Era Perfume

After you’ve bought your dress, your hat and your shoes, what’s next to improve your period fashion performance? Using the proper perfume. Remember when buying a bottle, that so many fragrances sold today post date the Model A Era.

In the August 2022 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, there was an article titled “In Defense of ’Old   Lady Perfumes.” which said that “if someone,  after embracing you and catching a whiff of your scent, says, “Wow, you smell like Old Lady,” that’s probably not a compliment.” But, I’m hoping for authenticity more than trendy odors.

In looking up Helena Rubenstein’s offerings on Parfumo.com, all of the ones with dates debuted after 1934. A possible reason for this is that in 1928, she sold the cosmetics business to Lehman Brothers for $7.3 million. In a 1928 advertisement for a drugstore selling Helena Rubenstein beauty products, it lists “Bath Perfume (assorted odors)” and both “Lilac” and “Violet Toilet Water.”  However, there is no indication that these were Helena Rubenstein.  Every product identified as Helena Rubenstein in the Model A era is a soap or a cream. After the onset of the Great Depression, Rubenstein bought back the by then nearly worthless stock for less than $1 million and in order to revive the business, established salons and outlets in almost a dozen US cities. I believe she also branched out at this time to include her own brand of perfumes to stock in these outlets.

New fragrances in the 1920s include Coco Chanel’s Chanel No. 5 which was available for $13.50 in 1928, D’Orsay's La Dandy was $8.50, and Guerlain’s Shalimar sold for $25 at the time. Yardley’s English Lavender debuted way back in 1873, but sold for just $1 in 1928 and is still around today, so would work.

As for out of business, but popular, Darnée was a drug store cosmetics brand out of San Francisco, founded in 1924 by the Owl Drugstore chain—dozens of California outlets, later taken over by Rexalls. Oceanside’s Modern Pharmacy owned by Carleton B. Sturdivant which later became Mission Drug Store owned by Dr. Von Sternberg was a longtime Owl drugstore outlet at Second and Hill.  In 1928 Darnée hired silent star,       Colleen Moore, to promote a perfume brand, which folded in 1930, a green bottle of that would be very time specific item you could carry in an era fashion show.. If you could find one.

 

Walter S Ball and Camel's Thorn

Walter S. Ball's first exposure with weeds was when he was a very young boy. He was born in Aspen, Colorado on March 17, 1898, but soon after the family moved to a homestead in the Southeast part of Colorado, several miles north of the town of Manzanola. While growing up on this 160-acre farm, he became very familiar with hoeing and cultivating. He attended Colorado A & M (now Colorado State University) where he participated in football, baseball, and basketball.

He left school for five years after his freshman year, to run the farm. He said that during this period managing it with his brother "Buster" (Willis E. Ball), was its only profitable time. Walt returned to Colorado A & M and obtained his B.S. degree in forestry in 1927 and an M.S. in 1929 in Botany under Dr. W.W. Robbins. This is where his real beginning in weed control began. Walt and "Doc" Robbins became close friends and following Robbins' move to UC Davis, Walt received a job offer from the California Department of Agriculture to begin a weed control program for the state.

In August of 1929, Walt alerted farmers as to the dangers of the weed Camel’s thorn, Alhagi Camelorum, which is considered the worst weed known to agriculture. The infestation was several years old by then and was thought to have been carried in alfalfa seed. It was a native of Asia Minor and a very noxious weed found in grain fields which a header could not cut. The roots may extend ten feet into the ground and 2 to 4 times this distance horizontally. It sends up new shoots every few inches from its roots.

In 1941, Walt co-authored with Robbins and Margaret K. Bellue, Weeds of California. UCSD has a copy and you can buy a used copy on Amazon for $40. Walter was promoted to the Chief of the former Bureau of Rodent and Weed Control and Seed Inspection. He was instrumental in organizing the California Weed Conference and served as its first and second president (1949 & 1950). Following his retirement in 1962, he served as its Business Manager-Treasurer for seven more years, his commitment was so strong.

