Aunt Jenny was an advertising character

Advertising character

An advertising character is a fictional character that appears within advertising and marketing materials for a given product or service.-See also:*Moe anthropomorphism*List of American advertising characters...

 created for Spry Vegetable Shortening

Spry Vegetable Shortening

Spry was a brand of vegetable shortening produced by Lever Brothers starting in 1936. It was a competitor for Procter & Gamble's Crisco, and through aggressive marketing through its mascot Aunt Jenny had reached 75 percent of Crisco's market share...

. Primarily portrayed by Edith Spencer, Aunt Jenny was best known as host and narrator of the long-lived radio show, Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories

Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories

Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories was a 15-minute radio soap opera which aired from January 18, 1937 to November 16, 1956 on CBS, sponsored by Spry shortening...

(1937-56), but she was also seen promoting the product in drawings, photographs and cookbooks.

Origins

In 1936, Lever Brothers

Lever Brothers

Lever Brothers was a British manufacturer founded in 1885 by William Hesketh Lever and his brother, James Darcy Lever . The brothers had invested in and promoted a new soap making process invented by chemist William Hough Watson, it was a huge success...

, part of the large corporation Unilever

Unilever

Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational corporation that owns many of the world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products....

, introduced Spry Vegetable Shortening

Spry Vegetable Shortening

Spry was a brand of vegetable shortening produced by Lever Brothers starting in 1936. It was a competitor for Procter & Gamble's Crisco, and through aggressive marketing through its mascot Aunt Jenny had reached 75 percent of Crisco's market share...

 as a competitor to the long-successful shortening Crisco

Crisco

Crisco is a brand of shortening produced by the J. M. Smucker Co. popular in the United States. Introduced in June 1911 by Procter & Gamble, it was the first shortening to be made entirely of vegetable oil...

, produced by Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble is a Fortune 500 American multinational corporation headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactures a wide range of consumer goods....

. Aunt Jenny was intended to give a pleasant face to what might otherwise be seen as a boring or at least uninspiring product, therefore presenting a challenge to writers of advertisement copy. Sometimes even Jenny’s enthusiastic writers seemed to be reaching for things to say—on the final page of the Aunt Jenny’s Favorite Recipes cookbook appears a blurb boasting that doughnuts made with Spry are “so light and digestible a child can eat ‘em.” For the most part, however, Aunt Jenny was successful, and within mere months Spry had consumed nearly half of Crisco’s considerable market share.

In appearance, Aunt Jenny was a slightly plump, grandmotherly woman with bright white hair, thin spectacles, and an ever-present baking apron. Her demeanor was sweet, kind, helpful and almost bizarrely enthusiastic, especially regarding her home cooking and Spry Vegetable Shortening in particular. She spoke in a plain and homely manner, often dropping the ending g of words like cooking.

Radio

Aunt Jenny’s best-remembered aspect was the long-running radio show, Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories, which made its debut on CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 on January 18, 1937. The show took the format of a dramatic serial or soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

, presenting a different story weekly, and running for 15 minutes from 10:45am to 11:00am each weekday morning. The stories featured typical soap opera plots involving the people of a small American town called Littleton. Aunt Jenny herself was not the focus of these stories but served as host and narrator. She also offered cooking instruction, generally in the form of easy recipes which included Spry Vegetable Shortening as an ingredient.

Aunt Jenny was played by Edith Spencer, who served not only as the voice of Jenny but also provided her visual appearance in promotional materials. The announcer of the show was actor Dan Seymour. Animal imitator Henry Boyd provided the warbling of Aunt Jenny’s canary. Like most soap operas, the show had a large revolving cast over the years, serving as a springboard into professional acting for future stars, such as Richard Widmark

Richard Widmark

Richard Weedt Widmark was an American film, stage and television actor.He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, Kiss of Death...

. Eventually, Edith Spencer left the show and was replaced by Agnes Young, who sounded reasonably similar to Spencer but did not look like her. Finally, on September 28, 1956, the show’s long run came to an end.

Cookbooks and print advertisements

Aunt Jenny also appeared in numerous print ads found in women's magazines, as well as several promotional cookbooks. These were generally illustrated with photographs of Edith Spencer as Jenny, but after Spencer’s departure from the radio show, they displayed artwork based on her likeness. The character of Aunt Jenny was phased out after the radio show left the air, and Unilever eventually discontinued Spry Vegetable Shortening.

Cookbooks featuring the Aunt Jenny character:

• Aunt Jenny’s Favorite Recipes (48 pages with b/w illustrations, plus index)
• Aunt Jenny's Cookies Cookbook (21 pages, 1952)
• Aunt Jenny's Recipe Cookbook
• Aunt Jenny: Home Baking Made Easy