A Vintage Ad Portrays a Different Universe

December 13, 2011

ALAN writes:

Some years ago I was looking through a decades-old magazine when a full-page color advertisement for the Greyhound Bus Company commanded my attention. I clipped it and saved it. It appeared in a December 1945 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. It is from another moral and cultural universe and a better one.

The ad was not created by or for adolescents or adolescent-witted people. There were not many adolescent-witted people in the U.S. in 1945, when the ad was published. If there had been, Americans would never have celebrated V-E Day and V-J Day. The largest words in the advertisement are “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” a reminder of the song that became a Christmas classic after Bing Crosby recorded it two years earlier. How ordinary and simple that must seem today to generations of Americans who are drunk on excess, decadence, and their own limitless arrogance.

But Americans in 1945 were not like that. They were different. They were better. They were grown-ups. And being home for Christmas was not something many of them took for granted in the years 1941-’45. This advertisement depicts a happy occasion but it is not cutesy or frivolous. It reflects a degree of sobriety long since vanished from a nation whose people are now deeply immersed in adolescent manners and standards.

The woman depicted in the advertisement is an American wife and mother. It is not she but her husband who wears the military uniform. She is not a “Feminist.” Americans in 1945 had not been taught to swallow the poison called Feminism, which they would agree to do a few decades later. Would Americans have celebrated V-E Day and V-J Day if their military had been feminized? Don’t make me laugh.

Here is a striking contrast to today’s dumbed down culture – in standards of restraint and good taste in advertising, of dress, of manners, of the different responsibilities of men and women, and of loyalty to family, home, and country. It is noteworthy and memorable for all those reasons.

— Comments —

Lydia Sherman writes:

It is true that people in the 1940’s wanted to be grown up. I cannot remember my parents wanting to be young or even look young. They and their friends wanted to be grown up in every way, beginning with independence. They were very reluctant to accept help or hand outs, and even in severe circumstances they did everything they possibly could to endure it without asking for help. They sought to be grown up in the way they dressed, and in the way they handled responsibility and duty. Duty before desire was their mantra. It was always a wonder to me how so many of the people of that generation desired to be older or old, because today the culture is so youth-focused.

Buck writes:

Lydia Sherman’s comment is dead-on.

It’s an adult magazine, start to finish. There are only six children depicted in it’s pages; four as members of a normal family, one boy alone in an orange juice ad, one girl in a candy bar ad. There is nothing for teenagers. There were no “teenagers” before World War II. There’s a full page photo and a brief story about a 15 year old in agony. He was on his way to school, dressed as an adult in a classy suit and tie, when he slipped on the ice. A doctor is attending to him on an icy winter sidewalk. They are surrounded by policemen and bystanders. The young man is standing with his finger fully impaled on a fine-pointed iron fence picket. It took 45 minutes to saw off the iron picket and take him to the hospital.

On every page of the magazine, you get only the images and the sense of an adult world.

One of my most prized possessions is a Life Magazine dated two days after my birthday in January 1948. I keep in under a piece of glass.

(Everyone should have their birth issue. They make great gifts.)

Buck adds:

I was also reading in my January 19, 1948 Life Magazine about the conflict in the Middle East. “WARFARE SPREADS IN THE HOLY LAND” is a seven-page article with text only totaling maybe a half of a page. It’s classic Life Magazine photo journalism. The first page is four-fifths photo with this caption: “just beyond a smashed window in partially gutted Tel Aviv, a pair of Haganah soldiers closes in silently on Arab snipers infesting the area”. The stories section headings read: “AS THE ARABS FIGHT FROM AMBUSH THE JEWS TRAIN A REGULAR ARMY,” “JEWS LIVE IN A WORLD RINGED BY TRENCHES,” “SOME ARAB LEADERS PLAN WAR IN THE SPRING,” “CAIRO’S MOSLEM UNIVERSITY DEMANDED A HOLY WAR AGAINST THE JEWS”. One more photo caption; the photo is of a crowd around a car engulfed in flames: “VIOLENCE IN JERUSALEM is touched off at Damascus Gate, Arab entry to old city. When a Jewish taxi drove through gate into Arab mob, someone threw a bomb and crowd burned taxi. Fifteen were killed.”

I could write a book about this one magazine issue. Every single page; every story and ad is rich with American tradition.

At the top of the next page it reads: EDITORIAL. TAXES AND POLITICS. EVEN IN A ELECTION YEAR, LET’S BE CLEAR ON WHAT TAXES WILL PRODUCE WHAT RESULTS.

Laura writes:

That’s fascinating.

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