Unusual endorsements of the classic stars

For as long as celebrities have existed, they've been hawking products to the public. The integration of sponsors into TV or radio programs further blurred the line between advertising and entertainment, so it was quite common to see a top box office star promoting something. Most often it was cigarettes, with beauty and hygiene products a close second. They're glamorous and fun - I have a Chesterfield (cigarette brand) ad with Rita Hayworth hanging on my wall. But in browsing the great site Vintage Ads and Stuff, I came across some odd ducks - famous faces lending themselves to ads for unexpected products, or some ads that are just downright strange. I thought I'd share some of my favorites. If you like what you see, I should note that the thousands of ads seen on the aforementioned website are originals available for sale (mostly at under $5 a pop!). Click any image to enlarge.

Joan Crawford for Fleers Gum - it's kind of hard to read, but it seems like Joan has a personality test to determine if you're a good person, and you should buy gum, and those are unrelated thoughts.

Arlene Francis for The Wallpaper Council (!) - I'm thinking about making "Wallpaper is smart!" my catchphrase.

Zsa Zsa Gabor for Paper-Mate - Sex sells...pens?

Susan Hayward for Sunsweet Prunes - Ms. Hayward is a beguiling young lady with a lovely figure, but despite the claims of the text on this I don't think she maintains it by having a GIANT BOWL OF PRUNES for lunch on set.

Bob Hope for Texaco - Just Old Ski Nose relaxing at home with a cold glass of sponge. And ya know, I never questioned Texaco's competence at doing their job until they placed an ad to convince me...

William Bendix for the American Meat Institute (?!) - "On the air for MEAT!"

Sammy Davis Jr. for Alka-Seltzer - No words.

Joan Blondell for Auto-Lite - Both Joan and Auto-Lite spark plugs have rhythm and perfect performance! That's probably better for Joan than saying that the spark plugs are cheap and easy to use.

A couple of Woody Allen ads for Smirnoff - before Scarlett, before Mia, before Diana, there was Smirnoff.

A few thoughts on celebrity offspring

I like celebrity gossip as much as the next guy. I might not buy a copy of US Weekly, but I'll flip through it in a waiting room, and I'll absorb all the latest dish online. I like to know who's wearing what and who's sleeping with whom - I think it's a perfectly natural human impulse. But there is one aspect of celebrity worship that I simply do not understand: the attention given to their new babies.

We're all adults here (at least maturity-wise, I presume), so let's be honest about something: ALL BABIES LOOK THE SAME. Unless you see their special parts, you can't even tell if it's a boy or a girl. The only variations are size, skin tone, and amount of hair, but a human baby is a human baby. If you put one of the Brangelina twins in a room with 100 other random babies and instructed someone to find the celebrity spawn in the bunch, they couldn't. Now, if you put 100 random men in a room and instructed someone to pick out the one that Angelina Jolie was sleeping with, you probably could on basis on attractiveness (although there was that Billy Bob Thornton debacle). Or which of 100 evening gowns she had worn. The point is, reading about celebrities is fun because of all the sparkle, glamor, and variety, but their babies are the one thing in their lives that are just like everyone else's. They're not born with halos, lightning scars, or an otherworldly glow - there's nothing distinguishing them from some hick baby born in a trailer park.

I sometimes wonder if the tabloids that pay 19 kajillion dollars for a picture or two of a famous baby half-expect something special. They send out their check, and they get back a picture of the celebrity in question holding...a baby. A regular baby. Honestly, I'm not surprised that more people don't try to scam the bloids by sending in a random Google image of a baby and trying to pass it off as one of famous pedigree, because if it wasn't for the inherent shadiness of the source, NO ONE WOULD BE ABLE TO TELL.

The celebrity baby obsession is also pretty bipolar, however. Once these kids are about a year old (or in the case of adopted children, once they've been with a new celeb family about that long), they fade into oblivion instantly. No one cares. Their baby pictures may have financed three new houses, but by age 1 they're dead to the world. Their only hope of re-entering the media is through one or more of the following: 1) an exposé of their famous mom or dad's bad parenting skills that involves them only as a victim 2) an adorably futile attempt to become a star in their own right and not because of their lineage, or 3) some slutty scandal of their own.

And while some stars savor the publicity that their bundles of joy can bring, others (at least act like they) hate it. This article about Nicole Kidman and child made me roll my eyes so far back in my head that I didn't know if they'd come back. To summarize, she issues a whiny plea to the paparazzi to leave her newborn daughter Sunday alone. This won't work, because she is a celebrity and gave her baby a stupid name like Sunday (as an aside, who wants to be named after the day of the week that you spend groaning about how you have to go back to work/school?). Hey Nicole, you know how you can get the the shutterbugs away from you and your precious cargo? Go back in time and don't become famous, or don't have a baby. Being a celebrity stunned that paparazzi want to stalk your baby is like being a normal person shocked that their baby isn't potty-trained from birth. As powerful as celebrities are, they are powerless to change the social structures designed to document every second of their lives.

