1938 DeSoto ad featuring Ginger Rogers

I love just about everything in this 1938 Ginger Rogers DeSoto ad -- the car, the art, the fact that they felt the need to number the panels in the little edu-comic about their land-yacht, the stilted, patronizing stuff about "women welcome" and the traffic cop on the dashboard...

Contest entry - DeSoto 1938

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siliconsunset

but it’s an ad aimed at women, I’m not sure how saying that women would welcome automatic transmission is patronizing. the traffic cop on the dashboard? I still think they’re just displaying a feature of the car and it happens to be an ad aimed at women.
- Anonymous
  
  I suspect that isn’t an automatic, merely a column mounted manual transmission. (What we used to call “Three on the tree,” as opposed to “Four and the floor)
- Wally Ballou
  
  I don’t think this car has an automatic transmission. The ad is probably talking about a “three on the tree” as opposed to the floor mounted shifter, which started disappearing from American cars in the mid ’30s.
  
  So Ginger most likely knew how to use a clutch pedal. Good on her – I never dated anyone for any length of time who couldn’t drive a stick, and my wife is better at a heel-and-toe downshift than I am.
Anonymous

Among other “when I get rich” casual wishes, there is the one where I buy one of those gorgeous cars from the 1930′s or 40′s and restore it inside and out. The only thing I’d change is that the mechanical parts would have to be updated. Basically, I’d like to have a totally modern car that looks like the DeSoto or its contemporaries.

Incidentally, some years ago, Australian automaker Holden made an exquisite concept car called Efijy. It’s impossible to put into words how much I want that beautiful car. Whoever currently has it is very lucky.
Crashproof

So was Ginger Rogers four foot five, or is that a ridiculously enormous car?
- MrsBug
  
  I was thinking the same thing – that machine is HUGE!
Anonymous

Is anybody elss botherd by the mismatched perspective between the car and the driveway? It almost makes it look like the front left wheel is levitating.
Festus

Cory, if you dig this topic, check out Virginia Scharff’s wonderful history of women and cars (including car marketing to women), _Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age_. Or her _Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement and the West_. Scharff makes some really interesting points about what cars did to (and for) women, and also how women were essential to the carmakers’ success.
http://www.virginiascharff.com/books.php
bjacques

Well, it was pretty big. Here’s a great page on DeSotos of the 1930s, especially the 1936 with the sunroof bought by the Sunshine Taxi Co. and deployed on the streets of New York, each installed with a (coin-op) radio. I stumbled upon it when I was trying to identify the taxicab obscured in this picture.
imag

Fair enough ;)
Rich Keller

Ginger Rogers was 5′ 4 1/2′ tall.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_tall_was_Ginger_Rogers

She also drove everywhere Fred Astaire drove, but backwards and in high heels.
- Anonymous
  
  You, Sir, are Rich in Humor. Well done.
- imag
  
  I realize you were joking, but that saying about Ginger Rogers does drive me nuts. I could not be more supportive of equal rights for women in all ways – but lying about things doesn’t make them so.
  
  If you watch any of the movies, you see plainly that Rogers does not do everything Astaire does. She is a fantastic dancer. That doesn’t mean it’s worth demeaning him.
laukarlueng

It’s easily observed that the artist (artists perhaps?) has great skills, however the perspective of the car is not the same as the background in the large picture. It makes me believe it was intentional with the purpose of making the focus of the ad (the car) be even more obvious.
Anonymous

DeSoto used lots of movie stars to plug their cars in 1937-1939–Carole Lombard, Spencer Tracy, Janet Gaynor, Tyrone Power…

http://www.oldcaradvertising.com/DeSoto/1939%20DeSoto/dirindex.html
Antinous / Moderator

That was nice of Barbara Stanwyck to let Ginger borrow her hair.
- Rich Keller
  
  I knew there was something about this ad that kept reminding me of Double Indemnity! I bet she’s writing a check to Fred MacMurray in panel 4.
Anonymous

Simply increases my appreciation of Bruce McCall’s Bulgemobiles
BullishOnRhubarb

Ultimately, Ginger Rogers became a Cadillac owner. In the late 1950′s, the rumor swept our Northwest Detroit neighborhood that Ginger Rogers was at Klett Cadillac a few blocks away on Grand River Avenue. My brothers and I were not too sure who Ginger Rogers was but we knew it was a pretty big deal so we raced down there just as she was being handed the keys to a brand new Cadillac. She paid $6000 cash for it (according to her publicist). She was very elegant and we asked her for her autograph which she gave to us and said “when you go home, tell your mother what nice polite boys she has.” We did this but it did not have a lasting effect on domestic relations.
Anonymous

notice how car ads now are not shot at private country clubs
Anonymous

“Ask the manwho owned one” Back in college (in 1956), I owned one of these behemoths. And I can tell you,Yes, this was a truly big car, so no reflection on Ginger’s size. My car was black, not yellow. And it resembled the gangsters’ cars seen in black-and-white movies about the 1930s bank robbers. For that reason my male buddies enjoyed riding in it. In the back seat area there were two seats which folded down from the back of the front seats (Is that clear?) making plenty of room for extra passengers to a Drive-In movie. Showing the girls this feature provided a smooth way to get them in the backseat. I can only tell you that the college girls I drove around in it seemed to like it.
Rich Keller

I’m not demeaning Fred. But I still haven’t forgiven him for Second Chorus.
Anonymous

The car in the ad is actually a 1939 DeSoto.
Frank W

Nobody mentioned Bruce McCall yet?
TimDrew

Ginger’s size aside, I’d be a bit more concerned about her driving a car with such a twisted looking chassis (if the angle difference between the front bumper and its shadow / the pavement, as seen in the big picture- is anything to go by)
Anonymous

Loved this post. It brought back memories of an excellent book by Bruce McCall called Zany Afternoons. The book has a great section about Bulgemobiles.
dwdyer

I wonder if at the time the testimony about liking and getting action in the car was as suggestive as I’m taking it to be.