Walt passed away on June 7, 1975. He will be remembered as a person who liked people, a leader, an organizer, and someone who liked to get the job done without a lot of "red tape." by Robert R. Ball His son, Bob Ball was a professor of seed certification in the Department of Agronomy at UC, Davis.

I’ve followed both Walter and Jim Ball’s ancestries back ten or more generations and have yet to find an overlap, but ask Jim his feelings towards weeds; it might run in the family.

 

A. P. Allen and C. A. Beaver

Arthur Potter Allen, born November 6, 1892 in Flint, Michigan, was certainly an active ancestor.  He came to my attention as on January 12, 1928, he was elected as president of the San Pedro  Automobile Dealer’s Association.  In 1926, he and partner C. A. Beaver (no joke), bought Seaboard Motors, a Chevrolet dealership.

A.P. was not born into wealth, however, his father, Thomas, was a teacher, but Arthur was very studious, and received a degree from the Michigan College of Mines in 1914.  His first job, rather than at a mine, was as a cost accountant for the Buick Motor Company in his home town of Flint.

He then worked as an engineer at several small mines in Michigan, then to Ashcroft, British Columbia. He was working as a draftsman at Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining Company in Kellogg, Idaho when he signed his draft card for WWI in 1917. Then to Miami, Arizona. Somewhere in there, he married Margaret Mansfield of Pasadena, a graduate of the University of Nebraska.

In 1922 he left mining and began work as a car salesman in Los Angeles County.  As a budding industry, there was frequent turnover, and as his story goes, he moves swiftly from the sales floor to community leader.

The couple raised five children in an ocean-view house in Palos Verdes while running the dealership: A. P. Jr. (WWII vet, career in the US Dept of State), Barbara (Journalist, editor Woman’s Day, social worker) Celia (clerk married a teacher)   David (Pilot Korea, Boeing Aerospace, County Planner) and (my favorite) Margery (Librarian).

During World War II Mr. Allen served as Vice Chairman of the region’s War Labor Board & postwar, he was a member of the Presidential Board of Inquiry in the maritime dispute of 1948. During the war years he had had considerable experience as a labor arbitrator.

From 1952-53, Mr. Allen served as chairman of the San Francisco regional office of the Wage Stabilization Board. He was the author of two books, Unemployment Insurance in California and Industrial Relations in the California Aircraft Industry. On July 21, 1955, he died suddenly.

Clyde Alton “C.A.“ Beaver was born, suitably for a business man, in Enterprise, Kansas, and he, like Mr. Allen, had many jobs in his life. He managed a lumberyard in 1910, by December 1927, he had departed Seaboard Motors, leaving it exclusively to Allen, and bought a competing service station in San Pedro. By 1930, he’d left car sales and was the manager of a gravel mine in Calaveras County, in the 1940 Census he is in Yavapai County, AZ prospecting for gold. In 1948 he’s a realtor

In 1907 C.A. Beaver married Solda Campbell.  Solda should have worked the dealership herself, her name made her a natural car saleswoman.

 

Bobbi Trout

I looked for an article in which a woman dressed with flair for the career she wanted, and found record setting aviator, Bobbi Trout.

Whether hers is a story unusual to her family, or to her era, I can’t genuinely answer.  One grandfather, Henry Grant Trout, had a career making brooms, yes, brooms, and moved from Chicago to Denver to Huntington Beach. The other, William O Denman was a doctor, banker and real estate investor who lived most of his life in Greenup, Illinois, population less than 1000.

Her father George Everett Trout, was taking care of a farm and his wid
owed grandmother and sickly aunt in Greenup when he’s 13 while also attending school in 1900. From there his life is like Frank Abagnale’s (con artist portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch me if You Can).

By 21, he’s married and sells a drug store he founds in Greenup, so he can buy a farm in Greeley, Colorado.  Then two years later he’s running a grocery store in Denver, and Bobbi mentions a butcher shop in a third Colorado town. His wife insists they separate, in 1915 and so he’s in Nashville studying for General Electric, while his wife is in St. Louis running a hat store. He later gets a job with Bell Telephone in California and moves in with his parents. Bobbi is sent to live with them to recover from influenza.

