Celebrity Women in Ads: The Good, the Bad, and the Shootist

The British started it.   Their advertising geniuses by the mid-1800s had figured out that by putting celebrity faces in ads — people like Queen Victoria — the attention of the public was virtually assured.  Their U.S. counterparts were not long in copying.  Among those singled out were the Good — the young and beautiful wife of a President, the Bad — the notorious wife of a millionaire, and the Shootist — a woman whose rifle was her livelihood.

The Good — Frances Folsom Cleveland.  A close friend of Frances’ father, Grover Cleveland met his future wife shortly after she was born.  As she grew up, he doted on her and the bachelor’s feelings toward her turned romantic while she was still in college.  Now President, the 49-year-old Cleveland proposed, she accepted, and at 21 she married him in the White House in June 1886.  The ad men had a field day.   Her face appeared on trade cards in both photo and illustration advertising a wide range of products.

At right is a colorized portrait of Frances that frequently was used.  This one was issued by the Philip Best Brewing Company of Milwaukee, the forerunner of the Pabst Brewery.  It advertises the “Best” Tonic, an alcoholic elixir that was alleged to be concentrated liquid malt and hops, capable of curing dyspepsia, strengthening the system, and just the thing for nursing mothers.  Identified on the cards as “Mrs. President Cleveland,” Frances’ image could be obtained by sending 12 coupons obtained — one each — on bottles of “Best” Tonic.

My favorite image of Mrs. Cleveland is the illustration above on a trade card for Ivory Tooth Polish.  Done pointillist style it is a strong representation of the First Lady, one that increases her appeal by showing a few strands of hair out of place.  It clearly was drawn from the photograph shown right.  There Frances is advertising “Seal of North Carolina Plug Cut Tobacco,” claimed to smoke cool, last long, and “not bite the tongue.”  By softening the eyes and providing a fuller mouth, the drawing presents a much handsomer woman.

The Sparks Medicine Company of Camden, New Jersey, found it expedient to use a photo of Frances to advertise its “Sparks’ Perfect Health” nostrum, said to be a remedy for kidney and liver distress.  Dating from about 1885, her image appears on in a transfer printed ironstone plate that likely was available upon submission of coupons.  Issued by the Sparks Medicine Company of Camden, New Jersey, it was designed by Robert H. Payne of another Camden firm, “Porcelain Show Cards.”

The “Lady of the White House” was not done any favors by the Yatisi Corset Company for its trade card picture of her.  She seems intensely absorbed in some task, perhaps getting accustomed to her Yatisi corset, claimed on the back of the card to be “recommended by all the prominent physicians in all the leading cities of the U. States and Canada.” She was, however, guaranteed to to be able to return it after wearing for ten days and have her money refunded.  

A final look at the First Lady is a trade card from W. F.McLaughlin Company, a coffee merchant located in Chicago. William Francis McLaughlin came from Cloneybecan House in county Laois, Ireland, from a well-to-do family and a college graduate.  He started from the bottom in Chicago, however, first selling coffee beans from a wheelbarrow and then from a wagon. He eventually owned several mansions on Rush Street and the family had several estates in Lake Forest. 

The Bad - Florence Evelyn Nesbit.  While the Clevelands likely looked askance at the use of Frances’ face to sell tobacco, toothpaste and corsets, Ms. Nesbit reveled in the ad role.  She was a celebrity, later to be known as “the girl in the red velvet swing,” for her role in sex parties staged by famed architect Standford White.  Her millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, subsequently gunned White down in a rooftop restaurant at Madison Square Garden, insuring her notoriety.

At the outset of the 20th Century Nesbit’s figure and face were everywhere, appearing in mass circulation newspaper and magazine advertisements, and on souvenir items and calendars, often in suggestive modes.  The image left, with bare skin and lily was typical of the pose Florence or Evelyn — she answered to either — adopted for doting photographers and artists.