What do you think? Am I alone in being passionately disinterested in celebrity spawn?

A public service announcement regarding sex with celebrities

Picture this scenario: You are happily involved with a girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife/partner/significant other. You are at home alone, and they are out somewhere. Suddenly, without any rational explanation, the celebrity you have always fantasized about appears naked in your doorway and states their intent to make sweet, sweet love to you. What do you do? Forget momentarily that this would never, ever happen. Readers and friends - do you have a protocol in place for this situation?

I do.

My boyfriend and I, early in our relationship, each established our own List. The List refers to an assembling of celebrities chosen by your partner that you permit him/her to sleep with should the situation arise. The key is keeping the list short. Is it okay if your significant other hooks up with some reality TV slut at a party? No. But if they've been fantasizing about Jessica Biel for years, it's really only fair to let them have her if possible. Plus, that means you could shag your celeb of choice! (Retroactive additions to the list cannot be permitted.)

Please do not send me hate mail accusing me of being a homewrecker. I am in no way endorsing the active pursuit of the stars in question, because obviously no one should be doing that in a relationship. This is only if said celebrities fling themselves at you.

I think 3-5 celebrities is a fair number for your List. Mine includes Paul Rudd, Patrick Wilson, Simon Pegg, James McAvoy and Tony Leung. My boyfriend's consists of Scarlett Johansson, Tina Fey, Kristen Bell, and sometimes Kirsten Dunst ("drugs have not been good to her," he says). I conceded that Scarlett Johansson is so ridiculously attractive that if I found the two of them in a compromising position I would probably hop right in. I'm completely straight, but this line of reasoning provides a bonus for couples of a gay or partially gay persuasion: List overlap.

So, fair readers, I strongly recommend that you have this conversation with your loved one today - because somewhere down the line, it could save your relationship. One a more practical level, it proves whether or not they have the sense of humor necessary to engage in completely serious conversations about absurd hypothetical situations and can do so without freakish jealousy and possessiveness - because if not, you should probably break up with them anyway.

Dream Celebrity Family

I was commiserating with a friend recently about family woes, and had an idea that turned into a kind of car ride game (sans the car). What if you could construct a dream family of celebrities? Who would be in it? Now, this can't just be a matter of celebrities you think are cool - like, would you really want Angelina Jolie as your mom? She might ignore you because you're not from a third-world country. You can't just pick celebrities you think are hot, either, because we're talking family here, and incest is so not okay. We decided that "celebrity" includes all famous people, regardless of profession. Fictional characters of any type are not allowed. We also decided that you could resurrect one person from the dead.

My family looked a bit like this:
My dad would be either Steve Carrell or Will Smith. I know this whole exercise is based on arbitrary character judgments of people you don't actually know, but I just feel that these two would be good dads.
My mom would be Reese Witherspoon, but a version of Reese Witherspoon that didn't make crappy romantic comedies constantly. I am not a devoted Reese fan by any means, but I am basing this choice solely on a tidbit I read in an interview with her, where she said that the only Barbie she lets her daughter play with is President Barbie. Girl power!
Cameron Diaz would be my sister. Many silly sisterly montages abound.
Jonah Hill would be my brother. Hilarious and vulgar - and would probably behave in a rowdy fashion that would make me look even better to my parents. (But then again, I have cool celebrity parents now, so they're probably way chill).
Conan O'Brien would be my fun uncle (funcle), Sarah Jessica Parker my hip aunt.
Shirley MacLaine is one of my grandmas. She can regale me with stories of the Rat Pack, and we can have sing and dance-alongs.
Ian McKellen is my cool, knighted British gay grandpa, and Tim Gunn is his partner, my effortlessly suave, stylish and classy gay grandpa.
For my resurrected celebrity family member, after much consideration, I decided that Alfred Hitchcock would be my eccentric grandpa with a dark sense of humor. Oh, and he'd slide me into the movie biz real easy.

I couldn't decide on cousins, more aunts and uncles, and another grandma, though. In discussing this with the aforementioned friend (and other friends later), some names that were suggested were:
Bill Murray for a dad
Bill Cosby for an uncle
Nancy Sinatra for a grandma
Paul Rudd as a brother (I think that came up with two different people)
Craig Ferguson as an uncle
Dustin Hoffman as an uncle
Meryl Streep as a grandma
Morgan Freeman as a grandpa
Jimmy Stewart as a dad
Chris Farley as an uncle
Mel Brooks as a grandpa
Karen Allen as a mom
Howard Zinn as a dad
Vincent Price as a grandpa
Seth Rogen as a brother-in-law (one friend got very specific and drew an actual family tree)

Who would you want in your celebrity family? (If there are good suggestions, I am SO imaginary-snatching them.)