The blatant betrayal that erased the Tupperware queen from history

11:43Alison Clarke:Allison says this magical domestic bliss that Brownie Wise was writing about in the late 1930s and 40s as hibiscus, it was nowhere close to her real life. I, because I was fortunate enough to be born an American, can plan color schemes and landscaping for a new home.

12:01Bob Kealing:She obviously constructed imaginary worlds to survive.

12:05Alison Clarke:Soon after Brownie moved to Detroit with her husband in the late 1930s, things got ugly.

12:10Bob Kealing:He was a drunk and violent and kind of every other stereotype of the neglectful husband.

12:18Alison Clarke:Determined to make a better life for her and her young son, Brownie divorced her husband in 1941. This was still somewhat taboo at the time, but she'd seen it play out. And she knew that sometimes you've got to seek your fortunes alone.

12:32Bob Kealing:Brownie Wise was a lonely child. Her parents divorced when she was very young.

12:38Alison Clarke:This is Bob Keeling. He's the author of Life of the Party, the remarkable story of how Brownie Wise built and lost a Tupperware Party empire.

12:46Bob Kealing:She was raised by a strong-willed mother who would go out on the road and give speeches for the hat makers union.

12:54Alison Clarke:Brownie's mother worked at a local hat maker's shop, and after getting involved with her local union, she became a full-time labor organizer, promoting unionization and supporting strikes.

13:04Bob Kealing:She took Brownie with her, and Brownie showed a real proclivity towards being able to motivate people.

13:12Alison Clarke:By the age of 14, Brownie was on the road, giving motivational speeches to workers alongside her mother. She learned grit, self-confidence, and faith in the power of hard work. And so after her own divorce, Brownie got down to it. She picked up a job as a secretary and continued writing and peddling the domestic dream as hibiscus.

13:32Bob Kealing:Just trying to make money for her son and herself.

13:36Alison Clarke:But she wanted, she needed more than the minimum. And opportunity came knocking at her door, quite literally.

13:44Bob Kealing:One day, she gets a knock on the door from a traveling salesman from Stanley Home Products.

13:53Alison Clarke:Door-to-door salesmen were almost a daily thing around this time, showing housewives how his vacuum would work on this very rug or how the most stubborn stains could vanish with new, improved products.

14:06Bob Kealing:An array of cleaners, detergents, floor waxes, basic utilitarian products.

14:12Alison Clarke:And Brownie was really not buying it.

14:16Bob Kealing:The sales rep for Stanley Home Products gave her a pitch that was fumbling enough to where she really, she said later, you know, I could do better than that.

14:26Alison Clarke:She's watching this man like, hold on a minute. I would be great at this. I could do this. So she did. She signed up to start selling Stanley Home Products.

14:36Bob Kealing:In June of 1947, so just after World War II, she received her first Stanley Speakers kit and an outline of an effective speaking course.

14:49Alison Clarke:Right as many American women retreated into the suburbs and left the workforce, Brownie dove in.

14:55Bob Kealing:Stanley had this primitive first version of the home party where like the salesman would set up a card table and invite women to come over. And it was just the opportunity to get out of the house.

15:10Alison Clarke:Women were still watching simple demonstrations and trying to spend wisely. But now in the company of other women, picture pearls, kitten heels, light refreshments. And Brownie went all in on the home parties.

15:25Bob Kealing:Really, that's the genius. That's the vision of Brownie Wise.

15:29Alison Clarke:Her home parties tapped into the world she had created as hibiscus. She pitched products that promised women a life that was a bit easier, freer from drudgery, and a chance to spend time with friends while still technically contributing to their household. Before long, Brownie went from a seller at Stanley to a dealer overseeing a group of sellers, to a top dealer in the country.

15:52Bob Kealing:You could not ask too much, apparently, of Brownie to make sure that her dealers and her unit were the highest performing of all.

16:02Alison Clarke:Brownie honed her superpower of selling a possibility, a vision. Sure, she was pushing floor wax and hairbrushes, but she was also recruiting more sellers, mostly women, to join her crew. And she knew how to encourage them with something they really valued.

