@5onlife interview with Sharrie Williams author of the Maybelline Story

Sharrie Williams is an award-winning Celebrity Columnist and author of The Maybelline Story. She is none other than Tom Lyle Williams’ great niece, the founder of Maybelline, which is now one of the most popular makeup brands worldwide. Tom Lyle revolutionized the world of beauty with his innovation of the Maybelline Cake Mascara and changed an entire industry. In The Maybelline Story she describes Tom Lyle Williams’ humble beginnings when he started out with his first creations for a darker, fuller eyelash look, inspired by his sister Mabel. In her honor, he named the company Maybelline which became a huge success over the years thanks to his keen business acumen and his imaginative mind for beauty products.

For over 35 years, Sharrie Williams has been very committed to spreading her great uncle’s legacy and reviving the history of the Maybelline empire by engaging in public speaking.Her affluent family enabled her to lead a glamorous lifestyle - “a lifestyle that had taken many generations to create”. 

Nevertheless, at some point, all went wrong. Her grandmother squandered all her money and was murdered. This incident was followed by a painful divorce when her child was only 5 months old and several hard years of struggling with personal troubles and recovering from addiction. She almost lost everything - but not her strength.

In the end, it turned out that these dramatic events were a blessing in disguise as her values changed into more meaningful ones since she worked hard to get rid of the image of the pampered princess. She turned the tragedy of her life to her advantage and became a self-assured, ambitious and capable woman with a fulfilled purpose in life.

Finally, she found the courage to attend the Vanguard University in California to take a degree in Psychology. In her later career, Sharrie Williams also completed studies in Screenwriting, Video Production and Public Speaking. The Maybelline Story became a huge success and has won Hollywood’s Best New Author - Honorable Mention and a Pulitzer Prize entry memoir among others. Furthermore, she has been featured in many online and print magazines worldwide as well as on television programs such as Good Morning Arizona and CBS California. More than 3 million people have registered at Sharrie William’sblog www.maybellinebook.com.

Experiencing the rise and fall of a dynasty, Sharrie has lived a colorful life and learned how to press on despite several setbacks - this makes her an incredibly inspiring woman for our website. In our interview, she expresses the true meaning of beauty and gives us an insight into the secret success of Maybelline.

Sharrie Williams Interview with 5 On Life click here

Maybelline no longer does animal testing unless regulatory authorities demand it

People ask me about animal testing a lot. They say Maybelline isn't on the anti animal testing list. Here is some evidence that L'Oreal has stopped animal testing when ever possible. Since Maybelline is a Global brand, some countries still demand it, however L'Oreal is working with these authorities to find alternative methods of testing. 

Maybelline in Cambodia

There is reasonable evidence that claims that Maybelline products were tested on animals are not wholly unfounded. During 1989 L'Oreal ceased to test finished products prior to their launch on the market and has committed to developing alternative methods.  Although according to a 2010 report, it is required by law in some countries to continue with animal testing. The company has made a commitment to "work with the authorities in these countries and sharing knowledge about alternative testing methods". According to their website, L’Oréal no longer officially tests on animals any of its products or any of its ingredients, anywhere in the world. Nor does L’Oréal delegate this task to others. An exception could only be made if regulatory authorities demanded it for safety or regulatory purposes.

 http://www.wow.com/wiki/Maybelline?s_chn=3&s_pt=aolsem&s_gl=US&s_dto=d&v_t=aolsem#cite_note-12

Rudolph Valentino's statue, "Aspiration" is still inspiring us to achieve our ambitions

The Villa Valentino, 1938. Chet Hewes, Ches Hains, Eva Williams Haines, Tom Lyle Williams, Mabel Williams Hewes.

An interesting article found in Tom Lyle Williams, sister, Eva's, archives has recently surfaced and was sent to me by her grandson, Jerry Westhouse. I've added pictures for my readers enjoyment. 

Tom Lyle Williams and Emery Shaver at the Villa Valentino in 1935, standing in front of Tom Lyle's, 1934 Packard

The statue, "Aspiration" was created in honor of Rudolph Valentino in 1930. Four years after his untimely death in 1926.  When Tom Lyle Williams purchased the Villa Valentino, in the Hollywood Hills, he had a copy of  "Aspiration" made and placed overlooking the pool. In the late 1940's, the Villa Valentino was destroyed by Eminent Domain, for the Hollywood Freeway. Today if you are on the Hollywood freeway at Vine, look up to your right and you will still see the foundation of the Villa Valentino. Tom Lyle Williams and his partner, Emery Shaver moved to Bel Air California and built a modern glass and steel home.

