The woman who invented beauty

"I fell in love with beauty a long, long time ago, but what I wanted was to create beauty - not to be blinded by it."

"I've always thought that a woman owes it to herself to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity."

"American women had purple noses and grey lips and their faces were chalk white from terrible powder. I recognized that the United States could be my life's work."

"Work has been indeed my best beauty treatment. I believe in hard work. It keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and the spirit. It helps to keep a woman young."

"I have never had my face lifted. I prefer to have my spirits lifted. In my opinion, the effect is very nearly the same."

"Beauty is power. The greatest power of them all."

Facts:

• Born into a poor Jewish family in Krakow, Poland, she fled the arranged marriage her family had planned for her by emigrating - changing her name to Helena Rubinstein on her identification papers and wiping 10 years off her age in the process - and began her cosmetics empire in rural Australia.
• She expanded her horizons when she opened beauty salons in Mayfair, London (in 1908), Paris (in 1909) and eventually, in New York.
• In 1928, she sold her business to Lehman brothers for $7.3m - but when the stock market crashed a year later she bought it back for $1.5m, a business move that helped her become one of the richest and most famous women in the world.
• In 1941, when she was told she couldn’t buy an apartment in her New York block because of her Jewish heritage, she thwarted the anti-Semitic residents by buying the entire building.
• When she died aged 93, her fortune was estimated at more than $100m.

Helena Rubinstein (born Chaja Rubinstein, 25th December 1872 – 1st April 1965)

The 'Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?' of the cosmetics world

We went to see a camp extravaganza on Thursday night - Madame Rubinstein, John Misto's brand new play about the true-life rivalry between cosmetics moguls Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, their entirely fictional face-to-face encounters as they compete with each other to create the first waterproof mascara, and their reluctant alliance as they attempt to thwart the underhand tactics of Charles Revson, founder of Revlon.

As if the premise itself weren't appealing enough, when we discovered that not one, but two of our favourite gay icons Miriam Margoyles (as Madame) and Frances Barber (as Miss Arden) were in it - it was essential that we got a ticket!

As the always amusing review site West End Whingers elucidates:

Rubinstein is portrayed as an irascible, cheapskate manipulator who waddles around weighed down by envy and bling and keeps a leg of chicken in her office safe as it saves buying a fridge. Somehow Margolyes makes her endearing. Almost.

Arden drifts in and out plotting and competing with her to find a waterproof mascara. That’s when the two aren’t volleying barbs at each other. It’s the Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? of the cosmetics world. If Barber doesn’t get to play Bette Davis one day then it’s an affront to the gay community...

...Some of the jokes are as clumsy as the between-scenes furniture-shifting but if you’re a connoisseur of high camp you’ll find enough to make you chortle.

And chortle we did, as these two mistresses of OTT acting brought the "Great Ladies of Slap" to life in all their bitchy and manipulative glory - for despite the irritatingly disjointed scene changes (far too many gaps in the "action" for my liking), they have many great waspish lines to relish.

The foil for this (almost) two-hander is Madame Rubinstein's trusted aide, originally hired to help prevent industrial espionage, the gay Irishman "Patrick" (played by Jonathan Forbes). His loyalty to the end, despite all the cruel jokes and tricks played upon him by his ogrish-yet-vulnerable patron, gave a humanity to the story that otherwise could have veered a little too close to caricature.



Despite its limitations, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! However, unless the production is tightened-up a bit so that the storyline flows rather than appear as a collection of vignettes, I really cannot see this production making a transfer to the West End.

But I certainly shan't be buying Revlon again...

Madame Rubinstein at The Park Theatre [currently sold out]

Skin deep

From Dame Joan Collins' regular column in The Spectator:

“Like many British actors and actresses, I fly to the US two or three times a year, with my new and nifty global entry card. Though you do hear some horror stories, I have rarely - if ever - had any problems with US immigration, until last month.

Because I apply moisturiser on long trips, quite liberally, my hands were covered with lotion at the border control counter, which meant my fingers didn’t make a strong enough impression on the fingerprint scanner. My immigration form came out of the printer with a large and very ominous X on it. This alarmed the official, who decided to leave me standing next to his desk while he waved forward and collected the forms of those whose fingerprints had made the grade.

After an interminable parade of obvious stares and hidden snickers from the successful entrants, he made me take off my hat and glasses and peered at me. I felt like a criminal caught at the border while trying to immigrate into the US illegally. He cross-examined me ruthlessly - ‘What do you do?’ ‘Why are you here?’ ‘What are your plans in this country?’ Several other officers were called over to discuss me; my passport was inspected thoroughly and scanned time after time.

That was a lot of fun after a ten-hour trip from Heathrow, and all because I moisturise."

Be warned - too much Oil of Ulay and you're suddenly a terrorism suspect. Osama bin Laden swore by it.