SIMS, Agnes (McCAY)

SIMS, MCCAY

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 11/10/2014 at 23:59:06

The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
Saturday, May 18, 1940, Page 16

THEY STARTED HERE
No. 9 in a Mason City Series of Success Stories

MRS. MERL SIMS, Newspaper Columnist

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A good many adjectives might be used to describe the career of Mrs. Merl Sims - among them such words as fascianting, varied, successful, colorful, promising or sparkling - but no one can apply the terms full or failure to her experiences in reaching the place of prominence she now holds.

For Mrs. Sims is now fasion editor of the Los Angeles Herald and Express, the largest paper in point of circulation in the city of the angels. Behind her lie experiences as teacher, singer on the concert stage, radio author, featured entertainer of the Columbia Broadcsting system, and an outstanding air personality in Fort Smith, Ark., Kansas City and the west coast.

* * *
North Iowans will well remember Mrs. Sims, for it has been less than 10 years since she was a Mason City housewife who already was winning recognition as a person of marked musical ability. Some of the community's most distinguished singers of today had their start under Agnes Sims as teacher and a recital givien unassisted by her a dozen years ago is still most pleasantly remembered here.

* * *
But to tell the story from the beginning, Mrs. Sims was born Agnes McCay at Loda, Ill, Her family moved about through the ensuing years and she was graduated from Bridgewater, S. Dak., high school in 1916.

Even while in high school she was beginning to exhibit some of the qualities that have been so apparent since. For ambition to better herself and willingness to work for what she wanted were exhibited when she began to give piano lessons to finance a college education.

Another trait, probably equally characteristic, was her confidence in herself as a teacher. She now admits that she may not have been as well qualified to teach as many have been, having had but a few lessons on the piano herself, but that fact that she was capable to teach is shown by the fact that several of her pupils went on in music and made credible showings.

* * *
Fifty cents a lesson was the standard charge in those pre-war days and 30 to 40 lessons a week were sufficient to finance the college education Agnes McCay wanted. She went to Iowa State Teachers college at Cedar Falls, being graduated in 1918.

Voice and piano were her greatest interests in college and so the diploma carried withit a certificate as a public school music teacher. This, in turn, brought a job as music supervisor in a large consolidated school at Galva.

The success that usually accompanies Mrs. Sims' endeavors was not lacking at Galva. So successful was she that she received a wire out of a clear sky from the state university asking her to come to Iowa City and take charge of music in the experimental school there.

* * *
Her work there for the next three years was interesting to her, but in the back of her mind persisted the idea that she wanted to be a great singer, so she resigned and went to Chicago, there to study music. One summer she spent "up a side track" as she says, studying art at Northwestern university. While of not immediate value, that work since proved of considerable worth to her, she has found.

Studying music as various Chicago conservatories took money, so Agnes McCay worked at the educational music bureau and in the summers taught music at the extension schools of Iowa State Teachers college. It was during one of those summers that she met the man to whom she was later to be married, Merl Sims.

Then she left Chicago and went to a teaching position at the Southeastern State Teachers college at Cape Girardeau, Mo. There she taught for a year before she and Merl Sims were married.

* * *
The marriage began her residence in Mason City, for her husband was then in the insurance business here. Mrs. Sims lived in Mason City for 10 years, the longest she has ever lived in one place.

"Because both the children were born there and because we spent such happy years there, we all speak of it as 'home'," Mrs. Sims says.

Although she was busy with rearing a family and with the social activities here, Mrs. Sims did not forget her music. She continued to study, as best she could, in Chicago, and to teach here. "I had some grand pupils there," she says, "and got a real thrill out of their progress."

Two sons were born here, Jerry in 1925, and Jack in 1930. About three years later the Sims family moved to Dubuque, where Mrs. Sims continued to teach, and then to Chicago, where she got her first radio opportunity. She became soloist on the Edgewater Beach hotel's Sunday evening music programs, which were broadcast over the CBS chain.

Mrs. Sims sang her musical debut in Kimball hall, Chicago, in 1933.

It was about this time that a scholarship calling for tutelage under the celebrated singer, Mary Garden, was offered. Competition was keen for the honor of studying six weeks of 18 hours a day under the renowned opera star, but Mrs. Sims won the scholarship.

* * *
With this background another opportunity in radio persented itself - not a big one, but a start. She went to Fort Smith, Ark., where for the first time she did some writing for radio, handling a daily program for a big department store. And it was at Fort Smith that she learned something important, the fact that she has a good speaking voice for radio work, a rarity with women.

She decided to capitalize on her speaking voice.

The next step was Kansas City, where Mrs. Sims had little trouble getting on the air with an idea she had originated, a program called the "Women's News Parade." The program was a success and Mrs. Sims soon found herself branching into a new line of endeavor - writing all kinds of radio programs.

* * *
But it was apparent that Kansas City offers nothing in the way of a future for a really ambitious person, so the former Mason Cityan courageously tried her hand at getting a job on the coast.

She had been warned that it is next to impossible to get a job in radio on the west coast, but a hankering of long standing for southern California led her to Los Angeles. There she "clicked" with the "Women's New Parade" program and landed a job on stations KHJ and the Mutual broadcasting system. The program was valuable to her, for on it she interviewed movie actresses and other outstanding women. And of course the program was successful.

But one day, purely by accident, Mrs. Sims heard that a big advertising agency was auditioning for a sponsored program. Looking into the matter immediately, she found that the auditions were about to be closed but the agency would be willing to audition her if she could get a script ready by the next day.

* * *
She did, and her program was selected. A total of 75 persons had auditioned for the program over a period of two months.

The new program meant work - in copious quantities. But it was the Big Time and was worth it. The program got a big send-off with people flying from New York for the premiere, lots of publicity, parties and similar events.

Mrs. Sims then had an office in the Columbia building, a secretary and even an office boy. But even so the work was heavy - often as much as 16 hours a day - for the first six months or so.

Even when reduced to a system, the program required 10 hours a day. After six months the sponsors of the program, Cluett Peabody and company, signed "Nancy Dixon" the copyrighted name of the company used by Mrs. Sims on the radio, to a contract lasting through 1946. Producers of the "Nancy Dixon" show were Young and Rubicam, an outstanding agency which handles the Jack Benny and Kate Smith programs among others.

* * *
The radio work lasted until last fall when an offer of the position of fashion editor came to Mrs. Sims, entirely unsolicited, from the Herald and Express. She accepted, because she felt the position was more stable and at the same time would give her more time with her family. Mrs. Sims began her work Jan. 1.

Now she covered the important stores, shops and all gatherings that have to do with fashions and reports for what is probably the most style conscious and critical public in the world, the women of Los Angeles - and more particularly, of Hollywood.

The work is the threshold of a new phase of the former Mason City woman's career, or it might well be called a new on in a series of serveral careers. Her column now reaches some 285,000 readers, but Mrs. Sims is dreaming now of a syndicated column reaching millions. It wouldn't be wise to bet that she won't attain that goal.

Photograph courtesy of Globe-Gazette

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, May of 2014

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