As children, my sisters and I lived a pretty ordinary middle-class life. We went to school, played in the backyard with our cousins, and waited excitedly for the Easter Bunny to arrive with baskets overflowing with chocolate eggs—and, if we were lucky, maybe even a live bunny or baby chick.
Yet just beyond our little world, something extraordinary was happening.
Our great-uncle, Tom Lyle Williams, founder of the Maybelline Company, was taking his beauty empire into the exciting new age of television.
1956 was a banner year for Maybelline. Tom Lyle understood the enormous power of this new medium and put Maybelline before millions of television viewers. That year, Maybelline sponsored CBS-TV's coverage of the magnificent wedding celebrations of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III of Monaco—one of the most glamorous events of the decade. Contemporary television-industry records confirm Maybelline's sponsorship of the April 21, 1956 CBS broadcast.
Maybelline was also associated with some of television's biggest attractions, including The Miss America Contest, The Perry Como Show, and The Loretta Young Show.
Imagine the contrast.
While Uncle Lyle was steering Maybelline toward the moon and back, bringing glamorous Maybelline eyes into living rooms across America, his great-nieces were sitting in the grass hunting Easter eggs, completely unaware that we were growing up inside an American success story.
To us, he was simply Uncle Lyle.
Only years later did I understand what I had witnessed: a brilliant businessman recognizing that television was about to change advertising forever—and making sure Maybelline was right there when it happened.
Read more about the fabulous 1950s and how Tom Lyle Williams took Maybelline from the pages of magazines into the television age at .
The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It
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