THE BEAUTY MAKERS

A love affair between the new president of a large cosmetic company and one of the secretaries provides the romance in this expose novel about the men who make American women beautiful. Paul Vandenberg, born rich and now richer through his ability to revitalize dying corporations, inherits more than financial problems when he takes over the House of Vermeyer. There is the late owner's dipsomaniac mistress, a conniving personnel director, a shrewd, ambitious vice president and wholesome, beautiful Sigrid Anderson with whom Vandenberg falls in love despite his three unhappy marriages and his fatal heart condition. Although the inner workings of the beauty business are interesting, the characterization is not more than skin-deep, the plot trite and the whole is just another big business novel that doesn't rise out of the dime store category.