Frances Bemis

Who is Frances Bemis?

Frances Bemis was a public relations specialist specializing in department store promotions, a newspaper writer, radio producer, and a fashion director. She attended college at Oglethorpe University and the University of California. After graduating college she returned to Georgia and wrote columns for both the Atlanta Constitution and Atlanta Journal, at the same time she began her public relations career by handling publicity for the Woman's Club of Atlanta.

In the late 1920s she moved to New York City to develop a dual career in public relations and advertising. She was contracted by various New York City department stores to develop advertising by staging various types of publicity events. In 1932 she was hired by Brooklyn-based Hearn's as a fashion promoter and publicist. Among the publicity events she staged at the store were a fashion contest emceed by gossip columnist and society figure Elsa Maxwell and a Thanksgiving Day circus in Central Park. Bemis wrote the press releases for the events she staged and occasionally made the front page of New York City newspapers herself.

In 1938, Bemis resigned from Hearn's to do free-lance public relations for a variety of diverse companies, including the Ford Motor Company, which she worked to promote at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and the Claire Wolff modeling agency.