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Grave Hunter
Max Factor Sr.
D.O.B.: 1877 (Russia)
D.O.D.: 1938
Cause of Death:
Location: Hillside Memorial; Mausoleum, outside/rear, U-112
Biographical Notes:
Max
Factor was born in Lodz, Russia, in 1877. At the age of 14 he became an
apprentice to a wig maker. At 20, he was running his own makeup shop.
In 1904,
Factor brought his family to America for the St, Louis World's Fair, and they
never left. First, Factor opened a cosmetics shop in St. Louis, but the motion
picture industry, then beginning in Hollywood, beckoned. Factor moved to
California and got a job with the Pantages Theatre.
By 1914, he
was perfecting makeup for the movies. He found that die grease paint used in the
theatre looked dreadful on screen, so he improvised. He created false eyelashes,
the eyebrow pencil, lip gloss, and pancake makeup. Of course, once they had been
made to look so stylish on screen, actresses wanted to maintain that allure off
camera, so they wore the makeup in personal appearances.
It
was not long before non-actresses were asking for the makeup so that they too
could look glamorous. It was in 1927 that Max Factor introduced his first
cosmetics to be sold to non-theatrical consumers. Before Max Factor, few women
used cosmetics. Factor popularized both the word "makeup" and the
wearing of the stuff.
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