Sexist ads?

This week I received an email containing over a dozen vintage advertisements that must have appeared in newspapers and magazines in America many years ago. A brief introduction said: "Do you remember seeing any of these ads? Can you believe there used to be such ads!" I scrolled through the images and found some of the most sexist ads I'd seen. I'm thinking: were there any protests when these ads were published? Or were they simply laughed off because they weren't meant to be taken seriously? Or am I missing something? In our world, today, ads like these would be unthinkable. There is another lot which I'll post some other time. For now check these out and if you know something, let me know.

For previous Vintage Ads, look under ‘Labels’.

The Outlaw by Howard Hughes, 1943

Click on the image to enlarge and read.

Hollywood veteran and aviator Howard Hughes directed only two films, Hell's Angels (1930) and The Outlaw (1943), and produced over two dozen films. I don't recall seeing any. This week I was going through the ebook version of Dime Mystery Magazine, September 1946, when I came across this vintage advert or plug about The Outlaw which, I assume, is his most famous film. 

Apparently, the western film was banned by US censors soon after its world premier in San Francisco in June 1944. Rather than cut some of the objectionable scenes which, I think, had to do with the scantily-clad Jane Russell, the filmmaker pulled out the film from theatres across the world. I don't know whether this was true. The taglines of the American and Australian posters—"The picture that couldn't be stopped! (left) and "Not suitable for children" (below)—indicates that it was, though I suspect the whole thing was a plug for the success of the film.

The Outlaw is about the complex relationship between seductress Rio McDonald (Jane Russell) and the three men she plays against each other—Jack Buetel (Billy the Kid), Doc Holliday (Walter Huston), and Sheriff Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell), who shot the Kid in real life—in the backdrop of a battle with the Indians.

The film is described as "a story of the untamed West. Frontier days when the reckless fire of guns and passions blazed an era of death, destruction and lawlessness. Days when the fiery desert sun beat down avenginly on the many who dared defy justice and outrage decency." It seems like a good film to watch.

For previous vintage ads, see under Labels.

VINTAGE ADS

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises, the first full novel by Ernest Hemingway, was published in 1926 by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, the pioneers of publishing in America. In the second half of the 20th century, Scribner was taken over by Alfred A. Knopf, Jr's Atheneum Books in 1978, merged into Macmillan in 1984, and was finally bought by Simon & Schuster in 1994. The latter has retained the Scribner imprint.

The advertisement is simple but spot on about Hemingway's literary career. It says: "— and with this book Mr. Hemingway's sun also will rise, for this is a novel able to command the sharpest attention even in a season so crowded with good fiction. The publishers advise you to be very much aware of this book from the start."

According to Wikipedia, the dust jacket of the first edition of The Sun Also Rises was illustrated by Cleonike Damianakes who used a Hellenistic design (characteristic of the classical Greek civilisation) intended to tastefully suggest a quasi-sexual theme. 

The novel is about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the bullfights. Hemingway was a keen bullfighter himself and there is a nice black-and-white picture of his fighting one in Pamplona, Spain. The first edition consisted of 5,090 copies and sold at $2.00 per copy.

On Cleonike Damianakes, the illustrator, I have drawn a blank so far. And I haven't read the book yet.

VINTAGE ADS

When Sony launched its portable TV

This Tuesday, I don’t have a review for Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom. Instead, I have a television set you may have overlooked or forgotten about.

“Even people who can't get out love a Sun Set. The black screen
that gives you sharper contrast outside does the same job inside. You get
blacker blacks, whiter whites. And it runs on rechargeable batteries as well
as AC current. So if you ever do get out you can take the Sun Set with you.
Assuming, of course, it's your Sun set — SONY.”
This ad was published in Life magazine, November 24, 1967. 

Sony launched Japan's first transistor radio in 1955, exactly a decade after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Five years later, in May 1960, Sony came out with the first transistor TV. It was, in fact, the world's first direct-view TV and a dream come true for Masaru Ibuka, Sony founder and President at the time. 

The TV8-301 8-inch portable transistor TV (right) also launched Sony's TV business. 

Making the transition from transistor radios to transistor TVs with both sound and visual was a challenge for Sony which, as is its custom, lost no time in getting around the new device.

"Transistors with enough display power to be useful for TVs were comparably more difficult to create than transistors for radios, but Sony had perfected these special transistors the year before, in 1958, and work on developing a transistor TV was already underway," Sony observed in a short piece in Time Capsule: Revealing Sony Across Time.

When Masaru Ibuka asked a group of people representing US TV manufacturers whether they thought small TVs would sell or not, they said no in one voice. In 1962, Sony launched the TV5-303, which was even smaller than the TV8-301, and proved them wrong. The smaller than the small TV was a big hit in the US.

In 1945, Japan lost the battle of the air raids to the Allies, ten years later it rose from the debris to win the battle of the air waves.

VINTAGE ADS

Unknown World

This is the ad that Fawcett Publications, Inc. of Greenwich, Connecticut, USA, published in its inaugural issue of Unknown World, released in June 1952, to advertise its new comic magazine. Will Lieberson was the executive editor and Al Jetter was the art editor.

According to his obituary in The New York Times, published January 17, 1995, William H. Lieberson, 79, was a successful director and playwright before he became editor-in-chief of Fawcett Comics, "where he oversaw the production of such monthly comic books as Captain Marvel."

Fawcett published comics across many genres including horror comics in the 1950s, a string of titles which, apart from Unknown World, also included This Magazine Is Haunted, Beware! Terror Tales, Worlds of Fear, and Strange Suspense Stories.

Lieberson and Jetter also collaborated on other horror comics from the Fawcett stable, notably This Magazine Is Haunted, which resembled EC's distinct brand of horror comics.

History in a vintage ad

I don’t remember posting vintage advertisements on this blog before. I usually hop over to noted author Bill Crider’s blog Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine for a regular dose of vintage ads that tell their own story.

There are always exceptions to the rule, though, and I am making an exception with the above advertisement I came across in Weird Tales: Isle of the Dead, Vol.28 No.31, 1936. 

In this ad titled Let Me Tell You (finger-wagging) astrologer Pundit Tabore guarantees a solution to most of life’s problems that include relief from your enemies. I couldn’t think of putting it any other way.

The ad intrigued me for two reasons: one, it’s a nondescript ad placed by an Indian in an American pulp magazine, and two, the address at the bottom of the ad, Upper Forjett Street. I suppose astral readings and fantasy and horror have something in common.

Now Forjett Street, located in the upmarket neighbourhood of south Bombay (not very far from where I work), and Forjett Hill on which the road sits, is named after Charles Forjett who was commissioner of police in British India from 1856 to 1864. According to a report in The Times of India, Forjett was a genial and excellent officer who wore native clothes, spoke the local languages fluently, and cracked down on criminal rings. He was also credited with creating the first formal police structure for Bombay (now Mumbai).

There is nothing amiss about the advertisement itself for Pundit Tabore’s “descendants” are thriving in India even today, conning the gullible and the illiterate.