The Maybelline Story
Room VIII · The Studio

THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW TRANSFORMED WOMEN’S ROLES.

By Sharrie Williams · Written April 2012 · 2 min read

The Loretta Young Show, put women front stage and center, and created a vehicle for Maybelline to reach a larger target market in the 1950’s.

THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW TRANSFORMED WOMEN’S ROLES.

The Loretta Young Show ran from 1953 to 1961. Her trademark was to come through a door dramatically at the beginning in various high fashion evening gowns.

THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW TRANSFORMED WOMEN’S ROLES.
Maybelline capitalized on Loretta Young’s fashionable image…. with a series of ads that illustrated her persona….. and affirmed postwar ideas, that true happiness, was possible, within the domestic/heterosexual
sphere of the middle-class home.
THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW TRANSFORMED WOMEN’S ROLES.



The Lorette Young, TV series, worked through the image of the glamorous Hollywood star, and would forever remain a phenomenon of 1950s television, the period in which the Hollywood studio system that had created larger-than-life stars came to a close.

THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW TRANSFORMED WOMEN’S ROLES.

Her program ran in prime time on NBC for eight years, the longest-running prime-time network program hosted by a woman up to that time.

THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW TRANSFORMED WOMEN’S ROLES.
In 1988, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award. for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the
entertainment industry.




THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW TRANSFORMED WOMEN’S ROLES.



Young was married to actor Grant Withers from 1930 to 1931. After that she was involved in affairs with Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable and in 1935 had Gable’s child, a daughter.



View video of “The Loretta Young Show” US TV series (1953–61.)




Read all about Maybelline’s influence on Women’s culture in the 1950s, in my book, The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It.



Coming soon · Next from Sharrie Williams

Maybe She’s Born With It

The next chapter of the Maybelline family story. Get a text the day it’s out.

Where it began: The Maybelline Story — Amazon · Ebook · Signed copy

© 2026 Sharrie Williams · All photographs from the Williams family archive