Saturday’s ad is for “Rheingold Beer,” from 1963. 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 and beyond. In this newspaper item, from August 25, 1963, it shows the six finalists for Miss Rheingold 1964, wearing the same outfits from when they were at the New York World’s Fair, which was used in several ads, such as “Beer In Ads #4722: Who Will Be The 25th Miss Rheingold” and which they appear to have been required to wear throughout much of the campaigning period. In this one, they’re modeling in Hartford, Connecticut at a large department store called G. Fox & Co., which at the time was the “largest privately held department store in the nation,” but was closed in 1993.
