July 1, 2019 • 38 mins
In the 1920s and 1930s, Sylvia was famous for shaping up starlets, cementing the idea that Hollywood’s beauties were aspirational figures for the average woman. Many of Sylvia's ideas about fitness were totally sensible, but she could also be quite harsh
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson,
and today's topic is one I've actually been wanting to
do for a little bit because it is the woman
(00:21):
who really started the idea of celebrity trainers, and she
also cemented the idea that Hollywood's beauties were aspirational figures
for the average woman to try to achieve similar looks,
which I there's a whole bundle of psychology to discuss there,
but that is that is not a history podcast. That's
a different podcast. There's some baggage, a lot of baggage. Yeah,
(00:42):
there's a ton of baggage, and it's fascinating. As we
go through her story, you will hear a lot of
things and practices and ideas that are very commonplace today,
but we're not at the time at all. She is
a mix of kind of interesting and trailblazing and also
like there's some cringing. We'll talk. You'll hear about the
cringing parts. Her name was Sylvia oh Back. You will
(01:04):
see that spelled two different ways, sometimes with two l's
and sometimes with one, and the reason is that she
almost never used her last name. She went by Sylvia
or Sylvia of Hollywood or Madam Sylvia, but in anything,
even her books are written as Sylvia of Hollywood, you
never see her actual name appear in them. Yeah. I
also saw some places where it was spelled with an
(01:24):
E instead of an A, so it's kind of all
over the place. Yeah. Uh. And in the nineteen twenties
and nineteen thirties she became a star in her own right,
known for shaping up starlets to get them screen ready
and heads up. Obviously, this episode is going to be
talking about things like body image and weight loss in
ways that are in some ways completely sensible and in
(01:45):
others utterly ludicrous and really dangerous and unhealthy. So if
that's a sensitive topic for you, just know that going in. Additionally,
Sylvia was known to be really harsh and direct in
her criticism of people's bodies, so that is a whole
other angle. If hearing people be very mean to other
people is problematic, this might not be the episode you
want to hang out with yet, because she could be
(02:06):
really harsh. One of the few photos of her that
you can find on the internet is literally of her
preparing to hit someone because they're slouching. Yes, I have
the book that that photo appeared in. She's showing how
you should teach your friends to do it. Well. Oh great,
because her idea is that we don't talk about this
(02:27):
a lot later, so I could say it now. A
lot of her books where she's talking about things that
she would do as a trainer, she wants like people
to have a workout partner so they can do some
of the stretches together and stuff, but also can hit
each other in the back when they're not exhibiting good posture. Great.
Like I said, it's a mixed bag. She was born
(02:49):
Sylvia Waller in one and Oslo, Norway, to an operasing
her mother and an artist father. Her grandparents were her
primary caregivers and part because their parents both had really
demanding careers, but also because she lost her mother when
she was still a girl. Her mother, Emily, died in
one when Sylvia was ten, and then Sylvia claimed in
(03:09):
interviews that her family referred to her as an ugly
duckling and that really catalyzed her interest in beauty. Yeah,
we should also say uh and We talked about this
a little that Sylvia is also a little bit tricky
because she crafted her persona very carefully in the media,
So we don't know how much of the things she
said about her life previous to becoming a well known
(03:33):
uh figure in the United States are true versus how
many are kind of crafted to developed that persona. So
we don't know if they really called her an ugly duckling,
but that's what she said. As a young woman in
the eighteen nineties, Sylvia, against the wishes of her father,
decided to pursue nursing as a career. I had read
at one point that she had wanted to be a doctor,
(03:53):
but that was not an avenue open to her. She
claimed later on, when she was recounting her life, to
have studied under a doctor l Rich in Copenhagen, but
there is a little bit of fuzziness about whether she
actually took any medical courses while she was there. She
did learn massage during this time, and would describe what
she learned as a sort of medical massage, manipulating the
(04:15):
body for medical purposes. To be clear, the mid to
late eighteen hundreds were a time when massage was being
integrated into an approach to wellness that involved massage and
calisthenics is a way to improve your digestion and mood
and fatigue, among other things, similarly to how a lot
of folks talk about massage today. So it's really not
especially unusual that Sylvia would talk about this link between
(04:37):
massage and medicine. We just don't have any hard evidence
that she had actual medical training. Yeah, and in the
parts of Europe where she lived was where this whole
idea of massage and wellness being linked and also physical
activity was really getting sort of the most interest in research,
(04:59):
So she was in the hot bed for that to
be a very real discussion she would have been a
part of, or at least had access to. Yeah, as
a former massage therapist, I will also say it was
a lot more common to call massage therapist massus is
at the time, which will like come up later on
in the episode. Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I was
(05:20):
looking up usage of that word, and a lot of
people still use it, but other people find it not
so good. Uh. I used it in her case because
she used it about herself. Um. And sometime in the
late eighteen nineties, while she was doing these studies, Sylvia
met a man named Andrew Uhlback and the two were married.
The exact date of their wedding is not known. It's
estimated to have happened sometime in nineteen hundred, probably, and
(05:43):
the couple had two sons, uh and the way that
marriage was uh and was characterized by Sylvia shifts a
little bit depending on what interview with her you might read.
So in some she describes it as a very happy union,
but at other times she mentions that after Andrew returned
from fighting in World War One, understandably he was a
very different man and that affected their relationship and they
(06:05):
were maybe not so close. Sylvia was a master of
self promotion, and once she told a story to the
Hartford Current about her relationship with Andrew leading her to
a life of calisthenics and healthy eating. She claimed that
she had put on some weight during their marriage, until
she weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds at
five ft tall. After seeing Andrew flirting with a slender secretary,
(06:27):
Sylvia vowed to learn about reducing and got her own
weight down to five pounds, which was her weight for
most of the rest of her life. It's really not
clear if this story is true or if it was
just more of a yarn spun by Sylvia to bolster
her image as a weight loss expert. In the summer
of Sylvia, Andrew and their children moved from Copenhagen to
(06:47):
the United States. Before the war, Andrew had a successful
lumber business, but the post war economy made it impossible
to keep that company going, so they moved first to
New York and then short thereafter to Chicago. In Chicago,
Sylvia started working with the family of Julius Rosenwald, and
if that name sounds familiar, he was mentioned in our
(07:08):
episode on Sears History. He was a partner in the Sears,
Roebuck and Company business. We've talked about wanting to do
an episode on him at some point too. Sylvia was
hired to help the family matriarch recover from an injury,
and she exceeded all her expectations in that role. After
Sylvia's massage treatment got the woman back on her feet
(07:28):
in less than a week, the family put her on
retainer as their massage therapist. Sylvia was paid a dollar
and fifty cents daily for this role, which was a
good income at the time, but through the Rosenwalds, she
also had interactions with other wealthy and famous people who
also became her clients. Yeah, their grandmother had apparently hurt
one or both of her kneecaps when she fell, so
(07:51):
she had had a lot of difficulty walking, and Sylvia
apparently appeared as a miracle worker to them. Uh. And
through those connections that she made through the Rosenwald family,
Via eventually found herself pulled to Hollywood. She had made
several connections to the entertainment industry while working for the
rosen Walds, and eventually one or more the story of
which celebrity or if there were several shifts a little
(08:13):
bit urged her to move to Los Angeles and attend
to the needs of the actresses there full time. So
in Sylvia made the move to the West Coast. She
was in a good position from the start for a
number of reasons. For once, she had a lot of
clients already waiting for her when she arrived. And for another,
this was a time when there was a surge of
(08:34):
body consciousness, which created a really fertile ground for a
health and beauty business to grow. The ideal body type
in quotation marks had shifted from the hour glass shape
of the Victorian era and the Gibson girl to a
more boyish and less voluptuous figure. A lot of women
were eager to be told how to achieve a slim figure,
(08:55):
and so this idea of reducing and we put that
in quotes because that's what it was called at the time,
was all the rage, and it was often marketed to
women throughout the United States as the way to become
happy and beautiful. Yes, that is totally damaging language. Uh,
this is really a time when fat shaming as a
means of advertising first became common in the US, and
(09:15):
products to help women reduce were often downright dangerous. Related
to our recent episode, for example, on radio iodine therapy,
some women even turned to medication that would essentially put
their bodies into a state of hyperthyroidism to lose weight.
We talked in that episode about how that is a
dangerous state to be in for your body, so obviously
(09:37):
not a good plan. The film industry was still in
its infancy and it was taking off at this same
time in a way that really created celebrity actors. So
these standards of beauty were often really closely tied to
these starlets who were appearing on screen as the aspirational
figures that women should strive to emulate. And coming up,
we're going to talk about how one magazine actually tried
(09:59):
to combat this unhealthy approach and the unhealthy products that
were being marketed to women, and how that really set
the stage for Sylvia's rise to fame. The first we're
going to pause and have a little sponsor break. Just
as quickly as these false claim weight loss products became
(10:22):
regularly advertised, the American Medical Association denounced them as both
fake and dangerous hogwash. Photoplay magazine, one of the most
popular film periodicals of the time, ran a three part
expos a on what was called reduced omnia, titled Wholesale
Murder and Suicide, which opened with the line quote, in
their efforts to reduce thousands of American women are ruining
(10:45):
their health and preparing their bodies for tuberculosis and other
diseases by lowering their resistance. The preface to this article
made the magazines strong stance on this matter really clear.
It said, quote Photoplay Magazine refuses to admit to its
advertising columns any internal reducing preparations are questionable methods. Photoplay
(11:06):
is going to fight to the end to force these
dangerous preparations from the market. Why is the sale of
mind and body wrecking drugs prohibited and the sale of
dangerous reducing nostrums permitted? After its investigation and exposure of
reduction drugs as completed, photoplay believes that national action will
be necessary. Medical quacks must be prevented from killing American women,
(11:28):
and American women must be prevented from committing suicide. In
the Pursuit of Fashion and that series, written by a
fairly well known journalists at the time, Catherine Brody, discussed
the use of thyroid treatment as a weight loss aid
women who developed mental health disorders as a result of
their anxiety related to their bodies. And it even talked
about the death of actress Barbara Lamar as it built
(11:50):
its case against the dangerous claims the medical quacks that
it sought to expose. She had died not long before
this article from I Believe a heart failure, which is
how it was publicized, But really she had been doing
some very foolish things trying to become incredibly thin. That
article also stated pretty clearly that there's no such thing
as an ideal figure, but merely trends that shift and
(12:13):
lead to these problematic situations as reduced so mania as
a craze. And this whole series concluded with exercise tips
that were from a more sensible approach to fitness. It
was like, maybe you should if you want to be healthy,
just eat well and take care of your body and
don't worry about what people say it should look like.
As the discussion played out in papers and magazines, the
(12:34):
concept of a diet and exercise regimen that was meant
to achieve a slim look rather than using a pillar
a cream started to take shape and enter Sylvia all back.
Sylvia was essentially already doing similar work to what Photoplay
and other journals were touting as a more reasonable approach
to health and beauty. She had developed a three part
approach to health and beauty that combined a healthy diet, exercise,
(12:57):
and massage. From the mid on, Sylvia was working with
clients both in her home in Los Angeles and in
their homes. She would go over what they were eating,
give them massages, and teach them exercises to get and
keep them in shape for their on screen work. And
this is still an industry. She was a trailblazer in
this regard, and if she built a client's hell and
(13:18):
a reputation for getting results, she emerged as something of
a celebrity in her own right. She started fielding requests
for interviews to give advice and tips to magazine readers
that would mirror the work that she was doing with
celebrity clients. Yeah, this really like was where her career exploded.
One of those celebrities that she worked with, incidentally, was
May Murray, who we mentioned in our donut episode. Murray
(13:41):
was the one that's given credit for inventing dunking by
accidentally dropping a donut in her coffee. But she had
hired Sylvia to go with her on her vaudeville tour
starting in September of nine. In April, so just a
few months later, their business relationship had fallen apart, and
eventually they went to court. All Back said that the
actress had failed to pay her and sued Murray for
(14:03):
her unpaid wages, and the court found in Olbeck's favor
and she won two thousand dollars. She also swore off
exclusive contracts after that that desire to stay away from
becoming one stars exclusive massus and adviser was just almost
instantly problematic. Gloria Swanson desperately wanted to be Sylvia's only clients,
(14:24):
even after Sylvia said no repeatedly. Eventually, Swanson appealed to
Joseph Kennedy at Patay's Studios to step in. Kennedy did.
He offered Sylvia a contract to work exclusively with the
studios Stars, including a clause that Swanson had to get
priority over everyone else. And Sylvia took that job and
it became something of a stepping stone for her career
(14:48):
because she had carved out this unique space for herself
in Hollywood. She was also a source of fascination for
the press. She was in the job less than two years,
but gave dozens of interviews during that time, and her
message in those interviews resonated with the public. She felt
that beauty was in your mind first, and that you
had to work on your confidence to achieve the body
(15:09):
that you desired. She focused on health as a means
to achieve beauty. Sylvia was said to work miracles through
a very direct, no nonsense approach that did not baby
her clients. She could be sharp and critical, but people
found this appealing instead of off putting. Her tough truthfulness
was a departure from the ways stars were used to
being treated. Additionally, her promotion of a healthy lifestyle was
(15:32):
a breath of fresh air at a time when Hollywood
was seen as being indulgent and debaucherous. Yeah, she really
sort of became a good bit of pr for Hollywood
when it was like, no, we're employing this woman who
talks about not drinking and not eating bad things and
not being self indulgent, and aren't aren't we the paragons
of good healthy living? Um, So it was it was
(15:54):
in the studio's interest to promote that they were working
with her. But while she was in her studio contrast,
Sylvia also got caught in the middle of a bunch
of Hollywood drama because of her clients, which she did
not enjoy. When Gloria Swanson's husband's mistress, if you can
follow all of that, whose name was Constant Bennett, was
signed on as a talent with the studio, Gloria and
(16:15):
Constance started battling over everything, including Sylvia's time and attention.
And just to be clear, this is not a case
where Swanson was a spurned wife acting out of hurt.
She was having her own affair with the head of
the studio, Joseph Kennedy. It was a big morass of
people all cheating on one another and being devious and
having just terrible relationships. At one point, Bennett, according to Sylvia,
(16:38):
even tried to bribe her to be her exclusive missus
with an expensive sapphire ring. Sylvia was loyal to Swanson
and refused, but this tug of war that the two
women were playing over her just exhausted and frustrated Sylvia.
It started a sentiment that Hollywood just might not be
worth the trouble. Yeah, she definitely reached a point where
(16:58):
she thought Hollywood was getting more out of the relationship
than she was. Uh. In another case of perfect timing,
just as she had kind of landed on the Hollywood scene,
as this desire to shift away from some of the
more foolish approaches to to losing weight was happening. When
the nine crash happened, it really didn't damage Sylvia's business.
(17:19):
That signaled the end of the Flapper era and the
excess of the Roaring twenties, and so her more sensible
methodology was actually bolstered and her business continued to thrive,
although it did go on a different path. Instead of
treating individual clients, she took her advice on health and
beauty to the masses by starting a writing career. By
(17:39):
the time Sylvia left her studio gig in nineteen thirty,
her name had significant star power of its own. In fact,
when she left her studio contract behind, almost every other
studio in Hollywood started making her offers, but she didn't
take any of them. She had initially told the press
that she wanted to work with anybody she pleased and
not be limited by exclusivity d was with the studio,
(18:01):
but she never really re established her client based business
and said she started writing articles for the weekly general
interest periodical Liberty, and these articles were actually touted as
being written by Sylvia's quote indiscreet secretary, which was actually
ghostwriter James Whittaker. Presumably they were published that way in
an attempt to shield Sylvia from blowback because she told
(18:23):
a number of Hollywood secrets in her article series, which
ran for two months and was titled A Masseuse looks
at the Stars. The article series was also adapted into
a book called Hollywood Undressed, which came out of ninety one,
and despite the effort to claim the info was leaked
by a secretary, Sylvia of Hollywood became a contentious figure
(18:44):
in the film industry. The book adaptation contained both anecdotes
of her time working with film stars as well as
the diet and exercise advice that she gave to them,
and in the process she talked in detail about the
private lives of the rich and famous. She mentioned her
feud with Maim, and she described the actress's bad marriage
and hinted that May's husband was abusive. She also called
(19:07):
out various entertainers as fat and lazy, and she outed
people for various minor illegal activities. She pointed out who
in Hollywood broke prohibition, for example, and it seemed that
she had turned and bitten the hand that had been
feeding her for years. Some actors actually called for a
boycott of all back, and those who did not were
still pretty vocal that her career in Hollywood was over.
