Corrections & further info can be found at the end of this article.
December, 1949
GLOBE TROTTER: Between Programs
When it comes to having her cake and eating it, too, WCSC's ace mike-woman Pearl Baum knows the ropes strand by strand. During two torrid summer months this year, while she relaxed in cool Canadian comfort, "Pearl Baum Says" went into local ozone five times per week right on schedule, and it was Pearl Baum who was still doing the saying.
Some of her sidewalk and home-and-hearth acquaintances were more than slightly knocked off-center when she reported this fall as having spent "eight wonderful weeks up North." Impossible, cried her listeners, how could it be? We heard you every day. But they reckoned without Pearl Baum, who as her listeners know, is a lady with ideas. It was transcription that did the trick. Mrs. Baum simply sat down, ahead of schedule, and vocalized 40-odd daily shows? then grabbed the nearest transportation to Canada.
New York born, Mrs. Baum has packed more than 10 lifetimes in her 30ish years. After being something of a globetrotter, librarian, lecturer, teacher, secretary, linguist, translator, wife and mother, Mrs. Baum tells friends about the only job she hasn't held is that of a stoker on the Union Pacific Railway.
It was while she was working her way through high school, with her salary earned in factory and secretarial capacities, that her thirst for travel was whetted by her pair of very talented vocal cords. At 12 she topped a nationwide contest with an extemporaneous plea on behalf of Federal purchase of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello home, then privately owned. Judges awarded her a trip to France for her efforts.
Twice more she went back to the Continent, studying on a fellowship. After graduation from Hunter College in New York, radio was probably as far from her thoughts as the moon. She dug into teaching, at Hunter. Next came a brief residence in New Mexico where she edited three books and wrote another after "living with the Pueblo and Navajo Indians".
Then she teamed with Dr. Frederick A. Blossom in the translation of "Marcel Proust" from the French, and later wrote a book about El Greco, the famed Spanish painter. (It never saw print; her publisher went broke as she put the finishing touches on her work). Next came a position as a New York librarian (but meanwhile the travels continued. She roamed over the Carribean like a Spanish man-o-war.)
But Puerto Rico somehow seemed finer than New Mexico or New York, and 1937 found her bound for the sunny American isle, to teach in the University of Puerto Rico. Her lectures at the University finally led her into radio, where she told stories over the air. And it was after one of her air talks that she got a fan letter which was to change her life. A listener wrote in praising her program; later he asked her to be his bride. A daughter, "Chiki", now 7, was born in Puerto Rico.
In 1943, because of a shortage of food on the island, she and her husband (a chemist engaged in manufacture of concrete ships) moved to Tampa, Fla. A quick year later cancer brought an end to a perfect marriage which had been all too short.
It was while fighting mental tension after a return to Charleston that she developed an idea which was to make her one of Charleston's best-known radio voices. She wrote a script, "How to Do It", which she presented to WCSC for approval. ("The show told how to do anything," Mrs. Baum said. "How to stop thumb-sucking, how to improve your vocabulary, even how to pin diapers.") WCSC liked it, and Mrs. Baum was on the air, first sustaining, then rapidly gaining later with a sponsor.
Her voice first moved into Coastal ether on January, 1946 and has been a permanent fixture since. Once she decided to try her talent in New York. But WCSC wired her a "come back soon"? offering her a job as director of music and star of a daily commentary show, now "Pearl Baum Says".
This woman-who-can-do-anything (even including a story in May, 1948, Modern Romances Magazine, "Goodnight, My Love") sometimes finds the charm in her voice a drawback, as well as a blessing. For instance, take the time when every day for three months an unidentified Charlestonian dialed her and begged for a date "because I love your voice". She never gave him the date. And she doesn't wonder if it would have been a potential romance either. Or so Pearl Baum Says.
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Please note: This article, which has been reprinted exactly as it was published, contains some errors. Ms. Baum won a trip to France when she was 19 or 20 years old, not 12. She was one of 57 women who topped the nationwide contest to save Jefferson's Monticello. She worked with Frederick A. Blossom to translate two volumns of Marcel Proust's 'Remembrance of Things Past', as well as helping him with 'Told At the Explorer's Club'.
Insider tidbits: Ms. Baum also MC'd the annual Miss Charleston Parade for a number of years. She was known by many as "the voice of Charleston". She was so popular, in fact, that during a year-long hospitalization for tuberculosis, WCSC brought the radio equipment into her room so that she could broadcast from her hospital bed.
She also wrote a weekly radio column for Charleston's 'News and Courier' newspaper.
After leaving Charleston, she was ghost writer for the founder of the The City of Hope for his book of the same title. In fact, she was a ghost writer, editor or uncredited contributer to many books, including 1925's 'The United States Senate and the International Court'.
She taught English and Drama at Beverly Hills High School for twenty years. Director/actor Rob Reiner and actress Bonnie Franklin (One Day At A Time) were students of hers. While there, she and her daughter, Mary "Chiki" Baum, helped launch 'Avant Garde', America's first high school literary magazine.
She continued to travel regularly, and was an unofficial ambassador for American women to China when Westerners were again allowed to enter that country. She spoke numerous languages and dialects, including Mandarin Chinese.
There is simply not enough space here to list all of the accomplishments of this incredible woman. She lived a life overflowing with adventure. She died in 1986 at the age of 80.