After Tom Lyle's death in 1976, his nephew's Bill and Noel Williams, had Aspiration recreated off the original mold and each of them placed it in their homes. After Bill and Noel passed away, their statues were given to Noel Williams son Chuck Williams, and my father Bill Williams statue was given to me. 

"Aspiration" reminds us to never stop aspiring towards our dreams.   A hope or ambition of achieving something: The Maybelline Story carries this theme throughout the book.

Maybelline vs. Max Factor. One devoted exclusively to EYES, the other known as Make up Artist to the Stars

When Maybelline was born in 1915 and until the late 1930's, women used the word Maybelline for mascara, saying,  "I need to order my Maybelline," not, "I need to buy mascara," and like Max Factors Face Make-up, Maybelline was consi
dered "the Provence of whores" and not used by respectable ladies.  

Maybe that's why Tom Lyle used the term  "Eye Beauty Aids" and marketed Maybelline as pure and healthy for lashes and brows.  Eventually Maybelline was referred to as Mascara and had no negative connotation.

Max Factor started out selling hand made wigs and theatrical make-up to the growing film industry and soon coined the word "make-up" based on the verb phrase "to make up" (one's face) in 1920.  Up until then the term ‘"cosmetics’’ had been used as the term for ‘"make-up" and was considered to be used only by people in the theater or of dubious reputation and not something to be used in polite society.

By the 1940's the Factor Brand expanded into a variety of cosmetics while Maybelline remained strictly Eye Beauty.


In this 1937 Maybelline Ad Tom Lyle used brilliant color, a Maybelline First!  As Technicolor film replaced Maybelline's black and white ads.  Notice the products are now attached to cards that were placed on display racks - another Maybelline First, and the 75 cent box of Maybelline was  scaled down to a small 10 cent size so all women could afford a box of Maybelline during the Great Depression. 

From 1915 to 1967 when Tom Lyle sold The Maybelline Company to Plough Inc, Maybelline controlled over 75% of the eye beauty market and never experienced competition from any other cosmetic company.

Read more about Maybelline's supreme control of the eye beauty market and Tom Lyle Williams genius as the King of Advertising in "The Maybelline Story."

looking 35 at 18 didn't get me a Maybelline model contract. But the Maybelline Story was born.

Nana, my dad Bill, me with dyed black hair and my dad's uncle, Tom Lyle Williams, founder of the Maybelline Company.

I hoped to be a Maybelline model after I graduated high school. My grandmother convinced me to dress up for Christmas in a black cocktail dress, heals and of course my Chicken of the Sea hair-do to impress Unk Ile.  He took one look at me he said, "My god, Sharrie, you look like a 35 year old woman, not a teenage girl.

Was that a good or bad thing?  I wasn't sure, but it wasn't what he was looking for in a Maybelline model. He was targeting the teenage market in 1966.  In fact, Unk Ile, wanted just the opposite of my exotic look. Maybelline was going for a softer, more natural look.  So my hopes of becoming the next teen Maybelline model were smashed. 

Nana watched me mope around a while, then said, "Sharrie, Darling, why don't you go back to Chicago next summer and stay with your Great aunts and uncles, meet your cousins and and get to know the Chicago branch of the family.

My spirits lifted and I was on my way.  Here I am, Queen of the super rollers, with my sister, Donna and her pin straight surfer girl hair.  she was happy to see me go for the summer, envisioning driving my 57, blue and white Chevy, to the beach everyday and surf.  I was excited to take my first plane ride back to where the story all began. 

Exotic and over dressed for every occasion in Chicago.

Nana encouraged me to take notes to document my trip in a letter to Unk Ile, when I got back.  I did, and those notes became part of the book I'd  publish 45 years later. 

 When my house burned down in 1993 most of my pictures of my trip to Chicago were lost.  this picture of auntie Eva and uncle Ches at their home on Mercer Lake survived. It was here, as well as with Auntie Mabel and uncle Chet, Aunt Verona and Aunt Bunny, that the Maybelline Story, began to unfold.  They loved showing me pictures, letters, and sharing stories about the early days of Maybelline.  With their help I pieced together a memoir, The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It. 

