Making Them Up as They Go Along : The Competition to Supply Hollywood’s Cosmetics
Welcome to the Hollywood beauty wars, where vendors recruit strangers in airports to hand carry “rush” orders to far-off movie locations. Where store doors open at odd hours so that stars like Michael Jackson can shop for stage makeup in private.
Unlike traditional beauty supply outlets, which sell professional hair, nail and skin-care products to salon stylists and consumers, three local competitors--Frends Beauty Supply, Naimie’s Film & TV Beauty Supply and Cinema Secrets Beauty Supply--do battle each day to provide the industry’s makeup artists and hairstylists with everything from fake blood to powder puffs.
And it’s a profitable business. “People go in, and instead of buying a $3 eye pencil, they’ll lay down $7,000 for a few boxes of goods for a film,” says Jeff Dawn, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Academy Award-winning makeup artist.
Although no store will disclose sales figures, beauty products for a feature film with a contemporary glamour look can run $10,000. The figure can be several times that if the film is set in another time period or has special effects. Supplies for a TV series may cost $75 to $200 per episode. And then there are the TV movies and miniseries, music videos, live stage and ice shows, soap operas, commercials, CD-ROM games and still photography.
All three outlets ship to productions and TV stations worldwide.
On a recent sales trip to Europe, Cinema Secrets’ owner Maurice Stein visited the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in London. “When they took me into their wig and special effects room and I saw our products, I realized that we had really arrived,” he says.
And, of course, there are the celebrity shoppers.
One store owner recalls that Lucille Ball would turn up at the crack of dawn. But for the most part these retailers are too protective to divulge the actual shopping habits of the stars.
After all, these warring shopkeepers will do almost anything to please their key customers.
“If you need something and they don’t have it, they’ll go out and shop for it themselves,” says three-time Academy Award-winning makeup artist Ve Neill of “Mrs. Doubtfire” fame.
The suppliers will also try to help solve quirky cinematic problems. A filmmaker recently asked Frends’ manager, Renee Arnett, to find a gray makeup that would not be toxic to elephants. Her efforts were rewarded, Arnett said, with “a very big order” for Walt Disney Studios’ “Operation Dumbo Drop.”
A makeup artist whose character needed a removable gold tooth called store owner Naimie Ojeil, who suggested that a fake fingernail tip be trimmed to fit, painted gold and attached with denture cream.
In such situations, “Naimie pulls rabbits out of hats,” says Sharleen Rassi, lead hairstylist on the NBC TV series “Sisters.”
Suppliers say they try to excel in the art of stocking anything and everything.
While filming a special-effects scene for “Batman Forever,” makeup artist Neill suddenly ran short of Day-Glo products--made with vivid colors that glow under black light. So, “we burst into Cinema Secrets and completely cleaned them out,” Neill says.
In an era of improving film technologies, store owner Ojeil has scored a merchandising coup.
“Years ago, the speed of film was so slow that it would exaggerate an actor’s skin-tone, so makeup had to compensate for any negative qualities,” says veteran makeup artist Howard Smit, who worked on “The Wizard of Oz.” But, he adds, today’s faster film speeds photograph more true to life.
As a result, Max Factor’s Pan-Cake and Pan-Stik makeups have lost ground as the industry standards, and many beauty pros report that they are doing more of their shopping in department stores for products such as the hot street makeup line called MAC cosmetics. “Naimie carried our products from the very beginning,” says MAC spokesperson Julie Toskan, whose company now works solely with Ojeil in the beautysupply field.
All three outlets provide opportunities for education and networking. Sales staff members are either makeup pros or trained by manufacturers to field technical questions about product use. And store owners frequently introduce fellow shoppers so that newcomers can get tips, and perhaps secure future employment from, industry veterans.
Despite these exhaustive efforts, things can go awry. Occasional billing disputes, miscommunication and unauthorized product substitutions may incite declarations of never shopping there again, but hard feelings often fade with the realization that no one else in town has, for example, an extra-large bald cap.
“I don’t tell my people who are working on different films where to go. Sometimes one [store] will treat them better than the others and they purchase from whomever they like,” says Bob Schiffer, manager of Disney Studios’ makeup department. “I think I would say that the majority of them go to Naimie’s.”
North Hollywood-based Naimie’s Film & TV Beauty Supply, reputed to have the largest share of the market, resembles an artsy large warehouse, and owner Ojeil seems to take an uncommon interest in his customers’ well-being. When one of his longtime patrons died, he reportedly spent four hours doing yardwork at the family’s home to help prepare for the wake.
Hollywood’s beauty supply business was, in part, pioneered by Sig Frends in the 1940s, first at his Mercury Beauty Supply in Los Angeles and later at his North Hollywood-based Frends Beauty Supply, where Naimie Ojeil started as a shipping clerk.
Ojeil soon rose to store manager, expanding the stock and becoming a local authority on theatrical products from around the world. “I was trained by the master,” Ojeil says of Frends. “All I brought was the belief that when you see someone struggling with a problem, you roll up your sleeves and make it your own.”
Twenty years later, Ojeil left to start his own business with partner Sam Bekerian. Late this summer, they are expected to move to a new location with a new name--Naimie’s Makeup Center--a sprawling beauty supply, salon and spa in North Hollywood.
Frends’ new generation of managers, meanwhile, has maintained a prominent position in the marketplace.
“We’ve been in the business for so long, I think people would be shocked if we weren’t here to help them,” Frends’ Arnett says.
Makeup artist Maurice Stein, whose credits include “Funny Girl” and the Academy Award-winning “Planet of the Apes,” launched his dazzling Cinema Secrets Beauty Supply in 1985. “I was very purposeful in opening my place in Burbank, 200 yards away from NBC, a half mile from Disney and a half mile from Warner Bros.,” Stein says. “That drove a real strong wedge into the industry.”
Stein, reputed to attract a newer generation of beauty pros because of his emphasis on in-store education, also designs makeup for the public, sharing the secrets and selling the products he used “on the stars.”
He added a full-service hair salon, manufactures Halloween gag items such as rubber noses and stick-on bullet holes, developed special makeup for burn and cancer survivors and creates prosthetic devices for mastectomy patients.
Another theatrical resource, regarded as more laid-back in marketing style, is Columbia Cosmetics on Gower Street in Hollywood; a few smaller local outlets strive to serve the industry. But “the three main supply houses seem to be most in tune with our needs,” says Alan Fama, business representative for the Makeup Artists & Hairstylists union, Local 706.
So is there enough business to go around? Did someone mention 500 channels? That’s an awful lot of fake blood and powder puffs.
