Doris Arnold: the Making of a Radio Star, 1926-1939.

Abstract

Doris Arnold was a highly popular BBC radio personality. She was especially feted for her gramophone record programme These you have Loved which she produced and presented from 1938, making her the UK’s first female ‘Disc Jockey’. But, despite her fame, Arnold is oddly absent from BBC histories and little is known about today. Hers was one of the best known ‘rags to riches’ narratives of the early BBC: a young woman who started as a meagre typist but whose musical talent was spotted so propelling her to stardom. This article explores Arnold’s rise to fame in the 1920s and 1930s. It does this through a detailed evaluation of her personal staff files, using these as a vehicle to demonstrate a key way that the early history of women in the BBC can be unpicked. A close reading of the files exposes a complexity of gendered issues that encompass status, pay – and clothes.