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