The celebrity endorsement so popular today was big business for women of a certain age in the nineteenth century. According to Leslie Midkiff DeBauche’s Testimonial Advertising Using Movie Stars in the 1910s: How Billie Burke Came to Sell Pond’s Vanishing Cream in 1917 : “A survey of the advertising in the Ladies’ Home Journal shows that in the 1890s spokespersons were usually women, mainly in their thirties or forties. They included actresses, like Julia Marlowe who was in her thirties and had gained prominence performing the respectable Shakespearean repertoire. She endorsed a shirt waist made by Schlesinger & Mayer, Freeman’s Face Powder, a book, entitled “A Bride and a Bridle,” with its attendant engravings and both “Julia Marlowe” shoes and oxfords made by the Rich Shoe Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”
Playing cards (below) were a popular endorsement as well.
People collected cabinet card photos of celebrities.
Julia endorsed Freeman’s Face Powder as well.
Julia endorsed books
and candies
cigars
Nerve tonic Peruna
Julia endorsed “harmless” remedy Orangeine, along with co-endorser (then-actress) future decorator extraordinaire Elsie de Wolfe.
Julia’s paper doll line
Julia’s cigarette endorsement
Julia’s endorsement income went to good use, funding her country home Highmount in the Catskills
Was it her acting that fueled Julia’s endorsements or the endorsements that kept the theaters packed? Either way, Jennifer Aniston and Sophia Vegara together can’t come close to Julia when it comes to endorsements.
