Saturday’s ad is for “Rheingold Beer,” from 1955. This ad was made for the Rheingold Brewery, which was founded by the Liebmann family in 1883 in New York, New York. At its peak, it sold 35% of all the beer in New York state. In 1963, the family sold the brewery and in was shut down in 1976. In 1940, Philip Liebmann, great-grandson of the founder, Samuel Liebmann, started the “Miss Rheingold” pageant as the centerpiece of its marketing campaign. Beer drinkers voted each year on the young lady who would be featured as Miss Rheingold in advertisements. In the 1940s and 1950s in New York, “the selection of Miss Rheingold was as highly anticipated as the race for the White House.” The winning model was then featured in at least twelve monthly advertisements for the brewery, beginning in 1940 and ending in 1965. Beginning in 1941, the selection of next year’s Miss Rheingold was instituted and became wildly popular in the New York Area. Nancy Woodruff was elected Miss Rheingold 1955.” She was born in Detroit Michigan in 1933, but was raised in San Leandro, California. Humorously, one newspaper reported she attended “San Leandro high school in San Francisco,” and not in … San Leandro. When she was 18, two years ago, she moved to New York City to pursue a modeling career. She entered the 1952 Miss Rheingold contest and was chosen as a finalist, but list to Mary Austin that year. But tried again in 1954, and well, here we are. I’m not sure who her career fared after this year, as there’s not much information I could find. Apparently, she did some early television, but mostly commercial work. She married stock broker Jack Paul Adler of New York in 1956, and they appear to have had two children, before moving to Naples, Florida at some point. She passed away in early 2004. This is page seven of an eight-page insert published in the Los Angeles Times on January 2, 1955 entitled “The Rheingold Story” and featuring the newly elected Miss Rheingold for 1955, Nancy Woodruff. Page 7, entitled “Like an old and trusted friend,” shows Ms. Woodruff having concluded her day with Dr. Scheulein, Chairman of the Board of the Rheingold Brewery, he’s offering her a final beer, saying “we come to the climax, the taste of Rheingold. Let it roll on your tongue. Savor the aroma with all its delicate overtones. Notice how the dryness of Rheingold lets the real beer flavor come through, keeps the taste crisp and clean with never an aftertaste.”