Memories of Mabel and Chet on their Wedding Day,  Tom Lyle Williams, aka Unk Ile to us,  Maybelline eye shadow in the 1930's and an original Maybelline ad from 1925.

After two wonderful months of getting to know my aunts, uncles and cousins, I returned to California, (as you can see I don't look very happy about it.)  I wanted to stay in Chicago and start college, but my parents insisted I come home.  So here I am at the airport, with my mother, Pauline, My dad, Bill, Nana and little Preston and Billee.

 I did keep a diary of my trip to Chicago and wrote a 25 page letter to Unk Ile.  He was quite impressed with my writing and said, "Sharrie, you certainly have a way with words, I think you'd make a great copy writer. He didn't offer a modeling contract, but he did tell me that if I got a degree in advertising, he'd open every door for me. He also said, I really don't want my story told, but if you do someday write it, I don't want to be remembered as the man who invented mascara, I want to be remembered as the "King of Advertising." 

Read more of my book, The Maybelline Story.  I guarantee you, you won't be able to put it down.

Living the Dream in the 1950's when Maybelline commercials first appeared on television

Sharrie,  Donna and Billee Williams, Easter 1956.

As children, my sister's and I lived an average middle class life,

 while at the same time, our Great uncle, Tom Lyle Williams, advertised his beautiful Maybelline commercials on television for the first time  In 1956 Maybelline sponsored Princess Grace and Prince Rainier lll's, Wedding, as well as The Miss America Contest, The Perry Como Show and The Loretta Young Show.

But for us kids and all our cousins, it was playing in the backyard as usual, while waiting for the Easter Bunny to bring us baskets filled with chocolate Easter Eggs  and maybe a live bunny or chick

Read more about the 1950's and how Tom Lyle Williams steered the Maybelline Company to the moon and back, when televisions appeared  household's around the globe. You'll love my memoir, The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty behind it. Now on Audible books. 

Chuck Berry may be gone but his "Maybellene" will live on in Rock n Roll Fame

Chuck Berry, Rock ’n’ Roll Pioneer, Dies at 90 click The New York Times

 

 

How Chuck Berry's "Maybellene" got it's name

In a fairly new book: The Third Coast When Chicago Built the American Dream, Thomas Dyja, describes how Chuck Berry's hit song "Maybellene" came about...However, as described in my book, "The Maybelline Story," Chuck Berry or his attorney, contacted Tom Lyle Williams, founder and owner of the Maybelline Company and asked for permission to use the spelling. Tom Lyle said no, so the spelling was changed to protect Berry from further disputes. Here is how the idea for "Maybelline" came about in 1955.

Chuck Berry’s "Maybellene" was taken from the country song "Ida Red", as recorded by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys in 1938.  In 1955 Berry brought his version of Ida Red, to Chess Records which he had renamed "Ida May."  Leonard Chess  was enthusiastic about the commercial possibilities in a “hillbilly song sung by a black man, but he thought the title Ida May,  was “too rural”

Spotting a mascara box on the floor of the studio, Chess said, “Well, hell, let’s name the damn thing Maybellene” altering the spelling to avoid a suit by the cosmetic company. “The kids wanted the big beat, cars and young love,”  “It was the trend and taking old recordings and modifying them, by changing the instrumentals and the lyrics was a common practice in the 1950s.

The lyrics struck a chord with teenagers fascinated by cars, speed and sexuality. "Maybellene” became one of the first records to score big on rhythm and blues, country and western, and pop charts. Featuring some inimitable Chuck Berry riffs, some blues-style picking on a country guitar and Johnson’s piano, which added rhythm to the steady back beat, "Maybellene" was a pivotal song in the emergence of rock 'n' roll. This exciting fusion of a rhythm and blues beat with a rural country style was the catalyst for the type of rock 'n' roll that emerged in the mid-1950s.

Read more about it and so much more in The Maybelline Story, buy a signed copy from me. Now listen to the book, on audible books from Amazon.

