8 Bombshells from New Docuseries Glitter & Greed: The Lisa Frank Story, from Workplace Romances to Overworked Employees

If you were a sticker lover, a colorful stationary connoisseur, or passionate about rainbows in the 1990s, chances are you were obsessed with Lisa Frank.

The brand's bright designs, plastered on everything from posters to backpacks, notebooks, and folders, captured the eyes and hearts of many kids of the era. The brand seemed to fade to obscurity more recently, but '90s nostalgia has brought the passion back.

However, the story behind the brand "wasn't all rainbows and unicorns," as an interviewee declares in Amazon MGM Studios' new docuseries Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story, now streaming on Prime Video.

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The four-part docuseries goes into how founder Lisa Frank rose to success while employees behind the scenes allegedly dealt with intense pressures and long hours, all as dynamics shifted between Frank and her business partner-turned-husband, James Green.

"As soon as I started digging into it — because you want to know that there's a real story there — you want to make sure that it's just not a shallow telling. That's something we really try to do with this story is go deep. I think people tend to write off as they did at the time, like, 'Oh, this brand for girls as it was called in the '80s and '90s.' And that's not how any of us felt," executive producer Arianne LaPenne tells PEOPLE exclusively.

"This brand influenced our psyches. So many artists I talk to were very influenced by it. And so, when we started digging into this story, it really turned out to be about what it means to be an artist and how much we suffer as artists for our art," she continues. "And I don't mean just the workers, I think everyone in this story suffered for their art. But as artists do, we feel like it's worth it."

Executive producer Mary Robertson adds, "Perhaps you're interested in it initially because it's about this brand that you loved so much as a child, and there's this incredible irony and contrast between the rainbows and the unicorns and the happy cheerful designs that you see on the inside of the complex reality that was occurring behind closed doors."

"Maybe that's why we're interested initially, and I hope and believe that once you're in the film and watching the film, that what you're experiencing is a story that's about the plight of the creative professional in modern America," she continues. "And that really is about our relationship with work, too. Both what it gives to you and what it takes from you."

Here are some of the biggest bombshell revelations from Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story.

Lisa Frank wasn't alone in building her empire.

Lisa Frank's name was on every product, but there was a team behind her. After growing up in Detroit, Frank moved to Arizona for college and settled down in Tucson, where she'd build the company. After some time working in art collection and jewelry design, Frank decided to try to jump on the latest emerging collecting trend — stickers.

In 1984, the company got their first $1 million deal with Spencer's Gifts. In 1989, the company started making the shift toward school supplies and stationery. Aside from hard-working artists, marketers, production specialists and more, there was another important component to Lisa Frank Inc. — James Green.

First hired as an artist, Green rose in the ranks and proved his business ideas were good enough to match Frank's own creative ones, the docuseries shows. The two became confidants and later, their relationship turned romantic.

Green says their romance "wasn't [like] one of those movies."

James Green says that his professional proximity to Lisa Frank led to their romantic relationship, but it wasn't "the kind of relationship you people normally are used to." He notes he felt pressure to get married as a 36 year old single man.

"You’re watching too many movies, I think, but this wasn’t one of those movies. We were having a good time, we were working hard and then we got married," he tells LaPenne amid his interviews for the docuseries.

“Working together for 15 years, we became very good friends and one thing led to another. I think it was just kind of a natural progression, hanging out together too much … There was a time where we were probably … there was some love involved. But the interest definitely came from her."

Lisa and James' "overblown" wedding included a special guest with an uncomfortable surprise.

Green remembers his wedding to Frank being "huge," adding, "It was like something out of Disneyland. It was way overblown."

The two were married on Oct. 22, 1994, in Tucson.

Former employee Rondi Kutz recalls, "The wedding was at this very nice dude ranch ... jumbo shrimp everywhere, cocktails everywhere. It was the fantastical world of Lisa Frank — over the top in every way. Lisa was brought in, in a horse-drawn carriage. They park and the horse just decides to relieve himself. And I mean, we’re talking a lot.”

Kutz continues, "I felt pretty special being invited. And her wedding dress was all like rainbow flowers, and very princessy."

