Poseidon's Underworld: shampoo

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Oh, 'poo!

From the looks of things, Lustre-Cream shampoo had a stranglehold on Hollywood-endorsed products for 1950s locks! Anybody who was anybody, regardless of their studio, seemed to appear in one of their colorful print ads. And we have a sizable collection to show you today along with a couple of other things. Lustre-Cream came in a small milk glass jar, yes, a jar! Nowadays, I believe most of us associate shampoo with being liquid and in bottles (which did happen with this product eventually, too.) See if any of your favorite ladies turn up in this photo essay.

It may have had something to do with the copious amounts of goop that Esther Williams had combed into her hair for all those water ballet routines, but if you watch her movies, take note of how beautiful her hair nearly always is!

Rita Hayworth, of course, paid a painful price for her glamorous hairline. It used to come further down on her forehead (think Teresa Guidice), but she went through rounds of stinging electrolysis to permanently raise her hairline and created a heart-shaped widow's peak in the bargain. Funny... my hairline rose higher all on it's own!

I always liked it when Eleanor Parker wore long falls or elaborate up-dos versus the more simple style shown here. (Escape From Fort Bravo, 1953, and The Naked Jungle, 1954, come to mind.)

Miss Deborah Kerr nearly always looked great and very pulled together. She's one of several ladies who appear here twice today.

Love the gloves and jewelry here!

Ava Gardner is also a two-fer in this post.

Although some people find it inappropriate that she was cast as Julie in 1951's Show Boat, I thought she did an excellent job and was, by the end, rather heart-breaking.

Once seen, few can forget that Margo Channing shoulder-length mane of hair that Miss Bette Davis sported in All About Eve (1950.) Davis showed off quite a wide range of looks with her hair over the years, even shaving off two inches of the front in order to play the follically-challenged Queen Elizabeth I in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939!)

Natalie Wood had pretty hair, but - like many of the ladies seen here today - did wear wigs in many of her mid-career movies. The studio lights and punishing (not to mention time-consuming) styling techniques just made it simpler for most to use other hair than their own.

The same year the movie mentioned in the text came out (The Girl Next Door, 1953), June Haver was living at The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth as a postulant nun from February to October. In fact, it was her final film. After leaving the order, she soon wed Fred MacMurray and never acted on-screen again apart from an appearance as herself on The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour with her husband. The union lasted thirty-seven years until his death.

This would definitely count as one of my least favorite hair looks on Lana Turner. So compounded and stiff looking. Love the color of the gown and jewels, though!

Not a tremendous improvement here! Turner was noted for having shaved off her eyebrows during a bit role in The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938), after which they failed to grow back! They always had to be drawn on or little false ones adhered to her forehead thereafter...

This ad with Marilyn Monroe heralds the introduction of "lotion form" Lustre-Creme. The original was sort of close to Pond's cold cream in texture. Presumably, this was less thick?

This is a nice picture of Jane Russell. If you, like me, have never heard of "The Big Rainbow," it's because the film's title was changed in the meantime to the more appropriate Underwater! (1955.)

This is not a very flattering representation of Loretta Young! Garish coloring, even after I dialed it back a little.

You'll note that Arlene Dahl is shown in four photos in this ad (as were a few of the prior ladies), but much of the time a different model was used in the preparation shots along the bottom.

I love green and lavender together and this is a lovely shot of Miss Elzabeth Taylor.

I would venture to say that this is a wig (and I hated her hair in the second half of The Last Time I Saw Paris, 1954, which featured a close-cropped wig.)

In this Betty Grable ad, it says that Lustre-Creme is the favorite beauty shampoo of 4 out of 5 top Hollywood stars. I believe it!

Debra Paget was a very pretty young lady and a decent actress. Having been wed very briefly twice, she left the biz in 1964, not long after a third marriage to a wealthy Chinese-American oil executive. They divorced in 1980 with one son born to them. Later, she became a born-again Christian and wound up on TBN.

Ann Blyth was pretty, but had unusual features which sometimes didn't photograph well in stills.

See what I mean? There's something a bit crooked and "off" in this one.

Miss Joan Crawford, who famously played Blyth's mother in Mildred Pierce (1945) has got one serious piece of bling around her shoulders here!

So few of Crawford's early films were in color it's sometimes a surprise to see her outside of black & white depiction. Female on the Beach (1955) is a black & white hoot.

Miss Barbara Stanwyck was notable as one of the very few (perhaps only!) major Hollywood actresses who let her gray hair show. It ultimately became a trademark of hers. The plotline of Jeopardy (1953), by the way, was reworked for an episode of her later series The Big Valley, with Bruce Dern essaying the sort of role Ralph Meeker played in the original.

Here, Babs has developed more gray in her hair.

Both Rhonda Fleming and her contemporary (and costar in Slightly Scarlet, 1956) Arlene Dahl are still alive as of this writing.

What?!?! Someone has dared to promote a product other than Lustre-Creme?! Virginia Mayo, how could you?!

