Saturday’s ad is for Ballantine, from 1940. In this ad, part of a series progressing from one, to two, to three rings, this one shows a clown juggling rings, starting with one and progressing to three. I like their idea to get people to order it. “Order the ‘Handy’ way.”
Friday’s ad is for Ballantine, from 1948. In this ad, part of a series progressing from one, to two, to three rings, this one shows a man carefully tending his garden consisting of a ring of flowers, which becomes two rings and then, naturally, a third. Yet he looks surprised that the flower rings keep multiplying. Maybe he’s a better gardener than he realizes, or perhaps he’s had too much to drink.
Thursday’s ad is for Ballantine, from the 1940s. In this ad, part of a series of clay figure dioramas, the ad depicts the transaction between Peter Minuit and the Lenape Native Americans in 1626. When exactly, is an open question, but he arrived in Manhattan on May 4, 1626 and the sale is believed to be taken place around mid-May, though it was reported until November, when a letter mentions it. “Minuit is generally credited with orchestrating the purchase of Manhattan Island (around $24 in today’s money) for the Dutch from the Native Americans called the Lenape, which later became the city of New Amsterdam, modern-day New York City, which was the core of the Dutch colony of New Netherland and the later British colony of New York. He also founded the Delaware colony in the early 1600s.” The myth about the beads is probably just that, a myth.
Wednesday’s ad is for Ballantine, from 1950. In this ad, part of a series progressing from one, to two, to three rings, this one shows the multi-colored northern lights with a native Inuit man (which they would have undoubtedly called an Eskimo when the ad originally ran) in the snow next to a giant bottle and glass of Ballantine Ale.
Tuesday’s ad is for Ballantine, from 1959. In this ad, another simple one, a full glass of Ballantine Beer hovers above a beautiful ocean with a man fishing from a rock below. I’m not quite sure why that makes it “the largest-selling beer in the East” or why it’s “the crisp refresher,” but I am inexplicably thirsty.
Monday’s ad is for Ballantine, from 1962. In this ad, a cold bottle and full glass of Ballantine Beer is beautifully rendered in front of a field being harvested. Pretty simple, pretty cool.
Between 1951 and 1953, P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company, or simply Ballentine Beer, created a series of ads with at least thirteen different writers. They asked each one “How would you put a glass of Ballantine Ale into words?” Each author wrote a page that included reference to their beer, and in most cases not subtly. One of them was Anita Loos, who was an American author, best known for her popular book “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” was she adapted into a successful film, along with several other well-known screenplays.
Today is the birthday of Anita Loos (April 26, 1889–August 18, 1981), who was “was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She wrote film scripts from 1912, and became arguably the first-ever staff scriptwriter, when D.W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She went on to write many of the Douglas Fairbanks films, as well as the stage adaptation of Colette’s Gigi.”
Her 1953 piece for Ballantine was done in the form of a short story about dropping a bottle of beer out her hotel window, somewhere with a cold climate:
It took an elevator man and a snowbank to show me how much I really appreciate Ballantine Ale.
One wintry evening I set a bottle of Ballantine on my hotel window ledge to chill. My only bottle — wouldn’t you know it? — toppled off into a snowbank on the rood next door. Immediately the thought occurred to me that the elevator man could climb out of a downstairs window and retrieve it.
But would he wade through the snow for a bottle of ale? My maid, Gladys, who evidently shares Lorelei Lee’s belief that diamonds are indeed a girl’s best friend, solved the problem by telling him I dropped a diamond bracelet, and he never learned the truth until he was standing in the snowbank with the bottle. At that, he seemed to think more of the ale than a bracelet!
I might add that I like Ballantine Ale because it refreshes me. And because it’s so light, it never takes the edge off my appetite. But most of all I like it because it has a flavor all its own that’s beyond anything else I have ever tasted.
Between 1951 and 1953, P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company, or simply Ballentine Beer, created a series of ads with at least thirteen different writers. They asked each one “How would you put a glass of Ballantine Ale into words?” Each author wrote a page that included reference to their beer, and in most cases not subtly. One of them was John Steinbeck, who’s the “American author of 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories.