Reading Bobbi’s encyclopedia entries, I believed that George was a great influence on how her life turned out. But I don’t feel that way after reading an article on Airport Journals dot com from 2001 titled Just Plane Crazy. It’s clear that she couldn’t have had the same success if born ten years earlier or ten years later, or had she not moved to Huntington Beach at 14, or if she relied on the Trout family for money.  Still, she was special.

Evelyn was a precocious teen influenced by her proximity to Hollywood.  She loved breaking new ground and telling stories, and like her father’s, many of them were true and many of them she worked hard to make true. Evelyn was dubbed “Bobbi” after she copied the hairstyle of actress Irene Castle which was a short “Bob” haircut.

She was excited by machines, but wasn’t allowed to take manual arts training courses “with the boys” in high school and lamented having to take a “sissy” cooking class for the rest of her life.

She was 12 the first time she saw an airplane aloft and said, ‘That’s what I’m going to do some day,’ Her first airplane ride was at 16 in a Curtiss Jenny.

At 16, Evelyn asked her parents to buy a service station for her to run, Her mother, Lola, said, “I should say not!” but her father thought it was a good idea, and convinced Lola to buy it.  After high school, she followed her mother’s advice to enter USC to study architecture, but had to drop out when her parents separated again to put in more time at the service station.

By 1928, at 21, she had saved enough money to pay for flying lessons. Her mother bought her an International K-6 (Otherwise known as a F-17H Sportsman powered by a Curtis K-6 engine, made by Catron & Fisk of Long Beach). Her mother read in the LA Times about her flight instructor crashing them during one of her lessons, sending Bobbi to the hospital and asked her to give up flying. Instead of listening to her mom, weeks after her solo, she added a $35-a-week job demonstrating a new high-wing monoplane called the Golden Eagle, which eventually included working to build the airplanes as well. 

On Jan. 2, 1929, Trout took off from Van Nuys Airport. When she touched down after circling the airport for 12 hours and 11 minutes, she had broken the previous women pilots’ solo endurance record of eight hours.

Her triumph was short-lived -- Elinor Smith beat Trout’s time by an hour a few weeks later. But Trout proceeded to set a new record of 17 hours and 24 minutes. In the process, she logged the first all-night flight by a woman.

In a 1990 interview with The Times, Trout recalled rubbing her neck and singing to pass the hours. But engulfed in darkness and bored by the monotonous drone of her plane’s 60-horsepower engine, she said: “I went to sleep a few times, and when I went into a dive, the engine awakened me.”

In 1929, Trout also broke the woman’s altitude record for light-class aircraft by climbing to 15,200 feet. And teamed up with Smith, she set yet another world endurance record in 1929 of 42 hours, 3 1/2 minutes in what was the first women’s in-flight refueling operation: Trout leaned out of the plane to catch bags of food, motor oil and a 25-foot rope attached to a gasoline hose lowered from the refueling plane.

In a second effort, with silent movie star Edna May Cooper in 1931, Trout set a new women’s refueling endurance record: 122 hours, 50 minutes. And in 1930, Trout became the fifth woman in the U.S. to earn a transport license, allowing her to fly for hire. However, airlines at the time didn’t employ women pilots.

In 1929, Trout joined Earhart, Barnes and 17 other participants in the first All-Women’s Transcontinental Air Race from Santa Monica to Cleveland. Humorist Will Rogers dubbed it the Powder Puff Derby and the name stuck. Trout made it to Cleveland, although her engine quit twice and she was forced to make emergency landings that put her out of the running. After the race the participants and many of their friends formed the association of female pilots called The Ninety Nines.

With a scarcity of flying jobs during the Depression, Trout became a flying instructor and, in the late ‘30s, a commercial photographer.

