Martha is a new documentary film released on Netflix, covering in great detail the life and works of Martha Stewart, self-admittedly the first American businesswoman to become a billionaire. In this documentary film, directed by R.J. Cutler, the makers directly interview Martha Stewart over the entire duration, making her open up about the best and worst times of her life so far. Overall, Martha seems to be interesting only to those already aware of the American businesswoman and her life’s trajectory, and is mostly an average watch even so.
How did Martha Stewart first gain popularity?
As the interview of Martha Stewart begins in Netflix’s documentary, the earliest memory that she recalls of her childhood days is of her father, Edward Kostyra, who was notoriously strict and old-school in his parenting style. It was Edward who taught all his children how to garden, almost foisting the skill upon the young kids with no consideration about whether they wanted to do it or not. Although these lessons helped Martha a lot, as gardening became an integral part of her career later on, some of her siblings openly state through voiceovers in the film that their experiences with their father had made them hate gardening even as adults. Along with the strict routine that the children were made to follow, there were obviously beatings and floggings by Edward, as was natural at the time among conservative-minded parents. The supposedly necessary toughness was not limited to just physical measures, as both Edward and his wife Martha were verbally stern on their children too, never hesitating to say mean things to them at the slightest failure.
Being a big family with a lot of children, they were always in need of money, and young Martha wanted to help out as well, which is why she started modeling at the age of fifteen. Seeing a neighbor of hers modeling during her spare time, Martha also joined the profession and was initially paid a paltry compensation of 15 dollars an hour, which she admits was not that bad at the time, especially considering her situation. She excelled at the job and started to make a name for herself in the local circuit, all while earning enough to help her mother run the family. But she had no desire to remain in New Jersey, so to explore the vast world out there, Martha moved to New York City in 1960 to pursue her higher education at Barnard College while continuing to model. The woman recalls how she was always bubbly and excited for the future while in college, which made her quite a popular student on campus.
One day, a batchmate of Martha’s approached her and asked whether she would like to go out on a date with her brother. There were already a number of factors that seemed interesting to Martha, beginning with the fact that her classmate came to college in a Rolls Royce, meaning that she belonged to a rich and influential family, and also the fact that the brother was a bright student at Yale Law School. On her first date with Andrew Stewart, she could not help but be impressed by how nice and polite the young man was, and also, self-admittedly, by his shiny American Express card. Soon, the two started a romantic relationship and wanted to marry as well. Martha’s father, Edward, did not agree to his daughter’s wish, as Andrew was a Jew and Edward a bigot. However, Martha did not ultimately pay any heed to him and got married to the love of her life, Andrew.
It did not take a long time for Martha to become mother to a baby girl, Alexis, but she struggled to be the perfect mother. The crushing experience of being a selfless mother, for which women need to give up on all their personal dreams and aspirations, was definitely not for her. Instead, Martha wanted to make the most of her life and explore the world in every possible manner, so she decided to start working as a stockbroker, following in her father-in-law’s footsteps. Although she got to mix with very wealthy people, even billionaires, while at this job, she was not meant to be a stockbroker either, and she miserably failed at the profession. Martha and Andrew had to move again, and they chose the town of Westport to be their new home, where they had found a large but ill-maintained house. This house became Martha’s first passion project, as she renovated and beautified it to perfection before starting to host gala parties for her neighbors and friends there. Guests were left so impressed by her work that they recommended her to their acquaintances, eventually leading to Martha Stewart setting up a very successful catering business, mostly working for celebrities.
As her husband, Andrew, had established his own publishing house by this time, the couple often met and became friends with other publishers and editors. This is when the idea of Martha writing a book first emerged, and although the publishers initially wanted it to be a simple cookbook with black-and-white pictures, the woman made her own changes. Her only demand was that the book be a more personal record of her opinions and guides and have bright, colorful photographs of food and lifestyle-related objects. It was clearly a lifestyle that she needed to sell, and her plan worked perfectly. Martha Stewart’s books made her instantly famous, even giving her TV show deals. Martha would soon appear on talk shows with Oprah Winfrey and Larry King.
How did Martha expand her business further?
As Martha’s books started to become popular, she struck a deal with Time magazine to head a special line of publications that would focus entirely on homemaking and lifestyle. Her expertise clearly lay in telling people about how they could cook up great dishes or arrange their houses in an aesthetically pleasing manner without necessarily having to be very rich. This was also why she entered a deal with the Kmart chain of department stores, which were usually considered to be cheaper stores for the financially weaker population to shop at. According to Martha, her own life had taught her that good aesthetic choices were not always linked to extreme wealth, and so she wanted to make her skills and advice accessible to the general masses. It was also clear that not everyone watching her shows or reading her books was necessarily trying to learn from them but was simply consuming the content for entertainment.
