The story of Maksymilian Faktorowicz is a story about determination, talent and a unique sense of beauty, which allowed him to conquer the tsarist court, and later the global film and cosmetic industry.
It all begins in Zduńska Wola, where in 1877 Maksymilian Faktorowicz is born as one of ten children in a poor Jewish family. He quickly loses his mother. The father, working in the Łódź textile factories, is rarely at home. Maksymiliana mainly raises siblings.
Already as a seven -year -old he takes his first job – he sells candies and fruits in the hall of the theater in Łódź. Remembering this time, he will say that it was a “introduction to the world of fantasy.” When he turns eight, he works as a midfielder of a local pharmacist. He is fascinated by the world of smells, colors and mixtures.
First full -time – “Service of love”
Shortly after the ninth birthday, he begins to study with the Łódź Perucoon and cosmetics manufacturer. For four years, he learns to bind and weave human hair in wigs, laying hairstyles and produce cosmetics. He does makeup for local actresses. “Service of beautiful” – as he calls it – becomes his first full -time job.
The experience gained allows him to join the team of the famous stylist of hairstyles and make -up specialist Anton from Berlin. This work quickly leads him to Moscow, where as a fourteen -year -old he is employed with a wig and cosmetologist of the opera at the Bolshoi Theater. For the next four years he works as a makeup artist and boy “from everything”.
At the age of eighteen, according to Russian law, Faktorowicz is appointed to serve in the army. He spends four years in the hospital corps, where he is a nurse. “I didn't like it, but I learned a lot” – he will mention later.
Career in a golden cage
After completing the military service, he opens a shop in the suburbs of Moscow, producing its own cosmetics and wigs. It is not known how his fate would continue, were it not for the fact that the corpse of the actors, who delighted with his products, come back to him, and finally pull him back to the theater, from where he goes to the court of the tsar. There he provides cosmetic and pharmacy services for the tsarist family and ladies of the court.
At the tsarist court Faktorowicz lives in luxury. But wealth has its price. “It is enough that I asked for something, I got it immediately – he will remember – but I lived like a slave. I only wanted freedom.” According to the strict tsarist ordinance, Maksymilian cannot leave the palace without an escort. “Whenever I left, I was watching a dozen people. I didn't have my own life. I was only a creature that is to embellish the court.”
The situation gets complicated when Estera Róża goes to his store. They begin to meet. In secret, because the next principle of the Tsar's Car's court is a ban on binding and marriages among his service. So Esther and Maksymilian have an hour a week. She sneaks out of her friend's house, he is waiting for her in the store before which she stands a carriage with tsarist guards.
Despite the risk, in 1986 Estera and Maksymilian get married. After the wedding, they still see each other once a week. They keep their relationship in secret. It is long enough that only when the second pogrom of Jews begins in Russia (1903), Maks confide in a friendly general, with fear of his wife and … three of their children. With his support and thanks to his make -up talent, the Faktorowicz who simulates the disease is delegated to the spa in the Czech Republic. A family is waiting for him there.
Road to freedom
As one version says, the family runs under the cover of night, through the forests, until it reaches the port from which the ship goes to America. In 1904, after a long journey, Maksymilian joins his brother and uncle in St. Louis, Missouri. During the inspection at Ellis Island, an American immigration clerk, by mistake or too much pronunciation problems, changes his name to Max Factor.
In St. Louis is just taking place, at which Max with a partner met on the ship sells its products. Unfortunately, a partner escapes without a trace with the money earned. Without giving up, Max opens the male hairdresser, which begins to bring income.
Soon after, Esther dies unexpectedly. Max is left alone with four children. He marries again, but the second marriage quickly ends in divorce. Eventually, he marries his neighbor, Jennie Cook, who helps him raise five children. They have one more together.
American dream: from a street stall to empire
In 1908, Max Factor moves with his family to Los Angeles, where he opens a shop similar to that in Moscow – “Max Factor's Antiseptic Hair Store”. This is the perfect moment – the beginnings of the film industry. At this time, the actors are responsible for their make -up. Factor offers its services as a street makeup artist. His stand quickly becomes the most crowded in the area.
He remembers fatal make -up from the first film screenings. At that time, actors often use the cottage specifics shot in the cottage method, which consists of petroleum jelly, flour and starch. Sometimes peppers for color. The bolder reach for crushed brick.
Cosmetics that work well on the theater boards look tragic in the film. Under the influence of facial expressions, they weigh and crumble. Factor develops its own recipes for light and durable foundations in twelve shades. They wash as easily as they apply. “No mask effect”. For this they are packed in practical tubes.
Max Factor and actress Dorothy Wilson in the apparatus for measuring facial proportion
Artist, innovator, genius
It is 1914, and Max Factor's products are unrivaled. However, he does not settle on his laurels – it constantly improves its cosmetics, introducing innovations that change the industry. It is to him that we owe the formula of liquid foundation, lip gloss, abrasion-resistant lipstick in a stick, or artificial eyelashes, and even the very term “make-up”.
It also creates perfect, realistic -looking wigs from human hair, replacing the used materials such as hay, wool or mattress fillings. When director Cecil B. Demille, filmmaker The Squaw Manhe considers them too expensive, Factor agrees to their rental, setting a condition: his sons will appear in the film as statists, who will be responsible for their safety. They get three dollars of days for this double role.
Max Factor has an extraordinary talent for understanding the technical aspects of cinema. He knows that the film emulsion has a different color than the human eye, which is why it adapts the shades of cosmetics to the requirements of modern film production. When in the 1920s sound films force the use of new, lighter tungsten lamps that heat up harder, Factor develops a high temperature resistant foundation and changing lighting conditions.
In 1929, Max Factor receives a special award – an Oscar for characterization, which makes him a pioneer in this field before this category is officially created a few years later.
Although Maksymilian believes that his cosmetics should remain the domain of the film world, his son Frank has a wider vision. He convinces his father in the production of the Society Make-up line-cosmetics inspired by the Hollywood style, but intended for the wide women's market. In 1928, Max Factor & Company already employs 250 employees.
Another breakthrough turns out to be “Pan-Cake”-a foundation in the form of a pressed powder applied with a damp sponge, created in 1935 especially for colored films. The product impresses the woman so much that it regularly disappears from film plans. In 1938 he goes on retail, becoming one of the best -selling cosmetics of his era.
Takeover
When Maksymilian undergoes a car accident, his son Frank takes over the company. After his father's death in 1938, Frank became the president of the company. He even changes its name to Max to maintain brand consistency.
Max Factor Junior. He continues his father's heritage by introducing further innovative products. In 1947, he was developing the first waterproof makeup, and in 1948 he formed mascara with an applicator in the form of a brush. It also produces camouflage cosmetics for the American army.
Max Factor was responsible for the characterization of the biggest cinema stars: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Marlena Dietrich, Poli Negri, John Wayne and Frank Sinatra. It was him that Rita Hayworth owed her red curls, and Jean Harlow is a platinum blonde. The special yellow shade of the foundation, soothing Rudolph Valentino's “exotic” beauty, opened the door to the actor to the role of Amanta. Without his innovative look, both the cosmetics industry and the film industry would not look the same.
