"A good day is when no one shows up and you don't have to go anywhere." - says Burt Shavitz, the Burt behind Burt's Bees.
You know his picture, the guy with the long beard on the top of the beeswax lip balm tins. Well, he's real. And quite a character. Back when he was just Burt (now 79), he was a celebrated news photographer. Then life took an unexpected turn when he quit his job and moved to the backwoods of Maine. During this time, he discovered his passion for beekeeping and met an ingenious hitchhiker named Roxanne Quimby while he was selling jars of honey out of the back of his car. She created candles out of his beeswax and their relationship developed both intimately and professionally. And with Burt's face on the packaging, Burt's Bees was born. Burt's Bees continued to thrive but their relationship didn't have such a happy ending. Burt was ousted from the the company in 1994 after having an affair with a Burt's Bees store employee. Quimby later sold the company to Clorox for over a reported $900 million.
Although Burt's paid well for his famous face, he continues to call a converted turkey coop in Maine home. "I had no desire to be a [sic] upward mobile rising yuppie with a trophy wife, a trophy house, a trophy car," Shavitz says in the new documentary film about him, "Burt's Buzz".
Now available on demand.
