UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1427
BENNETT, MARJORIE HARBAUGH

BENNETT, MARJORIE “MAGGIE” HARBAUGH (1932-)
Graduate Student
At UW: 1954-55

Interviewed: 	May 15, 2015
Interviewer: 	Maryo Gard Ewell
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce
Length: 	1 hour, 25 minutes

Abstract: In her May 2015 interview with Maryo Gard Ewell, Maggie Bennett reminisces about her several-decade career as a folklorist, performer, and educator after coming to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Growing up in Ohio, she recounts what led her to be interested in folk singing, shares her remembrances about Robert E. Gard and the University of Wisconsin, and tells a number of stories about producing television shows, traveling and learning about local cultures, and being involved with the Wisconsin Idea Theater.  These stories range from the 1950s to the 2000s. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program, in conjunction with the Robert E. Gard Foundation Oral History Project.

Key Words: Hudson OH; Chicago IL; University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kent State University; Denison University; Sorbonne; folk singing; Robert E. Gard; UW-Extension; Wisconsin Idea Theater; television; 

First Interview Session (January 21, 2010): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:43	Question: Tell me about yourself. Answer: She began by explaining why she was called “Maggie,” not wanting to be confused with her mother and playing Maggie in a high school production.

00:01:20	Question: Tell me about your childhood. Answer: Born in 1932 in Oklahoma, most of her early memories were from Hudson, Ohio, where her childhood was spent. She described Hudson, a “New England-style” town. 

00:02:39	Follow up: Where were your parents from? Answer: She described her family’s French, Irish, and German heritage, relating the history of her maiden name, where documents about her family were, and some anecdotes from her family history.

00:04:25	Follow up: Parents? Answer: Her father grew up in Kansas City, and was forced by his father’s death to care for his mother and sisters until he could go to UW at age 28. Her mother Marjorie grew up in Chicago (and later published a book about her neighborhood there) and met her father at UW, where they both got MAs. Follow up: This would have been quite early for a woman to get a landscape architecture degree. Answer: Yes; they never realized this growing up—just thought it normal.

00:06:56	[no question] She reflected on how she always considered that she got her education from her parents, with school not being that exciting—she told anecdotes about her mother’s books, trips to museums in NYC, and books they had in their homes. Question: School? Answer: She recalled being very shy, partly because she was so small for her whole life. But she enjoyed outdoor life and reiterated learning a lot just from being around her parents.

00:09:29	Question: Was it assumed you’d go to college? Answer: She supposed; she talked about getting intrigued by her father’s work at the local library, and how she decided very early that she would go to college, which led to her taking French at Kent State for the summer of her junior year. This is where she got involved with a children’s theater group and took the name Maggie.

00:11:40	[no question] While she would have been perfectly happy to stay at Kent State, she related, her brother was at Denison University and her mother encouraged her to transfer there. She described how she finished in 3 years there (graduating in 1952) and how she became a philosophy major.

00:12:54	[no question] She discussed the impact of her father’s death and read a letter he’d written years before that became her guidelines for her life.  She delayed going to the Sorbonne in order to help her mother.

00:14:46	[no question] She related some of her experiences in France, where she’d received a scholarship to study. She told stories about learning folk songs, playing her autoharp, and making close friends there.

00:15:31	Question: Did you ever imagine that the autoharp would lead to your career? Answer: No; she had no idea, but she talked about learning much of her repertoire in France. Follow up: Did you start thinking about American folk music there? Answer: Yes; because at the folksong club, there was an American and a French singer. She explained that, as a child, she developed lock-jaw, so while she couldn’t sing, she developed a keen sense of hearing and remembered almost every song she’d heard.

00:17:14	Question: Graduate study? Answer: When she returned from the Sorbonne, she decided to go back to school and get an education, and her brother was at UW, so she applied to be a graduate counselor at UW (which paid for room and board) and played her autoharp to pay for other expenses.

00:18:30	[no question] She recounted how she got involved with the Wisconsin Idea Theater’s experimental television program–Robert Gard had been one of her first teachers and hired her as an assistant as part of a grant to start “Wisconsin is my Doorstep” since he knew as little as anyone at that time how to make TV programs.

00:20:41	Follow up: Kinescopes? Answer: Kinescopes were just another way to record things on film, she explained. She described the technology.

00:21:33	[no question] She talked about how they developed the TV program—working with artists, experimenting with formats, and having Gard as the “yarn-spinner.” Follow up: What were you trying to do? Answer:  They experimented with all kinds of things—dramatizations, etc.

00:23:43	[no question] She explained that when she’d finished this initial work with Gard and after graduating, UW Extension hired her to do a four-month tour around the state singing and telling stories about different cultures. This was an incredible experience for her and a great training ground

00:25:42	Question: Early days of TV? Answer: She emphasized that the entire production happened live, and recounted the opening show they did (the “Lumber Show”), with songs, visual arts, artifacts—some of these ideas were unwieldy (like having a visual artist, which required the artist to talk and draw at the same time) and were discarded later on.

00:28:05	Question: How long was a typical show? Answer: At first, a half hour, but later they went to a 15 minute format. She explained why they did this, using the “natural disasters show” as an example. Follow up: Cameras? Answer: She quipped about how the camera operators were learning along with the performers.