(19:28):
There were a handful of exceptions that were like, ah,
that's just Sylvia, but for the most part she was
quickly becoming persona and garta. Sylvia vehemently denied that she
had done anything wrong and argued back and forth with
various Hollywood figures through reporters. She was insistent that she
was not about to back down because the very people
that she had called spoiled were mad at her for it.
(19:50):
She gave statements to the press that anyone was welcome
to come and talk with her or even give her
a sock in the jaw. She also said that people
could be as mad as they liked, but they still
needed her treatments just the same, whether she had intended
to all along or if it was precipitated by all
the conflict, Sylvia moved away from Los Angeles, and there
(20:10):
is some debate also about just how much of the
writing that went into Hollywood undressed and the articles that
preceded it was really the work of ghostwriter James Whittaker.
Whittaker was the ex husband of actress Ainah Claire, and
he had his own access to grind in Hollywood, so
some people shifted the focus off of Sylvia and onto him,
claiming that Sylvia could not have understood some of the
(20:33):
nuances of cutting phrasing that were used in the book
because she was a non native speaker. Of English. We'll
talk next about the evolution of Sylvia's career after her
break with Hollywood, but first we'll take our own break
and here from one of the sponsors that keeps the
show going. It turned out that Sylvia spilling Hollywood gossip
(20:59):
was really a pretty brilliant business move. Whether she truly
disdained the famous people who had come to her for
help in her time in Hollywood, in calling them spoiled, frivolous,
and indulgent cinema children, she appealed to a much broader
audience of readers who were dealing with the early years
of the economic depression and had their own negative opinions
(21:20):
about the spoiled entertainers of the film industry. The time
when all of this was going on was a significant
moment in Sylvia's life for other reasons too. When she
left Hollywood to move to New York, she did so alone.
Her husband Andrew, and their two sons, who were adults
at this point, all stayed in l A. Yeah, her
sons were both working in the entertainment industry, not as actors,
(21:41):
but in various other roles. Um and Sylvia's life in
New York involved a lot of efforts in different areas.
She made appearances at department stores to talk about health
and beauty, and she had started a line of cosmetics
with which Andrew was basically running that part of the business,
and so she would go and promote those cosmetics and stores.
But she also dabbled in new areas, including writing a
(22:02):
satirical play about Hollywood with playwright Edith Ellis for Ness
and even appearing on stage and a couple of vaudeville acts.
That play that she wrote never was actually produced, by
the way, But in the end, it was her status
as a health and beauty expert that kept her afloat
even as the depression wore on. In two the year
after she arrived in New York, she started working for
(22:22):
Photoplay magazine as a regular columnist. She wrote for the
magazine for three years, using that platform to continue and
share her knowledge about exercise and healthful eating. And it's
interesting to note that even as she advised women on
how to achieve the figure they desired, she tended to
focus it on women making themselves happy. It was never
(22:42):
about pleasing or catching a man. We have to note here, though,
as we said at the top, there's some conflict because
even though she was insistent that there was no single
ideal body type, she did insist that you had to
be slim, so it is a little bit of a
mixed bag. She was very clear that women had to
get over the easiness of their bodies and minds if
they wish to reduce and she remained her very direct
(23:04):
and sometimes quite harsh self. At one point, in response
to read her questions, she she didn't do like a
direct reply, but she wrote in her article, either get
some brains or stop reading my stories. I'm sick and
tired of the silly questions A lot of you ask,
not the most nurturing. And this reminds me a little bit.
(23:25):
I think it was about a net Kellerman, who was
the woman who made swimming a lot more accessible to
other women, particularly mostly white women at the time, and
how she also got into like some beauty tips as
part of her thing. And it was like she would
sort of simultaneously say, there's nothing wrong with you, it's
(23:47):
society's expectations of you or what's to blame. But at
the same time she would be sort of like, but
here's how to meet those expectations. There, Yeah, I feel
like Sylvia in some ways invented the concept of the
tough love trainer. Um. Yeah, she could be very, very harsh.
She did make some interesting connections between physical wellness and
(24:08):
mental wellness, though though sometimes that really turned out to
be about how crying makes your skin puffy and unattractive.
She was also a proponent of positivity and obviously hard work,
and she told readers that these were just as valuable
to being happy as any weight that they might lose.
In two, after thirty one years of marriage, Sylvia shocked
(24:30):
her husband Andrew by asking for a divorce. While she
had moved to New York alone, they had remained married
and seemed to be pretty amicable at that point. It
is always, of course, unclear what a relationship is truly
like from the inside, and we don't know if there
were troubles before this, but in the press at that
point Sylvia and Andrew had seemed very contented together. But
(24:51):
once she was in New York, Sylvia met someone. That
someone was actor Edward Lighter, who was twenty two years
younger than Sylvia and who really swept her off her feet.
At the end of June two, Sylvia and Andrew were
divorced in Mexico, and three days later she married Lighter,
who stayed with her for the rest of her life.
As Sylvia continued to write, she still used her Hollywood
(25:11):
experiences as material, even though she had left Hollywood behind.
She wrote a series in which she used famous actresses
as examples of different body types and advised readers on
how to achieve a similar level of fitness. It was
an early sort of synergistic journalism where photoplay could use
this popular column to then promote the latest entertainment. It's
(25:32):
kind of like its own little custom content studio going
on and in a later series, she wrote as though
she were writing two celebrities to tell them what was
wrong with them and how to fix it. These are
to me troubling to read because she's basically like, here's
what's wrong with you. She would tell an actress, for example,
that her face was too fat, and then outline a
plan to address the issue of her critique. In all
(25:55):
Back found herself in a new role, which was radio host.
General Eldrick and Ralston sponsored the radio show Madam Sylvia
of Hollywood. On each show, Sylvia recounted working with the
specific celebrity starting with the story of how any given
woman came to be her client, usually at the urging
of studio executives. These stories were played out as re
(26:16):
enactments with actors. Sylvia herself only briefly appeared each week. Yeah,
I would be like, here's what happened, and here's how
I fixed it. Tada happy. Ending is that she was
beautiful in this film. A second book by Sylvia was
published in ninety four. This one, titled No More Alibis,
became a bestseller and the opening chapter extols the virtues
(26:38):
of a healthy lifestyle, and it is a mix of
Sylvia's stern and direct manner. For example, she writes, quote,
stop being lazy, stop wishing for good looks when all
you have to do is get them by making the effort.
And it's also got a healthy dose of encouragement. For example,
she writes, quote, and believe me, I'm for you. I
think every one of you who really tries is swell.
(26:59):
The world is your or take it. It's your right.
She lays out a very clear ideology in this text.
People eat too much and moreover, eat unhealthy foods and
then don't get enough exercise. It's the same simple advice
that a lot of trainers still give today, and she
also touched on elements of mental health in the book,
particularly noting that nervousness was a normal reaction to the
(27:20):
demands of modern life. She wrote, to be ambitious is fine,
but there is such a thing as being eaten up
with ambition. She recommended massage to counter nervousness and anxiety.
That works for me. The massage advice is great, and
the diet that Sylvia recommended for reducing in the book
(27:40):
was fairly straightforward. It featured a breakfast of grapefruit or
orange juice, black coffee and melba toast or rye wafers
with honey but no butter. Lunch was liquids only, tomato juice,
and a large bowl of clear vegetable soup with black
coffee or tea with lemon to drink no sugar, of course.
For dinner, the Woman's Aking to Reduce could have a
(28:01):
fresh fruit cup, lettuce and tomato salad sprinkled with parsley,
a small portion of broiled or roasted meat, potato skins
seasoned with a little salt only, and for dessert, gelatin,
a baked apple or stewed fruit, no sugar added. I
would cry on this diet. Um, there are some problems there.
