Our 42nd Guinness poster by John Gilroy features carrying the biggest bale of hay, having presumably just finished off a pint of Guinness. The glass in the bottom right is empty, after all. That’s what gave him “Guinness for Strength” to be able to carry such a big load. It also looks a bit like a giant blond afro.
Friday’s ad is for Ballantine Ale and features everybody’s favorite humorist and cowboy, Will Rogers, who once said “he never met a man he didn’t like.” Perhaps the ad is trying to suggest he’d never met a beer he didn’t like either. I’m not sure when the ad is from, but Rogers passed away in 1935.
Thursday’s ad is for Narragansett Lager Beer from 1960. I love the simplicity of just the bottle and an near-empty glass along with the slogan “Hi, Neighbor — Have Another ‘Gansett.”
Wednesday’s ad is for the malt liquor Colt 45 and a contest where someone could win a “completely unique weekend on Playboy’s Jet.” I picked the ad because I’m getting on a plane early tomorrow morning and it is decidedly not the Playboy Jet. Does Playboy even have the jet anymore? My guess is no, and for that reason I have no idea when this ad is from, though it seems like the 1970s is a safe bet. But as the text for the contest begins, which makes me wonder, “do I deserve [a] Colt 45 weekend?” Does anyone?
Tuesday’s ad is for Rheingold beer, features Miss Rheingold for 1956 — Hillie Merritt — holding a stuffed elephant and donkey for the election that year, which would have been held November 6, 1956. That was the year Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson. Oddly enough there’s no text whatsoever about the election or politics of any kind, and in fact if it weren’t for the plush political symbols it could be a completely generic beer ad. Happily, however, the stuffed animals are there. Look closely at them. Is it just me, or does the donkey look like he’s laughing while the elephant is wearing a somewhat maniacal expression?
With the World Series ending in a Giants victory tonight, this will be the last baseball ad, at least for now. It’s for Stroh’s Beer and celebrates the Detroit Tigers winning the World Series in 1968 (though the ad ran the following year, in 1969).
With the World Series and baseball ads plus Halloween this weekend, I’m doubling up on ads so I can highlight both baseball and Halloween-themed ones. Today’s Halloween ad is from 1956 and is for Schlitz, depicting some pumpkin carving for Halloween. And to help their creativity along, they’re enjoying a couple of cans of Schlitz, poured into tall pilsner glasses.
And here’s just the artwork from the ad.
Today’s art is a cartoon by Barbara Shermund, who contributed regularly to the New York, Esquire and other high profile magazines. In fact, she did 597 cartoons that appeared inside the New Yorker and 8 covers, too. This unnamed cartoon was created in 1945, May 24 to be exact, and this is a color film copy transparency that’s housed at the Library of Congress, in the Prints and Photographs Division. It was published in the January 1946 issue of Esquire. A bunch of socialite types sit around listening to what appears to be a classical pianist. Who knows what the audience is drinking, if anything, but the pianist has a bottle of beer sitting on the edge of the piano, along with a glass full of beer.
Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum has the following short biography of Shermund.
Painter, illustrator, etcher, cartoonist. Born in San Francisco, CA on June 26, 1899. Shermund studied at the CSFA. As a contributor to the New Yorker and Esquire, she spent most of her career in NYC. She died in September 1978 in Monmouth County, NJ.
But perhaps the best account of Shermund is by Michael Maslin, another New Yorker cartoonist, at his blog Ink Spill, entitled Revisiting Barbara Shermund, that begins with this:
Born in San Francisco in 1899 to artistic parents (her father was an architect), Ms. Shermund studied at The California School of Fine Arts before heading east, at the age of twenty-six, to New York. She told Colliers that her initial visit east became permanent “after she had eaten up her return fare.” In June of that very year, she made her debut at the four month old New Yorker with a cover of a young woman sporting a hip hairdo, eyes closed, resting her arm over a railing, against a black sky peppered with stars. In a year’s time her cartoons, many if not most of which were written by her, were appearing in nearly every issue of the magazine.
You can see her eight New Yorker covers and three of her other cartoons as the magazine’s Cartoon Bank. And she has another in the Cartoon America exhibit at the Library of Congress.
And below is another drinking-related cartoon she did for the New Yorker in 1938.
With the World Series and baseball ads plus Halloween this weekend, I’m doubling up on ads so I can highlight both baseball and Halloween-themed ones. Today’s baseball ad is from 1942 and features baseball legend Leo Durocher, when he was a manager for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Durocher is saying that “My beer is Rheingold — the DRY beer!”
With the World Series and baseball ads plus Halloween this weekend, I’m doubling up on ads so I can highlight both baseball and Halloween-themed ones. Today’s Halloween ad is fairly contemporary and is for UK beer Hobgoblin, brewed by the Wychwood Brewery located in Witney, part of Oxfordshire.