With Barnes, she formed the Women’s Air Reserve to transport emergency supplies and personnel in disasters. She also served in the Civil Air Patrol and started two aviation-related businesses to aid the war effort: She invented a machine to sort unused rivets that were being scrapped by aircraft companies, and she developed de-burring equipment for smoothing the edges of machined metal.

Trout, who never married, later sold real estate in the Palm Springs area. She retired to Carlsbad in 1976.  (7512 Viejo Castilla Way, Carlsbad, CA 92009 – an apartment in La Costa near the third hole of the Legends course.)  And bought a red Porsche 914 which she drove over 200,000 miles—much of them over the speed limit. She died at Scripps Encinitas, January 24, 2003. She was 97.

 

History of Nighties

In Frances Paget’s article on the Paris Automobile Exhibition of 1928, she claims that “the Haute Couture has paid increased attention to negligees for the last year or so,..” It was definitely a trend building up over time.

The word negligee (also French for negligent or unprepared) was acquired in English for gauzy undergarments in the early 19th century.  A    chemise, also called a smock, was a long standing night dress or undergarment in which women often slept. 

I could find camisoles mentioned for sale in newspapers in the 1880s.  Described as made of silk and dressy, they were appreciated as fashionable, even during Victorian times in which showing an ankle to a stranger, would have been scandalous.

Teddys or camiknickers, so called because they combined camisoles with short trousers, became popular as skirts became shorter, beginning in the Teens. At the same time the word “nighty” was reserved for children’s nightwear. (Hold onto this thought.)

Bustier was only used as a surname in the early papers. Corsets, however, came in many different styles. Some of which were considered flattering to bustier women. Being “busty” was considered more troublesome than a compliment.

The word “sexy” was first used in a California newspaper in 1917 and for several years later it is regularly placed within quotes—something reserved for words readers might not be familiar with. The use of “sexy” rather than to be synonymous with the word “attractive” was more about the idea “dealing with a person’s gender”  The first time the words “sexy negligee” were used in a California newspaper wasn’t until May 1945.

The silent film star, Lila Lee, was born, Augusta Wilhelmena Fredericka Appel, in 1901. In 1925 she starred in a play called The Bride Retires according to the October 1925 issue of Theater Magazine. In the description, Lee’s costumes include knee length camisoles made to match the various colors of the sheets in her boudoir in which most of the play takes place.  The author, Anne Archbald, refers to these camisoles as nighties and she exclaims that in these costumes, Lee looks just like a babydoll. Which did seem to be the point of the costume designer.

I suspect that prior to the 1920s, appearing like a toddler in the boudoir would not have been considered sexy to most men; toddlers would be more troublesome than a compliment.

 

 

John and Fred Ott

 Brothers John and Fred Ott worked with Thomas Edison in Newark as machinists beginning in the 1870s; John beginning at 20 in 1871 and Fred beginning as a 14-year-old apprentice in 1875. Both brothers followed Edison to Menlo Park in 1876, where John was Edison's principal model and instrument maker. After the move to West Orange in 1887, John served as superintendent of the machine shop until a terrible fall in 1895 which left him severely injured.

Fred made history in 1894 as the first movie actor for pretending to sneeze while filmed. In 1900 he was also in the movie “The Kiss” with an unidentified woman. It was a remake of a movie of the same name starring May Irwin and John Rice in which the actors famously talk at each other with their mouths close for the worst kiss ever recorded.  I suppose that necessitated a remake with a machinist showing the world how to do it right.

WWI introduced problems importing latex rubber. Edison, and later Ford, bought estates in Florida and tried to find a non-tropical plant species that could replace the rubber tree if that supply would be cut off later.  John Ott retired, but Fred moved to support the work. After many years, there was some success in the weed, goldenrod, but the work hybridizing lost the energetic backing after Edison died, and the U.S. government let the attempt fail in 1936.

John died only one day after the inventor on October 19, 1931; his crutches and wheelchair were placed by Edison's casket at Mrs. Edison's request.

