Maybelline, 100 years ago!

One hundred years ago, here is what was going on.

On International Women’s Day’s 100th anniversary, March 8, 2011, we celebrated a century of hard-fought achievements for women around the world.

In 1911, Mary Pickford played stereotypical roles: mothers, ingénues, spurned women, spitfires, slaves, Native Americans, and prostitutes. However, women began to identify with “The Girl with the Golden Curls,” “Blondilocks,” or “The Biograph Girl,” and she became the most famous woman in the world, ushering in a new era for women in film.

Moore and Pickford married in 1911 and divorced in 1920.

At the same time all this was going on in 1911, a 15-year-old boy named Tom Lyle Williams bought a secondhand motorcycle for $40, drove it to work at the nickelodeon, and earned $6 a week. It was there that he noticed Mary Pickford and was inspired.

After a year, he sold his motorcycle by advertising it in the classified section of Popular Mechanics magazine. Astounded by the response from people willing to pay $50, a young entrepreneur was born who planned to make advertising his life’s work.

At that time, Tom Lyle had no idea of the role he would play in establishing women’s identities for the next 100 years. Maybelline would be 100 years old in 2015.

Read more about Tom Lyle Williams in The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It.