The Queen of Tupperware

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All right, all right, all right.

Time for my nightly ritual.

It's the end of the day, and I'm doing what I do every night, putting away the leftover food from dinner so I can repurpose it for my son's lunch the next day.

Chickpeas,

peas, standing in front of my Tupperware drawer, which is basically a repurposed shoe rack in my kitchen closet.

Problem is, you know, living in an apartment,

I wouldn't mind having like an entire closet full of Tupperware, but

that's, oh boy, that's not what I have.

I'm playing the game of finding the right lid for the right Tupperware.

We've all been there, right?

It's fair to say that as a young mom, Tupperware is a big part of my life.

I'm out here saving 10 peas and half a carrot because, you know what that is?

Tomorrow's snack.

But if I'm honest, Tupperware has been a key constant my whole life.

Extra pretzels, but the bag broke, throw it in some Tupperware.

You know, you don't want it getting stale.

Dinner at my in-law's house, I'm coming home with Tupperware.

Chances are you too have used Tupperware at some point in your life.

It's a part of our daily lives, and it's so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget that Tupperware, which has come to mean all kinds of food storage, is actually an iconic American brand.

And when it first hit the market in the mid-20th century, Tupperware revolutionized American kitchens.

This is Tupperware.

The airtight plastic containers that keep good foods fresher longer.

You can freeze it, stack it,

any which way.

So salads keep there

and gelatin desserts keep there.

Tupperware came onto the scene after World War II, right when many American women were leaving wartime factory jobs to stay home as wives and mothers.

More and more modern kitchens had electric stoves and refrigerators, and the airtight Tupperware bowl became a big hit.

And for decades, until the 1980s, when Tupperware's patented lid expired, it was the only game in town, a product marketed to and sold by women.

But lately, it's been in the news for another reason.

The iconic seller of storage containers and kitchenware had tipped into bankruptcy under a mountain of debt.

In 2024, Tupperware filed for bankruptcy.

If here's Alina Seljuk, has more.

Over the years, the company's debts became nearly double its assets.

Meet Alina Selyuk, one of NPR's business correspondents.

Hello, hello, Through Line listeners.

So, Alina, you covered that Tupperware bankruptcy story, and normally you would just move on.

But you reached out to us because you found out there was more to the Tupperware story that doesn't get talked about much.

Yes, and it's more of a who.

Basically, the reason why many of us still call everything we put our leftovers in Tupperware is because of one woman.

I imagine some of you have heard me say that I don't have much confidence in luck.

I never depend on it.

Her name is Brownie Wise.

I'd rather put my trust in hard work.

She became one of the first female corporate executives in U.S.

history.

Today we talk about women leaning in.

Brownie Wise climbed the very highest part of the high dive and jumped in.

She becomes, for lack of a better word, a Tupperware queen.

Brownie Wise was a figure that had a kind of daunting power over other women.

You're at your very best at a Tupperware party, aren't you?

She was a shepherd who led a generation of housewives into the workforce in this quiet but powerful revolution.

You're in your happiest frame of mind.

Your appearance is at its best.

You're alert and cheerful.

This makes people receptive to you.

And somehow, even though I cover big brands and the consumer economy for a living, I had never heard of her.

So I went on a treasure hunt.

Close the door, come in.

There's a lot of cool stuff here.

I went rummaging through the Tupperware archives at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Okay, we're looking at an entire cabinet filled with various kinds of Tupperware.

And my guide was historian and curator Faith Davis-Ruffins.

That ranged from

little cups to bigger storage bowls.

To cake carriers, skewers, salt and pepper shakers, a rainbow of plasticware.

And then there she was, the woman behind it all in a newspaper article from 1954.

Wow.

Here's Brownie Weiss selling career for housewives.

Crack salesman, Glib, the happy-go-lucky, and everybody's pal, a stock figure in American folklore, but always he's been male.

Brownie Wise is plowing the ground for women.

It felt so monumental to have this woman leading sales at a top American company at a time when the female ideal was a child-rearing, apron-wearing, suburban wife.

So that's already a big deal.

And then she does it by essentially leaning into that very female ideal.

This idea that, yes, a woman's place is in the home, but her living room can also be a sales floor and her customers are other women just like her.

That's fascinating.

It's like fighting fire with fire.

Yeah, I've been calling it subversive domesticity.

This army of housewives earning money, building community, growing their independence.

Subversive domesticity.

I like that.

For women, by women, under the leadership of a woman, but only only if it adheres to the quote-unquote woman's domain of the home.

Okay, I got it.

Exactly.

So why isn't Brownie Wise in the history books more often, right?

Well, turns out Brownie vanished from Tupperware history almost as quickly as she rose to the top.

She went from a luminary to a cast off, and her legacy was quite literally buried away.

I'm Randabdil Fattah, and today on Through Line, NPR's Alina Seljuk brings us the story of the rise and fall of Brownie Wise, the woman behind Tepperware's plastic empire who revolutionized women's work and America's kitchens forever.

