Nila Mack of Arkansas City created radio’s ‘Let’s Pretend’
The Arkansas City native ran children's programs at CBS and created a fairy-tale series that won two Peabody Awards.
By Jolene Marquardt
Generations of children who grew up with the radio knew “Let’s Pretend.” Few knew its creator came from Arkansas City.
Nila Mack was born there on Oct. 24, 1891. Her mother taught dance, and her father, a railroad engineer, died in a train accident when she was very young. She later went to Ferry Hall, a finishing school in Lake Forest, Ill., and took classes in Arkansas City and Boston, paying for them by playing piano at her mother’s dance studio.
She worked in a traveling repertory company and in vaudeville and on Broadway before joining CBS. There she rebuilt a children’s show around a company of child actors and fairy tales and renamed it “Let’s Pretend.” “We were deep in the depression when Let’s Pretend began,” she recalled, and she wanted children to have stories that filled them with wonder.
The series ran from 1934 to 1954 and won two Peabody Awards. Mack was director of children’s programs at CBS from 1930 until her death in New York in 1953.