Like many Baby Boomers, Greg Newberry spent lunchtime summers watching Ruth Lyonsâ top-rated 50-50 Club show with his mother.
And with that generation diminishing every day, Newberry decided it was time to tell younger viewers across the country about Cincinnatiâs most powerful TV personality who shattered glass ceilings decades before we knew the term.
âRuth Lyonsâ achievements would be remarkable at any time, let alone in the 1950s when women were expected to stay home and raise a family,â says Newberry, who grew up in Hamilton. âRuth built a media empire through sheer determination, savvy, and talent.â
Cincinnatiâs âFirst Lady of Televisionâ hosted a live 90-minute weekday show on WLWT-TV for nearly 20 years (1949-67) which was simulcast on sister TV stations in Dayton, Columbus, and Indianapolis, and on WLW-AM radio. Her show was so popular fans waited seven years for free tickets. Potential advertisers waited about half that long to get a spot on her show.
Among her other achievements:
- Lyons was WLWT-TVâs first program director in 1949, a year after the station began commercial broadcasts, making her one of the first female television executives.
- The woman affectionately called âMotherâ by her staff was the first woman to host a national daytime talk show on Oct. 1, 1951, when NBC picked up the 50-50 Club for one year.
- She was Oprah Winfrey 40 years before the Oprah Winfrey Show. Lyons attracted a âWhoâs Whoâ of Hollywood movie and TV stars, musicians, politicians and sports stars to her live 90-minute show â everyone from comedian Bob Hope, bandleader Duke Ellington, actor Tony Randall and the Smothers Brothers to comedians Bob Newhart and Edgar Bergen, actress Carol Channing, singers Peter, Paul and Mary and cowboy Roy Rogers. And his horse Trigger, too.
- The commercials were live, too. Lyonsâ ad-libbed personal endorsements for products, and her loyal followers snapped them off store shelves.
- The 50-50 Club was the nationâs highest-rated daytime program nationally for a dozen years, from 1952 to 1964, according to the 2011 Emmy-winning Ruth Lyons: First Lady of Television by David Ashbrock and Mark Magistrelli, which Newberry used researching his script. Lyonsâ had 7 million viewers in four markets; today The View has 2.3 million viewers nationally on ABC, Newberry says.
Lyons had so many career achievements that Newberryâs first draft for a feature film screenplay was 170 pages â about 50 pages too long. Unable to cut the story without gutting it, Newberry pivoted and broke it into three, one-hour episodes for television.
For Mother Ruth, Newberry took some artistic license to tell the story through Ruthâs relationship with her daughter Candy, who died at age 21 of breast cancer in 1966 while traveling home from Europe on a cruise ship with her parents. Lyons returned to the show that fall, then retired in January 1967. She died in 1988 at age 81.
Newberry calls Mother Ruth âbased on a true storyâ because most of the WLWT-TV stars, staff and crew from the so-called âGolden Age of Televisionâ in the 1950s and â60s have died.
Newberry, who teaches screenwriting at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, says his script has impressed his Hollywood friends.
âPeople who donât know about her read it and say, âWhy donât we know about her? Youâve got to get this made,' â Newberry says.
Newberry and his Squeaky Toy Films is seeking local investors in hopes of filming the miniseries here. Heâs also looking for a distribution commitment from a streaming platform such as Netflix.
âI have some definite interest and commitments. Iâm very encouraged. Iâve been at this a long time,â he says.
Three years ago Newberryâs Who Is Amos Otis? film about the trial of a presidential assassin played on Amazon Prime in 2022. It was filmed in 2020 with local actors at the same Northern Kentucky United States Post Office courtroom seen in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Ted Bundy film shot here in 2018 with Zac Efron and Jim Parsons.
A member of the Writers Guild of America, Newberry has written four screenplays which have been optioned to Hollywood producers â but never filmed. âIâm the most successful unsuccessful screenwriter,â he jokes.
Newberry also owns with customers that include the Newport Aquarium, Fifth Third Bank, Febreeze, Downy, Heinz and Gorilla Glue.
Mother Ruth, he says, is in honor of his mother, who âwas glued to the set every dayâ watching Lyonsâ 50-50 Club.
âIt never struck me when I was watching the show with her what a pioneer Ruth was, and how she obliterated the glass ceiling,â Newberry says.