That's more like it. She has now drunk the Kool-Aid and is converted.

I have enjoyed quite a few Jane Wyman movies (and, of course, thought she was wonderful on Falcon Crest!), but I have never liked her helmet hair of this period...

It's a little bit better here, perhaps, but I have never been able to get on board with those clamped-on, tightly-styled looks of some 1950s actresses.

Over the last few years, my appreciation of Mitzi Gaynor has grown by leaps and bounds. She's so effervescent and an amazing performer. And her online career retrospective interviews are a joy to watch and listen to.

The plot line of Dangerous Crossing (1953) with Jeanne Crain was reworked a hundred times in Hollywood. It even turned up in a reworked version on The Big Valley.

I scarcely recognize Grace Kelly here. I have yet to view The Swan (1956), a film which was released to theaters the same day Kelly wed Prince Rainier of Monaco.

I can't say that this rendering of Ruth Roman is particularly flattering. The already hardy actress seems very burly, even with all the surrounding foliage.

Kathryn Grayson saw her career fall apart once colorful Hollywood musicals went out of fashion (at least ones with her operatic sort of vocals.)

Grayson's friend and occasional costar, the marvelous Miss Ann Miller.

Aack! Miss Merle Oberon is using Drene instead of Lustre-Creme! This is why she was excluded from the big party down at Sidney Guilleroff's!

Oh dear... We have yet another traitor! Ida Lupino is using Drene! And as was the case with Oberon, I could find no evidence that she ever switched to Lustre-Creme... Love the neckline of her gown.

Pier Angeli is so pretty and fresh-looking here. She had a rough go of it in Tinseltown after a very promising start. She was compelled to end her relationship with James Dean because he was not a Catholic and wound up in a rocky marriage to Vic Damone. Then her Hollywood career began to falter at the end of the 1950s. By 1971 she was dead of a drug overdose at only age thirty-nine. (Her twin sister Marisa Pavan is alive today at eighty-seven.)

I'd never heard of The Girl in White (1952) with June Allyson. In it, she played New York City's first female doctor amid Arthur Kennedy and Gary Merrill.

I am not fond of the way Maureen O'Hara's mouth has been done in this ad. She doesn't look right! Almost like a Zuni Fetish Doll...! LOL

This is somewhat better. What a mutually beneficial relationship Lustre-Creme had with the studios. Each winning publicity for its product.

I always liked Jane Powell and thought she was pretty. She's still alive today at age ninety!

She was another casualty of certain types of Hollywood musicals falling out of fashion.

You know we couldn't forget our beloved Joan Collins (and this is surely a wig, too!)

We'll allow La Collins to introduce the all new LIQUID Lustre-Creme shampoo!

Also getting on the liquid bandwagon is Miss Vera Miles (also ninety at present!)

Myrna Hansen was never a star the same way all these other ladies were. Most of her parts were minor walk-ons, often uncredited. However, she was a Miss USA who went on to be runner-up for Miss Universe (and that year's winner was later found to have been too young for eligibility, so she really ought to have won!) Hansen only worked sporadically after 1964.

Martha Hyer's role in The Best of Everything (1959) was cut down significantly. There just wasn't room for all those working girls' personal issues...!

Tina Louise went from a promising movie career to becoming a TV icon (something she resented for many years!) The Trap (1959) had her opposite Richard Widmark and Lee J. Cobb, which is indeed a step up from Gilligan's Island's Bob Denver!

Few international starlets made quite the same splash as Anita Ekberg did when she became known to U.S. audiences, but it wound up being a rather brief period from the mid-1950s to the early-'60s.

This next set of ads all have artist Jon Whitcomb's renderings of their famous subjects, but - while they tend to be flattering - they are highly idealized portraits, augmenting things like eye size. This one is Janet Leigh.

Shirley Jones was then starring in the Italian-made thriller Dark Purpose (1964), which I've yet to see. Sounds interesting.

Debbie Reynolds, then starring in My Six Loves (1963) was about to embark on her signature role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964.)

No idea why, but Mr. Whitcomb declined to add his usual signature to this portrait of Janis Paige. (It doesn't necessarily look like her all that much!)

He's got Natalie Wood looking quite young and impish for this 1963 portrait.

See what I mean about the stylization? I barely could recognize Deborah Kerr in this rendering.

Recognize this Breck Girl?

Yes, before she became one of Charlie's Angels, Jaclyn Smith was a frequent model for Godl Formula Breck.

Eventually, though, she jumped ship and began hawking Wella Balsam shampoo instead!

I'm sure that many of you recall Victoria Principal's Jhirmack days. She really helped put them on the map for a time (and just look at all that hair!!!)

We're going to wring out the remainder of this post with a series of altogether different types of shampoo ads. These (by a brand called Halo) put the emphasis on the back of the heads of the models while simultaneously featuring a famous male celebrity checking them out, circa 1958. You know I am always in favor of tossing in a hunk or two whenever I can.