Actress Alice Faye and Maybelline's Tom Lyle Williams, mistaken for Jean Harlow and Howard Hughes in the 1930's

                    Times Square 1938, during the filming of 
                             "Alexander's Ragtime Band" 

Alice Faye

Tom Lyle Williams

My aunt Verona said she remembered once running into Tom Lyle and Alice Faye at a posh restaurant in 1938, right after the filming of “Alexanders Ragtime Band.” She said Tom Lyle and Alice Faye made a devastatingly handsome couple, he so tall dark and handsome, and she so petite, blond and glamorous.  “For a second,” she said, “I thought it was Howard Hughes and Jean Harlow.”

Howard Hughes

Jean Harlow

Harlow had already died, of course, but Alice Faye, was a blond bombshell that did have a Harlow aura. Verona went on to tell me that at that time Maybelline had a giant neon sign in Times Square and believed it was Alice who insisted that particular view of Times Square be shot and used in the film.  Verona was sick I didn’t tell Alice who my uncle was, and she knew Tom Lyle would  be very disappointed as well.



Excerpt taken from my book, The Maybelline Story.

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