There's a lot going on in the ad. It's from that time period when Hollywood had a surplus of starlets doing double duty by serving as spokesmodels in advertisements, so here we have the lovely Elaine Stewart.
(Elaine is okay in my book because she starred with a trio of my favorite Western actors – Audie Murphy, James Stewart and Dan Duryea – in the movie Night Passage.)
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| Elaine (as a blonde) with Audie Murphy in a scene from Night Passage |
The image of elegant Elaine may have roped us in (it did me), but the main focus of the ad is the "Win a Chevrolet Corvette" contest. It's interesting that – like the Mother's Day contest that I wrote about here – you had to compose a short essay to enter.
Besides the image of the Corvette and some nice shoe art, we also get a cameo from Esky, the Esquire magazine mascot.
Esky always reminded me of both the rich guy from the Monopoly game, and Lord Plushbottom from the Moon Mullins comic strip.
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| That's Plushie in the middle, with Prof. Byrrd on the left and Moon on the right |
Here's Esky as a fully dimensional advertising figure.
Personally, I prefer Ms. Stewart as a brunette.
ReplyDeleteMoon Mullins was one of my favorite comic strips as a kid; I wanted to sleep in a dresser drawer like Kayo, but Ma said that I had a perfectly good bunk bed from Delis Brothers, so that wasn't happening.
Have a great weekend, y'all!
I had an uncle who always wore those ventilated, gusseted shoes like the ones on the lower right in the shoe store ad. Don't know why that stuck with me, but it did.
ReplyDeleteSo, who won??
ReplyDeleteThat's a good question. The winner doesn't seem to have been announced in the Journal, which isn't too surprising since it was a national contest. But I've been Googling it in a variety of ways and can't find any mention of someone actually winning the Corvette. All I find are more appearances of the ad in newspapers and magazines across the country.
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