Rainier Beer, by contrast, chose to present Nesbit on a serving platter looking like a “Phi Beta Kappa” graduate of an exclusive girls seminary.  Note her modest garments and her hands folded if in prayer.  The original brewery dates all the way back to 1854 when A.B. Rabbeson opened Washington Brewery, which was Seattle’s first commercial brewing company.  In 1872, Rabbeson renamed his brewery Seattle Brewery.  They launched Rainier beer in 1878. 

It has been said of this damsel:  “By the time of her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was known to millions as the most photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty, and whose innocent sexuality was used to sell everything from chocolates to perfume.”  Make that “supposedly innocent.”   As shown here, she could even be used to sell newspapers.   The ad references her role in a 1902 Broadway musical comedy called The Wild Rose.”  It ran 136 performances.

The Shootist — Annie Oakley.   Our final female celebrity had thousands of performances.  Born Phoebe Ann Mosey, Oakley adopted the stage name after being discovered at 15 years old when she won a shooting match with Frank Butler, a nationally known marksman who later became her husband.  After becoming a famous international star, performing before royalty and heads of state, Oakley became a prime ingredient for the advertising mill.

A prime attraction for the Buffalo Bill Wild West show, she was often showcased in the color flyers and broadsides for the extravaganza.  Note that in the upper right of the sheet above, Oakley is shooting while riding a bicycle.  The Sterling Bicycle Company of Kenosha, Wisconsin, was not long in picking up on that ability and featuring Annie in their ads.  In 1898 Sterling won a silver medal for its “chainless bicycle” at the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition.   Two years later company went bankrupt.

Du Pont, the chemical company of Wilmington, Delaware, also was quick to pick up on the fame of Annie Oakley.  An advertising paperweight showed a gent with five playing cards, each of which had been plugged in an appropriate place by the female sharpshooter.  Her bullets, it suggested, had been with “Lesmok,” ammunition loaded with a substance that was “accurate and clean” with “no corrosive effect.”

A singular difference between Oakley and Nesbit or Folsom is that Annie has continued to be featured in ads.  In the 1950s, for example, she was used to sell Canada Dry ginger ale.   A recent ad, shown here, is from Red Ants Pants, a clothing manufacturer located in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, a town of less than 1,000.  Oakley is presented as a woman who forged the way for those who followed.

Presented here have been three women and three paths to celebrity.   Regardless how they got there — being good, or bad, or a shootist — made no difference to the ad gurus.  Fame was, and still is, the name of the ad game.

More When Drinking and Driving Was Cool

                            

In November 2015 this blog featured a series of pre-Prohibition ads in which the automobile and beer drinking were juxtaposed in a fashion that would be generally unacceptable today.  In the ensuing months I have found a number of other examples of drinking and driving that deserve some scrutiny.   Although almost all of the examples here are from beer ads, I begin with one right from a whiskey dealer.

He was C. H. Ritter, a liquor wholesaler from Detroit, noted for issuing this humorous saloon sign for his flagship brand, Westminster Rye.  Done by fine lithograph, the image was of a young man offering a drink to  a local farmer.  A closer look showed  a pig lying dead in the road, apparently struck by a roadster from which three passengers are watching. The title is “Settled Out of Court” and implies that a drink of Westminster Rye is so appealing that the farmer will let he motorist off the hook for the death of his hog.  Representing the dawning of the automotive age, Ritter’s sign likely was a favorite of the drinking crowd.

While Ritter’s farmer seems ready to trade a sip of whiskey for his hog, the farmer in the Falstaff beer ad above appears to be less convinced that a glass of foaming brew will pay for the wreck of his wagon and the spillage of his apples on the road.  Entitled “The Peacemaker,” this was a lithographed saloon sign issued by the Lemp Brewery of St. Louis.  Note that the owner of the errant automobile has come well stocked.  From the hamper at his feet are peeking several bottles of Falstaff.