Today is the birthday of John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902–December 20, 1968), who was “widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Red Pony (1937). The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939)[2] is considered Steinbeck’s masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies.
The winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been called ‘a giant of American letters.’ His works are widely read abroad and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature.
Most of Steinbeck’s work is set in southern and central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.”
His piece for Ballantine was done in the form of a few paragraphs of one of his novels about the desert, like “The Grapes of Wrath:”
The sun is straight overhead. There isn’t enough shade to fit under a dog. The threshing machine clanks in a cloud of choking yellow chaff-dust. You wear a bandana over your nose and mouth, but your throats aches and your lips are cracking. Your shirt is black with sweat, but inside you’re dry as the Los Angeles River. The water in the barrel tastes like chaff. It only makes you thirstier.
Let’s say the boss is a man of sense and humanity. When the machine stops for lunch, he comes bucking over the stubble in a jeep, and on the back seat is a wash boiler of crushed ice and bottles of Ballantine Ale. Such a boss will never lack for threshing hands.
Well, first, you take a big swallow to cut the crust, and suddenly you can taste again. The you let cold Ballantine Ale rill into your parched throat like a spring rain on the desert. Smooth malt and hops pull together against the heat and dust and weariness. That’s the biggest thirst I know, and the best antidote.
Between 1951 and 1953, P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company, or simply Ballentine Beer, created a series of ads with at least thirteen different writers. They asked each one “How would you put a glass of Ballantine Ale into words?” Each author wrote a page that included reference to their beer, and in most cases not subtly. One of them was James A. Michener, who’s best known for Tales of the South Pacific.
Today is the birthday of James A. Michener (February 3, 1907–October 16, 1997), who “was an American author of more than 40 books, the majority of which were fictional, lengthy family sagas covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and incorporating solid history. Michener was known for the popularity of his works; he had numerous bestsellers and works selected for Book of the Month Club. He was also known for his meticulous research behind the books.
Michener’s novels include Tales of the South Pacific for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948, Hawaii, The Drifters, Centennial, The Source, The Fires of Spring, Chesapeake, Caribbean, Caravans, Alaska, Texas and Poland. His non-fiction works include Iberia, about his travels in Spain and Portugal; his memoir titled The World Is My Home, and Sports in America. Return to Paradise combines fictional short stories with Michener’s factual descriptions of the Pacific areas where they take place.”
His piece for Ballantine was done in the form of a letter of recommendation:
Ale, as Ballantine brews it, is one of man’s noblest drinks, and I speak from more than a passing acquaintance with the great beers and ales of the world.
In Ballantine Ale one finds the refreshing thirst-quenching qualities so welcome on a warm day; but hidden in its amber depths is a goodness, a character, a strong satisfying flavor, found in no other brewed beverage.
I commend Ballantine Ale to you as a thirst-quencher, a lesiure-time glass eminently designed to promote sociability.
Between 1951 and 1953, P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company, or simply Ballentine Beer, created a series of ads with at least thirteen different writers. They asked each one “How would you put a glass of Ballantine Ale into words?” Each author wrote a page that included reference to their beer, and in most cases not subtly. One of them was Louis Bromfield, who’s best known for as a conservationist and farmer.
Today is the birthday of Louis Bromfield (December 27, 1896–March 18, 1956), who “was an American author and conservationist who gained international recognition, winning the Pulitzer Prize and pioneering innovative scientific farming concepts.”
His piece for Ballantine was done in the form of his reminiscences about his first Ballantine Ale, and why he continues to recommend it or serve it to friends:
Ballantine Ale is a breeze-tossed field of barley … a handful of sun-warmed aromatic hop leaves … a fusion of light and air and taste.
The golden sun, the warm rains, the richness of the earth itself … all lend their goodness to this delightful drink.
Ale itself is the very symbol of good fellowship, of rich and hearty living throughout centuries.
I have never known Ballantine Ale to be anything but wonderful. Friends and neighbors to whom I offer it tell they never really knew who ale should taste until they changed to Ballantine.
