J.B. Nethercutt, 91; Co-Founder of Merle Norman, Car Collector
J.B. Nethercutt, who made a fortune in women’s beauty products as the co-founder of Merle Norman Cosmetics and used much of that wealth to assemble one of the world’s finest automobile collections, has died. He was 91.
Nethercutt died Monday at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, said his son, Jack Nethercutt. The elder Nethercutt had been in failing health for some time.
Respected in the beauty industry as an expert on cosmetic chemistry, Nethercutt created a number of his firm’s most popular products, including blush rouge, perfume and lipsticks.
But Nethercutt is perhaps better known to the public for his private car collection, housed in two buildings in Sylmar and open for viewing.
The Nethercutt Collection and Museum contains nearly 250 automobiles, as well as a nationally known automobile library and a state-of-the-art restoration shop. It has become a mecca for car enthusiasts and collectors since it opened in the 1970s.
Jay Leno, the host of “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and an avid car collector, knew Nethercutt and expressed great admiration for the breadth and quality of his collection.
“He was more than a car collector, he was a historian,” Leno told The Times on Wednesday.
“He has done a Smithsonian-style effort on the history of transportation in America right here in the San Fernando Valley. It’s the equivalent of Cooperstown in baseball or the rock ‘n’ roll museum in Cleveland. It’s the hall of fame for cars,” Leno said.
Jack Boison Nethercutt was born in South Bend, Ind., on Oct. 11, 1913. He moved to Southern California when he was 9, after his mother’s death, to live with his aunt, Merle Nethercutt Norman. After graduating from Santa Monica High School, he studied chemistry at Caltech.
Working out of a house in the Ocean Park section of Santa Monica, Nethercutt’s aunt had started a small business producing cosmetics for sale locally in 1931. Nethercutt dropped out of college and joined the venture, helping establish Merle Norman Cosmetics.
Their first cosmetics studio was opened on Main Street and Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica.
Nethercutt subsequently bought out his aunt, her husband and the other shareholders in the company and eventually created a firm with $100 million in sales. There are now about 2,000 Merle Norman franchises across the country.
Nethercutt loved the cosmetics business, his son said, and was active in the firm’s management until his health began to decline in August.
Nethercutt’s other passion was the automobile.
He once said that his interest in cars developed during the early part of his marriage to his wife, Dorothy. The Nethercutts loved to take drives, and along the way they would study many of the cars that became classics and are in his museum.
“We got to the point where we could identify a car two blocks away and pretty well quote the specifications on it,” he recalled.
“Years later [when] we were affluent enough to afford those gleaming monsters we had remembered so well, we found that most of them were in dreadful condition,” Nethercutt said.
This was the beginning of his lifelong passion for buying and restoring cars.
Nethercutt started his collection in 1956, purchasing a 1936 Duesenberg convertible roadster for $5,000 and a 1930 DuPont town car for $500. Both needed total refurbishing, however.
Nethercutt estimated that the DuPont restoration would take just a few weeks, but it took 18 months and cost more than $65,000.
Two years later, the DuPont was shown at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, one of the world’s leading classic car contests.
It won “best in show” that year and established Nethercutt as a force in the classic car world. Nethercutt went on to win five more best in show awards at the Pebble Beach competition, more than any other individual.
Nethercutt’s desire to make his collection as authentic as possible fostered an intense concern about restoration.
The Sylmar facility houses a 15,000-square-foot restoration shop that employs 24 experts on automobile engines, woodwork, metal work, upholstery and leather.
Nethercutt’s attention to detail was emulated and admired by other collectors.
“J.B. brought the standards of automobile restoration to an unchallenged mark,” said Bruce Meyer, a Beverly Hills developer, car collector and member of the Nethercutt collection’s board of directors. “He raised the bar, and he did it with his automobiles, with his fabulous museum and with life in general.”
Nethercutt played an active role in the restoration process and in the museum, said Skip Marketti, the collection’s curator and archivist.
“He often said that he had a different favorite car every day of the year, based on style, performance and engineering,” Marketti told The Times on Wednesday.
“Recently, he has been adding more affordable family cars like Fords, Dodges, Dorts [built before 1920] and Graham-Paiges [built in Detroit in the 1920s and ‘30s] because he wanted future generations to understand that not everyone drove very expensive V-16 Cadillacs, Marketti said.
Nethercutt also believed that his cars -- even the multimillion-dollar vehicles -- needed to be driven to assure that they were in good working order.
Each spring, he invited hundreds of friends and acquaintances to a picnic in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and assigned each of them a car from the collection to drive to the site.
The Nethercutt Collection and Museum also houses one of the world’s largest collections of orchestrions, the large mechanical musical devices that replaced orchestras in German dance halls and hotels at the turn of the 20th century.
There is also a Wurlitzer theater organ, again one of the largest in the world, as well as disc music boxes, cylinder music boxes, nickelodeons and reproducing pianos.
This separate collection started when Nethercutt wanted to buy a music box for his wife, and it became a hobby for him.
The museum also houses a 1937 Canadian Pacific Royal Hudson steam locomotive and a 1912 Pullman private railcar.
“J.B. only bought what he liked, but he liked everything,” Leno said. “[The museum] is a fascinating place if you like technology.”
In his later years, Nethercutt sought to ensure the future of the collection and museum by establishing a perpetual endowment.
His wife of 71 years died of a heart attack Oct. 8.
In addition to his son, Jack, who will now head both the car collection and Merle Norman Cosmetics, Nethercutt is survived by another son, Robert; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
A funeral service will be held today at 10 a.m. at First United Methodist Church, 1008 11th St., Santa Monica. Private entombment will follow.
Donations in his memory to benefit the Nethercutt Post Secondary Program may be made to the Kayne-Eras Center, 5350 Machado Road, Culver City, CA 90230.
More information on the Nethercutt Collection and Museum can be found on its website: www.nethercuttcollection.org.
