Road Roller Endorsed by Doris Day
An odd example of a movie cross promotion from 1949. Perhaps fans of Doris Day would also be interested in her favorite road roller!
I'm not entirely sure if this ad belongs here or on the Museum of Hoaxes, because there's some odd things about it. For a start, what is this magazine Asphalt & Macadam Monthly that the ad supposedly appeared in? This ad is the one and only reference to such a magazine that I can find. And did International Harvester ever produce a De Luxe Series 56 roller-compactor? Again, this ad is the only reference to it I can find.
However, print copies of the ad appear to be for sale, which would be odd if it was a fake ad someone had photoshopped together.
But it's possible it was a fake ad produced in 1949. The movie the ad mentions, It's a Great Feeling, was (according to Wikipedia) a "spoof of what goes on behind the scenes in Hollywood movie making." So maybe a ridiculous/fake cross-promotion was part of the marketing for the movie?
Update:
The ad appears to be a mishmash of parts taken from various sources. So almost definitely a modern fake. Though who went to the trouble of creating this is a mystery.
S. Norman identified the image of Doris Day sitting on the road roller as coming from a 1955 photo of her on a bicycle.
Many of the other parts of the ad are cobbled together from genuine 1940s era International Harvester ads.
I'm not entirely sure if this ad belongs here or on the Museum of Hoaxes, because there's some odd things about it. For a start, what is this magazine Asphalt & Macadam Monthly that the ad supposedly appeared in? This ad is the one and only reference to such a magazine that I can find. And did International Harvester ever produce a De Luxe Series 56 roller-compactor? Again, this ad is the only reference to it I can find.
However, print copies of the ad appear to be for sale, which would be odd if it was a fake ad someone had photoshopped together.
But it's possible it was a fake ad produced in 1949. The movie the ad mentions, It's a Great Feeling, was (according to Wikipedia) a "spoof of what goes on behind the scenes in Hollywood movie making." So maybe a ridiculous/fake cross-promotion was part of the marketing for the movie?
Update:
The ad appears to be a mishmash of parts taken from various sources. So almost definitely a modern fake. Though who went to the trouble of creating this is a mystery.
S. Norman identified the image of Doris Day sitting on the road roller as coming from a 1955 photo of her on a bicycle.
Many of the other parts of the ad are cobbled together from genuine 1940s era International Harvester ads.
Comments
According to Wiki the IH 56 Series came out in 1967. A little late for the movie tie- in.
Someone looking for answers on this board said they saw it in a brochure, not the magazine.
http://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/99725-international-series-56-roller-compactor/
This guy thinks it's a Mad Magazine parody :
http://wwwshadowofadoubt.blogspot.com/2014/09/cementimental-journey.html
Someone looking for answers on this board said they saw it in a brochure, not the magazine.
http://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/99725-international-series-56-roller-compactor/
This guy thinks it's a Mad Magazine parody :
http://wwwshadowofadoubt.blogspot.com/2014/09/cementimental-journey.html
Posted by S. Norman on 07/28/17 at 10:02 AM
The illustration here appears hand drawn, which was common for ad copy at the time. It is also possible that a cut-and-paste job was also performed, again very common for the time.
On a humorous note, if the picture had been staged live:
That machine has large weights in the rollers that rotate, thereby causing vibration that compacts the material it rolls across. The effect is quite pronounced if you happen to be standing nearby. I'll leave the probable physical effect on the operator, in this case Miss Day, to your imagination. (She may have enjoyed it!)
On a humorous note, if the picture had been staged live:
That machine has large weights in the rollers that rotate, thereby causing vibration that compacts the material it rolls across. The effect is quite pronounced if you happen to be standing nearby. I'll leave the probable physical effect on the operator, in this case Miss Day, to your imagination. (She may have enjoyed it!)
Posted by KDP on 07/28/17 at 11:40 AM
I now say fake. Here is the original photo of her I found that they used to make the mock up:
http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7744605/doris-day-birthday-true-age-95
http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7744605/doris-day-birthday-true-age-95
Posted by S. Norman on 07/28/17 at 12:41 PM
S. Norman -- great find! So the big question is when was the fake ad created? Is it modern, or from the 40s?
Posted by Alex on 07/28/17 at 04:03 PM
Scratch that last comment. Just realized the image of Doris Day used for the mock up is from 1955, so it can't be a fake ad from the 40s. Must be modern.
Posted by Alex on 07/28/17 at 04:06 PM
This has me flummoxed. So much of it is absolutely perfect, and so much is glaringly wrong.
The "Asphalt & Macadam Monthly" doesn't bother me. It's my understanding that publishing companies wanting to launch new trade magazines would make mock-ups, complete with fake ads, so salesmen would have something to show customers. If enough advertising space was sold, they'd begin publishing. If the salesmen bombed, they'd move on to the next idea. I saw a prototype sf magazine in the early 1970s (I thought the magazine was okay, but they never printed a real issue).
The typography, paper, and layout leads me to think it was professionally done. I can't spot a single mistake. Just the kind of thing a publisher would do, even for running off a dozen mock-ups.
