100 Years of Lux (and its Hookup with Hollywood)

A century ago this year (1923), the UK-based firm Lever Brothers introduced Lux Soap on the market. Five years later, the J. Walter Thompson agency cooked up an ingenious campaign to get Hollywood starlets to endorse the product, and thus began a successful association with show business and glamor that would last well past the middle of the 20th century. Here’s an early ad with Clara Bow:

And, thanks, Eve Golden, for drawing my attention to this Lupe Velez one:

We’ve chosen October 14 to post on the topic because that’s the day in 1934 that the program Lux Radio Theatre launched. While I’ve done close to 500 posts on old time radio, I’ve written relatively few posts dedicated to specific radio programs (most have been on the stars themselves, as most worked in multiple media). I love old time radio, but most of my listening has naturally been biased in favor of variety programs and sit-coms. But Lux Radio Theatre was truly too major to ignore. It ran for over 20 years, through 1955, putting out well over 900 episodes. I won’t list the actors who appeared on the show, because the concise description is EVERYBODY. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that ALL the Hollywood stars of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s were on the show. The reason why is baked right into the concept of the program. After the first couple of years, during which most of the shows were adaptations of Broadway plays, Cecil B. DeMille took over as host and the show specialized in adaptations of Hollywood movies. Very often, as a promotional gambit, the stars of the actual movies reprised their roles. When schedules did not permit, stars of comparable status were booked. In the era before home video of any sort was available, these adaptations were rated as unbelievably special events. Imagine: the magic of a Hollywood movie (an audio adaptation, anyway) in your own home! During the years CBS carried the show (1936-54), it was broadcast from CBS Radio Playhouse in Hollywood, which is now the Ricardo Montalban Theatre.

From 1950 to 1957 there was also Lux Video Theatre, the television incarnation which initially offered original live dramas but later resorted to doing adaptations of films, as well. A TV version of a movie may seem less special, but you must recall that Hollywood movies themselves were not yet commonly shown on television, as the studios feared (with reason) that doing so would cut into their box office. The hosts of Lux Video Theatre at various times included James Mason, Gordon MacRae, Otto Kruger, and Ken Carpenter. 337 episodes aired.

The last iteration of Lux broadcasts in American living rooms was Lux Playhouse, which alternated with Schlitz Playhouse of Stars on CBS between fall 1958 and fall 1959. It was all around a less stellar affair than what had gone before.

Lux continued print ads with Hollywood actresses into the 1960s, as this one with Natalie Wood indicates. By this point, Unilever (successor to Lever Brothers) introduced Dove Soap, which seems to have replaced Lux in the American market as a mass-produced “beauty” brand, though Lux still flourishes in South Asia, South Africa, and South America — everywhere South. When I think of the ’70s, when I grew up, above all I think of Proctor and Gamble’s “Ivory Girl” campaign. Nowadays, the world is so decentralized, I have no idea what women use on their faces. Dutch Cleanser? Clam broth? Soil-eating microbots?