The Real Rags to Riches Story of Liquid Paper

Monkee Mike’s Mum Makes a Mint

A godsend for typists (Photo by jules a. on Unsplash)

One of the must-watch TV shows from my childhood was The Monkees; the madcap adventures of a pop group comprising three Americans and a young Englishman. There are three jumbo-sized chunks of trivia associated with the show, and these are:

• Most of the backing tracks on the Monkees albums were not played by the Monkees at all, but by a band called Candy Store Prophets.
• The late Davy Jones, the English quarter of the group, once featured in Britain’s longest-running TV soap, Coronation Street, playing the grandson of Ena Sharples.
• The mother of guitarist Mike Nesmith (the one in the hat — 1942 -2021) invented correction fluid.

I shall elaborate on that last piece, as it is a genuine rags-to-riches story.

A Life-Changing Idea

Just after World War Two, Bette Nesmith Graham was a single mother who was employed as a typist. She was also something of an artist. Bette knew that artists often used white paint to cover their mistakes prior to repainting, and so she figured it might be possible to develop a type of paint to mask typing errors.

She experimented at home, mixing her concoctions in a food blender, and her early efforts were…