16:18Bob Kealing:It was recognition. She came up with this go-getter newsletter, which was one of the things to motivate these folks to try to compete to get what was even more important to many of these women than money.

16:34Alison Clarke:The value of recognition. Brownie knew it because that's what she wanted. And she was doing so well for Stanley Home Products that she thought she deserved more. She should be in management.

16:45Bob Kealing:It just never seemed to occur to her that her growth in any endeavor could be stunted because she happened to be a woman.

16:53Alison Clarke:So when she saw a chance to ask for that recognition, to ask for a promotion, a little over a year into her Stanley career, she took it.

17:03Bob Kealing:Stanley had this notion of the annual pilgrimage, where the sales force would go back to the home offices and learn all these different strategies of how best to sell the product and just new ideas. And at that time, Brownie, who was uber ambitious in this new line of work, actually met with Frank Stanley Beverage.

17:28Alison Clarke:The founder of Stanley Home Products. Not one to ever shy away, Brownie took her pitch straight to the top.

17:35Bob Kealing:And Stanley Beverage basically said, management's no place for a woman. She was doing everything she could to maximize her sales. working endless hours, and then bam, hits that glass ceiling. And it seemed to really take her off guard. When I interviewed her son, Jerry, he remembered his mother returning, really upset. And she vowed to her son, I'll show him.

18:08Alison Clarke:Brownie did not know exactly how she would triumph, but then...

18:12Bob Kealing:She discovers these luminous plastic bowls that have the airtight seal just like a paint can.

18:19Alison Clarke:Brownie found herself holding a groundbreaking new product from an up-and-coming company, Tupperware. It was called the Wonder Bowl.

18:30Bob Kealing:Her young protege, Gary McDonald, discovered it sitting on an apartment store shelf in Detroit. And he says to himself, that could be a really cool home demonstration product. So he bought it, took it home to Brownie, showed her. And Brownie's fidgeting with the seal as well. And she goes, oh, you have to burp it just like a baby. And at one point, she seals it and drops it on the floor, but it bounces. Because it's this new type of plastic product that was not brittle.

19:11Alison Clarke:Before the war, plastic was industrial, breakable, chemical smelling. But Tupperware was made from a new kind of plastic altogether. A material called polyethylene, or poly-T. Not just durable, but soft and flexible. It felt like a product of the future.

19:28Bob Kealing:It's hard to imagine a time when Americans did not know of Tupperware. But this is the time we're talking about still, just after World War II. So you had to, you know, the fact that someone is coming with these products for their food to stay fresh longer, boy, the timing was perfect.

19:48Alison Clarke:The idea was to help families save money by vacuum sealing food to keep it lasting longer. Tupperware's special burp-the-air-out lids worked much better than, say, waxed paper or glass jars. But this food storage revolution was not clear when the Wonder Bowl sat on a store shelf. People didn't know how to use it. The product was actually completely doomed as an invention. But not if Brownie Wise could help it. She was still upset with Stanley Home Products for clipping her managerial ambitions, and she started replacing her inventory of Stanley products with Tupperware. Eventually, it was almost all Tupperware, and she coined an amazing sales trick for the Wonder Bowl.

20:34Bob Kealing:One of the dramatic demonstrations she would give is she would fill the bowl with grape juice, seal it, and then throw it across the room. And it would usually be someone's family room and nice carpet and all this stuff. And of course, everybody's aghast. And then it bounces and not a drop comes out.

20:56Alison Clarke:It was a gimmick, but it worked.

20:59Bob Kealing:And she started racking up big numbers to the point where Tupper's like, what is going on out here?

21:06Alison Clarke:And big numbers were big numbers. In 1949, Brownie bought more than$86 ,000 worth of plasticware from Tupperware's factory. Today, that would be the equivalent of more than$1 million worth of bowls and storage containers. Brownie was buying it and distributing to other dealers, putting Tupperware in kitchens all over Michigan. Meanwhile, in New England, the Wonder Bowl's inventor, Earl Tupper, was looking at his sales numbers going, how is this one woman selling so much Tupperware? So he sent someone to meet her and make her an official part of the Tupperware company.

