TV Guide (November 27, 1953)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

look and sound like a housewife, but need not be; must believe in product; actress preferred; long-term contract; insincere girls need not apply.” That’s more or less what they want. The trend is taking hold. Large corporations have gone out and hired pitchgirls. General Electric has Kathi Norris; Colgate employs Candy Jones; Admiral’s girl is Muriel Williams; and Borden’s recently signed Betty John¬ son. The ad men’s hope: when a con¬ sumer thinks of either the girl or the product, he thinks of both. A Fa.sl .4d Lib In recent months the four men¬ tioned new pitchgirls, blessed with broad smiles and nice long-term con¬ tracts, have been plugging their spon¬ sors’ products. Of the lot, the most ex¬ perienced in the art of The Sell is GE’s Kathi Norris who spent more than four years on a New York TV station singing the praises of such items as one-armed egg beaters and ketchup dispensers for a department store. Kathi made her hour of vend¬ ing, plus interviews, each week¬ day strictly a family affair by co¬ hawking wares with her husband, TV producer Wilbur Stark, and occasion¬ ally daughter Pamela, now (Pa¬ mela still has a lot to learn about Mommy’s profession; upon biting into a sponsor’s doughnut once, she made a face and said, “I don’t like it.” Ad- libbed Mommy, sweetly but firmly, “Well, dear, millions of others do.”) Candy Jones, a fair-complexioned model who married the boss (glamor connoisseur Harry Conover) is Col¬ gate’s charm girl. Unlike Kathi, this is Candy’s first real dip into handling commercials. Her role is that of a peaches and cream beauty who is a shining example of how to stay “irre¬ sistible” by bathing with a Colgate soap. Her commercials are paying off. Since the sponsor hired Candy sales have hit a new high. I.,eave That Door Open Apparently the ad man’s favorite subject for a pretty pitchgirl is still the ever-ajar refrigerator door. Check the Bishop Sheen show and you’ll see Muriel Williams beaming over an ice tray or gleefully pointing out the un¬ withered meat, the unspoiled eggs, the crisp vegetables in an Admiral re¬ frigerator. Muriel, an established stage actress, is like most of the other video salesgirls in the new advertising scheme of things: she’s practically in¬ separable from her product. She’s Ad¬ miral’s Girl. Then there’s little Betty Johnson, a Down South package with a slight drawl who chirps commercials for Borden’s on Treasury Men In Action. Betty isn’t exactly in competition with Borden’s original pitchgirl, Elsie the Cow. She’s more of a running mate to that celebrated dairy bovine. In any case, pert Betty is one of the few who Muriel Williams: a living trade mark. takes singing the praises of old Spon¬ sor U. literally. She’s a professional at it, having sung with the Johnson Fam¬ ily Singers and also as a soloist. Pitchgirls try as much as possible to look the part of the modern, middle- class housewife, which many of them are. “We dress,” said one TV sales gal, “not in aprons or flimsy little prints like most homemakers, but rather in clothes a housewife would wear if she only had time.” Their talks stick mostly to the honest, direct ap¬ proach with a liberal sprinkling of female gushing. The pay is good, the work is steady. But with few excep¬ tions the girls don’t want to live out their careers as walking trademarks. Underneath they’re actresses all. 11