Kind-Of New Or Kind-Of Lipstick?

That’s the question of the day.

I’m guessing that it IS lipstick, supposedly a new kind. But I am not really sure about that either.

Hazel Bishop lipstick was supposed to not come off on all those martini glasses - and on the guys you would be snogging after you emptied them (the martini glasses, that is). I don’t know if that really was so. I know that they haven’t yet made a mascara that doesn’t come off on the skin around my eyes, giving me that attractive raccoon look.

The “out of the world” and “most exciting” shades of this stuff? I hope that you’re sitting down for this…. How does “Light Red” and “Soft Pink” sound?

OK, maybe you’re not convinced. How about an endorsement from Ralph Edwards? See him, over on the left? (Sorry, I couldn’t get it any bigger than this). He was the host of “This Is Your Life” on TV (in the US from 1952-1961), which featured various celebrities being reuinted with friends and relatives before a live studio audience (whether they wanted to be or not). 

Mr. Edwards was also a makeup expert on the side, apparently. Well, Ralph, I am glad that you like it (and appear to be wearing a little in that photo) but – I just don’t know.

Still, it stays on no matter how hot it gets. And all over America they are – well, they are raving! (Oh dear, please calm down, ladies, it’s just a little tube of lipstick). 

But it is a two-way lipstick – you can blot or not-blot. Not that you can use it like a two-way radio. Too bad. Now that I would buy in a New York minute. No ifs, ands, buts or kind-ofs about it!

From the Toronto Telegram, summer of 1954.

WordPress is supposed to be generating posts that are related to this one…but in case they haven’t, I wrote a post about dear Miss Bishop over at my other blog, here.

The Doll Who Couldn’t Stop Baking

It started with a rolling pin and a batch of gingerbread cookie dough…

Did anyone else know about this in 1965? I didn’t (of course, I was only three). I really liked dolls even then though, and was always longing for one that had special qualities. Not the Betsy Wetsy type dolls, but ones that had – well, trunks full of extra clothes, or the Aimee doll (early 1970s) who had hairpieces that you attached to her head by snapping them into a tiny hole in her skull. And you put earrings in the same way.

I also wanted an Easy Bake Oven, and have a ghostly memory of using one, but I don’t remember it clearly. Either I had one and it broke after the first little pancakey thing I made – or else I made the whole thing up and am merely recalling the commercials. Did I love the commercials for dolls and toys! Saturday morning, in between Scooby Doo, and the Beatles cartoons, and the Flintstones.

The McCall’s people combined Easy Bake Oven knowhow and a doll – and nobody told me!

For here is Betsy McCall, making gingerbread cutouts. Not an easy thing for a doll, or a child for that matter. Not that the recipe is complex. But the dough is rather hard to stir. Never mind the rolling and cutting. Drop cookies would have been a safer choice, I think.

There is a lady in the background, washing up (there are a lot of bowls and spoons involved). Is she aware that there is a doll in the kitchen with her - manipulating a rolling pin? And hovering near the oven? (A dangerous thing to do if you are made of plastic, I would have thought.)

And did McCalls create this astonishing thing – or did Betsy come to life and think of this on her own? Another post, another Hitchcockian subtext!

And what will Betsy McCall do next? I shudder to think. And if I keep thinking, I am going to need a dose of those effervescent Andrews Liver Salts, possibly.

Picture from McCall’s Cookie Collection (1965).