(28:21):
That was my weary sigh. Yeah she I mean for
the time, her ideology was that no, I'm I'm putting
together a balanced menu, but we know a lot more
about nutrition, um, and that not the same nutrition will
work for every person, whereas she was pretty much like
do this everybody well, and even the whole idea like
(28:46):
there are a lot of things that claim to be
about nutrition but are really about weight loss, like right, yea.
Like a lot of times people are marketed these things
in a way that it makes it seem like it's
the same thing when it's really not. There are also
plenty of exercises aimed at reducing and in sculpting various
parts of the body. In a lot of cases, massage
(29:06):
is also prescribed to melt away the pounds. This whole
book is full of quips like a fat back mars
your figure and posture and makes people think you're older
than you really are. There's also a chapter dedicated to
the needs of people who need to put on weight.
She also advises to have a friend give you a
hard whack on the back if they see you slouching,
which we talked about at the top of the show. Yeah, please,
(29:30):
don't any of my friends whack me on the back,
just tell me I'm slouching. I also just want to
know that there's a difference between like you and a
friend deciding to do something together to support each other,
and like policing your friend's behavior, which seems to be
more her jam here. Yeah, I mean, I think she
wants to be the person that police is your behavior.
She does kind of make it like you should have
(29:51):
a friend do this stuff with you, but she wants
to yell at you about your posture first. Sure. Um.
The second half of the nineties saw a lot of
activity in Sylvia's writing career, both in terms of volume
and in terms of where it appeared. She abruptly left
Photoplay magazine and started writing for a competitor, Modern Screen,
(30:11):
but then she went back to Photoplay as the beauty editor,
in part because they had received so many letters from
people wanting her to come back, and she also wrote
articles for Physical Culture. Her articles during this time followed
the same sorts of formulas that her early writing had,
often using stars as examples and then telling readers how
to get similarly pleasing figures, although she did always warn
(30:33):
that you shouldn't try to make yourself a carbon copy
of anyone, but just be your best self. Her writing
topics expanded though, to include her thoughts and advice on
parenting and marriage. She wanted parents to teach their children
about a healthy lifestyle from the very beginning, to set
them up for a healthy life. When it came to marriage,
it was less progressive, essentially urging women who found themselves
(30:54):
in lackluster marriages to recapture their youthful figures to reinvigorate
their husband's interests. Yeah, she did talk a lot in
her writing about how, um, I am more than twenty
years older than my husband, but I look so young
that that's how I keep him, and like there's a
lot of that going on. So uh, and she did
look very young for her age, but yeah, it's a
(31:16):
lot of like this is how you stay happy in
your marriage. Um. In ninety six, she wrote the book
Pull Yourself Together, Baby, which discusses diet and exercise but
in the framework of a person's personality. It made the
case that your personality was a reflection of your physical health,
and this was sort of intended as a follow up
to No More Alibis, employing a similar work ethic to
(31:38):
cultivating character once your physique is in pretty good shape,
all with the idea of becoming as beautiful as any
of her Hollywood clients. All Back's last book was Streamline
Your Figure in ninety nine, and was published after she
had stopped writing articles for magazines. Was once again a
return to her more body focused advice and less about personality,
(31:58):
but it was really last in a series of efforts
to try to stay relevant. In the late nineteen thirties,
the Nazi ideology of a physically superior race and talk
of physical perfection made it hard for someone in the
business of telling people how to make their bodies as
perfect as possible to stay in favor in the United States. Additionally,
as the world found itself in a very serious conflict
(32:21):
beauty culture, even Sylvia's relatively sensitive approach to it started
to feel frivolous. After the publication of Streamline Your Figure,
Sylvia stepped away from the spotlight entirely. On the nineteen
forties census, under occupation, she was noticed as a housewife.
Her life after that was apparently quiet and little is
known about it in terms of specifics. She and Edward
(32:43):
bought a house in Santa Monica, California, where they lived
out the rest of their lives. Edward died in February
five and Sylvia died a month later at the age
of ninety four. Reading any of Sylvia's writing which I
sort of have an almost guilty pleasure level of it,
like I really like reading it, but it is definitely
a mix of yeah, these are good ideas and complete
(33:04):
and total cringes. Uh. In many ways, her rhetoric is
so much about empowerment and positivity and getting what you
want out of life. But then she also writes things
along the lines of saying the Great Depression was actually
good for Americans because it made them stop being physically
and mentally soft. She also could be incredibly harsh, writing
things that always suggested that any bodily issues were the
(33:26):
individuals to overcome, even when they were things like actual disabilities,
like she talks in some of her books about like,
if you have very severe bow legs, if you just
work out and get the outside of them thinner, then
you'll look almost normal. Like it's a little dicey. Yeah,
So she definitely does not give any leeway for people
(33:48):
to have anything but a pretty healthy, standardized life and
figure like she puts all of the onus on you,
as though any problem or defect you have is kind
of your own fault. Yeah, well, an idea that then
people are automatically healthy, it's just not true. Nope. There
(34:09):
are though some gems you can find reading her work.
Some of them come off as funny just because she's
so curt, and then some of them do seem like
pretty good advice. So we thought we would close with
a handful of them. So first, as um, I legitimately
love this advice. There is a funny side to everything
that happens. Look at that side. Then there's eat properly,
(34:33):
live properly, exercise regularly and properly. I might add, use
your noodle and stay away from quackery and hocus pocus.
That's pretty good advice. Um. The next is you've got
to have courage and grit to be beautiful, and you've
got to stop whining. I think that might maybe should
(34:54):
go on a shirt. Yeah, every woman can be charming
if she'll let herself be. And then uh, this one,
remember this self assurance, the self respecting kind is a
first and ever present necessity of personality development. Finally, there's
this opening passage from her first photoplay article titled any
(35:15):
Woman Can be Beautiful. I say any woman can be beautiful,
and I mean it. You can't all have lovely features,
but you can be beautiful. Whoever said beauty is only
skin deep as a fool? Beauty begins behind your forehead,
and the beauty of some of the loveliest women I
know can never be registered by a motion picture camera.
Now here's the amazing part of it. You can make
(35:35):
yourself beautiful. You can if you have the nerve and
the courage do it all yourself. That's kind of like
the best of Sylvia, because then you know you'll find
something less delightful if you keep reading. Yes, she's such
a mixed bang that that's part of what's really fascinating
about her to me. Like I said, I'll read her
stuff and be like, yeah, that's Oh what did you
(35:57):
just say? No, that's all it was, Sylvia. Do you
have some listener mail for us? I do? I have
a postcard from our listener, Jane. She writes, Dear Holly
and Tracy, thank you so much for the amazing show. Recently,
I went to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and
this painting on the front caught my eye. When I
looked at the artist, it was Visis Leblin. I was
(36:18):
amazed to see what a great artist she was. My
mom was surprised when I started spewing a bunch of
facts about her, but it was so cool to know
part of the story behind a cool painting. Could I
request more Asian history? Also some more sad Royal childhood's
because I'm a terrible person. Thanks again, doesn't make you
a terrible person, it just makes you interested in those. Um. Yeah.
(36:38):
So it's a beautiful picture of princessa at Vocia Ivanova
gold Cina that was painted in It's absolutely beautiful, I UM.
I had been sharing on social media as we traveled
through France my trip to the Louver, in which I
stood in front of the four visions that they have
all in one room, crying like a chi olds. I
(37:01):
like lost it, full grade um because her artwork is
so beautiful, like no one captures light and skin the
way she does. I absolutely love it. So I'm always
glad when anybody discovers a piece of art. Tracy and
I've talked about it recently as well. Um, if you
would like to write to us, you should do that,
whether that's about art or anything you would like. You
can do that at History podcast at how Stuff Works
(37:22):
dot com. You can also find us everywhere on social
media as Missed in History. Missed in History dot com
is also the website you are l where you can
come and find us and check out all of the
episodes of the show that have ever existed, including show
notes for any that Tracy and I have worked on together.
