Rosaline Greenberg, who later used the professional name Greene, was born in Hempstead, New York, on Long Island. The only Jewish female student at Bay Shore High School, she was editor of the school newspaper and valedictorian of her class.
She enrolled at New York University and became a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi, but according to an oral history interview she did in 1951, she felt “so naïve, so out of my depth.” At NYU she took a drama course and was mortified when she received a “C” in the class – the lowest grade she earned in college. Years later, she was amused to learn that the instructor prided himself on having been her teacher.
Greene transferred to New York State Collège at Albany. She immersed herself in activities – AEPhi, Girls Athletic Association, Menorah Society, Spanish Club, and Advertising of Dramatics Plays Chairman. “Ro,” as friends called her, made time to become one of the first radio actresses.
“Ro” Greenberg is just under the “Phi”
In February of 1924, someone at WGY, a radio station in Schenectady, had the idea to perform plays over the radio. Students at local colleges could try out for parts. Although just a sophomore, Greene decided to audition for she had nothing to lose. She dressed, she later said, in “borrowed finery, with everyone in the sorority house contributing something to make me look grown-up and ‘actressy’.” She won a part in the Merchant of Venice.
The WGY Players troupe out of Schenectady was pioneering in using radio as a medium to perform stage productions. Radio drama was a new field and Greene became a large part of it. Greene reflected on the experience:
I personally think that one of the reasons I was successful in radio drama was that I had nothing of the theater to hamper me. I didn’t have to follow training or tradition. That was what seemed to confuse a lot of stage actors when they came into the radio business. They suddenly found themselves confined to a small space, unable to move around and forced to talk directly into a mike, instead of all around to the characters they were addressing. Suddenly they were unable to portray business either. They were so used to showing movement and business and action by means of stance, gesture, facial expressions, costume tricks, etc. How show all this with a voice alone?
She graduated in 1926 and took a job as a teacher in a private school in New York City. In September of that year she won the perfect voice contest at the Radio World’s Fair. According to a newspaper account, she won “in spite of the fact that the average listener prefers the male voice announcer to the female announcer.” Not satisfied teaching, she returned to radio acting. She even dabbled in theater productions.
The July 26, 1934 Syracuse Herald included a notice about a broadcast record:
the 2000th performance by a radio actress. It’s Rosaline Greene, now the speaking voice of Mary Lou in the Showboat, who has just passed this figure in portraying feminine microphone roles. Rosaline started at WGY, while still in college. In her career on the air she has been an ingenue, a villainess, a housewife, a detective, a barber and even a stooge for Eddie Cantor.
In 1935, she was mistress of ceremonies on the “Hour of Charm” program. It featured Phil Spitalny’s female vocal and instrumental group and aired on Tuesdays over CBS and WFBL. She also had the same mistress of ceremonies role on the “Ziegfeld Follies.”
Times Union (Brooklyn, NY), November 11, 1928
Hartford Courant (CT), April 8, 1930, Green was starring in Cleopatra at 9 p.m.
Pittsburgh Press, June 12, 1937
NY Daily News, May 29, 1936
In January 1936, she married Joseph M. Barnett, whom she met 10 years earlier just after she left teaching. They had three children. Theatrical radio programming declined when televisions became more commonplace. This combined with childrearing responsibilities may have contributed to the end of her professional career. While there are references to her performances through the 1930s, they cannot be found in the 1940s.
SUNY Albany Archives, 1974
In the early 1950s, Greene spoke about her experiences as part of Columbia University’s Radio Pioneers oral history project. The 52-page transcript is fascinating. Rosaline Greenberg Barnett died on December 17, 1987 in Los Angeles, California.
