Neysa McMein
Toronto Daily Star, August 9 1928
Neysa McMein (1888-1949) was a successful magazine and advertising illustrator and portrait painter. Among other accomplishments, she created every cover of McCall's magazine from 1923 to 1937 and she was the creator of the original Betty Crocker, a fictional housewife used in ads for General Mills.
She was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of New York City writers, critics, and actors that included Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Irving Berlin. She was in an open marriage to engineer and author John Baragwanath; her lovers included Charlie Chaplin and Benchley. She was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1984.
Created November 7, 2025.