Tuesday’s ad is entitled Friends Over For Tennis, and the illustration was done in 1949 by Douglass Crockwell. It’s #31 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, a group of apparently well-to-do people invited some “friends over for tennis.” I can’t imagine that even in 1949 that many people had their own tennis courts, so I ‘m not sure who this ad was directed at or why they though people might be able to relate to this situation. I suspect it may have been aspirational, since everyone thinks they’ll be wealthy enough to one day, though it’s probably only the 1% now who might, much less in the 1940s when wealth wasn’t nearly as consolidated.