Hi, this is Kirsty from Huntsville, Alabama and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

Here at LifeKit, we encourage you throughout life's big moments.

But what about support for those smaller problems?

Sometimes you just need a tiny pep talk.

Like, for when your clothes don't fit.

Or.

For when you want to order delivery, but should cook.

That's this week from NPR's Life Kit.

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Part 1, Wonder Bowl.

Ours is a rich and variant land.

We are a prospering people wherever we live or earn our livelihood.

America was booming after World War II.

All of us have the possibility of living one-third better than we do right now.

Wartime rations gave way to abundance on store shelves.

Cities sprouted webs of suburbs, a renaissance of the single-family home and planned communities subsidized by government loans.

It means more jobs, better housing, greater security, greater comforts for more and more of our people.

During the war, millions of women went to work for the first time, stepping up as men got drafted away.

Think Rosie the Riveter building ships or planes or tanks.

But now the war was over.

Tanks were not needed and men who were returning wanted their jobs back.

Women got offered a new American dream.

And as responsible as anyone else for the care of these bounties is the woman in the American home.

This was the baby boom era.

At its center was the lovely housewife.

In this kitchen that has made her task of food preparation so much lighter, the housewife can share her family's enjoyment at mealtime.

She was a gracious caretaker.

Meal planning presents the homemaker with her best opportunities to express her talent.

A modern woman whose fridge now had a freezer, whose stove was electric and steel was stainless.

Mixers, blenders, rotisseries, and many others.

All your helpful servants.

Her freedom, she could buy it.

Freedom from unnecessary drudgery.

Freedom to go shopping when the urge hits you or when there's a sale going on.

She was the ideal 1950s woman.

I stood in the kitchen, so efficient looking, so sleek and shining.

That, I thought, would look like an ordinary kitchen to anyone else.

But to me, it's a magic carpet.

And she was a fantasy.

A fantasy that Brownie Wise had cultivated since before the war.

It will be a privilege to polish glasses there in that pool of sunlight.

She wrote this kind of very touching

stories about idyllic domesticity for Detroit News under the pseudonym Hibiscus.

This is Allison Clark.

I'm the author of Tupperware, The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America.

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.

She obviously constructed imaginary worlds to survive.

Soon after Brownie moved to Detroit with her husband in the late 1930s, things got ugly.

He was a drunk, drunk, and violent, and kind of every other stereotype of the neglectful husband.

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.

Brownie Wise was a lonely child.

Her parents divorced when she was very young.

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.

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

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.

She took Brownie with her and Brownie showed a real proclivity towards being able to motivate people.

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.

Just trying to make money for her son and herself.

But she wanted, she needed more than the minimum.

And opportunity came knocking at her door,

quite literally.

One day,

she gets a knock on the door from a traveling salesman from Stanley Home Products.

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.

An array of cleaners, detergents, floral waxes, basic utilitarian products.

And Brownie was really not buying it.

This 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.

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.

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.

Right as many American women retreated into the suburbs and left the workforce, Brownie dove in.

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

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.

Really, that's the genius.

That's the vision of Brownie Wise.

Her home parties tapped into the world she had created as hibiscus.

She pitched products that promised women a 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 Beveridge.

The founder of Stanley Home Products.

Not one to ever shy away, Brownie took her pitch straight to the top.

And Stanley Beveridge 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.

Brownie did not know exactly how she would triumph, but then she discovers these luminous plastic bowls that have the airtight seal just like a paint can.

Brownie found herself holding a groundbreaking new product from an up-and-coming company, Tupperware.

It was called the Wonder Bowl.

Her young protege, Gary McDonald, discovered it sitting on a department 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,

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.

It was not brittle.

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.

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 for the timing was perfect.

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 Weiss 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.

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.

It was a gimmick, but it worked.

And she started racking up big numbers to the point where Tupper's like, what?

What is going on out

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 Bowls 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.

That's when things really start to skyrocket.

Coming up, Browniewise climbs the ranks to make Earl Tupper's invention a must-have sensation.

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Part two,

mink coats and diamond rings.

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?

This is from an early 1950s Tupperware brochure that explained how to give a demonstration at a Tupperware party.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

And

it was cool to have a Tupperware party down your street.

It's easy to forget that in the contemporary context, that they were kind of cutting edge and to go to one was had to cache.

Women who agreed to host a Tupperware party usually received little gifts from the seller if the evening went well and sent-ups like a set of knives or a silver tray.

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.

But the parties also dug into something deeper.

It was a way for women to earn money 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.

And she's getting really frustrated.

And she's had to complain multiple times.

And finally, she's like, okay, 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.

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.

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?

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 selling Tupperware faster than Tupper could manufacture it.

People didn't usually dress down Earl Tupper like that.

The two of them could not have been more different.

It's like the yin and the yang.

Tupper was very sort of spartan and straightforward New Englander.

Didn't take, you know, not a lot of back talk 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 Browniewise was seen as probably a little brash because she wore incredibly, you know, bright colours, bright lipstick.

Clearly came from a completely different cultural background.

