Sylvia of Hollywood and Physical Culture, 1920-1940
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Madame Sylvia of Hollywood and Physical Culture, 1920-1940 by Amanda Regan Copyright © 2013 Amanda Regan All rights reserved Table of Contents Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................... iv Abstract .......................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 Historiography............................................................................................................. 8 Chapter 1: “Reduce-o-mania,” 1920-1929 ..................................................................... 18 Chapter 2: The Rouge Masseuse, 1930-1931 ................................................................. 52 Chapter 3: “Any Woman Can Be Beautiful,” 1932-1935 ............................................... 71 Chapter 4: “A Call to Arms,” 1935-1939 ..................................................................... 103 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 133 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 138 ii Table of Figures Figure 1 Sylvia in her studio at Pathé with Carole Lombard........................................... 41 Figure 2 Portrait of Sylvia Ullback from her first Photoplay article. .............................. 72 Figure 3 Sylvia's massage technique for the neck........................................................... 75 Figure 4 Sylvia Ullback and Edward Leiter ................................................................... 79 iii Acknowledgments I am thankful to the many people who have helped me through the writing, research, and completion of this thesis over the last two years. This thesis would not have been possible without the support of my advisor, committee, family and friends. First, I am deeply grateful for the constant support of my chair and mentor Dr. Jill Watts. In addition to chairing and helping me with this thesis, Dr. Watts has been an unwavering source of guidance and has helped me to prepare for my next steps in a doctoral program. I am lucky to have been trained by such an amazing scholar and I owe her the most sincere gratitude for her long hours and willingness to go above and beyond for her students. I also am indebted to my committee Dr. Jeffrey Charles and Dr. Carmen Nava for reading drafts of my thesis and offering invaluable advice and critiques. Dr. Katherine Hijar read drafts of my proposal and was also a source of guidance over the last two years. My loving family was also a source of constant and unwavering support over the last two years. My parents, Mike and Sue, my little sister, Holly, and my dog, Chanel, have all been understanding of my busy schedule and patient with me on stressful weeks. Chanel was a faithful companion and sat with me while I wrote most of this thesis. I would not have survived this program without my cohort and wonderful friends Andy Aguirre, Mayella Caro, Bree Faulkenberg, Emily Hammer, and Ashley Atkins. Through the late nights and stress filled days they were always there to lighten things up and make a big paper fun. I owe my sanity to them. I am also thankful to my good iv friends Devon Barnett, Lauren Cerruti, Nunu Gabarra, Ninus Gabarra, and Sed Zangana who listened intently as I talked about Sylvia and were patient with me while I spent many Friday and Saturday nights in the digital history lab. I also want to thank Dr. Gerardo Gonzalez and Lisa Bandong of the Office of Graduate Studies and Research who allowed me to work in their office over the last two years. Finally, I want to thank Walter Horch, a personal friend of Sylvia Ullback, for inviting me to his home and for sharing his memories with me on multiple occasions. This thesis would not have been possible without him. v Abstract Sylvia Ullback, or “Sylvia of Hollywood,” was a beauty practitioner and writer in the 1920s and 1930s. An immigrant to America in the 1920s, Ullback’s career and discussion of women’s bodies and beauty paralleled historical developments in physical culture and beauty. She was trained in European ideas and techniques and she applied this training in her career in the United States. She emerged as the expert on beauty and the body in the late 1920s and represented a shift from the 1920s “reducing craze”, a period of extreme dieting techniques. Her methods and philosophies represented a new form of reducing based on healthy dieting and exercise. After departing from Hollywood where she worked with the Hollywood stars, she transformed herself into an author of popular magazine articles and books. Her articles reflected the culture of the Great Depression and contained an empowering message for women during this time. During the depression she became increasingly popular and she published several books in addition to her articles and her radio show. However by the mid-1930s, the attitude toward physical culture began to shift. The rise of Nazi Germany and fascist theories about the “superior” Aryan body and their nationalistic ideal of physical culture led to a decline in the popularity of physical culture in America. Consequently, Ullback began to struggle to maintain her platform and tried to shift her discussion of the body and beauty. Ultimately, she was unsuccessful and in 1939, after publishing her last book, she withdrew from the public sphere. This thesis examines the shifts that took place from 1920-1940 in ideas about the body and physical culture through Ullback’s life and career. Keywords: Sylvia Ullback, Physical Culture, United States, The Great Depression, Women vi Introduction Beauty and fashion were defining aspects of Hollywood stars in the 1930s and Sylvia Ullback, better known as Madame Sylvia of Hollywood, was the authority on beauty for the stars. She had built her reputation during the 1920s by helping the stars get into shape through diet, exercise and massage. By the 1930s, she had begun writing books and advice columns for Hollywood fan magazines. Her columns and books provided diet, fitness, and beauty advice for her readers. She used female Hollywood stars as standards and examples of the body types that readers should strive to achieve. Ullback’s work illustrates an attitude toward physical culture that was unique to the 1930s. This attitude was a shift away from the discussion of reducing in fan magazines of the 1920s toward a common sense based form of reducing and was a reaction to the social and cultural environment of the 1930s. Ullback’s discussion of beauty and health embodied an empowering sentiment for women living during the depression and echoed the New Deal values of hard work, confidence and determination specifically for women. However, this attitude only existed in Hollywood fan magazines for a short period of time, ranging between 1931 to 1936. In the late 1930s, the fan magazines moved away from discussions of physical culture as well as the type of woman that Ullback represented, and consequently she faded away. This thesis examines the content of Ullback’s books and articles in relationship to ideas about women’s bodies in the 1930s. It will add to the scholarship on the history of physical and beauty culture and differ from previous works by exploring the 1930s, an overlooked decade in this historical literature, 1 as well as by exploring the influence of Hollywood as a major factor in the changing standards for women’s bodies. In 1921, Ullback immigrated to the United States from Oslo, Norway with her husband Andrew and two sons. She was thirty-six years old when she arrived and had already worked as a nurse and masseuse for several years in Eastern Europe.1 Bringing her techniques with her, she moved to Chicago with her family and began working as a masseuse. Her first wealthy client was Julius Rosenwald, a businessman and partner in the Sears and Roebuck department store company. The Rosenwald family introduced her to other wealthy clients, including film star Marie Dressler.2 Sometime around 1925, Ullback made the move to Hollywood, California where she began working with movie stars out of her home. Her Eastern European treatments combining diet, exercise, and massage and her work with the stars soon made her a well-known figure. She was the frequent subject of newspaper columns across the country; the discourse that surrounded her focused both on her methods and her life. In 1929, Ullback got a job at Pathé studios, which made her even more famous.3 However, she left in 1930 to open her own shop where she could service stars from all the studios.4 Ullback became the most sought after beauty consultant in Hollywood, which would give her authority in her columns and books when she began writing in the 1930s. In 1931, Ullback published her first book, Hollywood Undressed: Observations of Sylvia as Noted by Her Secretary, which discussed her experiences working with the stars. The book revealed intimate details of her famous Hollywood clients and ultimately angered many with what they viewed as unkind portrayals. For example, Constance 2 Bennett was described as “plainly a product of the metropolis, one of those high-bred, high-strung girls. As restless and jumpy as a flea, the new star seemed to have a horror of being alone.”5 Hollywood Undressed was written from the point