The Fabuleous Fifties

Morris Dancers

Wednesday Advertising Day.

As I mentioned earlier I have just recieved a whole lot of advertising strips. Unfortunately I just missed out on a lot of Philip Morris ads, but there were two still attached to the Bond Street ads by Frank Robbins I showed last week. Looking at those Philip Morris ads, I was struck by how much there looked like the Sam Spade ads that are always attributed to Lou Fine. And on the other hand, they also look like the film ads I always assumed were by Leonard Starr. At the same time I recieved the newspaper ads, I also got a General Motors Information Rack comic book called Steel! by what seemed to be the same artist. But this 16 page informational booklet was published in 1954 and produced by Johnstone and Cushing. And Lou Fine had struck out on his own in the late forties, even though he may have started with Johnsone and Cushing and is reported to have worked for the J&C produced Boy's Life.

But... if Lou Fine is not the artist of the Steel! booklet, he probably is not the artist of the Philip Morris series either and then the resemblance between that series and the Sam Spade ads becomes troublesome.

To figure it all out, I have collected all the Philip Morris Ads and movie ads I have already shown here, together with the new Philip Morris scans and a whole lot of Philip Morris ads I have found on NewspaperArchive. Tomorrow I will show all of the Sam Spade ads I have already show plus about ten new color scans I got (together representing what must be more than half of that series). I will point out the similarities there, but for now I ask you to have a good look at the lions shown here in one of the ads and the bullfighter scene in another. On friday I will show the Steel! booklet, a great thing by itself. In that case it's the faces you should look for.

Also on friday I will join in with Craig Yoe's great Frankenstein simulpost in honor of his new Dick Briefer book, but I will probably do that as an extra. In the meantime, make sure to come back and have a look at there great realistic ads. If any of you hav any ideas about the artists involved, I would be glad to hear it.

The Film ads from 1946 to 1948:



















March 16 1947:


Philip Morris from 1950 to 1952:

#62:

Feb 12 1950:


April 2 1950:


#66, April 16 1950:

April 30 1950:


May 21 1950:


June 6 1950:


July 7 1950:


Aug 1950:


Oct 15 1950:


And a different version that ís cropped:

Nov 12 1950:


Nov 19 1950:


Dec 10 1950:


Jan 7 1951:


#85, Jan 21 1951:

#86, Feb 4 1951:


#87, Feb 18 1951:

March 4 1951:


#90, April 1 1951:


And then something I can't explain in any other way than a numbering mistake: in October the numering picks up at #90 again and continues from there! I have not yet had a chance to look at the intervening months, but I will do so and get back to this.

Oct 7 1951:


And why would I have two different ones for October 28?

Oct 28 1951:


Oct 28 1951:


Nov 2 1951:


Nov 25 1951:

Dec 2 1951:


Dec 23 1951:


Then I have a gap, which is where this one fits, #104:

After the summer the series moved into a I Love Lucy ad series, still featuring the bellhop (who was also used on the ads in that tv-show).

Aug 17 1952:


Sept 7 1952:


Sept 9 1952:


Sept 28 1952:


Oct 5 1952:


Oct 19 1952:


Nov 9 1952:


Nov 30 1952:


Dec 20 1952: