originally posted on March 24, 2024
This is a reprint of an article that appeared in the May 19, 1912 Cincinnati Commercial Tribune newspaper.
In the Witchery of her Self-Made Beauty.
We transmit below the first little message from Valeska Suratt to our readers:
My Dear Friends: It is somewhat embarrassing to speak of myself, for my friends persist in calling me beautiful. It is delicious indeed to be called beautiful, but it is even more inspiring to feel that one’s own efforts have brought it all about. To tell how these secrets of mine is not of my own choosing, but I have been importuned by so many of my friends to shed a ray of light upon the little corner of my dressing room where it has all happened, that I have submitted to their desires.
First, I want to say, that the customary rules of beauty so often advised of bathing, exercises, calisthenics, eating, sleeping and mode of living will have very little weight. Such rules as they are so often given, are burdensome, rarely effective and tiresome. What I have achieved has been rather in spite of any such strict rules. My methods have been simple and usually even more effective than I had ever hoped for. These methods will be so simple and inexpensive, (and I can assure you so surprising) that the well-to-do woman or the working girl can achieve the beauty that it brings. All I can do to make my less fortunate sisters obtain what every woman ought to have, I will do, and I thank the Commercial Tribune for giving me the opportunity. Next Sunday, I will begin the revelations that you will surely enjoy.
VALESKA, the thrilling, the bewitching, wonderful Valeska, before whom thousands have abandoned themselves to the caressing joy of an ecstatic half hour to listen to her and look upon her bubbling beauty, is to have a personal, heart to heart beauty-chat with our readers in these columns every Sunday.
The Commercial Tribune has scored a great triumph in securing from Valeska Suratt herself what she has never before chosen to reveal; for a self-made beauty is Valeska, with a superb charm all of her own industrious making, by means that are new, refreshingly wonderful, deliciously effective. And the gem that has resulted from these is Valeska, as you see her, and as you will never forget her.
Valeska Suratt is the new flower on the American stage, not the dolled, kinky wig variety of powder and rouge, which the round moon of the spot-light deceives into a resemblance of beauty, but like a marbled Venus in life, whose features faultless in line and texture can stand the scorching criticism of the sun. It is a maddening beauty, yet not born, but made.
With the lure of Broadway in her veins, that national pathway of wasted hopes, she became a histrionic climber to the top of the world’s stage in a fraction of the time in which the ordinary star takes to make the dizzy trip. The emotional ecstacy of her acting carried her hearers into palpitating frenzy and her name was made– Valeska of “The Whooping Cough,” and “The Red Rose.” She has the reputation of being the most expensively gowned woman on the American stage, but whether it is the elegance of her raiment, or the twenty-karat diamond solitaire that is the Suratt pride, the diamond ring which is the gift of Duke Boris of Russia, or the string of diamonds that encircles the left Suratt ankle, or the bewildering Suratt hats that may magnetize the eye, the beauty of her face and form will be the most lingering of all your impressions.
Miss Suratt is known today as the greatest exponent of the art of self-made beauty. No one rivals her; no one equals her. Endowed with but ordinary charms in her younger years, she with almost miraculous ingenuity set about in her own peculiar way to endow herself with the bloom and radiance which the ordinary “beauty rules” had denied her. Today, thousands go, if not to enjoy her acting, then to gaze upon her loveliness.
The secrets of Miss Suratt are to be laid bare in the columns of the Commercial Tribune, and to appear every Sunday. There is no question but that these revelations will create a sensation, as the privileged few who have seen the first of these articles of Miss Suratt know but too well.
These articles are not to be the ordinary beauty lectures, which are now so common, no theoretical essays on how to live, what to eat, how long to sleep, how to exercise, how often to bathe, etc., but real, simple, substantial instructions. The secrets themselves will be in black and white.
These beauty talks will be truly Valeskian, told only as Valeska herself cant ell them. She has graciously agreed to retain nothing, but to tell everyone of her secrets, and every Sunday in these columns, will be revealed her magic art of beauty-making.
Next Sunday will begin this incomparable series. No woman can afford to be without it. It means the end of the ceaseless search for beauty that so many women have failed to find. Every woman, putting Miss Suratt’s simple methods into practice can achieve what she has believed never could happen to her. It will be readily seen after you have read these chats that any woman however bereft of personal charms may surely acquire them by a mere determination to do as instructed.
The experience and success of Miss Suratt, glorious as it is, demonstrates conclusively what most women have never before realized, that contour, complexion and texture of the skin may be so treated as to become incomparably beautiful in spite of the previous lack of beautiful lines, natural grace and charm.
The haggard, worn look, the dull looking eyes, the faulty poise of the facial muscles, the spotty complexion, the lack of form of bust, neck and shoulders may give way to a radiant fullness, and to the charm of skin texture that people call queenly and beautiful.
There are many things upon which beauty seekers have their doubts; they are in the dark as to what to do and how to do them, details about themselves that people who know never advise them upon. For this reason, Miss Suratt has agreed to see that all personal letters of inquiry addressed to her will be answered in these columns when possible and when space forbids, then by mail. All letters of inquiry should be addressed to Miss Valeska Suratt personally, care of the Commercial Tribune.
Let nothing escape you that will appear in this extraordinary series of beauty secrets that is to begin next Sunday, for you will be able to see in all she says how it directly applies to you. Don’t miss next Sunday’s Commercial Tribune. If you do not already receive the Commercial Tribune at your home, have the newsdealer save one for you.
On my next blog post, I will feature Valeska’s first column. I don’t know how many of these I will reprint, but they are fun reads. Also, my reconstruction of her film, “The New York Peacock” is coming along and will be posted hopefully soon. -bP
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