00:30:33	Question: Date of this? Answer: 1954. Follow up: Your dissertation? Answer: Her dissertation was a treatment of what worked and didn’t work in this experiment.

00:31:06	Question: What were you looking to do with it? Answer: She said they often just learned through ignorance, beginning with ideas that were overambitious but never lacking for things to say (or sing) on-camera. “It was crude in the beginning.” Follow up: The idea was to help people from WI to know their own culture? Answer: Yes; she didn’t recall getting solicitations of scripts, and talked a little about some ideas they had for future directions of the show had it gone on longer

00:33:45	Question: Recollections of Gard? Answer: She didn’t remember her first meeting with Gard, but she vividly remembered Gard’s easy-going, low-key style. This style made the “Doorstep” concept fit perfectly. She thought that a lot of the material for the show came from Gard’s regional writers’ program material.

00:36:26	Question: Was the Wisconsin Idea Theater in Camp Randall? Answer: She didn’t remember where the offices or studio were.

00:37:30	Question: How long did the PhD take? Answer: She finished in a year and a half, because she wrote on the TV show and enjoyed her courses.

00:38:00	[no question] She explained her reasons for doing a post-graduate trip to Europe before doing her 4-month trip for UW Extension. She’d fallen in love with Austria during her time at the Sorbonne, and so she based there for a year while she took voice, started with the harp and zither, and hosted her mother for a trip to N. Africa.

00:39:47	[no question] Upon coming back, she did her 4 month tour for WI Idea Theater. She recalled doing the tour, her lack of fear at traveling around to places she didn’t know, and how it gave her confidence for the future.  She did 12 shows a week and chose the title “Cultures of the World” because of her recent experiences in Europe.

00:44:38	Question: Anything else about your years in Madison? Answer: She related that her common interest in folklore and storytelling was what made her interested in the people with whom she interacted at Madison; she also felt fortunate to have been able to earn money while getting an education.

00:47:11	Question: Do you watch TV in a critical way because of your early work? Answer: No; she remarked about how contemporary TV was much more scripted, with little room for the contemporaneity that characterized her work.

00:48:28	Gard Ewell introduced Bennett’s playing of her autoharp. Bennett played her favorite song called “Rummy-Dummy Line”—her father would sing the song to her.

00:52:10	[no question] She played “She’ll be coming ‘round the mountain when she comes.”

00:54:44	Question: After your concert tour? Answer: She discussed how on her tour, she got engaged and returned home to help her mother as well. While home, a local television host asked for her to perform, and then asked her to create a children’s segment for the station. She had the station make a tin-man costume she named “Mr. Rivets,” which became the focus of the program. The show was a great success.

00:58:17	[no question] She recounted her double wedding, moving to Colorado, where her husband enrolled in the school of engineering. She went to the speech and drama department, which hired her on the spot to teach part-time in television, voice, oral literature, etc. 

00:59:36	[no question] She related how her cousin got her involved in a television program—this was during the 1960s, which she described as “the folk years”—and how she began singing folk music with a friend.

01:01:46	[no question] After her husband finished his training in Colorado, they moved to Seattle, where he landed a job with Boeing. While in Seattle, she got a job doing shows on the local TV and radio stations, which she described.

01:03:03	[no question] After some time as a “subsidized artist” in Seattle, Bennett remarked, in the “difficult” late 1970s, that her husband left her for a younger woman and her age became an obstacle for the TV station. At that point, she began teaching drama at Mt. Si High School in earnest. 

01:04:08	[no question] During her years teaching, she became interested in logging stories and in going back for her PhD. She explained how her dissertation research for the Univ. of Washington (on logging and other stories from the Northwest) developed. 

01:07:15 	Follow up: Visiting schools as a folk singer? Answer: She explained that after getting her degree and teaching drama, she was invited to teach gifted children at Bremberton School in Seattle. She described some of the methods she used to teach speech and drama to these children, and why she left to retire after the administrator who’d hired her retired.

01:10:55	Follow up: Artist residences? Answer: After leaving Bremberton, she continued, she began doing folklore in the schools—she’d go into a community, learn about the ethnic traditions in that area, and then bring artists into the schools to teach the ethnic traditions inherent to the people there. She explained some of the results of this.

01:13:35	Follow up: Volunteering in Seattle? Answer: She explained that she continued to do programs in Seattle, but also in Thailand, Vietnam, New Zealand, etc. She explained how getting older made things a bit more difficult to continue singing and go to festivals.

01:16:35	Question: Themes of your experience? Answer: They talked about how she’d been intrepid about going into communities and perform; and also about how she’d sought out local cultures to teach to its own young people.

01:18:48	Follow up: Baker Brownell’s comment on canned culture? Answer: She read from the first page of her MA thesis about how people were content to watch specialists perform their culture for them rather than participate in it themselves.

01:21:23 	Question: You really have lived something of a charmed life? Answer: Yes; she thought so, noting that she’d never really learned to fear people. She shared an anecdote about getting robbed in Marrakesh, but even then she didn’t really learn to fear people.

01:24:54	End of First Interview Session

End of Oral History #1427