Hey, 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 our women who changed History, episode one of them. Yeah for sure. Um, we're talking about a woman named Betty Claire McMurray, better known as Betty Knewsome Graham, better known as the woman who invented um liquid paper, which also has a bunch of different UM copiers like white out, 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's some really cool parts of the story. Uh. Betty was born in Dallas and it's cool so far. She went to school in San Antonio and then at seventeen left school married her sweetheart, uh one Warren Nes Smith. And this is something I knew since I was a kid, is that Mike Nest Smith of the Monkeys, is that was the heir to the liquid paper fortune because his
mom invented it. Yeah, so I knew that he was an air to a fortune. I had no idea which one that's really anes 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 and so it was a single mom with a kid, little little Mike, to
support before he started making that Monkey's 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. He used to sort of erase it with the fabric ribbons, but now you
couldn't anymore. And she was like, I gotta fix this because I'm tired of retype in my stuff. Yeah, I mean imagine that. Imagine being a typist at at an office and and like, you make one typo and you have to retype the entire sheet. That was the thing. That was the thing, Yeah, at the very end. In particularly so what she created, um, this liquid paper, which originally she called mistake Out, was like a genuine godsend um for herself. At first she she went home and
she had been trained as a painter. Did you say that that her mama 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 um 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 making mistakes like crazy, She said, stop making mistakes. Then no, she said here uh And she had actually even branded 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 realize like, hey, people are actually using this stuff. Uh.
She started to refine the process in her kitchen. This is kind of like like an American dream story, like working on a product out of your house that eventually becomes like a multimillion dollar business. Uh. 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 to him. I don't know what you got, ed, Harris. Now,
he's too salty, too salty. No, that one um multi talented character actor. I can't remember his name. I think it's James, but he was like the guy in the game. Uh he's been Yeah yeah, the guy that's signed up Michael Douglas in the for the game. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally Kim, he would be great as that guy. I
like that. All Right, He's gassed as far as I'm concerned. Okay, So she puts all this together, and um, she's she's basically spending her nights and weekends working on um, just getting as many of his 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, UM. 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. UM. Apparently didn't use mistake out on that UM. 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 we take a break and then come back and talk about how she built the business even further. Let's do
it all right. So she has left the job in fifty eight, starts taking some meetings with some big corporations that are ordering bottles, like hundreds of bottles of liquid paper and this is g e IBM some big corporations. She applies for that patent, changes the name to liquid Paper Company, and then starts doing that business things, starts to reinvesting the profits, goes from the kitchen to the
backyard to a four room house. Uh, and then eventually gets remarried in sixty two to a guy named Robert Graham who kind of got super involved in the business. UH. As we'll see for better for worse. Yeah. So in nineteen sixty eight, she's got nineteen employees, corporate headquarters, automated operations. In that year, she sold one million bottles of liquid paper,
which is pretty great. Um. By nineteen seventy five, she's moved into a thirty five thousand square foot headquarters in Dallas and the equipment that she's running can produce five hundred bottles a minute. And there's something else that you should know about Betty Graham. She uh ran the company as a genuinely good person. There was a library in the plant. There was a child care center in the plant.
This is the mid seventies, by the way. Um, they didn't even come up with that idea until the eighties via the movie nine five, 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 and from this came from the I think
it's pronounced gihan g i h o n Foundation. She found a way back in nineteen seventy six, which combined her love of art with her supportive women in feminism. She collected paintings and art works by women, and then also the Betty Claire McMurray Foundation, which since nineteen seventy eight has been supporting women in need right like, if you need shelter and counseling because you're being physically abused, or um, if you're a non traditional student and you
need a scholarship. Um. Like, she definitely put her money where her mouth is and she considered herself a feminist for sure. UM. And so one of the other great things about her her husband Robert Graham. They divorced in nineteen seventy five, I believe, and um, she ended up stepping down as chairperson from Liquid Paper. Um. She built this really great company selling million bottles at a time, UM, spending a million dollars in advertising, and she's like, this
thing is going it's fine. I'm gonna 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 site. She came out on the losing end at first. UM. She was basically kicked kicked out, wasn't allowed back on the premises of the company. Uh. 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. Uh. 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 nineteen nine, uh with controlling interest, sold Liquid Paper to Gillette for almost forty eight 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 that's
what that's that's what's going to happen in the Robert Goolay. Okay, he does a great jerk. Have you ever seen Naked Gun two and a half? Yeah, of it is? He is he 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 Gooley because that's that's one of the funniest bits of all time. Okay. Cool. Uh. And here's the thing with Liquid Paper is that uh. And these are kind of wonky stats and I'm not gonna go over all
of them because it's um. Some of them are from likeeen but generally what they have found is h that while office UM like paper itself, UM, office printers, things like that, and office supplies have kind of trickled down over the years, liquid paper somehow his either stayed strong or even gained like a percentage point or two uh from me to year uh, which is pretty amazing. And they don't Liquid paper itself doesn't release their stats, but I think they go by like generically like uh whatever,
correction products that's what they call them. But UM, 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, 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, invent, let it dry,
and brush it thin. They actually think that it is artists that's keeping the correction products UM market afloat and making an increase. And then also gen Z and their fondness for retro things that you do by hand, like writing letters is also UM. Some of the patrons of liquid paper and its competitors. Now, yeah, I think uh. At one point Emily, my wife switched over to the little uh, a little entraption that fed out a tape. She was big on that. But that was kind of
a liquid paper purist. Okay, were you like brand Um loyal, like too liquid paper? Yeah? I get that white out out of my face. Okay. And hey, just to shout out Mike Nesmuth real quick. I now everyone knows him from the Monkeys, but Mike Nesmuth and I discovered this sort of after his passing, released some really really great solo records. Uh, and and looking back, was one of the founders of country rock kind of before there was
country rock. That was a seventy four 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 um that he was really just kind of unhappy and stifled in the Monkeys. 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 he came around and embraced the monkeys later in life, which was also great. 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 um big hats off to you for choosing as well. Short stuff is that