21:43Bob Kealing:That's when things really start to skyrocket.

21:49Alison Clarke:Coming up, Brownie Wise climbs the ranks to make Earl Tupper's invention a must-have sensation.

21:59Bob Kealing:Hello, my name is Miranda Berger calling from Seattle, Washington. You are listening to 3Line.

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23:18Alison Clarke:Part 2. Mink Coats and Diamond Rings

23:22Bob Kealing:How many of you have said to yourselves, if I could only find some way to keep foods fresher longer. Haven't you wished for unspillable containers that wouldn't break?

23:32Alison Clarke:This is from an early 1950s Tupperware brochure that explained how to give a demonstration at a Tupperware party.

23:39Bob Kealing:I'm here to show you modern dishes for modern living, which will save you time and money. I think Tupperware parties were interesting because it was definitely the hostess imbuing her home with her kind of charisma.

23:59Alison Clarke:This is Alison Clark, author of Tupperware, The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America.

24:05Bob Kealing:A warm smile here, you're making friends. Talk to the entire group, draw them into your circle. And this could be a woman who had never actually publicly spoken prior to being involved in Tupperware. So here she was in the middle of her living room presenting, and she has an audience probably for the first time in her life. The most outstanding feature is the Tupper seal. And she has the backup of a corporation and a product. Press hard in the middle of the seal with one hand. Keep it conversational. And at the same time, lift the edge just enough to let the air out. There. Did you hear it? It was important that you would demonstrate it properly.

24:49Alison Clarke:This is Bob Keeling, author of Life of the Party. That you would put it out to where people would see this is new, this is different, this is attractive.

25:00Bob Kealing:Use your Wonder Bowls for making jello and puddings and for leftover potatoes. The items would be passed around for people to touch and feel, but importantly, one could also, as a hostess, make recipes. And dishes to be served in the Tupperware to show you how great they were, kind of pineapple upside down cake that popped out of a Wonder Bowl. So it was all very orchestrated to give the best possible impression to the homemakers looking to stretch the family budget. I hope you'll be invited to another party soon. Or perhaps you'll be a hostess yourself. The Tupperware Party was different culturally because it was about being modern and being part of a new consumer culture.

25:46Bob Kealing:And it was cool to have a Tupperware Party down your street. And it's easy to forget that in the contemporary context, that they were kind of cutting edge and to go to one was had cachet.

25:59Alison Clarke:Women who agreed to host a Tupperware party usually received little gifts from the seller, if the evening went well, incentives like a set of knives or a silver tray.

26:07Bob Kealing:They were definitely about creating a sisterly environment where people felt that it wasn't just buying. If they were buying products in the party, they were actually helping out the hostess because she would then receive gifts. So there was a whole kind of network and social relations going on that were about helping each other.

26:30Alison Clarke:But the parties also dug into something deeper. It was a way for women to earn money on their own without threatening their husbands or society in general. Hello, this is Brownie Wise. Tupperware is rolling out the red carpet of welcome to women who want to supplement their family income or who must earn enough to support a family. After being recruited to join Tupperware, Brownie Wise moved to Florida to oversee all of the sales in the Sunshine State. She kept perfecting the Tupperware party and routinely selling out. The factory could not keep up.

27:06Bob Kealing:She's getting really frustrated. And she's had to complain multiple times. And finally, she's like, OK, I am done with this. and she called up the home office and she demanded to speak to Earl Tupper. And he gets on the phone and she's like, this is Brownie Wise in South Florida. And Earl is like, I know who you are.

27:32Alison Clarke:Earl Tupper, the creator of Tupperware, grew up wanting to be an inventor. He had many failed creations, including pants that don't crease and a boat powered by fish. but it's a job at a DuPont plastics factory that changed his life. After the war, he got a bunch of polyethylene, a wartime material that DuPont could not find a use for in peacetime.

