After my post on booze ads, I really thought I would find a plethora of cigarette ads, given that this was an era in which people smoked rather a lot. To my surprise, I could find only two cigarette-related ads. This isn’t even a cigarette ad, it’s an ad for lighters (bonus points for managing […]
Tag: LIFE Magazine
Thursday Night Life: America’s Love Affair With the Car
Tonight, some photographs from the glory days of automobile ownership! We’ve got cars, advertisements for oil, paeans to spark plugs, and even…ads for gas station bathrooms! I regret to say that I haven’t transcribed the text from these ads yet, so you can click over to embiggen but there’s no transcription of the text up. […]
Thursday Night Life: To Your Health! (And Beauty)
A roundup of health and beauty ads this week. I still have the plague, so, uhm, I don’t have much commentary here.
Thursday Night Life: Booze!
I collected all of the booze ads I hadn’t featured yet to showcase this week. One thing interesting to note is that these ads focus a lot on the male experience of alcohol, without using images of sexualized women, as is common in modern advertisements. In fact, only one advertisement, the Schlitz Beer Ad, shows […]
Thursday Night LIFE: Gosh Golly Dougnuts Edition
This week in Thursday Night LIFE, I’m showcasing an actual article, since I’ve been profiling a lot of advertisements, and I thought it might be fun to look at some real content. The article is about a “children’s court,” and since the text is, you know, relevant, I’m transcribing it here. If you want to […]
Thursday Night LIFE: Fashion Tips Edition
Intense pressure on the ladies to comply with social expectations about appearance is nothing new. Here’s a smattering of selections from 1939, illustrating the fact that beauty standards haven’t actually changed all that much. If you want to see the images in greater detail or read a transcription of the text, you can click through […]
Thursday Night Life: Unfortunate Advertising Edition
Oh, how the times have changed. Things which seemed totally acceptable and not at all unusual in 1939 are definitely viewed askance now. This issue of LIFE magazine is literally bookended with sexist and racist ads which would certainly raise some eyebrows today, and there’s some juicy stuff inside, too. As always, click through to […]
Thursday Night LIFE: Ominous Rumblings Edition
In 1939, the writing may have been on the wall, but LIFE Magazine seemed almost unaware. As always, click on the images for embiggenment and a transcription of the captions if you have trouble reading. There’s a lavish multiple page spread on the Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, for example, in which the article […]
Thursday Night LIFE: Aviation Edition
That’s right, kids, time for another round of Thursday Night LIFE! This week, I’m featuring aviation advertisements. I think that they’re interesting both as an opportunity to trace the evolution of civil aviation in the United States, and as a chance for some pretty ominous foreshadowing. (Background for those just tuning in: Thursday Night LIFE […]
Thursday Night LIFE
There are lots more goodies in the 1939 LIFE Magazine my father passed on to me, so I’m probably going to turn it into a bit of a running feature and parcel them out week by week so no one gets oversaturated with the awesomeness of this magazine. This week, I’ve got some vintage advertisements […]