You can also subscribe to this podcast I think you should.
You can do that on the I Heart Radio app,
(37:42):
at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. Stuff you
Missed in History classes a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen into your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson,
and today's topic is one I've actually been wanting to
do for a little bit because it is the woman
(00:21):
who really started the idea of celebrity trainers, and she
also cemented the idea that Hollywood's beauties were aspirational figures
for the average woman to try to achieve similar looks,
which I there's a whole bundle of psychology to discuss there,
but that is that is not a history podcast. That's
a different podcast. There's some baggage, a lot of baggage. Yeah,
(00:42):
there's a ton of baggage, and it's fascinating. As we
go through her story, you will hear a lot of
things and practices and ideas that are very commonplace today,
but we're not at the time at all. She is
a mix of kind of interesting and trailblazing and also
like there's some cringing. We'll talk. You'll hear about the
cringing parts. Her name was Sylvia oh Back. You will
(01:04):
see that spelled two different ways, sometimes with two l's
and sometimes with one, and the reason is that she
almost never used her last name. She went by Sylvia
or Sylvia of Hollywood or Madam Sylvia, but in anything,
even her books are written as Sylvia of Hollywood, you
never see her actual name appear in them. Yeah. I
also saw some places where it was spelled with an
(01:24):
E instead of an A, so it's kind of all
over the place. Yeah. Uh. And in the nineteen twenties
and nineteen thirties she became a star in her own right,
known for shaping up starlets to get them screen ready
and heads up. Obviously, this episode is going to be
talking about things like body image and weight loss in
ways that are in some ways completely sensible and in
(01:45):
others utterly ludicrous and really dangerous and unhealthy. So if
that's a sensitive topic for you, just know that going in. Additionally,
Sylvia was known to be really harsh and direct in
her criticism of people's bodies, so that is a whole
other angle. If hearing people be very mean to other
people is problematic, this might not be the episode you
want to hang out with yet, because she could be
(02:06):
really harsh. One of the few photos of her that
you can find on the internet is literally of her
preparing to hit someone because they're slouching. Yes, I have
the book that that photo appeared in. She's showing how
you should teach your friends to do it. Well. Oh great,
because her idea is that we don't talk about this
(02:27):
a lot later, so I could say it now. A
lot of her books where she's talking about things that
she would do as a trainer, she wants like people
to have a workout partner so they can do some
of the stretches together and stuff, but also can hit
each other in the back when they're not exhibiting good posture. Great.
Like I said, it's a mixed bag. She was born
(02:49):
Sylvia Waller in one and Oslo, Norway, to an operasing
her mother and an artist father. Her grandparents were her
primary caregivers and part because their parents both had really
demanding careers, but also because she lost her mother when
she was still a girl. Her mother, Emily, died in
one when Sylvia was ten, and then Sylvia claimed in
(03:09):
interviews that her family referred to her as an ugly
duckling and that really catalyzed her interest in beauty. Yeah,
we should also say uh and We talked about this
a little that Sylvia is also a little bit tricky
because she crafted her persona very carefully in the media,
So we don't know how much of the things she
said about her life previous to becoming a well known
(03:33):
uh figure in the United States are true versus how
many are kind of crafted to developed that persona. So
we don't know if they really called her an ugly duckling,
but that's what she said. As a young woman in
the eighteen nineties, Sylvia, against the wishes of her father,
decided to pursue nursing as a career. I had read
at one point that she had wanted to be a doctor,
(03:53):
but that was not an avenue open to her. She
claimed later on, when she was recounting her life, to
have studied under a doctor l Rich in Copenhagen, but
there is a little bit of fuzziness about whether she
actually took any medical courses while she was there. She
did learn massage during this time, and would describe what
she learned as a sort of medical massage, manipulating the
(04:15):
body for medical purposes. To be clear, the mid to
late eighteen hundreds were a time when massage was being
integrated into an approach to wellness that involved massage and
calisthenics is a way to improve your digestion and mood
and fatigue, among other things, similarly to how a lot
of folks talk about massage today. So it's really not
especially unusual that Sylvia would talk about this link between
(04:37):
massage and medicine. We just don't have any hard evidence
that she had actual medical training. Yeah, and in the
parts of Europe where she lived was where this whole
idea of massage and wellness being linked and also physical
activity was really getting sort of the most interest in research,
(04:59):
So she was in the hot bed for that to
be a very real discussion she would have been a
part of, or at least had access to. Yeah, as
a former massage therapist, I will also say it was
a lot more common to call massage therapist massus is
at the time, which will like come up later on
in the episode. Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I was
(05:20):
looking up usage of that word, and a lot of
people still use it, but other people find it not
so good. Uh. I used it in her case because
she used it about herself. Um. And sometime in the
late eighteen nineties, while she was doing these studies, Sylvia
met a man named Andrew Uhlback and the two were married.
The exact date of their wedding is not known. It's
estimated to have happened sometime in nineteen hundred, probably, and
(05:43):
the couple had two sons, uh and the way that
marriage was uh and was characterized by Sylvia shifts a
little bit depending on what interview with her you might read.
So in some she describes it as a very happy union,
but at other times she mentions that after Andrew returned
from fighting in World War One, understandably he was a
very different man and that affected their relationship and they
(06:05):
were maybe not so close. Sylvia was a master of
self promotion, and once she told a story to the
Hartford Current about her relationship with Andrew leading her to
a life of calisthenics and healthy eating. She claimed that
she had put on some weight during their marriage, until
she weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds at
five ft tall. After seeing Andrew flirting with a slender secretary,
(06:27):
Sylvia vowed to learn about reducing and got her own
weight down to five pounds, which was her weight for
most of the rest of her life. It's really not
clear if this story is true or if it was
just more of a yarn spun by Sylvia to bolster
her image as a weight loss expert. In the summer
of Sylvia, Andrew and their children moved from Copenhagen to
(06:47):
the United States. Before the war, Andrew had a successful
lumber business, but the post war economy made it impossible
to keep that company going, so they moved first to
New York and then short thereafter to Chicago. In Chicago,
Sylvia started working with the family of Julius Rosenwald, and
if that name sounds familiar, he was mentioned in our
(07:08):
episode on Sears History. He was a partner in the Sears,
Roebuck and Company business. We've talked about wanting to do
an episode on him at some point too. Sylvia was
hired to help the family matriarch recover from an injury,
and she exceeded all her expectations in that role. After
Sylvia's massage treatment got the woman back on her feet
(07:28):
in less than a week, the family put her on
retainer as their massage therapist. Sylvia was paid a dollar
and fifty cents daily for this role, which was a
good income at the time, but through the Rosenwalds, she
also had interactions with other wealthy and famous people who
also became her clients. Yeah, their grandmother had apparently hurt
one or both of her kneecaps when she fell, so
(07:51):
she had had a lot of difficulty walking, and Sylvia
apparently appeared as a miracle worker to them. Uh. And
through those connections that she made through the Rosenwald family,
Via eventually found herself pulled to Hollywood. She had made
several connections to the entertainment industry while working for the
rosen Walds, and eventually one or more the story of
which celebrity or if there were several shifts a little
(08:13):
bit urged her to move to Los Angeles and attend
to the needs of the actresses there full time. So
in Sylvia made the move to the West Coast. She
was in a good position from the start for a
number of reasons. For once, she had a lot of
clients already waiting for her when she arrived. And for another,
this was a time when there was a surge of
(08:34):
body consciousness, which created a really fertile ground for a
health and beauty business to grow. The ideal body type
in quotation marks had shifted from the hour glass shape
of the Victorian era and the Gibson girl to a
more boyish and less voluptuous figure. A lot of women
were eager to be told how to achieve a slim figure,
(08:55):
and so this idea of reducing and we put that
in quotes because that's what it was called at the time,
was all the rage, and it was often marketed to
women throughout the United States as the way to become
happy and beautiful. Yes, that is totally damaging language. Uh,
this is really a time when fat shaming as a
means of advertising first became common in the US, and
(09:15):
products to help women reduce were often downright dangerous. Related
to our recent episode, for example, on radio iodine therapy,
some women even turned to medication that would essentially put
their bodies into a state of hyperthyroidism to lose weight.