27:53Bob Kealing:He would be at his plastic molding machine, 10, 15, according to his son, even 20 hours a day trying to figure out, okay, I have this waste product. What could I do with it to come up with something that is useful and I could make money from.

28:13Alison Clarke:Earl figured out Dupont's trouble. They'd made the plastic stiff, and he kept it soft. He molded it into the beautiful, translucent Wonder Bowl. It won design awards. He patented the special ceiling lid. It was food storage like you had never seen before. And then came this phone call from this high-energy woman complaining that her parties were selling Tupperware faster than Tupper could manufacture it.

28:39Bob Kealing:People didn't usually dress down Earl Tupper like that.

28:42Alison Clarke:The two of them could not have been more different. It's like the yin and the yang.

28:48Bob Kealing:Tupper was very sort of Spartan and straightforward New Englander. Didn't take, you know, not a lot of backtalk here. He's the boss. He didn't like the razzle-dazzle of the home parties, and he doesn't want to have his picture taken in publicity photos and that kind of thing. And Brownie Wise was seen as probably a little brash because she wore incredibly bright colours, bright lipstick. It clearly came from a completely different cultural background. So there'd be pictures of Altupper showing Brownie Wise, all very, very glamorous with amazing hairstyle and beautiful clothes, a handful of plastic pellets.

29:27Bob Kealing:And it very much looked like she was the kind of queen and given a kind of offering from this slightly dowdy inventor.

29:37Alison Clarke:As Brownie's influence and sales grew, Earl Tupper recommended that his company bring her into the executive suite. And in 1951, Brownie Wise became the vice president of marketing, one of the very few female executives of her time.

29:54Bob Kealing:Brownie, just this little line to be sure you know I appreciate what a whale of a job you're doing in spite of all the many problems. It's the first time I've ever had anyone so good on my team. Believe me, it's a good feeling.

30:09Alison Clarke:Tupperware essentially split into a plastics manufacturing business run by Earl and the home party sales business run by Brownie. He brought the designs, she brought the razzmatazz. Business started flying. On her 40th birthday, Earl sent Brownie a gift. a five-year-old Palomino horse named Golden.

30:31Bob Kealing:She was finally bringing his baby to the world. And that was everything to him.

30:38Alison Clarke:And the other thing she was bringing was a clear understanding of who would fuel Tupperware's success.

30:45Bob Kealing:She believed in women and empowering themselves.

30:49Alison Clarke:Brownie understood that recruiting women to become sellers was a delicate act. Do you need money? Do you want an automatic dishwasher, a new car, or perhaps a piano for your children? Often a woman would have had to convince her husband that he would still be the breadwinner, while her earnings would just be extra, the icing on the cake. If she sold enough Tupperware, she could win a Disney trip for the kids or a car for the family. We are in competition with husbands who would prefer not to have their wives work outside their home, even though the family income needs to be supplemented. And as Brownie's letters to Earl Tupper show, she knew what she was up against.

31:32Alison Clarke:We are competing with the natural fear of a woman with no sales experience. The fear that she cannot accomplish the unknown.

31:40Bob Kealing:So it was very much, was an oppressive culture of homemaking and that women's roles should be in the home.

31:49Alison Clarke:This is the woman, mind you, who regularly transacts dozens of sales a day. She sells her husband on leaving the car at home that morning so she can shop. She sells the butcher on a good steak cut. So Brownie's task was twofold. She needed to sell Tupperware and she needed to convince other women to do the same. A housewife with three children who had no previous sales experience.

32:14Bob Kealing:You can do exactly what she did. Join the thousands of Tupperware dealers working part-time or full-time who are paying off mortgages, sending their children to college, or buying furniture for their homes.

32:29Alison Clarke:Earl Tupper had little interest in interacting with the sellers, or the shoppers for that matter. He wanted to tinker and invent.

