“Are you listening?”

We like the unselfishness of local society girls of the Cradle Club in devoting their time toward raising funds for the nursery at Women’s College Hospital. Who wouldn’t be glad to publish the photograph of Miss Dorothy Dayton, well-known Toronto girl, who will go on the air tomorrow morning at 11:30 over CFRB with Stanley St. John and Eli Spivak providing the music as a background of some sort of beauty program, which ought to be of interest to women.

“Are you listening” column published in the Toronto Daily Star, October 24, 1932.

Helena Rubinstein advertisement appearing in the 1946 January Nite programme.

In the 1930s, radio stations across Canada expanded women’s programming to attract female listeners. The media savvy members of the Cradle Club realized that radio would provide them with a unique opportunity to promote their charitable work to a larger audience of women.

Beginning in the fall of 1932, the Cradle Club participated in the Helena Rubinstein radio show sponsored by the Helena Rubinstein Cosmetic Company. Promoted as “entertaining and instructive,” the radio show featured beauty chats with prominent beauty editors and members of the Cradle Club. The show broadcast every Tuesday morning from Toronto radio station CFRB, then aired on six associate radio stations throughout Ontario.

Noteworthy beauty chats with club members included a discussion with Eldred Plaxton about her oily skin and Enid Poole’s tour of the Helena Rubinstein laboratory “amidst the fragrant aroma of water lily blooms, listening to the hum of whirring electrical condensers and liquefiers.”

On the air! Helena Rubinstein Program promotional card.