Charles Laughton, actor and drinker

In this ad for Pabst beer we see the great Charles Laughton squinting into the California sun, holding a glass of chilled Blue Ribbon. It’s 1949 and Laughton has just turned fifty – and recently played the part of Simenon’s Inspector Maigret in The Man on the Eiffel Tower (released in 1950). Filmed on location in somewhat dishevelled post-war Paris in Ansco Color, the production had been fraught with difficulty. The original director had been replaced halfway through, after much internal conflict, by one of the cast (Burgess Meredith). Unsurprisingly the finished movie lacked coherence and consistency of tone – a curious combination of suspense and flippancy. The cinematographer was Stanley Cortez whose excellence was squandered on a meandering narrative and some mediocre acting. Laughton himself seemed uninspired and disinclined to take it at all seriously. But Cortez and Laughton would collaborate to infinitely greater effect five years later when Laughton directed his only film, the incomparable Night of the Hunter. Laughton had become a US citizen and at his first attempt made what would come to be regarded as “one of the masterpieces of American cinema” (David Thomson). When Laughton died in 1962 the critical standing of his film was basically unchanged from the initial indifference – the subsequent reassessment and rise to greatness would take place after his lifetime. Previous posts on Laughton here and here. 

“I was curious...”

This campaign for Schlitz beer followed a three part formula beginning with an image of awakening interest in bottled beer, captioned “I was curious” and a concluding frame in which the two male protagonists exchange glances of shared understanding of the merits of Schlitz whilst strenuously avoiding any suggestion that their camaraderie is based on anything other than healthy and hearty man to man companionship. The female presence is ornamental and confined to handing round the drinks. Like the industry sponsored Beer Belongs campaign where beer belongs anywhere but in a bar, the setting is either the great outdoors or the airport-sized lounges of the executive suburbs. Schlitz and Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser) were locked in mortal combat for market leadership throughout the 1950s and the advertising spend must have been colossal as the lead passed back and forth. 

It was the age of the illustrator and photography remained in the back seat. Indeed the only photographs on view are hand-painted – see the final example, one of the rare examples to show any imagination in which two gents browse a photo album. Aware of any relationship ambiguities, the artist has highlighted the wedding rings. Most Schlitz campaigns were illustrator-led and kept a lot of artists in steady employment producing genre scenes and hyper-real condensation coated foaming glasses. Social acceptability was the ultimate goal – this meant promoting moderation in consumption without threatening sales volume, not an easy trick to pull off. Fate caught up with the Schlitz brand in the 1970s in a textbook case of disastrous mismanagement designed to cut costs by accelerating the brewing process. They employed silica gel as a stabiliser and then replaced it with another additive that produced a beer that appeared to have mucus floating in it. By the time the business collapsed into the arms of a competitor its value was less than 10% of what it had been only 8 years earlier. The entire saga is explained in great detail by the Beer Connoisseur. There’s more to follow on both Schlitz and great rival, Budweiser. 

Into the Crockwell Universe

I have written before about Douglass Crockwell’s strange double life as avant-garde film maker and mainstream commercial illustrator. The fact of his personally driven cinematic activities throws an odd light on his illustrations, tempting us to look for hidden depths below the always perfectly finished surfaces. Every tilt of the head or furrowed brow, a clenched fist or tension in the shoulders, an outstretched hand, a vacancy of expression – it easily tempts us to conclude that the surface contentment is an illusion and deep unresolved emotional conflicts simmer below. This may be no more than wishful thinking, guided by an erroneous assumption that an interest in experimental film would be incompatible with accepting a middle class status quo. Perhaps Crockwell was perfectly adapted to his dual existence and had no difficulty pursuing two totally unrelated projects. Perhaps his illustration work was a way to subsidise the unremunerative film work. What can be said with some certainty is that the subtle articulation of light and shade through pictorial space betrays the presence of a cinematographic eye when it comes to illustration. 

This selection with one exception is drawn from the extended series of over a hundred illustrations commissioned for the Beer Belongs campaign that ran in American magazines during the mid-1950s. The aim was to lift the consumption of beer out of the blue collar gulag and reposition it as the first choice of the educated, materially successful middle class. The air of studied informality under pressure and alcohol induced jocosity supplies more than a few unintentionally comic images. Taken together they offer a remarkable survey of mid-century affluence – there’s a great selection to be seen on Robin Benson’s Past Print blog. The definitive guide to Crockwell’s excellence is to be found at the Alphabet of Illustrators. Final thought – Rockwell or Crockwell? It’s Crockwell for me; he may have the occasional wobble into sentiment but he never takes us to the maudlin extremes that Rockwell routinely inhabits. The Crockwell composition has a spatial complexity and ingenuity that Rockwell never even aspired to. Crockwell made inspired colour choices to create mood or sometimes subvert it while Rockwell simply coloured in his modest tableaux. Rockwell’s triumph was to ingratiate his way into the American Pantheon with prodigious quantities of flattery and treacly charm. It may be that Crockwell has the last laugh – the elderly moneybags in the first illustration has more than a passing resemblance to the great curator of the American Dream and just may be a sly reference to Rockwell’s formidable earning power.