But the content is horrendously wrong. They'd never use the name of a real company (trademark infringement), and they'd certainly never fake a celebrity endorsement (of such things are lawsuits made).
As others have said, the pictures are wrong. I saw that right off because she didn't wear her hair that way until the 1950s. The background image is possibly passable, but the sheared-sides was a few years away (for Calamity Jane (1952)).
Besides that, I don't think IH used celebrity endorsements. I'm certainly not an authority, but I have seen a lot of their advertising, and even for their refrigerators, they used generic models rather than actresses.
Why would someone put so much effort in making major parts of it perfect and then not do even basic research for the rest? That's what has me puzzled.
The "Asphalt & Macadam Monthly" doesn't bother me. It's my understanding that publishing companies wanting to launch new trade magazines would make mock-ups, complete with fake ads, so salesmen would have something to show customers. If enough advertising space was sold, they'd begin publishing. If the salesmen bombed, they'd move on to the next idea. I saw a prototype sf magazine in the early 1970s (I thought the magazine was okay, but they never printed a real issue).
The typography, paper, and layout leads me to think it was professionally done. I can't spot a single mistake. Just the kind of thing a publisher would do, even for running off a dozen mock-ups.
But the content is horrendously wrong. They'd never use the name of a real company (trademark infringement), and they'd certainly never fake a celebrity endorsement (of such things are lawsuits made).
As others have said, the pictures are wrong. I saw that right off because she didn't wear her hair that way until the 1950s. The background image is possibly passable, but the sheared-sides was a few years away (for Calamity Jane (1952)).
Besides that, I don't think IH used celebrity endorsements. I'm certainly not an authority, but I have seen a lot of their advertising, and even for their refrigerators, they used generic models rather than actresses.
Why would someone put so much effort in making major parts of it perfect and then not do even basic research for the rest? That's what has me puzzled.
Posted by Phideaux on 07/28/17 at 09:33 PM
The 1st job I had @ International Harvester (now INT'L Truck and Engine - Navistar) was on a diesel engine assy. line, and one of the companies the engines were for was Galion, who made rolling machines like the illustration. That was in '70 tho. In the '50s ?? :dunno:
Posted by John on 07/29/17 at 12:31 PM
I added an update above. I'm now convinced it's a modern fake. But I'm very curious who did it, and why.
Posted by Alex on 07/29/17 at 12:35 PM
Back in the time, I knew the cars. Grain trucks; not so much. I think the truck is pre- WW11.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgJvgESR920
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgJvgESR920
Posted by BMN on 07/29/17 at 04:18 PM
The strangest part, for me, is the ad copy. That's obviously produced by good typesetting/publishing software. You don't get that kind of kerning and perfect margin changes in a word processor (Word is particularly bad at such things). Composing the text to exactly fill the space is a special talent.
Maybe it was an exercise done by an apprentice forger?
Maybe it was an exercise done by an apprentice forger?
Posted by Phideaux on 07/29/17 at 07:12 PM
My money is on Cris Shapan. Here's some of his other work:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Cris+Shapan&safe=active&rls=com.microsoft:en-US:IE-SearchBox&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiV2t7lwLPVAhWGNT4KHc7kAi4Q_AUIDCgD&biw=1304&bih=837
And a Snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/winking-glue/
https://www.google.com/search?q=Cris+Shapan&safe=active&rls=com.microsoft:en-US:IE-SearchBox&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiV2t7lwLPVAhWGNT4KHc7kAi4Q_AUIDCgD&biw=1304&bih=837
And a Snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/winking-glue/
Posted by S. Norman on 07/31/17 at 07:23 AM
S. Norman -- Nice detective work! I did some googling and Shapan mentions (and acknowledges as his) the Doris Day ad here:
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/everything_on_the_internet_is_a_lie_except_for_this
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/everything_on_the_internet_is_a_lie_except_for_this
Posted by Alex on 07/31/17 at 03:56 PM
Yes, this is one of mine. The roller is hand-drawn, and I deliberately placed poor Doris teetering on the edge with no ladder or means to get down . "Series 56" was off the top of my head - and the reason that the ad is full of spurious information (vs. carefully researched facts) is that it was never intended to be a hoax, or to fool people, it was a half-hour photoshop & airbrush lark done to amuse my friends at lunchtime. It migrated off my personal facebook page; it wasn't done for the public at large. It's so obviously a joke, I can't understand why people would waste their time parsing the content, trying to find 'proof' that it's 'fake.' Kudos to those of you who chalked it up to foolishness, because that's all it was ever supposed to be - a glance and a laugh (hopefully).
Posted by cris shapan on 07/31/17 at 05:39 PM
@cris shapan: First, thank you for Ad and its visual presence. I have enjoyed viewing since Alex first posted the drawing. Second, I did not care one way or the other whether or not it was "fake", I just enjoyed it.
Posted by Steve E. on 07/31/17 at 06:31 PM
thank you, Steve E. - The goal was to entertain, so score one point for Doris!
Posted by cris shapan on 07/31/17 at 09:18 PM
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Category: Movies | Advertising | 1940s