Later Life
Advertisement for the Gillette Safety Razor by the Gillette Sales Company in Boston, Massachusetts, 1911. (Photo by Jay Paull/Getty Images)
During his later years, Gillette began to be recognized wherever he went. Many people were surprised to see him and learn that he’d invented the company, with a lot of people assuming his face was just a random marketing tool put on the packaging. In spite of all this success, he still retained his anti-capitalism stance and even vainly tried to tempt the president at the time, Theodore Roosevelt, into bringing his utopian plans to life. He also spent a lot of cash on property in his later years, losing a lot of money after the crash of 1929, and left most of the running of his company to others. In 1932, he died at the age of 77.