Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Liquid Paper

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

Correction fluid goes by many names, but the OG was Liquid Paper. And it has a pretty cool origin story. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck Jerry's here,

Dave's here too. Don't worry about that. And this is short stuff. That's right. This is our women who changed history episode. One of them. That's true. Yeah, for sure. We're talking about a woman named Betty Claire McMurray, better known as Betty Newsome Graham, better known as the woman who invented liquid paper, which also has a bunch of different copiers like Whiteout, which has become a proprietary eponym. But really liquid paper was first, which is why we're talking about Betty today. That's right. And there are some really cool parts of the story. Betty was born in Dallas in 1924 and it's cool so far. She went to school in San Antonio and then

at 17, left school, married her sweetheart, won Warren Nessmith. And this is something I knew since I was a kid is that Mike Nessmith of the Monkeys was the heir to the liquid paper fortune because his mom invented it. Yeah. So I knew that he was an heir to a fortune. I had no idea which one. That's really awesome. Yeah. I don't know why I knew it back then. It was just one of those weird little facts that always stuck with me that Mike from the Monkeys, his mom invented liquid paper. And she did so largely. Well, let's get to the story. She divorced not too long after she got married, just about five years. She got divorced in 1946. And so it was a single mom with a kid, little Mike to support before he started making that Monkeys dough. And eventually she

got a job as a typist at Texas Bank and Trust. And there was a weird thing that happened with the ribbons that we talked about in the typewriter episode that was just out. They went from fabric to carbon. And the keyboards got a little more sensitive and they realized that mistakes were easier to make in typing and that that carbon ribbon would smudge. You used to could sort of erase it with the fabric ribbons, but now you couldn't anymore. And she was like, I got to fix this because I'm tired of retyping my stuff. Yeah. I mean, imagine that. Imagine being a typist at an office and like you make one typo and you have to retype the entire sheet. Like at the very end. That was a thing. That was a thing. Yeah, at the very end in particular. So what she created,

this liquid paper, which originally she called mistake out, was like a genuine godsend for herself at first. She went home and she had been trained as a painter. Did you say that that her mom had kind of taught her how to paint? No, but that kind of guided her life in a lot of ways, as we'll see. For sure. So she kind of took that knowledge and used what's known as a tempera paint, you know, the kind that they let preschoolers paint with. That's the same thing as liquid paper. And then she took a watercolor brush, put it in a little jar and brought it to work. And in very short order, some of her colleagues who were also typists and secretaries said, give me some of that. Yeah, I'm making mistakes like crazy. She said, stop making mistakes then.

No, she said here. And she had actually even branded it. She started writing mistake out on the label early on. I think probably, I think probably at first, just as sort of like a fun thing to do. And then realized like, hey, people are actually using this stuff. She started to refine the process in her kitchen. This is kind of like an American dream story, like working on a product out of your house that eventually becomes like a multimillion dollar business. And that's what happened. She had a paint company employee that apparently helped her out and a chemistry teacher at a local high school that helped her out. Who would play him? The chemistry teacher? Yeah, I'm assuming it's a him.

I don't know what you got. Ed Harris? No, he's too salty. Too salty. No, that one multi-talented character actor. I can't remember his name. I think it's James, but he was like the guy in the game. He's been in a movie. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally no. The guy that signed up Michael Douglas for the game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. Great character. Okay, good. He would be great as that guy. I like that. All right. He's cast as far as I'm concerned. Okay, so she puts all this together and she's basically spending her nights and weekends working on just getting as many of these bottles together as possible, but also not making a lot

of money. She hired Mike and his friends to fill bottles at like a dollar an hour, a piece, I think. And it wasn't until that she either quit her job at the bank or was fired from the bank for accidentally signing a business document with her business's name and address. Apparently, didn't use mistake out on that. And when she was released from work one way or another, she was set free and all of a sudden mistake out became like a big thing. So I say now, Chuck, we take a break and then come back and talk about how she built the business even further. Let's do it. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when

questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new

podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just

when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So she has left the job in 58, starts taking some meetings with some big corporations that are ordering bottles, like hundreds of bottles of liquid paper. And this is GE, IBM, some big corporations. She applies for that patent, changes the name to liquid paper company, and then starts doing that business thing, starts reinvesting the profits, goes from the kitchen

to the backyard to a four-room house, and then eventually gets remarried in 62 to a guy named Robert Graham, who kind of got super involved in the business, as we'll see for better or for worse. Yeah. So in 1968, she's got 19 employees, corporate headquarters, automated operations, and that year she sold one million bottles of liquid paper, which is pretty great. By 1975, she's moved into a 35,000 square foot headquarters in Dallas, and the equipment that she's running can produce 500 bottles a minute. And there's something else that you should know about Betty Graham. She ran the company as a genuinely good person. There was a library in the plant. There was a childcare center in the plant. This is the mid-70s, by the way.