The age of cosmetics had begun with Lash-Brow-Ine in 1915, which became Maybelline in 1916

In the 1920's the American frontier had been explored, and cities were now the epicenters of discovery. New technology demanded an expanded workforce. Women defied their stay-at-home roles. With the freedom of their own money, they behaved differently. They even started smoking.

 

Massive advertising campaigns by Lucky Strike Tobacco Company lured women as well as men into smoking with the slogan “It’s toasted!” After all, what could be more pure and aromatic than toasted, golden leaves?

The public fell for it. With product placement in the first self-serve grocery stores—the Piggly Wiggly chain—it was easy to develop a smoking and Maybelline habit over night.

No one could stop their little purchases, which included beauty-products. The era when only performers and prostitutes wore make-up had passed.

.....

You can't be truly independent and free without being financially independent.....

Read all about it in my book, The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It..... 

Maybelline stayed at the top of it's game during the Great Depression: How did they do it?

The Maybelline Company, 1934

Excerpt from The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It. 

 

       Although Tom Lyle knew that much of the company's success was due to his own daring eye for advertising combined with Emery and Arnold’s exceptional talents, he also knew that without Rags, Maybelline would simply not have been able to stay constantly at the top of the fast-growing cosmetics market. 

      For his efforts, Rags was paid solely on a commission of one and one-quarter percent of gross sales, which had risen from $359,000 at the time of his employment in 1933 to its 1955 level of over $7,000,000 a year. Knowing that this tremendous rise in sales was directly due to Rags relentless work and devotion to the company, Tom Lyle decided to not only raise Rags' commission to one and one-half percent, but give him three percent of Maybelline’s stock.  To seal the deal, Rags would also be made Executive Vice President in charge of Sales, positioning him as an equal with Tom Lyle and Tom Lyle, Jr. --in other words, as family.

 

       With Rags securely placed as a jewel in Maybelline’s crown, Tom Lyle could direct his next move on the cosmetics chessboard.  Although he continued to target both the sophisticated, intelligent woman in her 30s and the more mature woman in his world-wide advertisements, as 1955 continued a new brand of female was emerging. This girl differed from both the World War II pin-up girl and Rosie the Riveter. 

       Thanks to movies like East of Eden staring James Dean, and Blackboard Jungle, featuring the song “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets, “The Rebel" had become the latest cultural icon. Maybelline sales soared as heavy make-up appeared in every teenage girl's purse. The era of teen marketing was born in Jacksonville, Florida, that year, when young girls jumped out of their seats to dance at an Elvis Presley concert--the first first musical riot on record.

Read all about it in The Maybelline Story, you'll be entertained from page one.  

 

False Eye Lashes were patented in 1911, three years before Maybelline was born in 1915

Three years before Tom Lyle Williams walked into his sister Mabel's room and witnessed her applying ash and Vaseline to her brows, a lady Anna Taylor got her U.S. patent for false eyelashes in 1911, it's doubtful she could see far enough into the future to know that trying to make lashes look longer and fuller would turn into a multimillion-dollar industry.

Bette Davis eyes

In the early 20th century, film director D.W. Griffith and Hollywood makeup artist Max Factor brought false lashes to the big screen. Movie stars, such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Lauren Bacall and Carol Channing were regular lash wearers.

A 2007 Los Angeles Times obituary for Hollywood makeup artist Monty Westmore, who worked with the legendary Crawford, noted that she did her own face. But it was his job "to lay out her makeup supplies and curl six pairs of her false eyelashes each morning before filming began."

Maybelline false lashes in the 1960's.

In the '60s, model Twiggy made false lashes so popular as many as 20 million pairs were sold a year, according to Racked.

Maybelline false eye lashes 1976

"They were mystifying!" says Jenny Bailly, the executive beauty director for Allure magazine. Even though false lashes were the standard for movie stars, showgirls and models, for the laywoman they could be a bit of work.

"There was the glue, the strips — how do you get these things on and then how do you get them off," Bailly says.

Unyi Agba, a senior manager of marketing at Maybelline, says there's a growing demand for mascara that gives the false lash look.

"It's always about trying to find that mascara that's going to really transform them," she says. "So there's going to be an increased appetite for that. Consumers are going to want mascaras that can really deliver a false lash look. So even more lengthening, even more volume, and even more depth to the lashes — expect to see some of that."

February 25, 20176:03 AM ET

Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

TANYA BALLARD BROWN

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