We talked in that episode about how that is a
dangerous state to be in for your body, so obviously
(09:37):
not a good plan. The film industry was still in
its infancy and it was taking off at this same
time in a way that really created celebrity actors. So
these standards of beauty were often really closely tied to
these starlets who were appearing on screen as the aspirational
figures that women should strive to emulate. And coming up,
we're going to talk about how one magazine actually tried
(09:59):
to combat this unhealthy approach and the unhealthy products that
were being marketed to women, and how that really set
the stage for Sylvia's rise to fame. The first we're
going to pause and have a little sponsor break. Just
as quickly as these false claim weight loss products became
(10:22):
regularly advertised, the American Medical Association denounced them as both
fake and dangerous hogwash. Photoplay magazine, one of the most
popular film periodicals of the time, ran a three part
expos a on what was called reduced omnia, titled Wholesale
Murder and Suicide, which opened with the line quote, in
their efforts to reduce thousands of American women are ruining
(10:45):
their health and preparing their bodies for tuberculosis and other
diseases by lowering their resistance. The preface to this article
made the magazines strong stance on this matter really clear.
It said, quote Photoplay Magazine refuses to admit to its
advertising columns any internal reducing preparations are questionable methods. Photoplay
(11:06):
is going to fight to the end to force these
dangerous preparations from the market. Why is the sale of
mind and body wrecking drugs prohibited and the sale of
dangerous reducing nostrums permitted? After its investigation and exposure of
reduction drugs as completed, photoplay believes that national action will
be necessary. Medical quacks must be prevented from killing American women,
(11:28):
and American women must be prevented from committing suicide. In
the Pursuit of Fashion and that series, written by a
fairly well known journalists at the time, Catherine Brody, discussed
the use of thyroid treatment as a weight loss aid
women who developed mental health disorders as a result of
their anxiety related to their bodies. And it even talked
about the death of actress Barbara Lamar as it built
(11:50):
its case against the dangerous claims the medical quacks that
it sought to expose. She had died not long before
this article from I Believe a heart failure, which is
how it was publicized, But really she had been doing
some very foolish things trying to become incredibly thin. That
article also stated pretty clearly that there's no such thing
as an ideal figure, but merely trends that shift and
(12:13):
lead to these problematic situations as reduced so mania as
a craze. And this whole series concluded with exercise tips
that were from a more sensible approach to fitness. It
was like, maybe you should if you want to be healthy,
just eat well and take care of your body and
don't worry about what people say it should look like.
As the discussion played out in papers and magazines, the
(12:34):
concept of a diet and exercise regimen that was meant
to achieve a slim look rather than using a pillar
a cream started to take shape and enter Sylvia all back.
Sylvia was essentially already doing similar work to what Photoplay
and other journals were touting as a more reasonable approach
to health and beauty. She had developed a three part
approach to health and beauty that combined a healthy diet, exercise,
(12:57):
and massage. From the mid on, Sylvia was working with
clients both in her home in Los Angeles and in
their homes. She would go over what they were eating,
give them massages, and teach them exercises to get and
keep them in shape for their on screen work. And
this is still an industry. She was a trailblazer in
this regard, and if she built a client's hell and
(13:18):
a reputation for getting results, she emerged as something of
a celebrity in her own right. She started fielding requests
for interviews to give advice and tips to magazine readers
that would mirror the work that she was doing with
celebrity clients. Yeah, this really like was where her career exploded.
One of those celebrities that she worked with, incidentally, was
May Murray, who we mentioned in our donut episode. Murray
(13:41):
was the one that's given credit for inventing dunking by
accidentally dropping a donut in her coffee. But she had
hired Sylvia to go with her on her vaudeville tour
starting in September of nine. In April, so just a
few months later, their business relationship had fallen apart, and
eventually they went to court. All Back said that the
actress had failed to pay her and sued Murray for
(14:03):
her unpaid wages, and the court found in Olbeck's favor
and she won two thousand dollars. She also swore off
exclusive contracts after that that desire to stay away from
becoming one stars exclusive massus and adviser was just almost
instantly problematic. Gloria Swanson desperately wanted to be Sylvia's only clients,
(14:24):
even after Sylvia said no repeatedly. Eventually, Swanson appealed to
Joseph Kennedy at Patay's Studios to step in. Kennedy did.
He offered Sylvia a contract to work exclusively with the
studios Stars, including a clause that Swanson had to get
priority over everyone else. And Sylvia took that job and
it became something of a stepping stone for her career
(14:48):
because she had carved out this unique space for herself
in Hollywood. She was also a source of fascination for
the press. She was in the job less than two years,
but gave dozens of interviews during that time, and her
message in those interviews resonated with the public. She felt
that beauty was in your mind first, and that you
had to work on your confidence to achieve the body
(15:09):
that you desired. She focused on health as a means
to achieve beauty. Sylvia was said to work miracles through
a very direct, no nonsense approach that did not baby
her clients. She could be sharp and critical, but people
found this appealing instead of off putting. Her tough truthfulness
was a departure from the ways stars were used to
being treated. Additionally, her promotion of a healthy lifestyle was
(15:32):
a breath of fresh air at a time when Hollywood
was seen as being indulgent and debaucherous. Yeah, she really
sort of became a good bit of pr for Hollywood
when it was like, no, we're employing this woman who
talks about not drinking and not eating bad things and
not being self indulgent, and aren't aren't we the paragons
of good healthy living? Um, So it was it was
(15:54):
in the studio's interest to promote that they were working
with her. But while she was in her studio contrast,
Sylvia also got caught in the middle of a bunch
of Hollywood drama because of her clients, which she did
not enjoy. When Gloria Swanson's husband's mistress, if you can
follow all of that, whose name was Constant Bennett, was
signed on as a talent with the studio, Gloria and
(16:15):
Constance started battling over everything, including Sylvia's time and attention.
And just to be clear, this is not a case
where Swanson was a spurned wife acting out of hurt.
She was having her own affair with the head of
the studio, Joseph Kennedy. It was a big morass of
people all cheating on one another and being devious and
having just terrible relationships. At one point, Bennett, according to Sylvia,
(16:38):
even tried to bribe her to be her exclusive missus
with an expensive sapphire ring. Sylvia was loyal to Swanson
and refused, but this tug of war that the two
women were playing over her just exhausted and frustrated Sylvia.
It started a sentiment that Hollywood just might not be
worth the trouble. Yeah, she definitely reached a point where
(16:58):
she thought Hollywood was getting more out of the relationship
than she was. Uh. In another case of perfect timing,
just as she had kind of landed on the Hollywood scene,
as this desire to shift away from some of the
more foolish approaches to to losing weight was happening. When
the nine crash happened, it really didn't damage Sylvia's business.
(17:19):
That signaled the end of the Flapper era and the
excess of the Roaring twenties, and so her more sensible
methodology was actually bolstered and her business continued to thrive,
although it did go on a different path. Instead of
treating individual clients, she took her advice on health and
beauty to the masses by starting a writing career. By
(17:39):
the time Sylvia left her studio gig in nineteen thirty,
her name had significant star power of its own. In fact,
when she left her studio contract behind, almost every other
studio in Hollywood started making her offers, but she didn't
take any of them. She had initially told the press
that she wanted to work with anybody she pleased and
not be limited by exclusivity d was with the studio,
(18:01):
but she never really re established her client based business
and said she started writing articles for the weekly general
interest periodical Liberty, and these articles were actually touted as
being written by Sylvia's quote indiscreet secretary, which was actually
ghostwriter James Whittaker. Presumably they were published that way in
an attempt to shield Sylvia from blowback because she told
(18:23):
a number of Hollywood secrets in her article series, which
ran for two months and was titled A Masseuse looks
at the Stars. The article series was also adapted into
a book called Hollywood Undressed, which came out of ninety one,
and despite the effort to claim the info was leaked
by a secretary, Sylvia of Hollywood became a contentious figure
(18:44):
in the film industry. The book adaptation contained both anecdotes
of her time working with film stars as well as
the diet and exercise advice that she gave to them,
and in the process she talked in detail about the
private lives of the rich and famous. She mentioned her
feud with Maim, and she described the actress's bad marriage
and hinted that May's husband was abusive. She also called
(19:07):
out various entertainers as fat and lazy, and she outed
people for various minor illegal activities. She pointed out who
in Hollywood broke prohibition, for example, and it seemed that
she had turned and bitten the hand that had been
feeding her for years. Some actors actually called for a
boycott of all back, and those who did not were
still pretty vocal that her career in Hollywood was over.
