Nila Mac

Nila Mac was born on October 24, 1891, in Arkansas City, Kansas, though she later added a "k" to her surname, feeling that "Mac" read as a nickname rather than a proper last name. Some sources, including her New York Times obituary, listed her birth name as Nila MacLoughlin. Her father, Don Carlos, worked as a railroad engineer and died in a train accident during her early childhood. Her mother, Margaret, was a dance instructor, and after her father's death Mac attended Ferry Hall, a finishing school in Lake Forest, Illinois, and later took classes in both Arkansas City and Boston, funding her studies by playing piano at her mother's dance studio.

Mac began her performing career with a traveling repertory company, where she met and married actor Roy Briant. She subsequently worked in vaudeville and spent six years with the Nazimova company, appearing with that troupe in Fair and Warmer, A Doll's House, and both the stage and film versions of War Brides in 1918. Her Broadway career spanned from 1918 to 1928 and included appearances in It Happens to Everybody, Hedda Gabler, Eva the Fifth, and Where's Your Wife?. Her husband died in December 1927, following thirteen years of marriage, after which Mac took on various acting engagements and wrote comedy material for performers including Nydia Westman and Fanny Brice.

Mac also worked in early radio, appearing in CBS's experimental Radio Guild of the Air, which later evolved into the Columbia Workshop, as well as a CBS comedy program called Nit Wits. She scripted and narrated the Night Club Romances series. In 1930, she returned to Arkansas City to care for her mother and began working at a local radio station. Within six months, CBS contacted her to take over its children's program, The Adventures of Helen and Mary. Relocating to New York, she restructured the struggling series, eventually replacing its adult cast with child actors, changing its content to center on fantasy and fairy tales, and retitling it Let's Pretend. The program broadcast more than 300 fairy tale adaptations in addition to original scripts, with Cream of Wheat serving as its sponsor.

CBS appointed Mac Director of Children's Programs, a position she held from 1930 until her death in 1953. Let's Pretend ran from 1934 to 1954 and earned numerous honors, among them two Peabody Awards, a Women's National Radio Committee Award, and five Radio Daily Awards. Cast member Arthur Anderson credited both her scripts and her skill in selecting and directing child performers as the primary reasons the program outlasted every other dramatic series in American radio. Mac died of a heart attack in her Manhattan apartment on January 20, 1953.