On this episode of Our American Stories, Brownie Wise didn't invent Tupperware, but she turned it into an American institution. A single mother with little formal education, Wise discovered a talent for direct sales and eventually convinced inventor Earl Tupper to take his plastic containers out of department stores and sell them through parties held in American homes: Tupperware parties.

Mary Lisa Gavenas tells how Wise rose to become Tupperware's vice president of sales, built a nationwide army of mostly female sellers, and transformed the Tupperware party into a cultural phenomenon of 1950s America. But after landing on the cover of Business Week and becoming increasingly identified with the company's success, Wise was abruptly fired in 1958 and largely erased from the history of the business she had helped build.

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