Once Martha realized that her name itself was becoming a brand, she decided to stop working for other established media houses and instead create her own business brand. Thus, she founded Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 1997 and became the CEO of the company. The MSLO was basically a media company that had a number of magazine publications and TV and radio shows under its name. Most of this content, if not all, involved Martha very directly. It was apparently out of her desire to write more articles and edit more lifestyle magazines than the established channels were letting her do that she started the MSL Omnimedia business. Plus, the revenue generated was directly coming to her, and it was in this manner that she became the first American businesswoman to reach the glamorous position of being a billionaire. Martha then also wanted to take her company public and launch IPOs in the share market, which she eventually succeeded in doing in 1999.
What was the financial scandal that ruined Martha Stewart’s empire?
Although Martha had managed to create an empire out of her own brand by the 2000s, everything was about to come crashing down because of a financial scandal that was revealed to the world in the first half of 2002. A very successful businesswoman at the time, Martha naturally had a lot of investments in various companies, and one such business was the biopharmaceutical company named ImClone Systems. ImClone’s main claim to fame was an experimental drug that it was trying to research and manufacture, called Erbitux, which would be instrumental in the treatment of cancer. Like many others who saw this as a great investment opportunity, Martha too had put in her money in the company. However, Erbitux ultimately failed to get the approval from the FDA, meaning that it could not be produced for the masses. This was quite expectedly a huge setback for ImClone, and it led to a huge financial loss for the company.
However, in a very suspicious manner, some of the key influential executives in the company had sold off their shares just a day before news of the failed FDA test was made public. This meant that these particular executives had already withdrawn their money before ImClone’s failure was announced, and its share prices dropped terribly. The US Securities and Exchange Commission soon filed an official lawsuit, claiming that it suspected that insider trading had been carried out by the CEO of ImClone, Samuel Waksal, for he had supposedly told some of the influential investors about the FDA failing the drug in their test. Obviously, informing some investors about the financial crisis that is about to come while keeping others in the dark is a gravely unethical practice, and so a case was filed against the CEO and against all the executives who had suddenly sold their shares a day earlier.
Martha Stewart happened to be one of these investors, and it was claimed by the SEC that Peter Bacanovic, who handled her shares at ImClone, had told her about the drug failing to pass the FDA test, so that she could withdraw her money from ImClone before it was too late. Thus, a case was filed against her as well, although Martha and Peter always maintained, and still maintain, that they had done nothing wrong. Eventually, the court tweaked the case against Martha and charged her for having lied to the court about not having received unethical insider information.
Martha always claimed that she was being made a target only because she was such a successful businesswoman, and the male members in authority were jealous of her. While that claim is a bit of a stretch, Martha does make the viewers wonder whether any male billionaire businessman would ever be made to face the same repercussions as Martha because of a relatively small amount of about 45,000 dollars. Either way, she was finally found guilty by the court and was sentenced to five months in federal prison and two years of house arrest for financial fraud. This shocking development naturally made all the media houses distance themselves from the businesswoman, and she had to step down from the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia company too, which she herself had built using her own personal brand. This truly marked the end of her business empire that she had put together with her own two hands.
How did Martha create a new public image of herself once again?
When the entire duration of her prison time and house arrest was over, Martha returned with a fresh perspective on life, and she was ready to work on any show that would have her. But the initial attempts actually failed, and she was forced to sell off the MSL Omnimedia company as well. However, a real changing point came in 2015, when Martha got the offer to be on a Comedy Central Roast program, which was going to be mostly about Justin Bieber’s run-ins with the law. The main idea was to provide an intervention for Bieber while having a jury of celebrities roast each other and create an entertaining show for the audiences in the process. Martha was invited to be a part of this show, and despite it being starkly different from all her previous work and even the public image that she had built, she agreed to it.
Contrary to everyone’s expectations, Martha actually did great at the show, embracing her past and the criticisms against her and using that to do comedy. It was seemingly for the first time that the woman truly believed herself to be equal with and the same as everyone around her, including the audiences, after having spent years maintaining a superior-to-the-masses image. This clicked very well with the people, and Martha quickly adapting to the new world of social media also helped her brilliantly. She then teamed up with Snoop Dogg for a series of programs, which made her popular among non-white sections of society as well, who had earlier felt her to be too detached from their lives. In recent times, Martha Stewart has even reinvented herself as an iconic model and also became the oldest model to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue at the age of 81.