Starting from their wedding day and throughout their marriage, Frank gifted shares of the company to Green, eventually totaling 49%.

The marriage ended after Lisa was convinced James was unfaithful.

According to Green, threats of divorce flew between the two before the end came. “I guess I was delusional thinking that you could separate the personal from the business," he says.

"One day I was in the car by myself driving home. She decided to tell me, over the phone, that she was going to 'Fire my ass and strip me of everything I had.' I was like, ‘Wait a minute, this is nuts. Nuts.’ I think she thought, 'Well hell, I want the company back. I want it all for myself.' And that was the beginning of the end.”

Hunter Green, the older of the couple's two sons, says he knew the divorce was inevitable before it happened, when he was just 10 years old.

"I remember, I knew my dad wasn’t coming home that night. I just knew something was wrong. I give him a call, even though I knew the answer, I asked him, ‘Hey Dad, are you coming home tonight?’ I remember him saying, ‘I’m not coming home tonight buddy.’ I said, ‘Can’t you wait 8 years until I’m 18 years old?' It is a long time but as a 10 year old kid you don’t know any better. There was resentment there, yeah.”

Hunter also remembers his mom thinking that his dad was cheating on her with Rhonda Rowlette, the Executive Vice President of LFI from 1996 to 2005.

“I think Lisa was looking for anything to make herself look like a righteous person or to make herself feel okay with her decisions, but at the same time I think she was jealous," Hunter says. "My dad was working very closely with Rhonda, but that doesn’t mean someone’s having an affair.”

Rowlette appears in the documentary and also denies the claims emphatically.

"I did not have an affair with James Green. I have not had an affair with anybody ever in my life except my husband. I’ve been very happily married to my husband for 50 years next month," she says. "You know, people will believe anything. In short, I helped James run the company. We were close friends. James would tell you we were close friends, but it was not improper.”

The divorce was also difficult for the company.

In divorce proceedings, Green says that despite being "gifted" his shares of the company, he did much of the hard work that was intrinsic to Lisa Frank Inc.'s success.

"First of all, you have a married couple owning a business. When you get divorced instead of thinking it through, like ‘We’re going to get a divorce because we can’t live together. We can’t get along.’ Instead, she turned everybody against me," he claims. "She went and told employees ‘Don’t work with James. I’m taking over the company. I’m getting rid of him.’ ”

In a lawsuit, Frank denied ever speaking out against Green to employees. Her team also allegedly provided affidavits saying he was mismanaging the company and needed to be removed. She claimed that Green was working with Rowlette to try to sell the company out from under her. Green, however, claimed Frank knew they were looking for "a partner" in the business and that Frank "was on board."

"Lisa’s dream was to sell it. She would call me and be like, ‘Rhonda, pray. Please pray that we sell this company.’ She was aware of every step we took," Rowlette says.

Green believes "outside influence" changed the way Frank regarded both him and their professional relationship.

"People tried to convince her she didn’t need me and that she could run the company without me. She wanted it all back. She wanted 100% That was her mentality. I could be wrong, but it just became a greed factor that she wanted it all to herself," he says.

The couple's kids were divided between their feuding parents (and still appear to be).

The documentary highlights the strong bond between James Green and son Hunter. Green and Frank's younger son, Forrest, has stayed close to his mom over the years, even working for Lisa Frank Inc. as recently as 2019, managing the company's social media.

"There was a certain period of time where I didn’t see my dad as much as I wanted to. I felt like my mom was trying to make it impossible for me to see my dad. It seemed like she was trying to get him thrown in jail," Hunter claims.

"They said he would abuse me. I don’t know what sense, whether it was physical or verbally, but none of that happened. My dad gave me life, he gave me hope, he gave me a future. He made me feel loved. He made me feel at home. That’s all he ever did.”

Hunter says that the family never functioned quite like a traditional family, noting, "I have no recollection of us sitting down at dinner without an argument. I have no recollection of a birthday that went well.

"They just didn’t see eye to eye. It was just a broken family, arguing yelling back and forth. It was me and my dad and my mom and Forrest. There was never a time that we were one big happy family, ever. I knew that the family would split from an early age," he adds.

