Celluloid dreams: The marketing of Cutex in America, 1916-1935

Journal of Design History

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 175-189

  Forde, Kate ^a  

^a Metropolitan Museum   (United States)

Author keywords

Advertising; Cutex nail polish; J. Walter Thompson Advertising Company; Social construction of technology; United States; Women's history

Indexed keywords

EID: 34249113700     PISSN: 09524649     EISSN: 17417279     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jdh/15.3.175     Document Type: Review

References (30)

1. Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History, Norton & Company, New York/ London, 1948, p. 3.
2. M. Kaufman, The First Century of Plastics: Celluloid and its Sequel, The Plastic Institute, London, 1963, p. 45.
3. Neil Schlager (ed.), How Products Are Made: An Illustrated Guide to Product Manufacturing, Vol. I, Gale Research Inc., Detroit, Washington, DC/London, 1994, p. 299.
4. Jeffrey L. Meikle, Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design In America, 1925-1939, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1979, p. 9. It is impossible to give precise figures for national advertising expenditure around the turn of the century, since statistics by the advertising trade press date back only as far as 1935. Whilst intriguing, the contemporary accounts that survive are far from reliable, as advertising historian Daniel Pope has observed: 'For 1902, a Printers' Ink editorial estimated about $100 million. Two years later, a newspaper article asserted that 1/2 a billion dollars were spent for advertising, but Printers' Ink continued to maintain that outlays were really far below that. Only six months later however, the same publication raised its estimate to one billion dollars.'
5. These and other conflicting reports are discussed at length in Pope's The Making of Modern Advertising, Basic Books, New York, 1983, pp. 18-30.
6. JWT Newsletter, 25 July 1916, p. 4, Newsletter Collection, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
7. See Jennifer Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies' Home Journal, Gender and the Promises of Consumer Culture, Routledge, New York, 1995.
8. Susan J. Douglas, Where the Girls are Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, Penguin, London, 1994, pp. 45-6.
9. In 1987 Burt Manning, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of JWT, moved the company's archives from its offices in New York to the Special Collections Library at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
10. Cutex Account History, 25 February 1926, 16mm Microfilm Research Reports, Reel 38-9, p. 12, JWT Company Archives, John W. Hartman Center.
11. Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture, Henry Holt & Company Inc., New York, 1998, p. 21.
12. Cutex Account History, op. cit., p. 10.
13. Cutex Dealer Investigation in NY and Brooklyn on proposed changes in Cutex sets, 1926, 35 mm Microfilm Research Reports, Reel 338, unpaginated, JWT Company Archives, John W. Hartman Center.
14. John B. Watson, Behaviorism, W. W. Norton & Company Inc., New York, 1925. Watson's landmark publication was dedicated to Stanley B. Resor, JWT's president.
15. Paul T. Cherington, The Consumer Looks at Advertising, Harper & Bros. Publications, New York/London, 1928, p. xiii.
16. JWT Newsletter, January 1925, p. 11, Newsletter Collection, Bulletin Series, JWT Company Archives, John W. Hartman Center.
17. Taylor's influential Principles of Scientific Management, Harper & Bros., New York/London, 1911 advanced the theory of applying scientific principles to human labour, in the name of efficiency.
18. Advertising Club News advertisement, 5 June 1918, SR Bernstein Files, JWT Company Archives, John W. Hartman Center.
19. Helen Resor, Stockholder's Affidavit, March 1924, JWT Archives, cited by Scanlon, op. cit., p. 174.
20. Peiss, op. cit., p. 21.
21. Advertising and Selling, 14 March 1935, p. 10.
22. Sharon H. Strom, Beyond the Typewriter: Gender, Class and the Origins of Modern American Office Work, 1900-1930, 1992, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, p. 65.
23. JWT Newsletter, March 1922, p. 11, Newsletter Collection, Bulletin Series, JWT Company Archives, John W. Hartman Center.
24. Mary Tucker, Perle Dienst, Rebecca Hourwich, Faith Kelley, Frances Maule, Personnel Files, JWT Company Archives, John W. Hartman Center.
25. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986, p. 171.
26. Bela Balazs quoted by Richard Dyer, Stars, British Film Institute, London, 1979, p. 15.
27. Transcription of 14 December 1932 staff meeting, p. 4, Creative Organization Staff Meeting Minutes, JWT Company Archives, John W. Hartman Center.
28. Transcription of 19 March 1932 staff meeting, p. 4, Creative Organization Staff Meeting Minutes, JWT Company Archives, John W. Hartman Center.
29. JWT Newsletter, April 1930, p. 10, Newsletter Collection, Bulletin Series, JWT Company Archives, John W. Hartman Center.
30. Calvin Coolidge, 'Introductory Address to the American Association of Advertising Agencies', in Papers of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, The Ronald Press Company, New York, 1927, p. 14.