Joan Bove; Began Clairol

Joan Bove, co-founder of Clairol who made coloring hair respectable in 1930s America, has died at the age of 99.

Bove, a resident of New York City, died Saturday in a Stamford, Conn., hospital.

The innovative hair care company, which enriched the American lexicon with such phrases as “Do blonds have more fun?” and “Does she or doesn’t she--hair color so natural only her hairdresser knows for sure,” began in 1931.

Bove, then Joan Gelb, and her chemist husband, Lawrence M. Gelb, had bundled their two young sons, Richard and Bruce, onto an ocean steamer to France in search of a magic potion to revive his failing chemical products business. They found what they were looking for in Paris--a remarkable hair dye called Clairol made by a company named Mury.

Hair dye was known in the United States, but was inferior to the French product. American versions coated hair, dribbled and appeared to be painted on with a brush. Older women trying to cover gray kept quiet about using dye, and often used secretive entrances to hair salons to obtain it.

The attractive and fashionable Joan Gelb liked the Clairol product--which penetrated the hair shaft and contained oils that improved hair by conditioning it.

The Gelbs established the Clairol company based in Manhattan, with Joan Gelb as president, to market a product considered something less than essential in Depression America.

Introducing herself as “Joan Clairol,” she gave demonstrations to major department store buyers and hairdressers, who were easy to convince of the product’s advantages. She scored a major coup by persuading her friend Antoine, a Paris hairdresser who styled the tresses of Greta Garbo and Claudette Colbert, to dye wigs with Clairol for display in Saks Fifth Avenue windows.

Working to change the lowlife image of hair dye, Bove also altered sales pitches to make them sound more palatable--she touted “coloring” and “tinting.”

“She talked to women everywhere and when she talked, women listened,” her son Richard told a Phillips Academy alumni publication after he donated $11 million for the private school’s science center.

In 1938, the Gelbs bought the Clairol formula from a German chemist for $25,000, assuring that they could continue to manufacture the product when war erupted.

Joan Gelb, largely credited with making hair coloring acceptable in the United States and launching the company successfully, bowed out after divorcing Lawrence Gelb in 1940.

Her husband and sons remained involved with the Clairol company, even years beyond its purchase by Bristol-Myers in 1959.

Married and divorced again, and widowed by the death of husband Emilio Bove, she divided her time between a horse farm in France and homes near Palm Beach, Fla., and in Manhattan.

Born a brunet, Bove became blonder in her later years, but thanks to the coloring products that she convinced American women to embrace, was never troubled by gray hair.

Bove is survived by her two sons, eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.