Sunday’s ad is for Blatz Beer, from 1951. The ad is part of Blatz’s “I lived in Milwaukee, I ought to know” series from the later Forties and Fifties that featured prominent celebrities, sports figures and famous folks from Milwaukee claiming to know “Blatz is Milwaukee’s Finest Beer” because they lived there, or near there, at some point in their lives. This one features English actor George Sanders, and was best known for roles in Rebecca, All About Eve and as the voice Shere Khan in Disney’s The Jungle Book. He was also the first to play Simon Templar in a series of Saint movies. As far as I can tell, the closest he came to Milwaukee was visiting it “many times.”
In The Kinks’s fine composition, Celluloid Heroes, George Sanders was memorably referred to. Referring to Sander’s star set in concrete on Hollywood Boulevard, Ray Davies sang that, “if you covered him in garbage/George Sanders would still have style”. Blatz was a pretty good brew I’m sure, but it was a product from a mundane industry in a mundane city, and Sanders was endorsing it as part of a commercial arrangement, clearly. Yet how he made the product (truly) sparkle through his friendly, debonair image holding the glass! As emphasized by the picture of his visit to the local art gallery. The ad states that he had good taste in art, not just beer, thus linking the two helpfully for those consumers who might have been puzzled by the incongruous context.
“You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard
Some that you recognize, some that you’ve hardly even heard of
People who worked and suffered and struggled for fame
Some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain”.
George Sanders succeeded by all conventional standards, yet he did suffer too, and died in his mid-60’s by his own hand.
Gary