed for high-quality transcript recordings and low cost flexibility for local radio stations, which grew exponentially after World War II.  Again NBC handled the proceedings, and the name of the show reverted to what everyone remembered: 'The Wife Saver'.  While popular, it may not have been like what long-time listeners recalled: Surviving recordings are quite dull in comparison to the 1930s scripts.

Like many radio performers, Prescott tried television in 1947.  'The Wife Saver' had only a five-week New York run in an era when daytime television programming consisted largely of test patterns.  It's likely the concept didn't suit the medium, as showing a handy hint not only slowed the proceedings but also looked less clever than it sounded.

The Wife Saver continued in radio syndication throughout the 1950s in an ever-dwindling market, with the last demo tapes being made in 1963.  In between recording transcriptions, he substituted for radio's venerable The Breakfast Club host Don McNeil and apparently had a respectable run on daytime television in Philadelphia as a talk show host.  In the end, however, he never escaped his own creation.  Allen Prescott's 1978 New York Times obituary opined: "Allen Prescott, 74, 'Wife Saver' was defined by his association with the program."

First edition, 1937

It is, of course, impossible to fully uncover the man behind the publicity---of what he wanted to be and what his bosses wish he was---to discover who he was in his private life.  Almost forty years have passed since Allen Prescott died; surely most of the people who knew him, even in his advanced years, are gone, too.  His scripts, recordings and memorabilia reside at the Library of Congress, yet perhaps one of most telling artifacts just came up for auction: A rather tattered first edition of Noel Coward's 1937 autobiography Present Indicative.  Inside it is inscribed: "For Allen Prescott and we hope it will be fun. 'Handmaiden'."

From a handmaiden

The script is decidedly masculine and the quotes suggest inside knowledge.  Was Handmaiden a campy friend or an effete personal assistant?  The 'we' is suggestive of the former---as from one member of a couple, but it also could speak of a social circle with a mutual understanding.  While the details are lost, the meaning remains queer.