
Friday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1956. The scene shows two couples drinking some beer and making sweet music. I love the expression on the harmonica player’s face, but it’s the accordion that signals just what a hopping party it must have been.

By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks

Thursday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1960. It features a perfectly quaffed man in his pajamas and a robe raiding the icebox at 11:45 p.m. He’s got what’s presumably a Schlitz in one hand and a sandwich in the other. Surprisingly enough, that’s exactly what I look like just before midnight most nights … except for the robe … and the pajamas … and the sandwich.

By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks
By Jay Brooks

Wednesday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1948. I love the look on her face, like she’s about to play a trick on someone, instead of simply delivering a beer. I know it was 1948, but it’s hard not to notice the servant/slave and husband/master relationship depicted in the ad. At least she looks happy in her subservience. He just looks clueless.

By Jay Brooks

Tuesday’s ad is another one for Schlitz, from 1956. Showing another backyard barbecue, or “cookout,” it’s another group of well-dressed hipsters, enjoying some brewskis with grilled meat. The barbecue man is even wearing a chef’s hat and white apron. And according to the ad, Schlitz is not only the “World’s Largest-Selling Beer” but is also as “refreshing as all outdoors!”

By Jay Brooks

Monday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1954. Showing a backyard barbecue, or what was then called a “cookout,” the man working the grill is holding up his glass of beer while still sing his spatula on the burgers. I mentioned this in an earlier bbq ad, but again look at how dressed up they are for a cookout, the women in dresses and the men in what today we’d call business casual, though the guy in the pink shirt is sporting a tie. There’s lots of little details, like the odd facial expressions on the salt and pepper shakers next to the Schlitz sign in the lower left. The main man, the grillmaster, has shown up in a number of modern mash-ups, but this is the original ad he was taken from.