There's no ill will against his brother, though he has no relationship with Frank. “We love Forrest. My mom treated Forrest a little differently than me, a little bit softer. She treated him more like her child than me," Hunter says.

Employees were worked hard — with one dying at the office.

Philip Cyr, a former employee with diabetes, recalls being given a hard time about the meal breaks he needed to take at routine times for his health.

“I've been diabetic since I moved to Arizona so I needed to be on a schedule for lunch and dinner. But then they had us start working later in the evenings. I at least had to leave for dinner, but they didn’t like that. It was probably Rhonda that said, ‘Where are you going at 6 or 5? We hired you to work,' " he recalls.

After doing what he needed to for his health, he says it wasn't long until “I was laid off by Rhonda. She wouldn’t tell me why.” Rowlette says that the company "didn't do anything illegal ever."

"Sure, their attitude, not working when we asked them to work. They’ve been fired for that. It wasn’t a great place to work. It was for some people. If you wanted to get in there and do something, Lisa or James, neither of them limited what you could do," she says. "If you had the ability, there was your place. But you had to work hard, really hard.”

In another instance, a man in the finance department had a heart attack and died at his desk. Employees were expected to continue going about their workday after the shocking incident, Cyr says.

"All the sudden you hear a commotion upstairs. He pitched over, dead. He had a heart attack. 51 years old. The paramedics tried to do CPR on him, but he was dead. We’re all still working," Cyr recalls.

"We didn’t get the rest of the day off. This guy just died and they’re carrying him out like a football team, next man up, and got on with business. He deserved more than that.”

Green recalls the incident, too. "I guess there was any, I don’t remember having any counseling. I didn’t know they needed counseling," he acknowledges. "I guess that was something I didn’t understand but yeah, somebody died."

Employees found Frank and Green to both be tough bosses, but after Green's departure, Frank "stood in her own way."

Frank and Green both had their own professional strengths. “Lisa had her pulse on the trends and what was cool and what wasn’t," former employee Kutz says. "We were coming up with new products all the time — crafts, activities. Lisa was brilliant at figuring out how to make her products way better than anyone else's."

Meanwhile, Green enjoyed working on pushing the vision forward. "I did a magazine, I did advertising, print, television. We had costume characters. I had a hot air balloon. I was building this company into something I thought would be the next level," he says. "We had several other lines. It’s like yeah, you can keep making school supplies until you drop dead but it had to evolve.”

"At one time, we had 400 people, two shifts in the back of our warehouse assembling product. Tell me that’s not complex. I’m running around with my head chopped off," he admits. "Some days are better than others. I can come down and I can be in a bad mood and it escalated year after year. It got harder and harder and harder. It’s a brutal business.”

Frank's intensity returned to the forefront after Green departed the company for good in 2005. James, an art director hired in 2015 as the brand took another attempt at revitalization, says the headquarters looked like a "zombie apocalypse" because it was all but abandoned.

“I was hired at Lisa Frank to revitalize product lines, to come up with new characters, new products. I only ended up staying with Lisa Frank for about 6 months. I think it says it all on that first day, you drive up and it looks abandoned. Landscaping outside was unkempt. Trees are overgrown, grass is overgrown. It was just eerie," he says.

“Even though she brought me in [to] create new characters and do all these wonderful things, I did almost zero of any of that. To me it was the old school of work. Micromanaging over your shoulder, don’t talk until you’re talked to. Everything was closely guarded by Lisa," he continues.

"There was no creative freedom at all. She just wanted to fall back on some of her previous legacy characters. I think it’s because she felt ‘It was successful once, let’s try it again.’ I say it with some remorse too because I saw the potential. But I think Lisa stood in her own way, honestly.”

In response to the documentary, Frank released a statement which appears in each episode that reads, "I have loved art and have been an artists ever since childhood. Lisa Frank, Inc. is the result of that passion. I’m incredibly grateful for the amazing artists and team members who helped bring my vision to life. I’m so excited about the future, as the next generation takes the helm. Stay tuned — the best has yet to come!”

Amazon MGM Studios' new docuseries Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story is now streaming on Prime Video.