They didn't even come up with that idea until the 80s via the movie 9 to 5, and she was already doing it. She also was a patron of women and the arts and women who were also artists. Yeah. She set up a couple of foundations. One, in fact, a lot of the information from this came from, I think it's pronounced, Gihan, G-I-H-O-N Foundation. She found a way back in 1976, which combined her love of art with her support of women and feminism. She collected paintings and artworks by women. And then also the Betty Claire McMurray Foundation, which since 1978 has been supporting women in need. Right. Like if you need shelter and counseling because you're being physically abused,

or if you're a nontraditional student and you need a scholarship, like she definitely put her money where her mouth is, and she considered herself a feminist for sure. And so one of the other great things about her, her husband, Robert Graham, they divorced in 1975, I believe. And she ended up stepping down as chairperson from Liquid Paper. She built this really great company selling 25 million bottles at a time, spending a million dollars in advertising. And she's like, this thing is going, it's fine. I'm going to go focus on my foundations. And Robert Graham was left along the board. And he did what can only be described as a hostile takeover. Yeah. It was not a pretty sight. She came out on the losing end at first.

She was basically kicked out, wasn't allowed back on the premises of the company. They changed her formula actually. So she couldn't even get royalties anymore, which is one of the biggest like scumbag moves of all time. So scumbag. And then still managed to sort of fight her way back in. She had some health problems, but finally managed to get control of the company again. And in 1979, with controlling interest, sold Liquid Paper to Gillette for almost 48 million bucks. Pretty great. Yeah. She had the very famous quote when she finally regained control of her company. Robert, get out of my office. That's what's going to happen in the movie. Who plays Robert? Okay. Robert Gillette. Okay. He does a great jerk. Have you ever seen naked gun two and a half?

Yeah, but is he, is he still with us? I don't know, but didn't they do Peter Cushing and he's not still with us? Oh, I don't know. Well, you could get Will Ferrell to do Gillette because that's, that's one of the funniest bits of all time. Okay. Cool. And here's the thing with Liquid Paper is that, and these are kind of wonky stats, and I'm not going to go over all of them because it's, some of them are from like 2017 and 2018, but generally what they have found is that while office, like paper itself, office printers, things like that and office supplies have kind of trickled down over the years, Liquid Paper somehow has either stayed strong or even gained like a percentage point or two from year to year, which is pretty amazing. Liquid Paper itself

doesn't release their stats, but I think they go by like generically, like whatever correction products is what they call them. But I know that during the pandemic, home printing and stuff like that picked up. So I think, I think the correction products industry picked up because people all of a sudden were like, Hey, I'm at home now. And Liquid Paper, you, it wasn't just for typing, you know, like I used it all the time to like write over things and then just kind of let it dry and brush it thin. They actually think that it is artists that's keeping the correction products market afloat and making it increase. And then also Gen Z and their fondness for retro things that you do by hand, like writing letters, is also some of the

patrons of Liquid Paper and its competitors now. Yeah, I think at one point, Emily, my wife, switched over to the little contraption that fed out a tape. She was big on that, but I was kind of a Liquid Paper purist. Okay. Were you like brand loyal, like to Liquid Paper? Yeah, get that white out of my face. Okay. And hey, just to shout out Mike Nessmith real quick. I know everyone knows him from The Monkees, but Mike Nessmith and I discovered this sort of after his passing, really some really, really great solo records. And looking back was one of the founders of Country Rock, kind of before there was Country Rock. There was a 74 album called And The Hits Just Keep On Coming that is now viewed as like this genius Country Rock masterpiece

that nobody would touch back then, including record execs. Yeah, I remember like learning that he was really just kind of unhappy and stifled in The Monkees. Like if there was a sour puss among the four, it was definitely Mike. And you can just tell by looking at him. But that was why, like he was way more talented than he was allowed to be. Yeah, but he came around and embraced The Monkees later in life, which was also great. Good for him. Also big ups to The Atlantic and David Graham for the article and Thought Co and Mary Bellis and then the Gihan Foundation. This is where most of the stuff came from. Very nice, Chuck. And big hats off to you for choosing this one. Thank you. Short stuff is out.