Sunday’s ad is entitled The Boss Comes To Dinner, and the illustration was done in 1947 by John Falter. It’s #8 in a series entitled “Home Life in America,” also known as the Beer Belongs series of ads that the United States Brewers Foundation ran from 1945 to 1956. In this ad, it portrays another uncomfortable scene. A young couple entertains an older gentlemen who is presumably the boss of the younger man. They sit pretty far apart, each with a beer, while the wife sits demurely in between doing her knitting. Doesn’t that look like fun?
I found this very interesting, as it was a practice among some in Montreal in the 1960s and 70s to add salt to the beer. It immediately raises a head on the beer. I have never seen this done elsewhere. Try it Jay, it’s quite remarkable how it works…
Gary
Oops, I see now I posted the above comment in the wrong place, I have placed it now under the right posting. Since I’m here, I might point out there is an interesting subtext to ads of this period. First, there is the idea that American freedom was threatened, of course during WW II, from which this ad may date, or even after, during the contest with the Communist regimes.
Second though, is the idea of Prohibition, still fresh in Americans’ memory. The freedom referred to in the ad reflects the right brewers continued to assert never to go back to that baleful time.
Gary