(19:28):
There were a handful of exceptions that were like, ah,
that's just Sylvia, but for the most part she was
quickly becoming persona and garta. Sylvia vehemently denied that she
had done anything wrong and argued back and forth with
various Hollywood figures through reporters. She was insistent that she
was not about to back down because the very people
that she had called spoiled were mad at her for it.
(19:50):
She gave statements to the press that anyone was welcome
to come and talk with her or even give her
a sock in the jaw. She also said that people
could be as mad as they liked, but they still
needed her treatments just the same, whether she had intended
to all along or if it was precipitated by all
the conflict, Sylvia moved away from Los Angeles, and there
(20:10):
is some debate also about just how much of the
writing that went into Hollywood undressed and the articles that
preceded it was really the work of ghostwriter James Whittaker.
Whittaker was the ex husband of actress Ainah Claire, and
he had his own access to grind in Hollywood, so
some people shifted the focus off of Sylvia and onto him,
claiming that Sylvia could not have understood some of the
(20:33):
nuances of cutting phrasing that were used in the book
because she was a non native speaker. Of English. We'll
talk next about the evolution of Sylvia's career after her
break with Hollywood, but first we'll take our own break
and here from one of the sponsors that keeps the
show going. It turned out that Sylvia spilling Hollywood gossip
(20:59):
was really a pretty brilliant business move. Whether she truly
disdained the famous people who had come to her for
help in her time in Hollywood, in calling them spoiled, frivolous,
and indulgent cinema children, she appealed to a much broader
audience of readers who were dealing with the early years
of the economic depression and had their own negative opinions
(21:20):
about the spoiled entertainers of the film industry. The time
when all of this was going on was a significant
moment in Sylvia's life for other reasons too. When she
left Hollywood to move to New York, she did so alone.
Her husband Andrew, and their two sons, who were adults
at this point, all stayed in l A. Yeah, her
sons were both working in the entertainment industry, not as actors,
(21:41):
but in various other roles. Um and Sylvia's life in
New York involved a lot of efforts in different areas.
She made appearances at department stores to talk about health
and beauty, and she had started a line of cosmetics
with which Andrew was basically running that part of the business,
and so she would go and promote those cosmetics and stores.
But she also dabbled in new areas, including writing a
(22:02):
satirical play about Hollywood with playwright Edith Ellis for Ness
and even appearing on stage and a couple of vaudeville acts.
That play that she wrote never was actually produced, by
the way, But in the end, it was her status
as a health and beauty expert that kept her afloat
even as the depression wore on. In two the year
after she arrived in New York, she started working for
(22:22):
Photoplay magazine as a regular columnist. She wrote for the
magazine for three years, using that platform to continue and
share her knowledge about exercise and healthful eating. And it's
interesting to note that even as she advised women on
how to achieve the figure they desired, she tended to
focus it on women making themselves happy. It was never
(22:42):
about pleasing or catching a man. We have to note here, though,
as we said at the top, there's some conflict because
even though she was insistent that there was no single
ideal body type, she did insist that you had to
be slim, so it is a little bit of a
mixed bag. She was very clear that women had to
get over the easiness of their bodies and minds if
they wish to reduce and she remained her very direct
(23:04):
and sometimes quite harsh self. At one point, in response
to read her questions, she she didn't do like a
direct reply, but she wrote in her article, either get
some brains or stop reading my stories. I'm sick and
tired of the silly questions A lot of you ask,
not the most nurturing. And this reminds me a little bit.
(23:25):
I think it was about a net Kellerman, who was
the woman who made swimming a lot more accessible to
other women, particularly mostly white women at the time, and
how she also got into like some beauty tips as
part of her thing. And it was like she would
sort of simultaneously say, there's nothing wrong with you, it's
(23:47):
society's expectations of you or what's to blame. But at
the same time she would be sort of like, but
here's how to meet those expectations. There, Yeah, I feel
like Sylvia in some ways invented the concept of the
tough love trainer. Um. Yeah, she could be very, very harsh.
She did make some interesting connections between physical wellness and
(24:08):
mental wellness, though though sometimes that really turned out to
be about how crying makes your skin puffy and unattractive.
She was also a proponent of positivity and obviously hard work,
and she told readers that these were just as valuable
to being happy as any weight that they might lose.
In two, after thirty one years of marriage, Sylvia shocked
(24:30):
her husband Andrew by asking for a divorce. While she
had moved to New York alone, they had remained married
and seemed to be pretty amicable at that point. It
is always, of course, unclear what a relationship is truly
like from the inside, and we don't know if there
were troubles before this, but in the press at that
point Sylvia and Andrew had seemed very contented together. But
(24:51):
once she was in New York, Sylvia met someone. That
someone was actor Edward Lighter, who was twenty two years
younger than Sylvia and who really swept her off her feet.
At the end of June two, Sylvia and Andrew were
divorced in Mexico, and three days later she married Lighter,
who stayed with her for the rest of her life.
As Sylvia continued to write, she still used her Hollywood
(25:11):
experiences as material, even though she had left Hollywood behind.
She wrote a series in which she used famous actresses
as examples of different body types and advised readers on
how to achieve a similar level of fitness. It was
an early sort of synergistic journalism where photoplay could use
this popular column to then promote the latest entertainment. It's
(25:32):
kind of like its own little custom content studio going
on and in a later series, she wrote as though
she were writing two celebrities to tell them what was
wrong with them and how to fix it. These are
to me troubling to read because she's basically like, here's
what's wrong with you. She would tell an actress, for example,
that her face was too fat, and then outline a
plan to address the issue of her critique. In all
(25:55):
Back found herself in a new role, which was radio host.
General Eldrick and Ralston sponsored the radio show Madam Sylvia
of Hollywood. On each show, Sylvia recounted working with the
specific celebrity starting with the story of how any given
woman came to be her client, usually at the urging
of studio executives. These stories were played out as re
(26:16):
enactments with actors. Sylvia herself only briefly appeared each week. Yeah,
I would be like, here's what happened, and here's how
I fixed it. Tada happy. Ending is that she was
beautiful in this film. A second book by Sylvia was
published in ninety four. This one, titled No More Alibis,
became a bestseller and the opening chapter extols the virtues
(26:38):
of a healthy lifestyle, and it is a mix of
Sylvia's stern and direct manner. For example, she writes, quote,
stop being lazy, stop wishing for good looks when all
you have to do is get them by making the effort.
And it's also got a healthy dose of encouragement. For example,
she writes, quote, and believe me, I'm for you. I
think every one of you who really tries is swell.
(26:59):
The world is your or take it. It's your right.
She lays out a very clear ideology in this text.
People eat too much and moreover, eat unhealthy foods and
then don't get enough exercise. It's the same simple advice
that a lot of trainers still give today, and she
also touched on elements of mental health in the book,
particularly noting that nervousness was a normal reaction to the
(27:20):
demands of modern life. She wrote, to be ambitious is fine,
but there is such a thing as being eaten up
with ambition. She recommended massage to counter nervousness and anxiety.
That works for me. The massage advice is great, and
the diet that Sylvia recommended for reducing in the book
(27:40):
was fairly straightforward. It featured a breakfast of grapefruit or
orange juice, black coffee and melba toast or rye wafers
with honey but no butter. Lunch was liquids only, tomato juice,
and a large bowl of clear vegetable soup with black
coffee or tea with lemon to drink no sugar, of course.
For dinner, the Woman's Aking to Reduce could have a
(28:01):
fresh fruit cup, lettuce and tomato salad sprinkled with parsley,
a small portion of broiled or roasted meat, potato skins
seasoned with a little salt only, and for dessert, gelatin,
a baked apple or stewed fruit, no sugar added. I
would cry on this diet. Um, there are some problems there.
