A Man Who Changed the Faces of Hollywood

“If you want to be an actor,

Go see Mr. Factor.

He can even make a monkey look good.”

--From the 1938 song “Hooray for Hollywood”

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Max Factor spent years helping Hollywood put its best face forward, then went on to become a global “cosmetic king” who changed the way the world--or at least its inhabitants--looked.

A wig maker turned barber turned makeup artist, the Los Angeles-based Factor became a household name worldwide and a legend in the lucrative cosmetics industry. But it was his personal flair for creating beauty that first attracted attention, and his contributions to the movie industry ultimately earned him a special award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Though he is known internationally as the progenitor of one of the industry’s most recognized brand names, his major local namesake is the Art Deco building on Highland Avenue, just south of Hollywood Boulevard. Even today, it remains a testament to the pursuit of cosmetic perfection and a memorial to the man who made that pursuit his life’s work.

He was born Max Faktor in Lodz, Poland, in 1872. Launching his career at age 8, he learned the art of makeup and sewing wigs from human hair for the Russian Imperial Ballet.

Service to the czar was an onerous business, and when Faktor married, the terms of his employment forced the couple to keep their union secret for nine years, during which they managed to see each other for a single hour each week.

In 1904, the pair immigrated to the United States, changing the family name to Factor in the process.

Early wealth followed, but Max soon was swindled out of his first fortune by his partner in a wig-selling venture at the St. Louis World Exposition.

Mere dishonesty was not daunting to a man who had surmounted czarist tyranny. In 1908, Factor relocated to Los Angeles, where he set up a barbershop the following year. He was soon importing Leichner makeup for theatrical types, and making wigs and hairpieces for the new silent film stars, including four-footed ones.

When a horse needed a fuller tail for one of the industry’s popular westerns, directors said, “Get me Max.”

A sign outside the shop read: “Max Factor’s Antiseptic Hair Store. Toupees made to order. High grade work.”

It was there that he began experimenting with his own products, including Kill ‘Em Quick shampoo for head lice.

The slow film speed used in the early silent movies exaggerated an actor’s skin tones, so makeup had to compensate for any negative qualities. Customers Charlie Chaplin and cowboy star Tom Mix--who initially refused to wear makeup because he considered it “too sissy”--complained that Factor’s imported clay-based foundation dried out and cracked under movie lights. So in 1914 their barber perfected the first cream-based makeup specifically created for motion picture use and packaged in a sanitary collapsible tube.

His cosmetics could look ridiculous in real life: Stars colored their lips brown so they appeared more like red on the black-and-white screen and in later years used pancake makeup to keep their faces from appearing green in Technicolor.

Taking cosmetics out of the stars’ dressing rooms and into the drugstore, Factor created “society” makeup in 1916. Although some thought “nice girls” didn’t wear makeup, he satisfied many other off-camera females’ desire to look like movie stars, introducing the first retail cosmetic line for Los Angeles’ ordinary faces.

False Eyelashes Created

At first, people didn’t know what to make of Factor’s newfangled products, including friends of actress Mary Pickford, “America’s sweetheart.” While she was filming in the sweltering heat of Cuba, Pickford kept her cold cream in the refrigerator. House guests reportedly stole into the ice box and ate it, thinking it was dessert.

Sexy eyes came along in 1919, when Factor created false lashes from human hair for a starlet named Phyllis Haver. (They would later be popularized by Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn in the 1930s and would get a big wink from Lucille Ball in the 1950s.)

Camouflaging skin color became popular in 1925, when 3,000 extras in “Ben Hur”--the most expensive silent film ever made--were hosed down, 300 at a time, with 600 gallons of Factor’s Liquid Body Makeup in different shades to give them the appropriate ethnic look. It was the greatest single makeup order of all time.

Factor’s varied talents were even called upon to fashion fur underpants for the chimpanzees in Tarzan movies, a feat later immortalized in song. He also created the hairpiece worn by Rudolph Valentino in 1924’s “Monsieur Beaucaire,” and Norma Shearer’s ringlets in “Marie Antoinette.”

Building up the company’s name and outgrowing his downtown Los Angeles location, Factor moved the company to Hollywood in 1928. He soon moved his family from the burgeoning Jewish community in Boyle Heights to Beverly Hills.

In 1929, Factor began tapping his celebrity clientele for endorsements. Rita Cansino, for example, signed up so early in her career that she hadn’t yet changed her name to Hayworth. The “It Girl,” Clara Bow, added an unsolicited handwritten testimonial to her 1931 contract: “For the last six years, I have used Max Factor’s makeup and find it the only satisfying makeup on the market.” Jean Harlow and Bette Davis, among others, also endorsed Factor’s products for $1 a year--and a free plug for their latest picture.

Society ladies and other stars like Hepburn, Dietrich, Fredric March and Joan Crawford all came to the salon for wig fittings or beauty treatments. Dietrich insisted on having compressed gold, costing $60 an ounce, sprinkled onto her wigs to give them an on-screen sparkle. A Factor employee would later comb $24.32 worth of gold dust from a fake Dietrich do.

Stripper Sally Rand shed her ostrich feathers in 1931 so her famous body could be painted with zigzag stripes.

On Nov. 26, 1935, after he had improved the faces of countless stars, Factor’s newly renovated four-story building with its Art Deco facade opened with a star-studded gala for 3,000 invited guests. But 8,000 showed up: It was election day, and all the liquor stores and bars were closed. Word traveled fast that Factor had a bar on all four floors, and even one in the elevator. For the premiere, Factor created four special make-over rooms where women’s hair and skin coloring could be complemented with cosmetics. At the party, Jean Harlow cut the ribbon of the blue-painted salon “For Blondes Only,” with Ginger Rogers performing the honors in the green room for redheads, Rochelle Hudson for “brownettes” in the peach-colored room and Claudette Colbert in the brunets’ pink salon.

Stars Called Him ‘Pop’

With hair of silver and a heart of gold, Factor was a simple man whom all the stars called “Pop.”

By his death in 1938, he had parlayed his savvy as an entrepreneur with a few wigs and some greasepaint into a multimillion-dollar global business.

His legacy continued with son Frank, renamed Max Jr., who took over the business, while other siblings minded the store.

The family sold the company in 1973 for $480 million. Changing hands several times, the firm’s building--by then a museum--opened as a tourist attraction for the 1984 Olympics, drawing 1,000 visitors a week. Three years later, it was dressed up for the movies and used as the exterior of the jewelry store Adriano’s in “Beverly Hills Cop II.”

When the museum closed in 1992, it took with it some of the remaining glitz and glamour of Hollywood. But Factor’s creations endure, and current plans call for another museum dedicated to Hollywood history to occupy the landmark.