Saturday’s ad is for “Rheingold Beer,” from 1958. 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. In this newspaper item, from October 5, 1958, headlined “America’s Ambassadors of Beauty,” we see Miss Rheingold 1958, Madelyn Darrow, along with the six finalists for Miss Rheingold 1959 freshly touched down at Idlewild airport after their KLM return flight from their European trip, which included visits to Paris, France, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Oktoberfest on Munich, Germany, and the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Holding traditional Dutch wooden clogs, from left to right are Emily Banks, Penny Peterson, Madelyn Darrow, Miss Rheingold 1948, and , Robbin Bain. In the back row are Audrey Garcia and Gretchen Foster. For some reason, finalist Sondra Goss is missing from this photo.
