Helena Rubinstein, the world's first female self-made multimillionaire, once called Australia her "testing ground", Europe her "finishing school" and America her "goldmine".
A century after she launched the global cosmetics revolution, there's a theatrical reprise of her verbal tour d'horizon, with three more or less concurrent productions in Sydney, London and New York looking at her extraordinary life.
Both Sydney and London are staging a new play about Rubinstein by Australian writer John Misto, while in New York the musical War Paint, starring multi-Grammy and Tony Award winner Patti Lupone, had its Broadway premiere on March 7.
In London, Miriam Margolyes (she of Harry Potter, Romeo and Juliet, Age of Innocence) is starring in Madame Rubinstein at the Park Theatre. Previews will start on April 26, followed by a one-month season.
More than four months later, Sydney's Ensemble Theatre will put on the same Misto play, retitled Lip Service, and featuring Amanda (Prisoner) Muggleton in the starring role.
Rubinstein may have been short of stature, but they are big shoes to fill. She wrenched cosmetics out of a Victorian ghetto inhabited by hookers into a "must-have" item for a burgeoning female middle class in America, Europe and Australia. Ironically, the door-opening confidence that cosmetics gave many young women entering the workforce in the 1920s and '30s became the object of a feminist fatwa half a century later.
Business heavyweight
Miriam Margolyes, a dual British and Australian citizen, reflected on Rubinstein's hugely successful but tempestuous life during a recent visit to Sydney. "She was a natural feminist. She got what she wanted," Margolyes said, paused for a moment, then added: "I don't think she's a million miles from me."
Rubinstein was born near Krakow in southern Poland, where Pope John Paul II studied and became a bishop and cardinal. She escaped from her struggling family background by migrating to Australia in 1902. Diminutive at 144.5 centimetres (Margolyes is 147 centimetres), Rubinstein soon showed she was a business heavyweight.
Her family moved to the Victorian Western District town of Coleraine, where she had two uncles. Local women became enthusiastic buyers of her beauty cream. For this Rubinstein relied on lanolin – the grease-like substance secreted by sheep – which was in abundant local supply.
She moved to Melbourne, found a backer, launched her creme Valaze line, and at the same time developed a highly successful line of fantasy PR by claiming the creme included herbs imported from the Carpathian Mountains in central Europe. This became the Helena Rubinstein formula – glamorous packaging, pseudo skin "science" and high mark-ups to emphasise the "glamour" – that conquered the world.
New York headquarters
After enjoying stunning success in Melbourne and Sydney, Rubinstein opened a salon in London and then moved to New York, where she headed her booming global cosmetics empire.
"She was enormously important in the development of the cosmetics industry. It didn't really exist until she harnessed her energies. Her own company was up there for many years, and the brand placed enormous importance on the 'science' of cosmetics," Margolyes says.
But she also had competition. The musical War Paint in New York is based on a 2004 book with the same title by Lindy Woodhead, and focuses on the intense rivalry in the '50s between Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden.
The latter was the daughter of a poor Canadian horse trainer and farmer who presented her cosmetics as emblems of an exclusive, Hamptons-style, WASP-ordained upper-class life. By contrast, Helena Rubinstein emphasised science while promoting exclusivity through stylish packaging and high mark-ups.
After decades at the top of her game, Rubinstein died in 1965 aged 92.
"She interpreted the world entirely in her own eyes," says Margolyes. "She wasn't interested in other people."
