Dinah Shore - 1959 Chevy spot

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[Impala64ssa]

Chevy ad from 1959 featuring the late, great Dianh Shore. The days when the chrome was thick and the women were straight!

[Lazlo in PA]

She love the old cars because I let her sit up front. No airbags. She is getting to be a real pain with the cars though. She demands to take stuff that I got two deep in the barn or I’ll hear about it all day. A trip to get milk sometimes involves moving 3 or 4 cars to get something out. I am not going to complain. I told the wife that she can have the girliest girl she wants, as long as I can get her into the car hobby.

[goat granny]

Light bulbs use to be free until the government put a stop to it. they said it stiffled competation...All you had to do was take your electric bill to any office and they gave you a bag full of light bulbs...cost zero..My husband use to pick up light bulbs about every 4 months...

I am from the government and am here to help you.....

[goat granny]

Yep, I’d much rather listen to ads about Viagra and feminine hygiene products. Also sexual vibrators, oh yea, that is so much better...

[fella]

“Incredible. Were we ever really like that?”

Yes, we were. It was a good time until the lawyers screwed it all up by setting us at each others throats with greedy law suites and entitlements.

[count-your-change]

You better believe it! There is nothing like driving a big heavy car at 80 mph and just float along like you're sitting in an easy chair.
They were cars worth singing about unlike the little tin boxes now that only a contortionist can get into and the commercials are of cars skidding on wet pavement or of some skinny gal with her dress sliding up around her backside trying to get out of the car.

[radu]

Those old Chevy commercials were a hoot. LOL! My, how times have changed.

Gimme metal all around me, gimme chrome, gimme an engine with "grunt".

Me and my engagement "ring", Baby. Better than a diamond ANY day. Pic taken at a cruise-in earlier this year.

[golux]

Great car, great pics. Freepers are “ORIGINALS”!

[afraidfortherepublic]

Yes, we were like that. Dinah usually sang her commercials wearing a beautiful gown. The women thought that if they had a new Chevy they could dress like that. The men thought that if they drove a new Chevy they could squire a beautiful lady dressed in a beautiful gown. You could forget your grimy job and your kids in diapers (cloth, of course) for a couple of minutes and dream about how to get that new Chevy.

Loretta Young used the same concept her her show opening. She always started her show with a sweeping entrance in a beautiful dress. People tuned in just to see her enter a room and introduce the story of the night, always starring Miss Young.

The Loretta Young Show Intro

[afraidfortherepublic]

Loretta Young -- different dresses

[FastCoyote]

I own a 1957 Bel Air I’m restoring. That’s close to the last time they made real cars.

[FastCoyote]

That is gorgeous! I have a ‘57 Bel Air, a long way from that one though.

[Venturer]

The Viagra ads kill me. They most always feature some guy 35 years old.

I am 69 now and at 35 I didn’t need Viagra.

PS I could use a little now to keep my shoes dry.

[NavyCanDo]

I long for the days when you could open up the hood of the car and be able to name everything you see and explain what it does. And you have the tools to remove and replace it and the elbow room to do it.

[ottbmare]

I have no trouble believing it was wonderful to drive a big heavy piece of Detroit iron at 90 miles an hour. Been there and done that. I’ve had that experience too.

And I have no trouble believing that it was good marketing to have some glamorous movie star advertising a consumer product while clad in a beautiful gown.

What I was wondering was, did the people of the period not look at the three dorky-looking guys driving with lovely, vivacious Dinah Shore and think, “Those guys look gay.” In real life, nobody ever gets into a car and drives along singing; didn’t that bother consumers? Did it really motivate them to buy?

I’m asking because I was a very small child in 1959, and I’m trying to understand my parents and the apparently golden time in which I was born. I’m wondering how we can take steps toward recapturing the best of America’s past. It seems there was a sort of naïveté, a willing suspension of natural skepticism. Was this a reaction to the sorrows of World War II?

[SnuffaBolshevik]

"I long for the days when you could open up the hood of the car and be able to name everything you see and explain what it does."

[EyeGuy]

“Yep, I’d much rather listen to ads about Viagra and feminine hygiene products. Also sexual vibrators, oh yea, that is so much better...”

####

I meant also that the old commercial was better than not just the current commercials, but the PROGRAMS as well.

[EyeGuy]

“It seems there was a sort of naïveté, a willing suspension of natural skepticism.”

###

I think the key to it was, Americans did not have the sick, jaded view that infests our society today. The “natural skepicism” was not so natural back then, at least it wasn’t front and center. These days if you aren’t worldly wise and cynical you are viewed as a polyanna, naive or unsophisticated.

In the things that matter, people of that era were every bit as sophisticated and worldly as we are today. They were just more positive, optimistic and quite frankly, civilized.

That’s my take looking down the retrospective gateway. Take it for what its worth, as I was born in 1958.

[goat granny]

sorry for my miss wording. I meant the scarcasm for the second name to the post. the guy that posted to you...my bad...and yes it took talent to write comedy and drama. Now they take a thought sex it up and you have the lastest new show on TV. Networks shows suck, well 99% do anyway.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

Kreezus jist! You must account for half of vehicle emissions in North America!

[count-your-change]

“What I was wondering was, did the people of the period not look at the three dorky-looking guys driving with lovely, vivacious Dinah Shore and think, “Those guys look gay.” In real life, nobody ever gets into a car and drives along singing; didn’t that bother consumers? Did it really motivate them to buy?”

I don't recall anyone using the term gay for homosexual back in the fifties even for what now looks “dorky”. And remember every other pop male singer was named “Bobby” and had a big greasy pompadour hair style.

The “pansies” used to hang around the movie theater when I was young but had any even said a word to a kid the police would make sure he didn't walk for a long time. So there were homosexuals just as now but it was waaay back in the closet. Liberace was near the top of his career and played it straight as a arrow.

I think it was Frank Sinatra that made a movie, The Man with the Golden Arm, about drug addiction and it couldn't be shown most places. Some things were not for public discussion. At all.

“Did it really motivate them to buy?”

Evidently it did. Detroit sold all it could produce with no rebates or cash for clunkers. And they could sneer at the few foreign oddities imported. (see some of David Halberstams commentary and books).

But also during the period just after WWII research was being conducted in depth to discover what motivated people psychologically to act as they did and how to manipulate those motivations.
The advertising industry is simply more blatant about it now.

And yes Dinah Shore was a sex symbol but the image of a nice wholesome type. She had a simple message, She was moral and Chevrolets were for people like her and for people who liked her. See America but only in a Chevrolet. With a big kiss!