Fred retired shortly afterwards at the age of 81 and moved back to West Orange, New Jersey, where he died October 24, 1936.

 

Did Women Make Manufacturers Paint Cars in Many Colors?

 It’s often been written that if not for women, car colors would only be selected for economy or colors identified with their corporate manufacturers. Without taking that notion for granted, it’s not something easy to prove or to disprove.

A well-researched and cited article by Jithin R. Veer published on a Virginia Commonwealth University site says that “The first cars were unpainted; if painted they were often painted dark gray or black. Black paint was used primarily because it was the least expensive. However, it is also likely black paint was used naturally because, during the gilded age, most machinery and objects of transportation, from carriages to steam railroads to iron-clad steamships were painted black.” I am sure that most of us can pick apart a lot of this statement. 

There is no reason for Veer to include it, as he later states, “From 1908 to 1914, Model T Fords were painted in a variety of 4 to 5 available colors. All colors of were of darker shades. Interestingly enough, black was not offered as a color initially. However, from 1914 to 1926, all Model T Fords were indeed painted black. The reason behind this color choice was purely economic: Ford wanted to produce the most number of automobiles in the least amount of time. Because black paint at the time was the least expensive and dried the fastest, black paint allowed Ford to produce a car in about 90 minutes.” Veer’s concludes that “the evolution of color in the American automobile (industry) in the last century has been determined by economic issues facing the automaker, the national mood reflected in consumers, and the consumers’ tastes.”

In order to determine whether “economic issues” include “competition”, whether “consumers” include “women” and “consumers’ tastes” include “colors appealing to women,” let’s expand the story’s scope and include the view of females in society as to the interaction they’ve had with the automotive industry.

The first automobile company founded by a woman was the Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation started by Geraldine Elizabeth "Liz" Carmichael, in 1974. The company's flagship vehicle was the Dale, a prototype three-wheeled two-seater automobile designed and built by Dale Clifft. The company would ultimately prove to be fraudulent when Carmichael went into hiding with investors' money rather than build the 50,000 first year models as advertised.

The first female CEO of one of the big three auto makers is Mary Barra of General Motors, a long-time employee of the company rising from inspecting fender panels at 18 to CEO in January 2014 succeeding five other CEOs in six years as the company entered and exited bankruptcy. She has a BS from Kettering University in electrical engineering and an MBA from Stanford.

Jan Bertsch was vice president of sales and marketing at Chrysler for a short time after 2005 having worked at many lower positions at both Ford and Chrysler, and Jill Lajdziak was the VP of Sales, Services, and Marketing at GM’s, Saturn division back in 2000.  I can find neither listed as the first female vice president of sales, so there might have been someone earlier, perhaps even much earlier, but certainly no one in the 1920s or 30s.

The first female automotive designer, Helen Rother, was the subject of an article in our March, 2023 issue. Reminder, she worked for GM as an interior designer beginning in 1943.

In a 2010 article, Forbes said that 95% of car dealers were men. It’s often quoted that car salesmen are patronizing to female buyers figuring that their priority would be the car’s color above price or performance, A 2016 Groove auto study said that in a survey a woman’s favorite car color was gold or beige, and a 2017 iseecars.com survey said that a woman’s favorite car color was teal. Surveys have been taken, but female car salesmen have not been hired possibly leading to bias in both surveys and interactions with female purchasers.

Clearly during the Model A Era, women were not automotive producers.  Evidence does, however, say that they were consumers. A 1914 Saturday Evening Post marketing report said: “Whatever is bought for family use is selected largely by the wife, and the automobile is no exception. Dealers’ estimates of the proportion of sales of pleasure cars in which women are an important factor vary from 50 percent to 95 percent.” In a 2019 MSNBC story, 65% of new car purchases were made by women.