32:37Bob Kealing:Brownie is one of the few persons I've met that I could feel confident about on all scores, right from the start. She's completely unselfish. A business like ours needs that. But I didn't dream anyone could find a person so good.

32:51Alison Clarke:So Brownie presided over the Tupperware headquarters in Florida from her perch on a peacock chair. At one point, the company hired a marketing firm that declared that Brownie was Tupperware's secret sauce, a female success story for women to look up to.

33:09Bob Kealing:She's the first woman on the front cover of Business Week in 1954 with the slogan, if we build the people, they'll build the business.

33:18Alison Clarke:On this historic cover, Brownie, with perfectly styled hair and a double strand of pearls, holds a block of polyethylene as a nod to Tupperware's origin. But in the article, the writer minced no words about Earl Tupper's role in the company. Nominally, he is president of the sales company. Actually, Brownie Wise has just about carte blanche to run the organization. In a fold-out photo spread, Brownie is gifting one saleswoman a brand new Ford. Then she's pretending to wear a Tupperware bowl like a bonnet on her head. And then she's tossing a Tupperware container full of plastic poly tea pellets into a pond at the headquarters.

33:59Alison Clarke:She called it Polypond and said its water brought good luck.

34:03Bob Kealing:She was a kind of cult leader. There are people that are like, you know, Tupperware's like a religion to me. Being the chief cheerleader and motivator, she would travel a lot to all these different locations, going as far as Hawaii to have a Tupperware party and awarded prizes and gave recognition to the highest performing dealers to stoke the fires of competition among the Tupperware faithful. The women especially wanted to get their picture taken with brownie.

34:35Alison Clarke:They would compete to win her dresses even. In 1951, when Brownie took the helm, Tupperware had 200 sellers. By the time of the Businessweek cover, there were 9 ,000 of them, almost entirely women. Company sales tripled in that time, to an estimated$25 million.

34:54Bob Kealing:One of the important things about her as well is that she wasn't business trained. It was emotion. It was her emotion and her experience as a woman that created the kind of Tupperware culture. People must see an opportunity before they can take advantage of it. This is the spirit of Tupperware. Open the door for someone else, won't you? I managed to meet Brownie Wise in the late 80s. And within seconds, I was completely enthralled by her. I would have been one of her disciples at the top of a hat. She was so incredible. She told me to reach for the stars and anything could be mine. And I was completely converted.

35:37Bob Kealing:I could really see how she would transform other women's lives, that they would find recognition from her and belief in themselves. She was magical.

35:48Alison Clarke:And what better way to fuel those beliefs than a big old party?

35:52Bob Kealing:The Jubilees became the annual celebration.

35:57Alison Clarke:I'm sorry, not a party, a Jubilee. Part convention, part training, part corporate retreat, and altogether a celebration of Tupperware's high-performing sellers.

36:09Bob Kealing:Once Tupperware established their home party headquarters down on the Orange Blossom Trail south of Orlando, they really were the magic kingdom before Disney.

36:20Alison Clarke:You never knew what could happen at a Tupperware Jubilee. You could get a Cadillac and you could get a Cadillac.

36:26Bob Kealing:So the Jubilees were just these incredible extravaganzas. So burying underground mink coats, diamond rings, and then having women dressed as cowboys and Indians, as they were described in the 1950s, with spades, dig up these commodities from the ground.

36:47Alison Clarke:Literally digging for treasure. And whatever you found, you got to keep.

36:51Bob Kealing:These were gifts that belonged to a different kind of lifestyle. And no man was going to give you that, realistically, however much you dreamed of it. So here you were, empowering yourself.

37:04Bob Kealing:It was a way to stoke the fires of esprit de corps. And Brownlee, at the end of these sessions, they would have graduation for these people who've attended these training sessions.

37:22Bob Kealing:Very formal and dramatic with candlelight and music. And they would go there and sing songs like, I've got that Tupper feeling down in my heart.

