Vintage Powder Room

Welcome to Vintage Powder Room Cinema!  This week’s feature is GOOD GIRLS GO TO PARIS [1939] starring Melvyn Douglas and Joan Blondell.

TCM says:

Ronald Brooke, an English exchange professor at a Midwestern college, is astounded at waitress Jenny Swanson, whose ambition is to gold-dig her way to Paris. Jenny begins to realize her dream when Ted Dayton, the son of a millionaire, hits her with his car and she entices him into a marriage proposal. When her conscience prevents her from going through with a breach of promise suit, Ronnie counsels her that good girls go to Paris too.

Is the professor right? Do good girls really get to Paris?  Watch and find out!

One of the biggest advantages to blogging about my interest in vintage beauty products over the past several years has been having sellers contact me about rare items for sale. For example, on my birthday four years ago I received an email from a man in upstate New York; he had found me via my Vintage Powder Room page and thought I might be interested in a manufacturer’s catalog of face powder, rouge, and lipstick boxes. He described the 96-page catalog as c. 1922 with a brown paper cover and soft spine. He told me that the book was in excellent condition and that it contained approximately 300 images, with every other page printed in color and many with gold or metallic ink. He had just acquired the catalog that day and while researching it he came across my blog. He sent me a picture of the cover of the book and while it didn’t look like much, the pictures he attached of some of the inside illustrations let me breathless. I immediately offered to buy the catalog; it was my birthday present to myself.

E.N. Rowell Co., Inc. manufactured and designed some of the most exquisite cosmetics packaging of the 1920s. This slim volume was meant for cosmetics company representatives who were shopping around for the perfect containers for their products. Rowell’s pitch highlighted the quality of the company’s boxes and the excellence of their designs.

Since I purchased it, the catalog has become an invaluable reference tool. While I was excited to discover that I own many of the boxes depicted in its pages (including the Nylotis face powder box), it also reminds me that there are hundreds more face powder boxes I have yet to find. My quest continues.

Welcome to Vintage Powder Room Cinema!  This week’s feature is NOTHING SACRED [1937] starring Carole Lombard and Fredric March.

IMDB says:

Certain she was dying from radium poisoning, Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard) is delighted to learn from her doctor that it was a false alarm. But when dapper and desperate New York City reporter Wally Cook (Fredric March) shows up looking for a story about a young girl braving terminal illness, Hazel decides that she’s sick again. Wally whisks her off to Manhattan, where her supposed courage wins her many admirers. The toast of the town, she falls in love with Wally and dreads being discovered.

I collect exquisite examples of cosmetics packaging and advertising from the 1880s through the 1950s, but even though most of my collection consists of powder boxes, hairpin cards, and hairnet envelopes, I never restrict myself to those items. I appreciate the pieces in my collection that have context, so I can immerse myself in the history and popular culture of the era during which they were manufactured.

For example, I discovered this funny Valentine’s Day card at a paper show a few years ago. It is inscribed on the back with a man’s name (John) and the year (1932). If I hadn’t done my homework, I would not have known that 1932 was one of the worst years of the Great Depression. In L.A., thousands of people were unemployed and they found themselves competing for work with Dust Bowl refugees who were flooding into the city from Oklahoma and other areas that had been ravaged by deadly dust storms. Women, many of them wives and mothers, were tasked with keeping their families clothed and fed on meager resources, living day to day on the brink of ruin.

But strangely, while most industries suffered enormously during this time period, cosmetics sales actually rose. This phenomenon has since been dubbed the “lipstick effect,” the thinking being that when resources are scarce, women try harder to attract quality mates. Maybe back then, but I prefer to think that now, when times are tough, small luxuries are crucial morale boosters.

Anyway, I am touched by John’s thoughtfulness. He obviously cared enough for the unnamed young woman to select a card intended to lighten her mood, and it also conveys a heartfelt message—that he would adore her whether or not she could afford powder to touch up her occasionally shiny nose. These days, Valentine’s Day often means a box of gourmet chocolates or a pricey piece of jewelry, but I think that John got it right in 1932 when he handed his sweetheart a card that affirmed his unconditional love for her. This holiday is a good excuse to tell certain people in our lives how much their relationship, romantic or otherwise, means to us, and how abiding our affection is.

Welcome to Vintage Powder Room Cinema!  This week’s feature is THEODORA GOES WILD starring Irene Dunne and Melvyn Douglas. This is one of my favorites!

Enjoy.