As with any new invention, the consumer generally adapts before that market adapts to the consumer. Nicole Moelders, the author of the High Latitude Style Blog, makes the point that very early on in automotive history, female passengers struggled to find appropriate dress.  Big, fluffy hats, corsets bustles and high boots which could be quite comfortable in a street car would be poor choices for style or comfort in a small, opened, runabout – and over 70% of cars sold up to the early teens were open. Women’s adaptations included wearing scarves to tie down smaller hats without feathers or flowers, motor coats to cover shorter dresses without trains and without gold wire and gemstones that could catch, and even goggles. Included is an illustration from the January 25th 1902 issue of Country Life magazine.

Dorothy Levitt, pioneering British auto racer, in 1909 spoke to women who expected to be not only passengers, but possibly also drivers.  They would still need to protect their fashionable clothing, but with something more like a duster than a motor coat, but they’d also need to operate the pedals and nimbly hop into the driver’s seat after cranking the engine, so they would need an even shorter skirt and not wear high lace up boots. They would want gloves, not just to keep their hands warm, but so as their hands wouldn’t smell of gasoline when they took them off.

Fast forward to World War One during which women not employed as domestics or farm labor – which the Bureau of Labor Statistics didn’t count – rose from 23.6% of the labor force to 46.7% in 1918.  Flappers had the reputation, even with historians, as women who smoked, drank, listened to jazz, were openly sexual, and generally flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior.

From this historian’s perspective, knowing from my parents that teens in the Fifties were nothing like Grease and little like Happy Days; knowing from a 1970 Kent State student, that the few students shot were hopeful academicians wanting to limit campus recruitment during Viet Nam instead of hundreds of drug-fueled hippies taking over the campus who sought martyrdom. So, this image of 1920’s young, irresponsible feminism, should be looked at with skepticism. Statistically, there was a  baby-boomlet in 1919, but the fertility rate and the number of babies born out of wedlock actually declined during the twenties. Politically, at the time women pushed for prohibition equally with suffrage. So, it’s no great leap to actually admire so-called flappers for taking jobs, getting an education, and wanting to wear practical clothing while they drove themselves to work or to college.  They were adapting to the needs of their time, including driving automobiles.

In a 1929 newspaper article, record-setting pilot, Louise McPhetridge Thaden explained that women, in jobs like publicity, sales work, and design, especially design, will make their influence felt. "If you remember the bare, uncomfortable, inconvenient automobiles of a few years ago? Well, compare them with this'', with a gesture she indicated the luxurious interior of the Graham-Paige car besides which she was standing. "Do you see the difference? Women brought that about. Upholstery, engine starters, easy gear shifts, color, beauty, ease of handling, convenience. Those are women's work. Automobiles now are nicer than parlors used to be.”

I couldn’t find any new features meant to appeal to women introduced in the 1930s and 40s, in fact quirky items like bud vases disappeared. In 1955 Dodge introduced the Le Femme, a car that came with a matching purse, raincoat and umbrella. It had a pink interior with rose-patterned trim. It was a trim option available on Dodge Custom Royal Lancer models, but was unpopular and fewer than 2500 La Femmes were sold. 

Lastly, women haven’t gone away.  They remain major purchasers of cars and therefore an influence of car design.  If they were what caused cars to be painted in a greater variety of colors in the 1920s, manufacturers would continue to use a variety of colors today (or conspire together to only provide boring, colorless options that depress purchasers who feel they have no choice.)  According to iseecars.com (that said that women prefer teal) 78.6% of all cars sold today are shades between white and black, 9.5% are blue (either a silvery, metallic sky-blue [see silver with blue] or a very dark metallic blue [see gunmetal grey with blue], and 8.6% are red. Really noticeable colors like orange, purple, gold and yellow make up a combined 1% of cars produced.

In an unscientific study, I searched craigslist for the new beetle as it struck me as being the only models with routinely bright colors – my sons even pointing them out as “girl cars” which they would never own.  There were 13 available for sale, of which two were red, one yellow, and one metallic bronze. The other 9 were shades from white to black plus blueish greys.  Above is an advertising photo of 2023 Ford models which show a wide range of colors. It seems that image and reality diverge; what’s desired and what’s produced. Sorry, women.