So there'd be pictures of Altappa showing Browniewise, all very, very glamorous with amazing hairstyle and beautiful clothes, a handful of plastic pellets.

And it very much looked like she was the kind of queen and been giving a kind of offering from this slightly dowdy inventor.

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.

Brownie, just this little line to be sure you know I appreciate what a whale of a job you are 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.

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 Rasmataz.

Business started flying.

On her 40th birthday, Earl sent Brownie a gift, a five-year-old Palomino horse named Golden.

She was finally bringing his baby to the world,

and that was everything to him.

And the other thing she was bringing was a clear understanding of who would fuel Tupperware's success.

She believed in women and empowering themselves.

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.

We are competing with the natural fear of a woman woman with no sales experience.

The fear that she cannot accomplish the unknown.

So it was very much was an oppressive culture of homemaking and that women's roles should be in the home.

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.

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.

Earl Tupper had little interest in interacting with the sellers or the shoppers for that matter.

He wanted to tinker and invent.

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.

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.

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.

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, BrownieWise 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.

She called it Polypot and said its water brought good luck.

She also kind of cut it.

There are people that are like, you know, Tupperware is 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.

They would compete to win her dresses even.

In 1951, when Brownie took the helm, Tupperware had 200 sellers.

By the time of the Business Week cover, there were 9,000 of them, almost entirely women.

Company sales tripled in that time to an estimated $25 million.

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.

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.

And what better way to fuel those beliefs than a big old party?

The Jubilees became the annual celebration.

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.

Once Tupperware established their home party headquarters down on the Orange Blossom Trail south of Orlando,

they really were the magic kingdom before Disney.

You never knew what could happen at a Tupperware Jubilee.

You could get a Cadillac and you could get a Cadillac.

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.

Literally digging for treasure, and whatever you found, you got to keep.

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.

It was a way to stoke the fires of esprit de corps.

And Brownie, at the end of these sessions, they would have graduation for these people who've attended these training sessions.

They were very formal and dramatic with candlelight and music.

And they would go there and sing songs like, I've got that Tupper Feeling Doin in my heart.

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 poly pool that was blessed with a handful of polyethylene pellets and they would get even more of the Tupperware magic.

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 husbands started packing orders and getting involved.

Many successful dealers were couples.

The higher in Tupperware you went, the fewer women there were.

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

She did not drop the ladder, as they say.

No, she didn't.

She enjoyed being the central figure and that became something of a 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.

Coming up, Brownie hits her own plastic ceiling.

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Part 3: Uncontainable.

November 12th, 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.

This is Allison Clark, author of Tupperware, The Promise of Plastic in 1950s

I never saw dogs or cats dish at a back door or anywhere that looked appetizing.

And in a memo, he describes that someone visited a 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.

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.

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 29th, 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 wish 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.

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.

But El Tupper saw it, and his male executives 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.

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.

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.

And Brownie was not having it.

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.

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

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.

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.

Earl and Brownie started fighting over everything.

From your recent conduct, you seem to resist coming up here.

There can be no justification for refusal or unreasonable delay, 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.

Yes, this is Jubilee 1957, the Tupperware Homecoming Jubilee, called by many the most unusual sales convention in the world.

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.

She decided it would be a good idea to have a luau 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.

Thunderstorms would roll in.

You could set your watch by it.

And that's exactly what happened.

And if you remember the infamous fire festival back in 2017 and how that ended.

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.

Almost two dozen people ended up in the hospital.

Some of them sued.

By that time, Tupper had had it.

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 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.

And so Earl decided it was time for Tupperware without Brownie.

She ended up suing the company for over a million dollars and they settled with her for 30,000.

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 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 cancelled.

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 it in

hushed tones.

The same year Brownie left.

Earl Tupper sells the company to Rexall Drugs for $16 million.

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.

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.

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.

So then they just imitated Brownie Wise's culture.

They carried on doing the jubes.

She'd already got all the apparatus in force.

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.

There was less time or need for parties and ordering from catalogs.

Tupperware found new growth overseas, but never really nailed down its selling strategy for the internet.

And just like Browniewise might have predicted, to this day, most Tupperware products are sold by individual sellers.

Maybe on Facebook or TikTok, or maybe still in a woman's living room.

Have you ever stopped to think what happens when you say to someone,

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.

And bearing in mind that women may not have had any other roles in which they were recognised, 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.

And that's it for this week's show.

I'm Randab Defatta.

I'm Ramteen Adab Louis, and you've been listening to Through Line from NPR.

This episode was produced by me.

And me, and Lawrence Wu.

Julie Kay.

Anya Steinberg, Casey Miner, Christina Kim, Devin Katayama, Sarah Wyman, Irene Noguchi.

Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel.

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.

Our condolences to the family and friends of Smithsonian curator Faith Davis Ruffins, who passed away in late 2024.

Thanks also to Emily Kopp, Johannes Durgee, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell.

And of course, thanks to NPR's Alina Selyuk for bringing us this story.

Music for this episode was composed by Ramteen and his band Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvy, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.

And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at dooline at npr.org.

Thanks for listening.

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