37:36Bob Kealing:So it was just a way for people to have a sense of belonging, to be motivated, and for them to maybe get some recognition from Brownie in person, which was the big deal. And they could be part of the Tupperware magic and dip their hand in polypool that was blessed with a handful of polyethylene pellets and they would get even more of the Tupperware magic.

38:00Alison Clarke:At first, when women started earning real money as sellers, Tupperware's subversive domesticity might have meant husbands helping with childcare or washing dishes. Eventually, the husband started packing orders and getting involved. Many successful dealers were couples. The higher in Tupperware you went, the fewer women there were.

38:21Bob Kealing:I think it is a fair criticism that Brownie didn't bring along other women into the managerial ranks along with her.

38:29Alison Clarke:She did not drop the ladder, as they say.

38:32Bob Kealing:No, she didn't. She enjoyed being the central figure, and that became something of a metastatic problem as she got more and more publicity and started to feel like she was infallible. and that's when the trouble started.

38:49Alison Clarke:Coming up, Brownie hits her own plastic ceiling.

38:58Bob Kealing:Aloha.

38:59Alison Clarke:This is Avalon from Waikoloa, Hawaii, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. This message comes from Whole Foods Market. What's in your kid's lunchbox? At Whole Foods Market, they've already done the studying. Over 300 food ingredients are banned from their shelves. No hydrogenated fats in the peanut butter, and no high-fructose corn syrup in the cookies. And for sandwiches, there are no synthetic nitrates or nitrites in any of their deli meat, so you can pack lunchboxes with peace of mind. Get back to school ready at Whole Foods Market. This message comes from Instacart. Instacart knows not all bananas are created equal.

39:38Alison Clarke:Some want them green, some ripe, some want them ready right now. With Instacart's preference picker, available at most retailers, you can choose preferences like avocado ripeness or deli thickness before your shopper starts. So instead of hoping for the best, you get groceries picked the way you would pick them. Download the app and get bananas just how you like with Instacart. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at waltonfamilyfoundation.org.

40:15Alison Clarke:Part 3. Uncontainable.

40:22Bob Kealing:November 12, 1957. Dear Brownie, I hate to be critical, but I thought you followed my thinking about the use of Tupperware for a dog-feeding dish. The nail in the coffin of Brownie Wise's tenure as vice president was her suggestion that Earl Tupper should design a non-slip wonder bowl for dogs.

40:46Alison Clarke:This is Alison Clark, author of Tupperware, The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America.

40:52Bob Kealing:I never saw a dog's or cat's dish at a back door or anywhere that looked appetizing. And in a memo, he describes that someone visited her house and had seen a Wonder Bowl actually being used by her dog. And that how could this be possible that she would denigrate a piece of Tupperware for the use of an animal? When it's a dish that is normally associated with human food storage and serving, I think it scars the mind of any user or potential user who sees it. It's very much about how Earl Tupper saw this beautiful, profane, holy object being defaced and denigrated. And Brownie Wise was just seeing a practical kind of sales opportunity of selling Tupperware dog bowls.

41:40Bob Kealing:It's bad at your house of all places. Don't you agree? Cordially, Earl S. Tupper. So it was the dog bowl that really led to Brownie's final demise.

41:55Alison Clarke:But tensions had already been rising between Brownie Wise and Earl Tupper, the inventor of Tupperware, months before this incident. May 26, 1957. On April 29, I received a memo from you to the effect that you were embarrassed that you had neither received a copy of this book, nor have you seen fit to discuss with me how you wished to handle its promotion. In 1957, Brownie published a book, a sort of memoir, called Best Wishes. Women and wishes just seem to go together. I certainly agree that they do.

42:29Bob Kealing:And it was just some of her homespun philosophy that she had learned from her mother and her grandmother about the importance of wishing and all of this. Earl Tupper saw it, and his male executive saw it, as an ego out of control, that this was a woman who did not know her place and was overstepping. The idea that his beautiful Tupperware product could be supplanted by this extravagant, flamboyant, consumer-frenzied, filled woman was horrifying to him. And that became a problem.

