Monday’s ad is for “TWA Airlines” and “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 September 1958, was actually for the airline Trans World Airlines or TWA headlined “TWA Proudly Delivers a Precious Cargo.” But it’s the next subheading that make it relevant here, “… the California candidates for Miss Rheingold 1959!” and shows the six finalists for Miss Rheingold 1959 (Robbin Bain, Penny Peterson, Gretchen Foster, Audrey Garcia, Emily Banks, and Sondra Goss) standing and waving from the airplane gangway ladder with, presumably, the pilot and flight attendant at the bottom of the stairs.
