Before Ronald Reagan became the 40th President of the United States in the 1980s, he was a big-time Hollywood actor and spokesman for some products from between the 1940s and 1950s. Although he had endorsed the presidential candidacies of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, he had not yet really entered into the political arena. Enjoy these 12 Vintage Advertisements Featuring a pre-politics Ronald Reagan.
1. Van Heusen Ad, 1953
Reagan appeared in this Van Heusen campaign in 1953, and in January 1981, the company re-ran the ad with a celebratory message in Time, Newsweek, and People magazines to congratulate Reagan on the eve of his first inauguration. Then, in 1985, Andy Warhol used this same ad as a basis for his screenprint “Van Heusen (Ronald Reagan)” in his “Ads” series.
2. GE Portable Television Ad, 1961
This advertisement appeared in 1961 when Reagan was still presenting General Electric Theater, which he hosted the show until the following year. With Reagan at the helm, GE Theater had become a top-10 show in the Nielsen ratings between 1956-58, and celebrities like Fred Astaire, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, and the Marx Brothers all made guest-star appearances.
3. Chesterfield Christmas Ad, 1951
This ad was featured in the December 3, 1951 issue of
LIFE magazine. In 1947, Chesterfield had changed their marketing strategy to heavily emphasize celebrity endorsements, and by this time, famous spokespeople for the brand had included Lucille Ball, Joan Crawford, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Kirk Douglas, Bob Hope, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, and Jimmy Stewart.
4. Chesterfield Ad, 1948
Despite appearing in multiple Chesterfield advertisements—like this one from 1948—Reagan did not smoke cigarettes. He did smoke a pipe, writing in his autobiography,
An American Life, that he took up the habit in college because he thought it looked cool: “I’d never liked cigarettes, but I was impressed by a flurry of ads in those days in which women said, ‘I like a man who smokes a pipe.’ I’d always liked the look of someone smoking a pipe, so I saved up and bought one. But I never inhaled. I just sucked in the smoke, tasted it, and blew it out—and I only did that during the offseason, when I wasn’t playing football.”
After his brother, Neil, a two- or three-packs-a-day cigarette smoker, developed laryngeal cancer in the 1960s, Reagan quit smoking his pipe and picked up a Jelly Belly habit instead.
5. Marlboro Shirt Company Christmas Ad, 1947
“‘Pipe this!’ cries Ronald.” Apparently, Marlboro shirts feature “Soft-as-smoke fabric,” but don’t get confused: the Marlboro Shirt Company was unrelated to the Marlboro cigarette brand, which has been produced by Philip Morris since 1924. Founded in Baltimore in 1907, the clothing company still exists and now goes by the name Marlboro Originals. The above holiday ad appeared in the December 13, 1947 issue of the
Saturday Evening Post and in the January 1948 issue of
Esquire.
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