43:05Alison Clarke:This is Bob Keeling. He's the author of Life of the Party, the remarkable story of how Brownie Wise built and lost a Tupperware party empire.

43:12Bob Kealing:And he said, I didn't even know that you were doing this book. You didn't even think to send this to me. and that was a big strain.

43:21Alison Clarke:And Brownie was not having it.

43:27Alison Clarke:Let's take the first point, that you didn't receive a copy. At the time you wrote that memo, no one had received a copy. Her letter goes on and on. Did you have in mind that I was spending a lot of time on the promotion of something personal? That I was planning to get rich on this book? And on. That I was using the machinery and sales force of THP to increase the book's sales? If so, and it sounds that way, I am surprised at you.

43:57Bob Kealing:And you see Brownie's response is quite defensive, and there are several words that are typed all in capital letters.

44:07Alison Clarke:Earl started inserting himself more and more into the operations through a constant barrage of memos, phone calls, and teletypes, seemingly less out of fear about the product and more about Brownie Wise.

44:20Bob Kealing:And I think once she became more and more charismatic and powerful within the corporation, it seemed like the product would not survive without her. It's just this avalanche of publicity where it's like, oh yeah, you know, Brownie's the center of it. I think that's when it became problematic because the entire empire was built on her shoulders. I think that he saw her as being uncontainable.

44:47Alison Clarke:Earl and Brownie started fighting over everything.

44:50Bob Kealing:From your recent conduct, you seem to resist coming up here. There can be no justification for refusal or unreasonable delay.

44:58Alison Clarke:Since I'm president of the corporation and no business can be conducted unless there is respect for authority, won't you please recognize that fact? This letter is about as friendly as a mad dog and about as helpful as a first-class case of leprosy. I have read this letter over a dozen times. It is unbelievable. I can't help but wonder if you read it over even once before you sent it. And just a few weeks after the dog bowl incident came the big fiasco.

45:30Bob Kealing:Yes, this is Jubilee 1957, the Tupperware homecoming jubilee, called by many the most unusual sales convention in the world.

45:40Alison Clarke:Brownie had a private island right off the Tupperware headquarters. It was a little oasis, so she invited the guests of the Jubilee to come over.

45:49Bob Kealing:She decided it would be a good idea to have a luau for the top performing dealers, distributors, hundreds of people. So the night she did that, July of 57, she had forgotten one very important aspect of what it was like to be outside in central Florida in the summer.

46:15Bob Kealing:thunderstorms would roll in you could set your watch by it and that's exactly what happened

46:24Alison Clarke:and if you remember the infamous fire festival back in 2017 and how that ended

46:30Bob Kealing:people could not get off the island there was really no cover there were boat accidents people were injured, hospitalized. Meanwhile, Brownie went home and left the evacuation effort to others.

46:57Alison Clarke:Almost two dozen people ended up in the hospital. Some of them sued. By that time, Tupper had had it.

47:05Bob Kealing:and just the rapid expansion of this company was starting to take a physical toll on him. So after this confluence of events, he decides to sell and sell the company. And it's clear to him that Brownie Wise would be a liability. It was the sense that she had taken her eye off the ball and that the celebrity had really gotten to her.

47:30Alison Clarke:And so Earl decided it was time for Tupperware without Brownie.

47:34Bob Kealing:She ended up suing the company for over a million dollars, and they settled with her for$30 ,000.

47:41Alison Clarke:Brownie did not own her house. She had no stock or stake in Tupperware. There was no Farewell Jubilee. so hundreds of copies that were left over of her book best wishes tupper ordered that a big hole

48:00Bob Kealing:be dug on tupperware property and that they be dumped in there and buried and he also ordered everyone not to acknowledge her existence at all once she was let go as we would say now you know She was pretty much canceled. She was obliterated from the corporate history. Her erasure is incredibly effective, which is why when I first started my research, people would only talk about her in hushed tones.

48:30Alison Clarke:The same year Brownie left...

48:33Bob Kealing:Earl Tupper sells the company to Rexall Drugs for$16 million.

