Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

Socialize

Beer In Ads #1873: Backyard Barbecue

By


Wednesday’s ad is entitled Backyard Barbecue, and the illustration was done in 1947 by Stevan Dohanos. It’s #4 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, four men and two women are in a backyard on what looks like a beautiful spring day. One of the men is grilling steaks on the ginormous stone barbecue while the two women toss the salad and butter buns. The other three guys are holding, choosing or drinking beer but not contributing to the meal, the lazy weasels. I keep thinking there must be two more women out of the scene, because in postwar American everyone traveled in pairs, at least in the typical advertising of the day.

004. Backyard Barbecue by Stevan Dohanos, 1947

Beer In Ads #1872: New Beau

By


Tuesday’s ad is entitled New Beau, and the illustration was done in 1947 by Douglass Crockwell. It’s #3 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, an experience that no one really has to go through anymore is shown in all its awkward uncomfortableness. A man who presumably has a date with the girl sitting as far away from as she can on the sofa is being interrogated by her father, while Mom is carrying a tray of beers in with one for each of them. If you’re old enough to drink beer, I’m thinking you are probably too old to have to go through that. But why are they all smiling?

bb-003-xl

Beer In Ads #1871: Moving Day

By


Monday’s ad is entitled Moving Day, and the illustration was done in 1946 by Stevan Dohanos. It’s a second #2 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. There are just a couple of these I know about, and I’m not sure why they duplicated the number. New ads were created roughly every month and were published in the popular monthly magazine of the time, so possibly they ran concurrently in magazines reaching different groups of people. In this ad, a family is moving. The house is nearly packed up (hopefully that painting is staying behind on the junk pile!) though I’m not sure what’s going to happen to the bird or the goldfish bowl. As the truck is undoubtedly nearly full, they’re thoughtfully rewarding the movers by pouring them glasses of beer.

002b. Moving Day by Stevan Dohanos, 1947

Beer In Ads #1870: Family Musicale

By


Sunday’s ad is entitled Family Musicale, and the illustration was done in 1946 by Mead Schaeffer. It’s #2 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, at least four family members are performing — though it’s an odd combination of organ, violin, cello and harmonica — but it looks like a fifth is just arriving, case under his arm (with a possible sixth behind him), as the two apparently talentless men of the family watch. But at least they get to drink beer during the concert.

002a. Family Musicale by Mead Schaeffer, 1946

Beer In Ads #1869: Uncle From The West

By


Saturday’s ad is entitled Uncle From the West, and the illustration was done in 1946 by Stevan Dohanos. It’s #1 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, it appears that a relative who lives out west is visiting a more easterly family and bringing western gifts along with him.

001. Uncle From the West by Stevan Dohanos, 1946

Beer In Ads #1868: Visiting The Grandparents

By


Friday’s ad is a parody or spoof ad from Mad Magazine, which seems appropriate for April Fool’s Day. The artist was William or Will Elder and what it was making fun of was the Beer Belongs series of ads by the United States Brewers Foundation that ran from 1945 to 1956. In the ad, everyone from the baby to the family pets are drinking a beer.

Visiting the Grandparents by William Elder, a Mad Magazine spoof

Beer In Ads #1867: Facts Versus Fallacies #67

By


Thursday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1915, No. 67 in series they did from 1915-17 called “Facts Versus Fallacies.” I have no idea how many were done but some of the them are numbered into low triple digits, suggesting there were a lot of them, all in an effort to stop Prohibition from happening and win over support for beer. This ad, marked “67,” and is about how in every state that already had a prohibition in alcohol, it was failing miserably, and was impossible to enforce. In Alabama, in one city alone — Birmingham — it was estimated that 500 packages of alcohol were delivered every single day to residents who’d ordered them from out of state. So yeah, that worked.

Facts-v-Fallacies-67-1915

Beer In Ads #1866: Facts Versus Fallacies #61

By


Wednesday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1915, No. 61 in series they did from 1915-17 called “Facts Versus Fallacies.” I have no idea how many were done but some of the them are numbered into low triple digits, suggesting there were a lot of them, all in an effort to stop Prohibition from happening and win over support for beer. This ad, marked “61,” and is about a canard that’s still used as propaganda by prohibitionists today, which is that people who drink alcohol are criminals and that one leads to the other. But even statistics at that time (as today) did not support that claim, and in fact a majority of incarcerated people were not alcoholics. They go on citing several experts of the day, all with he same opinion, that drinking alcohol does not cause someone to become a criminal, despite the ludicrous cries of the anti-alcohol wingnuts.

Facts-v-Fallacies-61-1915

Beer In Ads #1865: Facts Versus Fallacies #57

By


Tuesday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1915, No. 57 in series they did from 1915-17 called “Facts Versus Fallacies.” I have no idea how many were done but some of the them are numbered into low triple digits, suggesting there were a lot of them, all in an effort to stop Prohibition from happening and win over support for beer. This ad, marked “57,” and is about yet another false claim by the Anti-Saloon League at their annual convention in Atlantic City, when they claimed that a report offered showed that thousands of people in Pennsylvania were giving up drinking. Sadly, this still happens frequently today, and the report showed no causation and was shown out of context. Statistics from another source, the I.R.S., contradicts their claim, of course.

Facts-v-Fallacies-57-1915

Beer In Ads #1864: Facts Versus Fallacies #55

By


Monday’s ad is another one for the Pennsylvania State Brewers Association, from 1915, No. 55 in series they did from 1915-17 called “Facts Versus Fallacies.” I have no idea how many were done but some of the them are numbered into low triple digits, suggesting there were a lot of them, all in an effort to stop Prohibition from happening and win over support for beer. This ad, marked “55,” and is again about Maine and especially how Massachusetts is accused of supplying alcohol to them, demonstrating more evidence that the local option — which is really a “local prohibition” — cannot work and should be abandoned. And that’s from people within the Anti-Saloon League at one of their own meetings, causing some amount of embarrassment to the prohibitionist position.

Facts-v-Fallacies-55-1915-MA-ME