Ruhstaller was a West Coast brewery, founded in 1898 and located in the heart of Sacramento California.  It provided a lithographed image on a serving tray that would have been given to saloons and restaurants carrying its Gilt Edge beer.  A young dude, apparently the driver, is pouring a beer for two female riders.  A full bottle and a glass remain, indicating that the driver himself will imbibe before driving on.  

The Edelweiss beer ad is entitled “A Case of Good Judgment.”  Is this a double entendre message?  Can it mean both a wise buy of beer as well as where the case is stowed, safely away from the driver and passengers?  Edelweiss was a brand of beer made by the Schoenhofen Brewing Company of Chicago.  The founder, Peter Schoenhofen was a Prussian immigrant who was working in the brewing trade as early as 1850.

This saloon sign shows two couples being served at curbside.  A waiter in a tuxedo has come from the confines of his restaurant to serve the motorists.  The Oshkosh Brewing Company was formed in 1894 with the merger of three Oshkosh, Wisconsin, breweries facing a tsunami of beer from Milwaukee.  Both Schlitz and Pabst had created distribution centers in a town known for its voracious beer drinkers.  With their survival in doubt, the three combined to create a viable brewery. 

Although no open alcohol is on display in this saloon sign, Schell’s Carbonated Mead was no mere soft drink, but a fermented beverage involving honey.  The New Ulm, Minnesota, company is still around, second only to Yuengling as the Nation’s oldest family-owned brewery.  Founded in 1860, Schell claims that through the years it has produced at least 100 varieties of “German craft beer.”

The Seattle Brewing & Malt Company, from the city of the same name, was famous for its Rainier Beer for which this picture was an ad.  The automobile shown here clearly is one of the earliest models, steered with a lever rather than a wheel.  Interestingly, unlike all the other vehicles shown here, it is being driven by a woman while her male companion looks on from the passenger seat.

Of Seib Beer I can find little information.  Its founder appears to have been William Seib, who is credited with bringing scientific knowledge to bear on the brewing process.  His brewery may have been in the Chicago vicinity.  Here on a lithographed pin an early automobile with passengers is stopped on the road, apparently stymied by a huge bottle of beer smack in the middle.  

The final example is an advertising sign from the early post-Prohibition era.  It shows an automobile that has frightened a horse but not a dog, the latter barking at the white-garbed driver who is attempting to crank the vehicle to life.  Pabst issued a series of these signs, all of them aimed at eliciting nostalgic responses about the “good old days” from potential customers.

 This image ends this second parade of drinking and driving examples from the people who ran some of America’s notable breweries and one liquor house.   While the close proximity of alcohol and gasoline in advertising today would be unthinkable, in earlier times drinking and driving was definitely cool.

Labels:  C. H. Ritter & Co., Falstaff Beer, Ruhstaller’s Gilt Edge Beer, Oshkosh Brewing Co., Schell’s Carbonated Mead, drinking and driving, Eidelweiss Beer, Rainier Beer, Seib Beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon, 

When Drinking and Driving Was Cool

Today the American public is warned on countless fronts about the dangers of  “drinking and driving”   Magazines, newspapers, radio, TV and billboards all carry that message.  Not so in the pre-Prohibition era when the automobile was a new invention.  Shown here are examples of vintage advertising that clearly seem to be fostering drinking and driving.

The automobile came along at the end of the 19th Century.  In 1895, for example, only about 300 motor cars existed in the entire United States. At the beginning of the 20th Century that number had increased to 8,000.  From there automotive growth was explosive — 78,000 in 1905, 459,000 in 1910, and 1.7 million in 1914.   Among other industries, breweries were quick to see the trend and to use automobiles in their advertising.

The first example is the ad above left from the Maier Brewing Company of Los Angeles.  It shows a “grande dame” with a large feathered hat downing a glass of beer.   Even more her liveried chauffeur also is pouring himself a snort.  Their automobile has no windshield and as a result both are wearing goggles. Note that the steering wheel also is missing.  This beer-maker has been described in the press of its time as “one of the oldest and best appointed brewery establishments on the Pacific Coast, and one that it has made itself and its superior products famous….”   The company sold its beer in Western states and even exported abroad.