48:38Alison Clarke:Brownie got no money from the sale. Earl cashed out, divorced his wife, moved to Central America, and renounced his U.S. citizenship so he would not owe any U.S. taxes. When he died in the 1980s, obituaries credited him alone with Tupperware's success. As for Brownie, she tried selling cosmetics and dabbled in real estate, but she was never able to recapture the stardom that she had with Tupperware.

49:07Bob Kealing:At one point in the late 80s, she was invited back, but they wanted to script everything she was going to say, and she politely declined. So she never really did have the homecoming many would say she deserved.

49:20Alison Clarke:Brownie passed away in 1992. At the age of 79, she was buried in a plain grave. There's no razzle-dazzle, no markings to reflect the role she played in so many women's lives. And Tupperware, having lost both of its pioneering parents, just kept going.

49:39Bob Kealing:So they then just imitated Brownie Wise's culture. They carried on doing the Jubilees. She'd already got all the apparatus in force.

49:47Alison Clarke:Tupperware products traveled to space. They sat in the cupboard of Queen Elizabeth. But Brownie died before her name got restored to Tupperware's official history. In 2016, the company donated$200 ,000 to develop a park by its headquarters. named after Brownie Wise. But by then, Tupperware was not quite the household brand that Brownie had helped build. After Earl Tupper's patents began expiring in the 80s, Tupperware copycats have sprung up in all shapes and sizes. And the very thing that once powered Tupperware started eroding its footprint. More and more women went to work outside of the home.

50:26Alison Clarke:There was less time or need for parties and ordering from catalogs. Later, Tupperware found new growth overseas, but it never really nailed down its selling strategy for the internet, the new era of the woman who is always online.

50:46Bob Kealing:Have you ever stopped to think what happens when you say to someone, and you'd make a wonderful Tupperware dealer. She doesn't profess to be a feminist leader. She doesn't profess to be a workers' activist. But actually, it's kind of what she ended up doing was empowering women and preaching self-empowerment in an era when many women had so many constraints over their lives. You're saying to her, in effect, you have a charming personality. You would get along well with people. You have a wonderful smile and a friendly manner. Being a Tupperware lady was definitely kind of some figure in the community that you had some respectability and that you had some standing.

51:39And bearing in mind that women may not have had

51:42Bob Kealing:any other roles in which they were recognized, to be a Tupperware lady, to be known and to be the center of a network was definitely something to aspire to. You are just the kind of person Tupperware wants.

52:04Alison Clarke:On our next installment of Hidden Histories...

52:07Bob Kealing:Koreans were like, we've done it, we're first world, we're a rich country and rich nation.

52:12Alison Clarke:The Korean government's plot to become a global cultural superpower.

52:20Alison Clarke:And that's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Del Feta. ThruLine was created by me and Ramtin Adablui. This episode was produced by me and... Lawrence Wu. Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Casey Miner. Christina Kim. Devin Katayama. Sarah Wyman. Irene Noguchi. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. This episode was mixed and mastered by Jimmy Keeley. And we want to thank the Smithsonian National Museum of American History for allowing us to visit and use so much of their archival collection. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes...

53:01Bob Kealing:Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.

53:05Alison Clarke:Thank you to everyone who contributed expertise, research, and voiceovers. Thanks for listening.

53:17Alison Clarke:This message comes from Instacart. Instacart makes grocery shopping easier. And just because you're not doing the shopping yourself doesn't mean you don't care how it's done. With Instacart Shopper Notes, you can add details about what you want right in the app. Like extra crispy rotisserie chicken or lettuce you'd pick yourself. Just leave a note so your shopper can get it right without having to ask. Download the Instacart app and shop today. Attention! A PSA from Shortwave, NPR science podcast. You need to be paying more attention to your poop. I really do think that this deep stigma we have about talking about pooping is tied to these early-onset colorectal cancer cases.

53:57Alison Clarke:What to watch out for and how to decode the secret messages hidden in your poop. On Shortwave, listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.