Saturday’s ad is for “Rheingold Beer,” from 1945. 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. This ad, which ran beginning of August, was encouraging people to vote for the next year’s Miss Rheingold, with the headline “Which Is Your Choice? Vote Now For Miss Rheingold 1946.” This year’s candidates include “Jean Welch, Jill Darnley, Maggie Long, Helen Riickert, Dorothy Hart, and Rita Daigle.” Who do you think will win?
And here’s a much larger black and whote version of the ad that ran in a newspaper.
