Lakewood Lore

Local makeup king chose movie queen to move ads

Actress Mary Pickford, who in the first quarter of this century became "America's Sweetheart" and moviedom's most valuable asset, had a Lakewood connection.

In 1918, she was chosen to be featured in advertising promoting the sale of products made by Pompeian Manufacturing Co., then a local cosmetics firm headed by prominent Lakewoodite Otto F. Leopold.

Leopold's daughter Elsa Watters, 85, who came to Lakewood in 1909, vividly remembers the picking of Pickford as "Pompeian Beauty of the Year."

"My father went to New York City to interview Miss Pickford and returned to rave to all of us about how very charming she was," said Elsa, who was then only 11 years old.

Lovely, playful, plucky Pickford became the prototype for many early film stars -- the perfect daughter, wife, sister, in a more innocent generation.

Leopold's Pompeian enterprise started in a West Side drugstore on Clark Avenue near Fulton Road before the turn of the century. It was founded by Fred W. Stecher, druggist, inventor and first president, who later lived in a home that occupied part of the Lake Avenue property where Winton Place now is located.

"Early on, at the drugstore, my father filled prescriptions, while Mr. Stecher, who was the boss, worked in the back room creating a soothing after-shave massage cream for use in barbershops," Elsa recalled.

"I still have the formula upstairs and could start re-making the preparation any day if I wanted to," she said.

About 1906, the business moved to 2082 E. Fourth Street in downtown Cleveland where a hair cream for dandruff was added, plus several products earmarked for women -- night and day vanishing creams, a face powder and a rouge called "Pompeian Bloom."

Leopold advanced to salesman, canvassing barbers throughout Ohio. In 1915, following the death of Stecher, he became president of the company. The next year, he had a five-story structure -- now know as the Film Building -- erected to his specifications on Payne Avenue at East 21st Street, catty-corner from the former Central Police Station.

During its heyday, Pompeian employed 100 workers, and its wares were distributed widely in the United States. Also in the early 1920s, Leopold established a European headquarters office in Liverpool, England, and a Canadian branch in Windsor, Ont.

In 1927, the company was sold to Colgate Palmolive Peet for $1 million. Afterward, the Pompeian name and product lines continued on the market for six months and then disappeared forever.

Leopold, born on Clark near Scranton in 1877, married Nell Pletscher, a milliner who also lived in the same neighborhood. Besides Elsa, the couple had a younger daughter, Jeanne, who died many years ago.

"My father left school after the eighth grade, but he was constant reader who educated himself throughout his career," Elsa said. " In 1896, he helped surveyors plot Lakewood, and two years later enlisted in the Spanish American War as a cavalryman."

In 1908, Leopold had a new home built for his family on Arthur Avenue in Lakewood, Then he bought his first car -- a 1909 EMF, a forerunner of the Studebaker.

"But father used it only for Sunday drives," Elsa pointed out. "He rode the trolley to and from work daily, and each afternoon my sister and I would sit on the stone entrance wall at Arthur and Detroit to wait for his return from downtown."

(Arthur's entrance gateway of stone wall and pillars provided a touch of elegance and stateliness to the street till the day the landmark was torn down during a major renovation of the Lakewood Main Library in the mid-1950s).

In 1926, the Leopolds moved into a spacious Georgian mansion in Clifton Park where they lived for 15 years. Otto died in 1946 at age 69 and his wife Nell in 1968 at age 90.

In the home's beautiful two-story arched living room in 1929, Elsa was married to William Andrew (Andy) Watters. Later the couple moved into their own Lakewood home on Parkside Drive, where Elsa now lives.

Andy became a science teacher and track coach at Lakewood High School, retiring in 1966 after a 31-year career. He died two years ago at 83. He was a very popular man of good humor, and last year his name was added to the school's Staff Hall of Fame.

Elsa, who enrolled in the seventh grade at Lakewood High in 1918 -- there were no middle schools at that time -- was one of the first students at the school's present location on Franklin at Bunts. She went on to earn a degree from Oberlin College.

She and Andy had two daughters -- Nancy Russell of Lakewood and Sally Burson of Western Springs, III. Today, besides her daughters, Elsa has nine grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

Some of Elsa's warmest girlhood memories are associated with her father's cottage at Put-In-Bay to which Pompeian employees frequently were invited.

"Dad wanted to give his workers a feeling of belonging — of being part of a close family," she explained, adding that the place was named Pompeian Cottage," that seven generations of Leopolds have gone there, and that it is still the family vacation home.

This month, octogenarian Elsa will add a first novel to the many short stories she has written. Entitled "Cherokee Woman," it will be published by Wilderness Adventure Books of Fowlerville, Mich.

It is the handiwork of a continued keen interest in American Indian culture first developed as a little girl searching for arrowheads on Put-In-Bay.

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post June 4, 1992. Reprinted with permission.

[Note: Otto Leopold's daughter, Elsa Watters, passed away in 1995. A notice appeared in the Plain Dealer June 29 of that year.]

More Lakewood Lore