The Personality

The newest and youngest of radio's women's home companions is 27-year-old Florence Pritchett, a bejeweled, baritone-voiced ex-model who takes the air as "Barbara Welles." Flossy's voice is husky, refined and thrillingly intimate as she says: ". . . Tear crisp green leaves of four-times-washed spinach into appetizing pieces. Moisten with French dressing and toss together in salad."

Would feminine ears, long adjusted to the ingenuous tones of such workers as Alma Kitchell and Martha Deane, take kindly to Flossy's sophisticated accent? Manhattan's WOR has high hopes. The station says it picked her over 1,000 applicants.* Flossy herself has few doubts that she will be a wow. Almost since the day when, at 14, she came out of Allendale, N. J. and into the public eye as a Powers model, her career has been steered by an indulgent, avuncular "board of directors": John Robert Powers, Columnist Walter Winchell, Publicist Steve Hannagan, Cinemogul Robert Goldstein, Singer Morton Downey. "They're wonderful," she says. "I couldn't move without their advice." The board thinks she's rather wonderful, too. Says Powers: ". . .A modern version of Lady Hamilton and Pompadour. I couldn't be prouder of her."

Flossy's skillful board has guided her up the ladder from movie-magazine interviews ("with male stars only") to feature writing on Hearst's New York Journal-American to a publicity stint for Duel in the Sun (Selznick dubbed her "The Personality"), finally to radio.

Flossy disagrees with the cynical huckster's view that she is addressing "slobs in a cold-water flat." She scans with a warmly attentive eye her 500 weekly fan letters (suggested one: "Give us lots of love and philosophy"). Mixed in with the love, philosophy, recipes, and "reviews of all the proper books," Flossy also gives them an occasional unscheduled laugh: e.g., when Bing Crosby visited her show, her eyelashes almost fell off when she learned that a baseball game could last longer than nine innings.

*One eager applicant wrote that a vision of radio's late Bessie Beatty visited her while she was having her hair dried in a beauty parlor, told her that she was the choice.

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