(28:21):
That was my weary sigh. Yeah she I mean for
the time, her ideology was that no, I'm I'm putting
together a balanced menu, but we know a lot more
about nutrition, um, and that not the same nutrition will
work for every person, whereas she was pretty much like
do this everybody well, and even the whole idea like
(28:46):
there are a lot of things that claim to be
about nutrition but are really about weight loss, like right, yea.
Like a lot of times people are marketed these things
in a way that it makes it seem like it's
the same thing when it's really not. There are also
plenty of exercises aimed at reducing and in sculpting various
parts of the body. In a lot of cases, massage
(29:06):
is also prescribed to melt away the pounds. This whole
book is full of quips like a fat back mars
your figure and posture and makes people think you're older
than you really are. There's also a chapter dedicated to
the needs of people who need to put on weight.
She also advises to have a friend give you a
hard whack on the back if they see you slouching,
which we talked about at the top of the show. Yeah, please,
(29:30):
don't any of my friends whack me on the back,
just tell me I'm slouching. I also just want to
know that there's a difference between like you and a
friend deciding to do something together to support each other,
and like policing your friend's behavior, which seems to be
more her jam here. Yeah, I mean, I think she
wants to be the person that police is your behavior.
She does kind of make it like you should have
(29:51):
a friend do this stuff with you, but she wants
to yell at you about your posture first. Sure. Um.
The second half of the nineties saw a lot of
activity in Sylvia's writing career, both in terms of volume
and in terms of where it appeared. She abruptly left
Photoplay magazine and started writing for a competitor, Modern Screen,
(30:11):
but then she went back to Photoplay as the beauty editor,
in part because they had received so many letters from
people wanting her to come back, and she also wrote
articles for Physical Culture. Her articles during this time followed
the same sorts of formulas that her early writing had,
often using stars as examples and then telling readers how
to get similarly pleasing figures, although she did always warn
(30:33):
that you shouldn't try to make yourself a carbon copy
of anyone, but just be your best self. Her writing
topics expanded though, to include her thoughts and advice on
parenting and marriage. She wanted parents to teach their children
about a healthy lifestyle from the very beginning, to set
them up for a healthy life. When it came to marriage,
it was less progressive, essentially urging women who found themselves
(30:54):
in lackluster marriages to recapture their youthful figures to reinvigorate
their husband's interests. Yeah, she did talk a lot in
her writing about how, um, I am more than twenty
years older than my husband, but I look so young
that that's how I keep him, and like there's a
lot of that going on. So uh, and she did
look very young for her age, but yeah, it's a
(31:16):
lot of like this is how you stay happy in
your marriage. Um. In ninety six, she wrote the book
Pull Yourself Together, Baby, which discusses diet and exercise but
in the framework of a person's personality. It made the
case that your personality was a reflection of your physical health,
and this was sort of intended as a follow up
to No More Alibis, employing a similar work ethic to
(31:38):
cultivating character once your physique is in pretty good shape,
all with the idea of becoming as beautiful as any
of her Hollywood clients. All Back's last book was Streamline
Your Figure in ninety nine, and was published after she
had stopped writing articles for magazines. Was once again a
return to her more body focused advice and less about personality,
(31:58):
but it was really last in a series of efforts
to try to stay relevant. In the late nineteen thirties,
the Nazi ideology of a physically superior race and talk
of physical perfection made it hard for someone in the
business of telling people how to make their bodies as
perfect as possible to stay in favor in the United States. Additionally,
as the world found itself in a very serious conflict
(32:21):
beauty culture, even Sylvia's relatively sensitive approach to it started
to feel frivolous. After the publication of Streamline Your Figure,
Sylvia stepped away from the spotlight entirely. On the nineteen
forties census, under occupation, she was noticed as a housewife.
Her life after that was apparently quiet and little is
known about it in terms of specifics. She and Edward
(32:43):
bought a house in Santa Monica, California, where they lived
out the rest of their lives. Edward died in February
five and Sylvia died a month later at the age
of ninety four. Reading any of Sylvia's writing which I
sort of have an almost guilty pleasure level of it,
like I really like reading it, but it is definitely
a mix of yeah, these are good ideas and complete
(33:04):
and total cringes. Uh. In many ways, her rhetoric is
so much about empowerment and positivity and getting what you
want out of life. But then she also writes things
along the lines of saying the Great Depression was actually
good for Americans because it made them stop being physically
and mentally soft. She also could be incredibly harsh, writing
things that always suggested that any bodily issues were the
(33:26):
individuals to overcome, even when they were things like actual disabilities,
like she talks in some of her books about like,
if you have very severe bow legs, if you just
work out and get the outside of them thinner, then
you'll look almost normal. Like it's a little dicey. Yeah,
So she definitely does not give any leeway for people
(33:48):
to have anything but a pretty healthy, standardized life and
figure like she puts all of the onus on you,
as though any problem or defect you have is kind
of your own fault. Yeah, well, an idea that then
people are automatically healthy, it's just not true. Nope. There
(34:09):
are though some gems you can find reading her work.
Some of them come off as funny just because she's
so curt, and then some of them do seem like
pretty good advice. So we thought we would close with
a handful of them. So first, as um, I legitimately
love this advice. There is a funny side to everything
that happens. Look at that side. Then there's eat properly,
(34:33):
live properly, exercise regularly and properly. I might add, use
your noodle and stay away from quackery and hocus pocus.
That's pretty good advice. Um. The next is you've got
to have courage and grit to be beautiful, and you've
got to stop whining. I think that might maybe should
(34:54):
go on a shirt. Yeah, every woman can be charming
if she'll let herself be. And then uh, this one,
remember this self assurance, the self respecting kind is a
first and ever present necessity of personality development. Finally, there's
this opening passage from her first photoplay article titled any
(35:15):
Woman Can be Beautiful. I say any woman can be beautiful,
and I mean it. You can't all have lovely features,
but you can be beautiful. Whoever said beauty is only
skin deep as a fool? Beauty begins behind your forehead,
and the beauty of some of the loveliest women I
know can never be registered by a motion picture camera.
Now here's the amazing part of it. You can make
(35:35):
yourself beautiful. You can if you have the nerve and
the courage do it all yourself. That's kind of like
the best of Sylvia, because then you know you'll find
something less delightful if you keep reading. Yes, she's such
a mixed bang that that's part of what's really fascinating
about her to me. Like I said, I'll read her
stuff and be like, yeah, that's Oh what did you
(35:57):
just say? No, that's all it was, Sylvia. Do you
have some listener mail for us? I do? I have
a postcard from our listener, Jane. She writes, Dear Holly
and Tracy, thank you so much for the amazing show. Recently,
I went to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and
this painting on the front caught my eye. When I
looked at the artist, it was Visis Leblin. I was
(36:18):
amazed to see what a great artist she was. My
mom was surprised when I started spewing a bunch of
facts about her, but it was so cool to know
part of the story behind a cool painting. Could I
request more Asian history? Also some more sad Royal childhood's
because I'm a terrible person. Thanks again, doesn't make you
a terrible person, it just makes you interested in those. Um. Yeah.
(36:38):
So it's a beautiful picture of princessa at Vocia Ivanova
gold Cina that was painted in It's absolutely beautiful, I UM.
I had been sharing on social media as we traveled
through France my trip to the Louver, in which I
stood in front of the four visions that they have
all in one room, crying like a chi olds. I
(37:01):
like lost it, full grade um because her artwork is
so beautiful, like no one captures light and skin the
way she does. I absolutely love it. So I'm always
glad when anybody discovers a piece of art. Tracy and
I've talked about it recently as well. Um, if you
would like to write to us, you should do that,
whether that's about art or anything you would like. You
can do that at History podcast at how Stuff Works
(37:22):
dot com. You can also find us everywhere on social
media as Missed in History. Missed in History dot com
is also the website you are l where you can
come and find us and check out all of the
episodes of the show that have ever existed, including show
notes for any that Tracy and I have worked on together.
You can also subscribe to this podcast I think you should.
You can do that on the I Heart Radio app,
(37:42):
at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. Stuff you
Missed in History classes a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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