Halloween Martin

Halloween Joan Martin Kurtzeborn (October 31, 1900 – July 29, 1971) was an American broadcast announcer and radio disc jockey. She was one of the first radio disc jockeys in Chicago and an early innovator in what became known as morning radio. Active from 1929 to 1946 on her show the Musical Clock, Martin broadcast from three radio stations for almost two decades beginning with KYW, then WBBM, and finally WCFL where she retired from broadcasting. In the early 1930s, it was estimated that she had an audience of more than 1.5 million radio listeners. Historian Donna Halper credits Martin as the first woman to host her own morning radio show, with music scholar Maren Hancock calling Martin one of the first modern DJs.

Early life

Halloween Joan Martin was born in El Paso, Texas, on Halloween in 1900 to a Canadian-born father, physician and dentist George Gordon Martin, and a Texas-born mother, Mabel Clare Kountz. She told the Associated Press that she went without a name for months until her parents chose the unusual birth-circumstance-inspired name. Martin grew up in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago with her brother Gordon, where she attended DePaul High School for Girls. She later matriculated at DePaul University, where she acted and performed with the drama club and wrote essays for The Minerval, the DePaul literary magazine. She also studied liberal arts, graduating in 1926 with an AB.

Career

After university, Martin joined the Chicago Herald and Examiner as a staff writer and columnist where she contributed to interior decorating content for the Prudence Penny column.