Early Years in New York
Born in Gainesville, Florida, she was reared in Columbia, S.C. At 16, her father died and, in order to pay her way through the University of South Carolina, she worked for the Columbia Record newspaper. Unable to finish university for financial reasons and interested in journalism, she took a job as a reporter with The Tampa Tribune in Tampa, Florida.
In 1938, she moved to New York City from Tampa and worked as a freelance writer. In 1944, she and her sister Ann founded a production company, Radio House, which prepared singing commercials and transcribed programs. One of their ideas was produced by the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1945; it was Leave It to the Girls, which had a panel of one man asking women celebrities questions that had been sent in by viewers. In 1946, eleven years after Lawrence E. Spivak purchased the magazine The American Mercury, she sent in an unsolicited article which was published. From 1947 to 1954, she worked as a roving editor for the periodical. Because of her experience in radio, Spivak asked for her critique of a radio show he used to promote The American Mercury.
Read more about this topic: Martha Rountree
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