Consumer’s-Eye View

Two hefty new books by Los Angeles graphic designer-author Jim Heimann have just been released by Taschen: the 768-page “All-American Ads of the 40’s” and the 928-page “All-American Ads of the 50’s,” ($40 each). Leafing through the pair is like walking through a massive design exhibition on the mores of those two decades. The books are peeks into what Americans wanted as much as what they were made to want, albeit from a narrow perspective--the homes are mostly Moderne America, the people mainly white and middle-class.

“All-American Ads of the 40’s” is divided into chapters according to product category: automobiles, alcohol and tobacco, consumer products, food and beverage, fashion and beauty, industry, World War II, interiors, entertainment and travel. The arrangement creates a kind of hodgepodge of similar images that could have been less confusing had they been arranged in chronological order. For example, World War II played a prominent part in ads at the beginning of the ‘40s, with patriotism linked to buying everything from Baby Ruth candy bars to Hickok belts, but after the war, consumers were encouraged to spend to build the economy. And following that, there was a push for space travel and technology.

This evolution is brought out in Willy R. Wilkerson III’s introductory essay. He explains that after the Allies dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, the Atomic Age began, and with it America’s love of cars. Only about 222,000 cars were built in 1943; the number jumped to more than 2 million in 1946. Between 1946 and 1950, 21.4 million new cars were sold. This car frenzy was helped along by ads, which fill 84 pages of this book.

With the hindsight of history, some of the ads in the book are now pretty shocking. Celebrities, many of whom later died of lung cancer, are shown promoting smoking, as are doctors. Ads for interiors also promote the new Melmac--lead-based paint.

There are also some that seem quaint, such as Formica draperies, or prescient, such as one for the solar house. Lots of new timesaving appliances are featured as well as suggestions for trips to exotic lands. Many of these products are still with us, from Armstrong tiles to Campbell’s soup to Revlon cosmetics, while others, like De Soto automobiles, are long gone. Most of the ads are done as illustrations and their designs are more cluttered and have more copy than contemporary ones. Some even have poems or entire story lines. Our current interest in being politically correct is nowhere to be seen in either book.

“All-American Ads of the 50’s” follows the same format, with atomic/defense taking the place of World War II. As Jim Heimann states in his essay, the Atomic Age was in full swing, with space helmets and rockets used to sell cereal and car designers adding elongated tail fins to cars to express speed.

Home ownership also grew exponentially in the 1950s: At the beginning of the decade, 23.6 million Americans owned their own homes. By 1960 the figure had grown to 32.8 million, most of the growth being in new suburbs.

“Americans wholeheartedly embraced a whole range of fads in the 1950s, buying unnecessary objects out of sheer compulsion. Coonskin caps, chlorophyll-infused products, capri pants, bongos, shrunken heads, Hula-Hoops, flying saucers and Tupperware were bought with abandon,” Heimann writes. In his research for the book, he was surprised by the proliferation of pink products, from stoves to Cadillacs to toilet paper.

When televisions became widespread, things really heated up. Heimann reports that from 1950 to 1955, the sale of TV sets went from 3.1 million to 32 million. Ads in the 1950s still mostly featured illustrations with lots of text, but photography began to be used more. The car ads--nearly 200 pages of them--are particularly glamorous, with women in strapless dresses and fur coats and tux-clad men lolling around new cars near resorts or restaurants.

Heimann is currently working on two more books on ads, from the ‘30s and the ‘60s. Who would ever have imagined that ads could say so much about our recent past?

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Design-Related Events

A panel discussion on “Visions of Saint Vibiana’s” will take place at 2 p.m. today with Linda Dishman, executive director of the Los Angles Conservancy, and architect Brenda Levin of Levin & Associates Architects, moderated by Liz Martin at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in the Bradbury Building, downtown Los Angeles, (213) 620-9961.

On Tuesday, John Loring, design director for Tiffany, will speak on “Magnificent Tiffany Silver” as part of the Decorative Arts Society’s lecture series at the Edwards Newport Stadium Theatre, 300 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach. The breakfast buffet begins at 9:30 a.m.; lecture at 10 a.m. Cost is $40 at the door; call (949) 722-7880 for more information. All proceeds benefit New Directions for Women, a nonprofit organization providing treatment to women with alcohol and other chemical-abuse problems.

An exhibition tracing the history and development of American color plate books in the 19th century continues at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens through May 26. The exhibition begins with the first book published in the U.S. illustrated in color, William Birch’s “The City of Philadelphia” (1799-1800). The Huntington is open Tuesday through Friday from noon to 4:30 p.m. and weekends from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission: $10 for adults; $8.50 for seniors, $7 for students; free for children under 12. (626) 405-2100; www.huntington.org.

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Kathy Bryant may be reached at [email protected].