Showing posts with label Maybelline advertisements. Hollywood stars.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maybelline advertisements. Hollywood stars.. Show all posts

Maybelline model Natalie Moorhead shifts direction in the 1930's.

Cold as ice, Vampish Natalie Moorhead ended the Roaring 20's with pure sophistication and skyrocketed   Maybelline advertisements to a new artistic level.

Statuesque, platinum-blond American actress Natalie Moorhead entered films in 1929; by the end of the next year, she had nearly a dozen movies to her credit. Moorhead was most effectively cast in vampish roles, notably her turn as one of the suspects in The Thin Man (1934).


Tom Lyle must have seen Natalie Moorhead's potential to target a more mature, sophisticated woman, who by 1935, had been wearing Maybelline for nearly 20 years.  His brilliance as the King of Advertising was to cover the market with every single type of persona developing in the movies, especially after sound was born by the end of the 1920's.  Moorhead, in her films, represented a beautiful, ultra sexy mature woman who knew what she wanted and she wanted Maybelline.  

 http://www.allstarpics.net/pic-gallery/natalie-moorhead-pics.htm
Click here to see Natalie Moorhead's photo's and you will see what Tom Lyle saw in this seductive, calculating actress!



Read more about Tom Lyle Williams and The Maybelline Company in The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It.



Hollywood Super Stars clamored to be featured in Maybelline color advertisements during the 1940s



                                    Rita Hayworth

 During World War ll, Maybelline's market share skyrocketed, because so many women worked in air craft plants and refused to cut back on their cosmetics.  When the war ended Tom Lyle's thirty-year-old invention benefited mightily from the Postwar Boom when mascara and eye-shadow came out in matching colors - with new hues added every Spring and Fall - imitating the practice of fashion designers.  The increase in sales were dramatic and though in 1940 only one in four American women wore eye make-up, by 1949 this figure increased to three out of four, with Maybelline accounting for 45,000 units out of 51,000 eye products sold that year. 

Merle Oberon
Tom Lyle contracted major motion picture stars to appear in Maybelline's advertisements.  War-movies showcased them as the ideal Amercan image and young girls around the world purchased Maybelline at their local dime stores.

Rita Hayworth, Merle Oberon, Betty Grable, Joan Crawford  and Hedy Lamarr (click to see) were some of the GI's favorite pin-up girls. They were top box office queens during the war years and their image represented money in the bank for Maybelline. 
Betty Grable

Tom Lyle contracted Betty Grable for her sex appeal, moxy and girl next door image.She appealed to young want-a-bee’s who saved their grocery money to buy hope in a little red box.  Maybelline turned simple shop girl's into  sex symbols - inspiring soldier boys to get back home.  In fact a G.I.'s morale was often dependent on pictures of their girls with "Those Maybelline Eyes."

 Tom Lyle spent more on his beautiful movie stars as cover-girls then any other cosmetic company in history and it paid off in the 1940's beyond his wildest dreams.

Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford became the official face of Maybelline in 1945 after she won an Oscar for "Mildred Pierce."  Be sure to watch HBO's new version of "Mildred Pierce" with Kate Winslet airing Sunday March 27th.  This mini-series depicts the era, clothes and background painted in The Maybelline Story.  I'm sure if you watch the series and read the book at the same time you'll see The Maybelline Story come alive.


Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress. Though known primarily for her extraordinary beauty and her celebrity in a film career as a major contract star of MGM's "Golden Age.  She had a seductive look in her eye that appealed to Tom Lyle, because she targeted a certain audience of women who sought her sex appeal. 

Tom Lyle Williams master of perfection.

The Maybelline Story



Armed with market savvy, an eye for beauty and a penchant for perfection, Tom Lyle continued to experiment boldly, introducing what would become one of the most familiar and effective ploys in advertising: “before and after” imagery. This captured the imagination of women everywhere, creating a need that he filled by placing striking cosmetic displays in dime and drug stores across America. Soon the name Maybelline came to represent more than just mascara—it meant beauty, sex appeal and self-confidence, indispensible tools for every woman’s success—however she defined it.