Windshields had come along — but true headlights had not — by the time Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis issued this ad for Budweiser.  It shows two couples out for a ride in their motor sedan.  Here there is a steering wheel, but it is positioned on the right  — it took the industry a while to straighten out that detail.  The two men and two women have stopped at the “Motor Car Inn,”  obviously a trendy place, for refreshment.   They are getting “curbside” service from a waiter who has four bottles of Bud and glasses on a tray.   With its drive-through daiquiri shops, Louisiana is about the only place left in America where one can get alcohol served to the car.

Pickwick Beer issued an ad featuring a jaunty look gent and his flapper companion heading in their fancy roadster toward a drinking establishment called “Ye Tavern,”  that — no surprise — served Pickwick ale and stout.  The couple look very keen on sampling “the tang of good old ale.” These brands were the product of Rudolf F. Haffenreffer, described as a Rhode Island industrialist and Massachusetts brewer, who called two of his beer brands “Pickwick Pale” and “Pickwick Stout,”  presumably after the character in Dickens novel.

Perhaps the most provocative of the “driving and drinking” promotions was a “novelty song hit” called “There’s Something Else Goes With It” and showing two comely young ladies, out for a ride and scarves blowing in the wind —no shield here.  What clearly goes with joy riding is “glorious old” Rainier Beer, the product of the Seattle Brewing & Malting Company.  The chorus, written by an obscure songwriter named J. Louis MacEvoy, tells us so:

There’s something else goes with it you like to think about;

There’s something in its spirit that you cannot do without.

Yes, something else goes with it and to you its very clear,

There’s something else goes with it.

What?  Rainier, Rainier, Rainier.

The next motoring and suds scene comes on a beer stein issued by Milwaukee’s Juneau Hotel in 1914.   Like the Maier ad earlier, a woman is being chauffeured.  This one is rather prim looking and the driver intent on reaching the destination, which is — a saloon.  A waiter is right outside waiting with a large foaming stein under a sign that proclaims “Lager Beer.”  The Juneau Hotel was located at 229 Wisconsin Ave in the heart of downtown.  Originally an apartment house it had been turned into a hotel in 1910 by Eugene Trimberger.  In 1919 he established a restaurant on the site called Eugene’s.  Known for its seafood, Eugene’s was a favor of mine when I lived in Milwaukee.

That city was famous for touting its beer heritage, once the center of brewing in America but, sadly, no longer.  This post card, entitled “Seeing Milwaukee,” boosted Pabst Beer.  The barrel between the wheels and the banner that waves atop proclaims the name. The drinking here seems to be confined to the tourists aboard a bus whose seats are made from beer barrels.  Several passengers can be seen imbibing.  The boxes along the side are clever in indicating favored Milwaukee German food items — sauerkraut, frankfurter, pumpernickel, and schwitzerkase (swiss cheese).

Not to be outdone, the Miller Brewing Company had its own postcard, entitled “The Water Wagon in Milwaukee.”  Have included it although the source of locomotion is not a gasoline engine but two dachshunds. There is enough drinking going on among all those hanging on to make this a risky situation.  

The final example of pre-prohibition “drinking and driving” comes from a postcard with no attribution on it but similar to those that feature the Milwaukee skyline.  Here the Germanic-appearing driver has in hand a vehicle whose engine is in a beer barrel, with two open steins as headlamps, and a third stein at hand should the dust he is stirring up make him dry.

The juxtaposition of the automobile and beer drinking ended with National Prohibition in when the Nation’s breweries either closed or were reduced to providing non-alcoholic beverages.  After repeal, the ubiquitous nature of the automobile and the frequency of drunken driving discouraged a repeat of these varieties of beer ads.  Today, of course, such images would be utterly unthinkable.

Note:  In my next post I will concentrate on beer and liquor ads that juxtapose drinking and flying, a prospect even more terrifying than drinking and driving.